Marketing Mechanisms Used for Summer Food Service Programs

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research was to determine the mechanisms/channels used for marketing the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), a federal program that provides free, nutritious meals to children during the summer months. This study utilized a multiple-site, exploratory case study design of 16 sites from seven states and Washington, DC. Data were gathered using various methods: conducting structured interviews with SFSP administrators, administering a short survey about the SFSP, and researchers’ observations of mealtime and marketing displays. Utilizing the Process Model for Customer Journey and Experience coding framework, we examined 107 marketing elements of SFSP on the basis of type of promotional mix, purchase phases, and interaction of consumer experience touch point types. Findings suggest SFSPs primarily use paid advertising and public relations as preferred marketing mix channels of SFSPs. Furthermore, findings suggest that SFSPs utilize a variety of promotional mix elements in the preconsumption and consumption phases of the customer journey but not in the postconsumption phase. Findings also revealed SFSP operators favor brand-owned and partner-owned customer touch points in the customer journey.     

Advertising appeals across varying economic and regulatory conditions: A longitudinal content analysis in the mutual fund industry

This research investigates the relationship between the utilization of various appeals in mutual fund advertisements and prevailing market, and regulatory conditions during the period 2000—2009. Mutual fund firms promote their investment products utilizing an array of advertising appeals, including those that highlight performance, product and consistency. We hypothesize that the application of these appeals varies over time and according to market conditions. In addition, the research considers the 2007 regulatory efforts mandating the inclusion of mutual fund expense information in advertisements that promote fund performance. A longitudinal content analysis is utilized to survey the presence and prevalence of various advertising appeals by mutual fund providers in Money magazine from 2000 to 2009. Results reveal that appeal usage varies over time and by market performance. Appeals focusing on performance and product are strongly correlated with market performance, whereas appeals relating to trust are correlated with subpar market performance. In addition, the use of cost information, broadly defined, has become more important over the 2000–2009 period independent of market performance. The implications of these findings and their relationship to government regulation are also discussed.     

Conceptualising Customer‐to‐customer Value Co‐creation in Tourism

The notion that tourists actively co‐create value with organisations is increasingly acknowledged in tourism marketing. Yet, not much is known about the processes in play when customers co‐create value with each other. This conceptual paper offers a theoretical basis for the study of customer‐to‐customer co‐creation in tourism contexts, while debating the epistemological assumptions of value‐related research in tourism. Proposed conceptual framework posits that value is socially constructed and embedded in tourists' social practices. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Virtual Teams and Multiple Media: Structuring Media Use to Attain Strategic Goals

Work environments have grown substantially more complex over the years. Teams are increasingly distributed, and presented with a variety of different communication technologies, e.g., e-mail, instant messaging, cellular phones, pagers, and intranet applications, for use in distributed collaborative activities. Further, individuals often belong to multiple teams concurrently. This study explores how virtual team members structure their use of multiple media to attain strategic goals in complex work environments. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze data gathered from forty interviews of information technology workers. Our results indicate that there are two primary structures individuals employ when making use of multiple media: sequential and concurrent. Sequential combinations are of three types: redundant, serial, or complementary, while concurrent combinations are of two types: independent or complementary. Further, individuals strategically use multiple media to accomplish specific communication goals beyond simply transmitting the message, such as message acknowledgement, enhancement of mutual understanding, and participation in multiple communication interactions. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.Both authors contributed equally to this paper.     

Metrics: HRM's Holy Grail? A New Zealand case study

What gets measured in business is noticed and acted on. The importance of human resource management (HRM) to be noticed as a vital key to business success has been argued profusely by the HRM profession over the last three decades. While the importance of human resource (HR) measurement is not disputed by business managers, the search for meaningful generic HR metrics is like HRM's Holy Grail. The purpose of this research is to investigate the issues confronting a sample of business organisations concerning measurement issues. It examines the current measurement practices used and their HR measurement needs. Developing appropriate HR measures, in terms of adding value, allows organisations to refocus their resources for leverage. Inappropriate measures simply encourage inappropriate behaviours not in the long‐term interests of the business. We know that HRM is less prepared than other business functions (like finance or management information systems) to quantify its impact on business performance. Our results suggest that HR metrics as the Holy Grail of HRM remain elusive. This research signals the importance of developing relevant and meaningful HR measurement models, while acknowledging that the actual metrics used (unlike accounting measures) may vary from business to business.     

Creating commitment and loyalty behavior among retailers: what are the roles of service quality and satisfaction?

As a result of weakening brand image/loyalty, little differentiation, and intense price competition, manufacturers are now increasingly pressed to ensure retailers’ shelf space and/or salesperson attention. This research contributes to the literature by empirically examining an underrepresented body of literature in the B2B context—retailer loyalty. Specifically, this study fills a gap by investigating retailer evaluations of the technical and relational dimensions of a manufacturer’s order fulfillment service quality as predictors of retailer satisfaction, affective versus calculative commitment, and ultimately loyalty behavior. Results suggest that both technical and relational order fulfillment service quality influence satisfaction, which in turn positively affects both affective and calculative commitment. By separating the affective and calculative dimensions, loyalty behavior is associated directly only with affective commitment. Further examination reveals that relational order fulfillment service quality has a direct impact on affective commitment. When the sample was split based on “share of wallet,” results suggest that satisfaction impacts both affective and calculative commitment, regardless of “share of wallet.” For “high share” retailers, the positive relationship of calculative to affective commitment creates an indirect route (through affective commitment) by which calculative commitment affects behavioral loyalty.     

CEO合同:旧貌换新颜

Magma Design Automation的首席执行官Rajeev Madhavan经历过由雇佣合同带来的愉快的和痛苦的回忆,如今,他很乐意在没有合同的情况下工作.     

付出才有收获

最新研究表明:公司财务成功和优秀的R&D表现联系在一起 历史已经表明,高科技公司可以通过优化像供应链和后勤部门这样的所谓"后端"运营来改善他们的财务表现.如今,一项最新的调查表明,优化前端运营--产电子公司获得成功的一个关键因素.     

Utility perturbations and the equilibrium price set

For pure exchange economies in which agents are described by a compact smooth manifold of smooth strictly monotonic and strictly concave utilities, it is shown that, at least generically, the equilibrium price set is a smooth manifold of the same dimension. Given any smooth selection from the equilibrium price manifold and any sufficiently close smooth function, the function is a selection from the equilibrium price correspondence for some manifold of economies close to the original one. In particular, the set of equilibria corresponding to any open neighborhood of an economy contains an open subset of the price simplex.