Brand image,cultural association and marketing: ‘New Zealand’ butter and lamb exports to Britain,c. 1920–1938

Abstract

This article examines the branding and marketing strategies of New Zealand Producers Boards which were established in the early 1920s to coordinate the export of butter and lamb to Britain. The brand ‘New Zealand’ featured prominently in the promotion of lamb exports to Britain, whereas much more emphasis was placed on the ‘Anchor’ brand for butter. Because the ‘Mother Country’ was by far the biggest single export market for New Zealand butter and lamb, the branding and marketing activities of the Boards emphasised the strong cultural affinity that existed between Britain and New Zealand. Drawing on the relevant branding and marketing literature, the Boards’ annual reports, and reports by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, we show that ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Anchor’ conveyed the fundamental message of a shared British identity.     

Marketing and Professional Services: the Case of Consultancy Engineering

Professional services suffer from a dearth of literature on marketing, especially in New Zealand. Like other professioal services, consulting engineers have expressed particular concern on how to adapt to the present competitive environment. A survey of New Zealand consulting engineers indicated that the use of marketing techniques within consulting engineering practices is uncoordinated in nature and there is disagreement as to the most efective method of attracting clientele. The lack of coordination of marketing techniques is best illustrated by the majority of consulting engineering practices competing on price, while actually perceiving service quality as the most important method for success. Within consulting engineering practices, marketing is becoming a legitimate management function. However, evidence can be seen to illustrate that the ‘trappings' of marketing prevail rather than the ‘substance’ which is needed to have the customer-driven orientation fundamental to the implementation of the marketing concept.     

Marketing and the British chief executive

British chief executives increasingly recognise the need to make their companies more marketing orientated. But boards of directors are still dominated by a financial outlook and most lack a professional approach to strategy and market innovation. Chief executives need to supplement their generally inadequate base with education and development programmes on strategic marketing and to add non‐executive directors with substantial expertise in marketing.     

Differences in Marketing Managers' Decision Making Styles Within the Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract

Marketing managers around the world are being asked to work with foreign counterparts as never before, but with limited success. This requires integration of decision making styles. The purpose of this study is to apply a management style of decision making measurement technique to selected countries of the Asia-Pacific region to determine the extent of differences in decision-making style among marketing managers.

This study surveys marketing managers within Australia, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Vietnam, New Zealand, and China. Within each country different sampling processes and modes of data collection were used by locally-based associates of the researchers, as appropriate for the country.

The study results indicate that substantive differences do exist between marketing managers from different cultural/national backgrounds within the Asia-Pacific region and these managers differ in their decision-making styles from managers in other parts of the world. doi:10.1300/J042v21n01_06     

The contribution of marketing to competitive success: A literature review

This paper reviews the literature relating to the practice of marketing and its relation to corporate success, examining pertinent concepts and issues. The marketing factors thought to be determinants of success are categorised as attitudinal, strategic and tactical factors, and these provide the framework against which enhanced corporate performance through marketing effort is analysed. The final section of the paper presents a summary of observations on the literature reviewed.     

Adapting a book to make a film: how strategy is adapted through professional practices of marketing middle managers

Abstract

For an organisation to be competitive its strategy must be highly responsive to both environmental challenges and customers continuously shifting demands. Yet many organisations treat strategy making as an exclusively top management concern, even though the top management team is often remote from the daily interactions and communications taking place at the organisation, market, and customer interface. We challenge the assumption that strategy making ‘belongs’ to top managers and argue that marketing middle managers, possessing expert market and customer knowledge and insights, adapt top manager’s strategy to shifting customer demands in a changing environment. We explore this argument by adopting a strategy-as-practice perspective and analysing marketing middle manager’s practices across three case companies operating in a dynamic retail environment. Our research enables two key contributions. Our primary confirmation is to demonstrate that marketers are not passive implementers, but active adapters of top management strategy through three critical practices of sensing, challenging, and transmitting. We use the novel analogy of how adapting a book to make a film involves minor changes to the story line and characters to suit the new medium and to illustrate the strategically relevant and influential role marketing plays in adapting the strategy developed by the top management team for implementation. By demonstrating the value of the strategic practices of functional middle managers we also contribute to the growing debate of the need for greater inclusion and transparency in strategy making.     

