Academy of Marketing Conference 2006 Marketing Excellence

Within business to business relationships it is not uncommon for some of the parties to be perceived as exercising power over others. A question that therefore needs to be addressed is why some parties appear to be willing to accept subservient roles. This paper will consider the possibility that an apparently subservient role may be acceptable to a party for two reasons. First, the party may not perceive their situation as being inequitable. Second, the party may believe that, at least in the short-term, there is no realistic alternative other than to accept a subservient role.     

The meaning of commitment in professional service relationships: a study of the meaning of commitment used by lawyers and their clients

Several authors have identified the importance of commitment in successful business relationships. However, few studies have considered the meaning of commitment, especially within the context of customer-supplier relationships.

Most studies of commitment within the marketing literature use existing conceptualisations developed within the psychology and organisational behaviour literatures. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of commitment in a customer-supplier relationship context, and to compare this with traditional conceptualisation of commitment.

This study investigates the meaning of commitment used by both lawyers and their clients, within the context of their relationship. The findings show that the meaning of commitment used in professional relationships may be more complex than its traditional conceptualisation and should be extended to include at least three additional components including: 'partnership commitment', 'impression management commitment' and 'personal commitment'. It is argued that it is inappropriate to 'borrow' the conceptualisation of the construct of commitment from other disciplines, without considering the market-based context in which it is used. Implications for professional service relationships include that professionals and clients would benefit from sharing a similar meaning of commitment and this meaning may be influenced by the culture, systems and processes of their organisation.     

A Speeddating Story: The Lover's Guide to Marketing Excellence

Without love – or, at least, its persistence as an idea – our cultural economy would collapse. Who else but the haves, the hopefuls and the have-nots of romantic liaison would sustain the business of restaurants, nightclubs and bars, not to mention the sale of films, books, music, magazines, of everything really? An Italian poet once wrote 'any time that is not spent on love is wasted.' Yet the marketing academy rarely engages in the business of lovemaking, at least in a scholarly capacity. This paper then, considers a potent manifestation of the search for love, speeddating – a form of dating that offers men and women the opportunity to partake in short, multiple dates in one night. It concludes with some guidance for lovers of marketing everywhere, distilled from the speeddating parable, contending that sagacity, self-confidence and courage, while important, are not nearly as fundamental as loving itself, which truly offers a route to marketing excellence.     

Academy of Marketing Conference 2007 "Marketing theory into Practice" Hosted by Kingston Business School

The Chairs of the 2007 Academy of Marketing Conference would like to welcome you to the Journal of Marketing Management Special Conference Issue, dedicated to the theme "Marketing Theory into Practice".     

The Gay Family in the Ad: Consumer Responses to Non-traditional Families in Marketing Communications

This paper investigates consumer responses to gay families portrayed in advertising, drawing on critical visual analysis, reader response analysis and queer theory. Twenty-five consumers were interviewed about a selection of family oriented ads. Several themes emerged from the interviews, including straightening up – reading apparently gay images as heterosexual, or straight, despite rather overt gay signals. This important interpretive phenomenon seems to "interfere" with processing of apparently gay imagery, revealing interesting interpretive strategies. Findings are discussed within the advertising as representation research tradition, and illuminate interpretive strategies that consumers use when confronted with culturally sensitive images in advertising.     

Multi-Brand Loyalty Cards: A Good Idea

The UK's leading coalition loyalty card scheme was launched at a time when questions were raised regarding the viability of such schemes. Two years into the scheme, it is now appropriate to review the scheme's relationship with its' customers and judge its' success in terms of its ability to influence card holders' behaviour.

To meet the objectives a survey methodology was adopted, and a new questionnaire devised for administration to a sample of coalition loyalty card scheme cardholders. The survey achieved 153 responses from the scheme members.

Findings from the study revealed that coalition loyalty card scheme holders' exhibit weak bonds between the card provider and its customers and that customers display signs of low commitment, low trust and low perceived relational benefits. There is a decisive lack of awareness of many sponsors and this confusion seemed to be leading to the use of coalition loyalty card scheme as a single-brand card. Although usage rates are on a par with other loyalty schemes, a lack of involvement seems apparent; indicating that no considerable increase in share of customer had occurred. This is mainly down to poorly targeted communications and irrelevant reward offerings.

