The legal and practical prevention of ambush marketing in sports

Ambush marketing has emerged in recent years as an effective, if controversial, weapon in the arsenal of marketing departments seeking to associate themselves with sports events without the official authorization or endorsement of the event organizer. This article highlights the dangers posed by ambush marketing to owners of commercial rights in these events and examines the legal mechanisms available to prevent and minimize the likelihood of suffering damage to marketing campaigns by third-party ambush tactics. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The effects of competitive context on consumer response to price changes

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to understand how a brand’s price level, relative to its competitors, will affect consumers’ responses to price changes of the brand. The study uses experiments to examine brand choice responses to price increases and decreases across contexts differing in competitor brands and their respective prices. These experiments are conducted with six consumer goods categories. The research identifies three key factors that affect the size of responses to brand price changes – (1) passing a competitor brand’s price, (2) narrowing versus widening the price gaps with competitors, and (3) whether competitors are predominantly higher or lower priced brands.     

Regulatory fit effects of gender and marketing message content

Many US adults do not get enough daily physical activity. To change behavior, governments and other agencies design marketing messages encouraging more physical activity. A lab experiment draws on Regulatory Focus Theory to examine health communication's persuasive effects on physical activity. This study identifies gender differences in chronic regulatory focus and shows that congruence between message regulatory focus and the message recipient's gender is effective, particularly for males. Results also show that emotions mediate regulatory fit effects on intentions. Further, chronic regulatory focus mediates these effects on emotions. Results inform implications for theory as well as for practitioners who design health-marketing messages.     

The effects of schema congruity on consumer response to celebrity advertising

The trend of celebrity-branded products is on the rise, creating a new domain in which to explore the match-up hypothesis. Moving beyond the celebrity as an endorser, but rather, a brand promoting a brand extension, this article examines how perceived congruence between a celebrity's image and the brand image of products they have developed is related to attitudinal and behavioral measures of advertising effectiveness. Employing a 2 × 3 full factorial design, congruence between the celebrity's image and the brand's image was varied (less vs. more congruent), along with the use of the celebrity's image (present, absent, non-celebrity models) to determine how schema congruity influences consumer's response to celebrity advertising. The results of a multivariate analysis of covariance analysis indicating lower levels of congruence between the celebrity's image and the brand's image led to greater advertising effectiveness compared to higher levels of congruence. Specifically, the means of the attitudinal dependent variables in the less congruent condition were significantly higher than the means in the more congruent condition. These effects were more pronounced when a celebrity's image was featured in the advertisement compared to when it was not featured. The implication of the findings suggests that moderate violations in the consumer's celebrity schema may improve advertising effectiveness.     

Modelling short-and long-term marketing effects in the consumer purchase journey

The role of advertising in consumer demand has received much attention in the marketing literature, where the marketing response model has emerged as a dominant analytical framework. In recent years, the basic model structure has evolved in three directions. Firstly, the incorporation of online paid, owned and earned media to accommodate the off-online path-to-purchase. Secondly, the introduction of consumer mindset metrics to capture the emotional foundations of brand-building. Finally, combinations of both to offer a complete view of the consumer purchase journey. In this paper, we argue that no one development successfully provides a fully holistic representation of the role of advertising. We thus propose a more comprehensive structural approach: one that combines search, paid, owned and earned media with a cointegrating mechanism for brand-building, linking mindset metrics directly to long-term base sales. The result is a practical modelling system for marketing mix practitioners with a rigorous economic and statistical foundation for short and long-term advertising effects. The proposed approach is applied to a global electronics manufacturer in the US market, where results fall into three broad areas. Firstly, we demonstrate how off and online marketing interact in the journey structure, the part played by search, owned and earned media and how specific media types play different roles. Secondly, we illustrate how consumer touchpoint experience is a key element of the process, improving measurement of in-store marketing. Finally, we show how consumer mindset metrics and social media play an important word-of-mouth role, with paid and earned media working together to drive long-term demand evolution.     

Measuring long-run marketing effects and their implications for long-run marketing decisions

This paper discusses the role of agents’ beliefs and their implications for the economic modeling of their behavior, in particular, their behavior over time. The paper also discusses the corresponding planning problems facing both firms and consumers in their current decision making. After a general discussion of the consumer and firm problem, we discuss recent examples of some of the emerging empirical literature on dynamic choice behavior in marketing.     