Marketing capability—A key success factor in small business?

This article focuses on the marketing problems of small manufacturing companies. The principal thesis is that marketing is generally perceived from too narrow a perspective. A more comprehensive and yet detailed view of marketing should benefit small business management. The authors develop a marketing capability framework which can be used as a qualitative tool for examining the “state‐of‐the‐art” of marketing in small manufacturing companies. This marketing capability framework is employed in examining the performance of 36 Finnish and Swedish companies using case study analysis.     

Advertising and Children

Abstract

This article reviews the debate regarding the issue of growing obesity in society in terms of issues and possible policy options. The issue is most focused on children though having obvious ramifications for adults in many economies around the world. Policy solutions such as advertising bans or taxes that have been proposed in several countries seem to be based on insufficient evidence—i.e., there is no empirical evidence to substantiate the claimed causal effect between marketing communication practices directed at children and nutrition. These solutions, if enacted in policy, could be both inequitable and ineffective. While the study is couched and framed from a New Zealand context, nonetheless it serves to illuminate issues and policies of wider relevance.     

Conference report: Second conference on political marketing: Judge institute of management studies,university of Cambridge 27–29 March 1996

Sales promotion activity continues to grow in terms of the number, scale and variety of promotional techniques being used by companies in their marketing communication campaigns. Research among marketing academics has yet to catch up with this reality and sales promotion continues to suffer from relative neglect compared to advertising;from a tendency for all promotional tools to be tarred with a rational economic brush; and from being labelled as a set of “tactical” took that lack the strategic brand‐building possibilities offered by advertising. This article builds upon earlier research examining the communication potential of competitions, to test empirically whether the potential marketing communications benefits claimed for competitions are actually recognised and pursued by marketing practitioners.     

Shopping on the Internet–Online Purchase Behavior of New Zealand Consumers

ABSTRACT

The Internet provides an evolving channel for both business people and consumers to achieve their mutual aims. The rapid growth of Internet users in New Zealand provides a developing prospect for E-marketers. New Zealand has literate, educated, technology savvy “netizens” who are willing to spend time and money over the Internet. If E-marketers know the demographics of online New Zealand purchasers and the relationships between these demographics and online buyers' behavior, then they can further develop their marketing strategies to convert potential customers into active ones, while retaining the existent online customers. This paper provides an insight into the demographic profile of New Zealand's online purchasers. Some implications are also provided in this research.     

Practice Makes Profit: Business Practices and Firm Success

Which business practices set successful firms apart from others? We address this question using data from an official survey of almost 3000 New Zealand firms. Questions cover: leadership, planning practices, customer and supplier focus, employee practices, quality and process monitoring, benchmarking, community and social responsibility, innovation, IT use, business structure and the competitive environment. Some of these are internal practices reflecting a firm’s resources and capabilities; some are characteristics of the external environment. We find that capital investment choices, R&;D practices, market research and a range of employee practices are positively associated with firm success; industry structure is also a key determinant of success. The association between specific business practices and firm success is mostly independent of firm size, age and industrial sector, other than for export marketing.     

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.     

Benchmarking Services Branding Practices

The results of research into the competitiveness of New Zealand firms that provide professional and other business services suggest that effective branding is a key source of success. Brand strength appears to be linked to four main practices: investing in marketing communications to improve customer awareness and understanding of corporate and product brand values; contributing to the wider community to improve corporate reputation; improving internal communications (internal marketing) so front-line and professional staff are kept better informed about customer needs, market changes and company initiatives, thereby enabling staff to help customers better; and improving service quality to improve market positioning. The paper answers calls for the development of an integrated theory of services branding and concludes by positing three main conditions for effective services strategies and practices.     

Country of Origin Effects on Industrial Products Coming from Eastern Europe

Summary

Industrial buyers and consumers may have opinions about the general quality of products and companies from different nations and use such opinions as informational cues in their buying processes. This article presents a comparative study of the industrial profile of a “New European nation” and Western European nations. Tentative implications of the differences in industrial profile are suggested for international marketing strategy.     