Finally, there was little to suggest that coalition loyalty card scheme are currently having much influence over consumer behaviour, as the bonds between the two parties were not strong enough to encourage this. However, this does not indicate that the current market leader is currently unsuccessful, there is evidence to suggest consumers perceive real benefits in coalition schemes and that there is a willingness to alter their behaviour if the motivation is sufficient. Implications for future research include more specific investigations into the dynamic of the relationship between loyalty schemes and consumers and further research on coalition schemes per se.     

Brand Image Transfer Through Sponsorship: A Consumer Learning Perspective

Despite the massive growth in sponsorship activity of all kinds, academic research is still in its infancy in this area. This is particularly true with regards the effect of sponsorship on the brand image of the sponsor. This article seeks to address this by producing a conceptual framework of factors that influence sponsorship's effect on brand image transfer (BIT) amongst consumers. The findings from existing research are summarised and highlighted. Where there is a lack of research, 'appropriate' theory from the wider branding literature is used to develop the discussion. Thus, brand knowledge, power, fit and quality are considered as influences on the BIT process. A model of the actual process by which brand image transfers is developed and conditions influencing the strength of the transfer are identified. From this overall analysis, implications for both sponsors and sponsored are discussed and future research directions are outlined.     

The Role of Perceptions in Predicting Donor Value

Explores the role of donor perceptions in predicting the value of a donor, both to the voluntary sector as a whole and to specific organisations. Three classes of perceptual variable are examined; perceptions of the performance of the voluntary sector/specific organisations, perceptions of any exchange benefits that might accrue and in cases where a relationship already exists, perceptions of the quality of service quality provided. Drawing on results of an empirical study of 5000 donors to ten large national charities, the paper concludes that all three classes of perceptual variable have the capacity to influence donor value.     

Improving Customer Orientation Within the Fresh Meat Supply Chain: A Focus on Assurance Schemes

Eighty percent of primary food producers are currently involved in assurance schemes (McDougal 2000), the largest group of which belong to assurance labels sponsored by producer-led groups (e.g. Quality Meat Scotland, English Beef & Lamb Executive). Originally designed to enable producers to provide assurances of meat safety and animal welfare to consumers, this paper evaluates the extent to which producer-led assurance groups have adopted a true market orientation. Both in-depth, semi-structured interviews and a postal questionnaire with Scottish meat consumers were carried out. Subsequently, using structural equation modelling techniques, causal influences upon producer-led assurance label purchase behaviour were determined. The results conclude that producer-led logos are the preferred assurance labels to be purchased by consumers and that the most significant influences upon purchase behaviour are attitudes, past behaviour, assurance label knowledge and personal identity traits. Moreover, weaknesses are identified in terms of producer-led groups' marketing communication strategies to consumers. Implications of those weaknesses in relation to improving market orientation are then discussed.     

Exploring the effect of self-image congruence and brand preference on satisfaction: the role of expertise

Prior research has reported that self-image congruence can influence brand preference, brand satisfaction and purchase intentions. With the help of an empirical research, the paper argues that while self-image congruence may be related to satisfaction in general in the automobile market, it may not necessarily affect satisfaction judgements when customers have higher levels of expertise. The paper discusses implications for brand managers and argues to take into account customer characteristics such as customer expertise while developing positioning strategies.     

A review of factors affecting online consumer search behaviour from an information value perspective

Much has been written about Service-Dominant Logic, Vargo and Lusch's vaunted contention that service isn't an add-on to goods but goods are tangible reminders of service. Most of these writings are conceptual rather than empirical, however. This paper adds an empirical dimension to SDL by means of a qualitative study of the Harry Potter phenomenon. It shows that although Harry Potter can be successfully viewed through V&;L's lens, the picture is not crystal clear. So vague is the resultant image, in fact, that SDL should be handled with considerable care and more than a modicum of caution.     