奥运会埋伏营销与奥林匹克知识产权保护警示分析

1984年洛杉矶奥运会富士公司耗费巨资成为该届奥运会的全球赞助商,柯达公司则首开奥运会埋伏营销先河。奥运会埋伏营销愈演愈烈的主要原因一是在于奥运的全球赞助＂TOP＂计划昂贵的入门费用,二是奥运会赞助计划运作体系的复杂。目前奥运会埋伏营销形态五花八门,包括直接侵害奥运标志、赞助赛事转播的主要媒体、赞助次类项目、赞助杰出的运动员、发动与赛事相关的广告战、进行与赛事相仿的促销活动、与没有竞争关系的赞助商合作、策划与赛事相仿的活动、利用赞助商尚未想到或无法涵盖的空白点等,世界各国奥林匹克知识产权保护意识也在不断强化,我国也出台了多项奥林匹克知识产权保护的相关规章,奥林匹克知识产权保护对埋伏营销的警示主要表现在：一是我国埋伏营销侵权法律规制还存在缺陷,二是应当建立清晰全面的赛事品牌保护计划,三是建立公众和企业的知识产权意识。     

Event sponsorship and ambush marketing: Lessons from the Beijing Olympics

Sponsorship of large sporting and cultural events has become a major marketing communication tool, particularly when firms obtain exclusive rights and garner the hype associated with this honor. Concomitantly, ambush marketing—defined as attempts by competitors to exploit the event—has also increased in prominence. This article outlines what is known as the Li Ning affair, whereby major Olympic sponsor Adidas was ambushed by lesser-known Chinese sportswear company Li Ning, whose namesake founder was the most decorated Chinese Olympian and who lit the Olympic flame at the 2008 Beijing Olympiad. Data collected immediately following the closing of the Beijing Games isolates what we call the Li Ning effect—or, being incorrectly identified as an official sponsor—and the positive effects this has on measures of brand attitude and recommendation likelihood. As presented herein, seven lessons about ambush marketing can be derived from the Li Ning affair, which sponsors and those considering sponsorship opportunity might wish to learn.     

The role of perceived control and gender in consumer reactions to download delays

An empirical study finds that perceived control strongly mediates the effects of perceived speed of a Web site download on consumers' attitudes and intentions to use the Web site. Moreover, results show that men are more likely to react positively to the perceived speed of a Web site download, whereas women are more likely to base their reactions on perceptions of control in the context of download delays. In contrast to past online research, the gender differences are intrinsic in two ways—they are context independent, and they are not caused by length of Internet experience, extent of Internet usage, or type of Internet connections.     

基于消费者需求与信息搜寻的消费者教育模型研究

本文结合消费者需求特点和信息搜寻两个维度,指出产品市场可分为易识实用产品市场、难识实用产品市场、易识享乐产品市场、难识享乐产品市场和未被考虑产品市场.企业应根据各类市场特征,制定有针对性的消费者教育策略.     

A study in international marketing: The development of a consumer database marketing capability

This paper examines the reasons why Seagram Europe & Africa (SE&A) decided to develop their database marketing capability in Europe. The paper describes the environmental changes, external and internal, that led SE&A to re‐evaluate their marketing communications strategy and examine sponsorship and direct marketing opportunities for Europe. The paper focuses on the major issues SE&A addressed when weighing up the strategic role of database marketing. Finally, the key considerations in the development and implementation of an European‐wide database marketing discipline for the division are discussed.     

Strategic social marketing to foster gender equality in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Gender equality is still facing many challenges in Indonesia; this also includes a prominent problem of gender-based violence. Social marketing approach has been used to promote gender-equality programmes tackling gender-based violence. MenCare+ is one of the examples of programmes in Indonesia that engage men with multicomponent, strategic, involves campaigns, education, training and policy advocacy with a number of objectives including improving access to services, increasing sexual and reproductive rights, and fostering gender equality. Some achievement has been made such as MoU with local government to promote male involvement in the use of contraception. However, gender-equality movement is still needed in order to change the mind set and paradigm towards gender equality, and social marketing can become a powerful tool to do it.

