Has Advertising Lost Its Meaning? Views of UK and US Millennials

The findings of a study of Millennials in USA and the UK—an increasingly important and digitally savvy segment of consumers—reveal that they see advertising as Companies promoting a product or service to people through media. Their perception is simple and all-encompassing with no evidence that they distinguish between different types of media or different types of communication. Some variation between the views of Millennials in the two countries is also identified, although this is less than expected. The findings contribute to an important and continuing debate among academics and marketing practitioners over how advertising should be defined in today’s multichannel environment. The findings are also compared with other recent definitions of advertising, and their implications are discussed.     

COUNTERING THE ASSAULT ON CAPITALISM

Capitalism is the most efficient system for solving problems and for advancing human welfare. Yet it faces opposition both from intellectuals and those with vested interests in big government. If business leaders would push for ‘liberate to stimulate policies’, they might succeed in creating a freer tomorrow and solving more of humanity's problems.     

Relationship between positive psychological capital and creative performance

Despite considerable attention to the creative process and its relationship with personal characteristics, there is no published study focused directly on the relationship between the recently recognized core construct of psychological capital (PsyCap) and creative performance. Drawing from a large (N = 899) and heterogeneous sample of working adults, this study investigates PsyCap and its components (i.e., efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience) as predictors of creative performance. Overall PsyCap predicted creative performance over and above each of the four PsyCap components. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The state of technological and social change: Impressions

As the long-wave theory has predicted, we are seeing a period of consolidation in which the pace of radical technological innovation seems exceeded by the pace of social change. Peter Drucker's dictum, that technology changes faster than society, appears now to have been reversed. The article offers research and anecdotal support for these assertions, linking them to specific trends and trend interactions, including patents and intellectual property litigation, new product development, and politics and revolution.     

Organizational attraction toward a company that adopts a smoke-free policy

The current study investigated Korean smokers’ and non-smokers’ evaluations of an organization implementing a policy which either mandated or recommended that employees quit smoking. Undergraduates (n = 268) were randomly assigned to one of 2 (high vs. low severity of smoke-free policy implementation) × 2 (high vs. low organizational assistance) conditions and indicated their attraction to a hypothetical organization, posing as job applicants. The findings showed that non-smoking individuals’ perception of organizational support was more strongly and positively related to organizational attraction when they were more likely to endorse employers’ right to control employee smoking behaviors. Ex-smokers indicated greater attraction toward the organization when it was described as implementing a high severity policy than a low severity policy. Non-smokers indicated greater attraction toward the organization when it was described as offering a high level of assistance than a low level of assistance for smokers’ cessation efforts. These and other findings concerning individuals’ perception of severity, perception of organizational support, smoking sensitivity, and employer control are presented in detail, and the implications thereof are discussed.     

Marketing planning in the larger family business

In recent decades a considerable literature on marketing planning has accumulated. The larger part relates to marketing planning in big firms with specialized, professional managers. There are books on the subject, like that of Malcolm McDonald which has gone through several editions, and there is also a steady stream of articles in the academic journals. In addition, the marketing planning activities of big firms are referred to by many more writers in the overlapping but broader contexts of “strategic marketing” and “strategic planning”. A lesser part of the literature relates to marketing planning in small firms. The small firms in question are usually very small. Typically they are owner‐managed and employ just a handful of people in a single location. The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining a medium‐sized firm; a category which seems to have been neglected by researchers.

Most modern economies are characterized by a significant group of middle‐sized firms, still owner‐managed, but with multi‐million dollar turnovers. Many of these remain family companies and constitute an important reservoir of business initiative. One such family business is the focus of this study. Given the relative lack of scrutiny of such firms to date, the author decided to conduct an in depth evaluation from within one large, family firm rather than seek by means of questionnaire to obtain information from a significant sample of the group. The results of the study suggest that neither the existing typologies of small firm approaches to marketing nor the formal models of marketing planning attributed to big companies necessarily characterize the marketing planning and management of larger, family businesses.