Buying a sponsor's brand: the role of affective commitment to the sponsored team

Sponsorship is increasingly important in a firm's communication mix. Research to date has focused on the impact of sponsorship on brand awareness and its subsequent consequences for image congruency and consumer attitudes towards sponsors' brands. A lesser studied area is the effect of sponsorship on consumers' purchase intentions and behaviours. We argue that existing models of sponsorship driven purchase behaviour fail to account for affective commitment, which mediates relationship between affiliation with the team and social identification with the team. We propose a modified framework describing the effect of sponsorship on purchase intentions in the context of low and high performing sports teams. The framework is tested using structural equations modelling; employing PLS estimation and data collected via online survey of AFL chat room participants. Results confirm the role of affective commitment in sport sponsorship purchase intentions and indicate that team success has a significant influence on fans' purchase behaviours.     

A New Kind of Marketing: Creating Micro-Niches Using Resonance Marketing

ABSTRACT

Marketing has been dramatically changed by the Internet, the old rules do not apply. The Web allows companies to create products using micro-segmentation for target markets that are extremely small. Firms that want to be successful have to learn about resonance marketing. Resonance marketing used in conjunction with cause marketing and/or multicultural marketing can help a company find new market niches, charge premium prices. It can also be of great value to those interested in starting a small business.     

Mapping out the Field of Gender and Buyer-Seller Relationships: Developing a New Perspective

Buyer-seller relationships have long been of intense interest to marketing academics and practitioners, most particularly within the domain of business-to-business markets, but also more recently within the purview of business-to-consumer markets. This paper looks at the role of gender in buyer-seller relationships. Covering the literature from sales and from consumer behaviour, the general lack of a specific gender perspective in the interactions between buyers and sellers is identified and weaknesses in the current literature are highlighted. It identifies an opportunity to develop and apply feminist research practice to this increasingly important area. The benefits, opportunities, and limitations of the feminist research approach are specified and some initial conclusions presented.     

A Taxonomic Analysis of Export Marketing Strategy:

This study focused on a taxonomic analysis of export marketing strategy pursued by U.S. electronics exporters, and identified six distinct strategy types, i.e., innovative differentiation, low price leadership, promotion- and technology-based differentiation, low price leadership with deemphasis on technology, marketing differntiation with product adaptation, and "stuck in the middle." The study also identified the significant impact of export marketing strategy on export performance. Two strategy types, i.e., low price leadership and innovative differentiation, were found to be particularly successful.     

Marketing program standardization: A cross-country exploration

This study explores the antecedents and consequences of marketing program standardization in subsidiaries of multinational corporations by contrasting the case of a lead market (Japan) and of an emerging market (Turkey). The findings show that: (1) marketing program standardization is positively related to performance in Japan and Turkey; (2) centralization of nonproduct decision is negatively related to performance in both markets; (3) customer similarity is positively related to marketing program standardization in both Japan and Turkey. Whereas, in Japan, marketing program standardization has a direct, positive relationship to performance, in Turkey, in addition to such a direct effect, there is also an indirect effect at work, through centralization of nonproduct decision.     

Marketing images of gender: A visual analysis

An interpretive method drawing from social psychology, feminist theory and art criticism is developed to analyze contemporary images of gender. Utilizing and expanding upon visual research techniques, a selection of ads from contemporary fashion magazines and catalogs was assembled to illustrate particular themes suggested by research on the representation of gender in advertising. The body‐and what it expresses‐is a site of central concern, and discussion focuses on how female and male bodies are represented in advertising. The conventions of art history, when framed within a social science perspective, offer unique contributions to the study of advertising and gender, well suited for researchers interested in the culture of consumption.     

Measurement of Service Quality in Internet Banking: The Development of an Instrument

Service quality measurement in Internet banking services is an area of growing interest to researchers and managers. Building on a synthesis of the extant literature on service quality in traditional services and that of Internet delivered services, this study develops a battery of measures that can be used to measure customer service quality in e-banking services. The study shows that service quality in e-banking can be measured using twenty-one parsimonious measures spread across five dimensions, namely, access, Website interface, trust, attention and credibility. The article discusses the importance of these findings for practitioners and for future research on service quality in Internet delivered services.