Abbreviations: MoU: memorandum of understanding; NGO: non-government organization     

Reframing gender and feminist knowledge construction in marketing and consumer research: missing feminisms and the case of men and masculinities

Abstract

Gender has been theorised and studied in many ways and across different disciplines. Although a number of these theorisations have been recognised and adopted in marketing and consumer research, the significance of feminism in knowledge construction has largely remained what we would call ‘unfinished’. Based on a critical reframing of gender research in marketing and consumer research, in dialogue with feminist theory, this article offers theoretical and practical suggestions for how to reinvigorate these research efforts. The analysis highlights dominant theorisations of gender, relating to gender as variable, difference and role; as fundamental difference and structuring; and as cultural and identity constructions. This reframing emphasises various neglected or ‘missing feminisms’, including queer theory; critical race, intersectional and transnational feminisms; material-discursive feminism; and critical studies on men and masculinities. A more detailed discussion of the latter, as a relatively new, growing and politically contentious area, is further developed to highlight more specifically which feminist and gender theories are mainly in use in marketing and consumer research and which are little or not used. In the light of this, it is argued that marketing and related disciplines have thus far largely neglected several key contemporary gender and feminist theorisations, particularly those that centre on gender power relations. The potential impact of these theoretical frames on transdisciplinary studies in marketing and consumer research and research agenda(s) is discussed.     

When ambush marketing is beneficial to sponsorship awareness: creating sponsor distinctiveness using exclusivity and brand juxtaposition

ABSTRACT

Ambush marketing is a contentious practice whereby brands communicate an association with an event without being an official sponsor. Those involved in sponsorship commonly try to limit it by restricting ambusher activity in event contexts. We introduce theoretical ideas around distinctiveness to explain that sponsors may actually fare better in terms of awareness outcomes when ambushers are present in the event context, if they strategically use ambusher presence to highlight their own distinctive sponsor status. Across two experiments we show that sponsor distinctiveness can be achieved by communicating sponsorship exclusivity in ambusher presence, and by facilitating juxtaposition of sponsor and ambusher messages. Results include increased recall to sponsor cues, and reduced recall to ambusher cues. The findings suggest ambusher restrictions may sometimes be counter-productive.     

Country-of-origin, animosity and consumer response: Marketing implications of anti-Americanism and Francophobia

Anti-Americanism and Francophobia express a consistent hostility toward the government, culture, history or people of the US and France or the Francophonie (the global community of French-speaking peoples). This study explores interactions between country-of-origin (COO) effects and animosity expressed through anti-Americanism and Francophobia through analysis of scholarly studies, several decades of articles from the general and online press in the US and France, and ethnographic fieldwork in France and the US results reveal interesting inconsistencies and variability in national expressions of consumer animosity and response to COO cues over the time of the study, underlining the need for further longitudinal study of animosity, COO effects and consumer response. Implications of findings are examined with reference to theory development, marketing practice, and public policy.     

The early American style: A history of marketing and consumer values

Since the 1876 Centennial, furniture companies, decorators, and home builders have incorporated early American designs into their products. This article recounts the marketing history of this style and some clusters of consumer values—the search for authenticity, status presentation and ethnic identification, nostalgia and tradition making, domesticity and femininity, and aesthetic conservatism—with which early American objects and architecture have been associated. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Scarcity tactics in marketing: A meta-analysis of product scarcity effects on consumer purchase intentions

Scarcity tactics are an essential tool for marketers. Cues that signal the current or potential unavailability of a product generally enhance its value and desirability and in turn increase purchase intentions. While there have been earlier reviews, the fragmented nature of the research to date means there is no cohesion across findings. Given that retailers employ a variety of scarcity cues in a diversity of settings, it is important to identify the magnitude of the effect of scarcity cues and how the effect on consumers’ purchase intentions changes across conditions. This research presents a meta-analysis of 416 effect sizes from 131 studies. Results show that demand-based scarcity is most effective for utilitarian products, supply-based scarcity for experiences, and time-based scarcity for high involvement products. The results show that managers need to consider the above factors to maximize the success of scarcity tactics in their marketing campaigns.