Chaffee,Steven H., and Petrick,Michael J. Using the Mass Media: Communication Problems in American Society. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974

Abstract

In recent years, a number of internal and external forces have urged companies to pay increased attention to the role that corporate advertising plays in marketing communications strategy. Despite this increased importance, a comprehensive view of current corporate advertising practices does not exist. This study reports the practices of the 500 largest manufacturing and the 300 largest non-manufacturing firms in the U.S. and makes observations on several key management issues, including the definition of corporate advertising, objectives and measurement, funding, and future directions.     

The characteristics and business impact of children’s electronic word of mouth in marketing communications

Abstract

Leading digital technology companies have shown a strong interest in enabling children to send electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Recasting children from passive to active participants in marketing communications, this shift expands children’s marketing practices from how companies influence children via traditional marketing communications, to how children influence companies’ marketing practices through eWOM. We apply the value-capacity-vulnerability framework for children’s expressive rights to the context of children’s eWOM. Using a dataset of Amazon customer reviews written by children under the age of 13, we examine the characteristics and business impact of children’s eWOM. We find that the volume and variance of children’s eWOM are smaller than that of adults’. Children’s eWOM increase the overall diversity of opinions. Although receivers perceive children’s eWOM as less helpful, children’s eWOM valence (i.e. average rating) correlates with that of adults’. Children’s eWOM volume has a product-category-dependent association with product sales: positively in children’s product categories, while negatively in general categories. Children’s eWOM valence and variance are positively associated with product sales in both product categories. Receivers are less likely to criticize children’s eWOM compared to that of adults’, suggesting an underlying protective behaviour towards children among eWOM receivers. These results show that children have the capacity to engage in eWOM of social and business value, with receivers typically mindful of children’s vulnerability in social interactions.     

The marketing and strategic planning interface

This article examines the potential contribution and implementational problems of developing marketing planning as a means to increase the marketing orientation of a company. It draws on the experience gained from a two year involvement in the design and implementation of a planning system for a large manufacturer, and reviews some of the literature on marketing and strategic planning. The focus is on the problems of managing the interface between strategic and marketing management, and the important role played by marketing information, the Chief Marketing Executive and the planning function in achieving effective and integrated strategic marketing planning.     

Economic Crisis and its Impact on Promotion and Media in Cyprus

ABSTRACT

The economic crisis has redounded sharply upon marketing communications and media vehicles in Cyprus. In recession periods, communication and marketing budgets can contract while companies seek to obtain the best communication outcomes with more limited resources, both the size and the distribution of the communication mix can alter rapidly. This qualitative paper reveals that Cypriot advertising agencies now place greater emphasis upon marketing public relations (MPR) as it is perceived to be cost effective and efficient in achieving campaign objectives. The empirical data also indicates a shift towards the use of internet marketing and social media as more and more businesses are realizing the importance of consumer generated marketing and word-of-mouth/mouse marketing (WOMm).     

Partner Symmetries,Partner Conflict and the Quality of Joint Venture Marketing Strategy: An Empirical Investigation

Joint venture research has overlooked the potential impact of partner conflict on the quality of joint venture marketing strategy. We address this issue by developing formal hypotheses concerning the antecedents to and consequences of functional and dysfunctional conflict between joint venture parent organisations on joint venture marketing strategy. We then describe an empirical examination of our model. Data collection was undertaken via a mail survey of New Zealand joint venture companies. Forty usable responses were returned, corresponding to a response rate of twenty-five percent. Correlation analysis of the data indicates that the degree to which partners exhibit both functional and dysfunctional conflict is influenced by (a) the degree to which joint venture partners share strategic and operational fit, (b) partners' level of mutual commitment, (c) levels of mutual trust, (d) opportunistic behaviours and (e) the adoption of collaborative communication approaches. Furthermore, both functional and dysfunctional partner conflict appear to significantly influence the quality of joint ventures' marketing strategy formulation and implementation. We discuss the managerial implications forthcoming from these results.