Barriers to Marketing Implementation in U.K. Professional Service Firms

This paper focuses upon the critical role that imple- mentation plays in determining the 'success' or 'failure' of the mar- keting function. The authors discuss the particular implementation problems that are faced by marketers in professional service firms in the UK where marketing is still a relatively new function, and pro- pose a number of ways in which marketers may be able to overcome some of these internal barriers.     

A Normative Model for Improving Services Quality

Abstract

As services businesses continue to proliferate, competition among professional and retail service providers rapidly intensifies. Amidst the competitive wars, service marketers are seeking new, innovative ways to improve services quality in order to maintain their competitive position. Many of the existing approaches are geared toward larger operations. This article proposes a normative model of services quality for service organizations of varying types and sizes with an emphasis on the small service provider. The utilization of this model can assist service providers in improving the quality of their service and overall customer satisfaction.     

Social media marketing: Who is watching the watchers?

The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media data. This study analyzes a census-balanced sample of online adults (n = 751) to identify consumers’ perceptions of using social media data for marketing purposes. The research finds that consumers’ perceived risks and benefits of using social media have a relationship with their comfort with marketers using their publicly available social media data. The research extends the applicability of communication privacy management theory to social media and introduces marketing comfort—a new construct of high importance for future marketing research. Marketing comfort refers to an individual's comfort with the use of information posted publicly on social media for targeted advertising, customer relations, and opinion mining. In the context of the construct development, we find that targeted advertising is the strongest contributing component to marketing comfort, relative to the other two dimensions: opinion mining and customer relations. By understanding what drives consumer comfort with this emerging marketing practice, the research proposes strategies for marketers that can support and mitigate consumers’ concerns so that consumers can maintain trust in marketers’ digital practices.     

Can users embed their user experience in user-generated images? Evidence from JD.com

Nowadays, massive user-generated images (UGIs) are posted online to convey users' experiences with specific brands or products. Thus, this visual information is precious, as it conveys users' actual and subjective feelings about brands and products. Because of the unprecedented quantity of images and the heterogeneity of their content, it is quite challenging for brand marketers and retailers to probe into subjective user experience in large-scale UGIs. To address this gap, this study aims to identify the connection between user experience and different image semantic features (i.e. centrality and richness) by using deep learning models. By employing objective data (8963 images) from JD.com and using deep learning algorithms (faster R-CNN), we found that users with positive user experience prefer to generate high-centrality and high-richness pictures. Our study enriches the relevant literature and provides valuable practical implications for brand marketers and e-commerce retailers. Based on findings of this work, relevant stakeholders can understand their users’ experience better from objective UGIs and devise corresponding recommendation and service strategies.     

Implementing Marketing Strategy Through a Market Orientation

The adoption of specific marketing strategies is related to several factors in an organization including the organization's mission, objectives, resources, and market orientation. We report an exploratory study in which we define relationships between market orientation and marketing strategy in a high technology environment - the telecommunications industry in the United States. Market orientation is defined as a culture that influences how employees think and act. Our results indicate that a market orientation provides a context for the implementation of specific marketing strategies by serving as a moderator of operational marketing strategy. For example, those organizations who possess a strong market-oriented culture (high-spirited cultures) engage in value creation strategies such as market segmentation, developing new products/services for new markets, and product or service customisation. Those organizations possessing low market orientations (ineffectual cultures) generally practice less aggressive and internally focused strategies such as charging lower prices, providing limited customer service, product/service standardization, and undertake limited market research.     

Interpersonal Orientation of Spouses and Household Purchase Decisions: The Case of Restaurants

Buyer Behaviour does not occur in isolation, but within a larger social context. The family being a social unit, its members are constantly influenced by a number of external agencies, including peers, friends and relatives. This paper investigates how interpersonal orientation of spouses affects their roles, children's and others' roles in five sub-decisions of visiting a fine dining restaurant. Data were collected from young, educated couples of Singapore, who, due to their affluence and spending power are the focus of marketers in the region. Interpersonal Orientation was measured by 'Susceptibility to Interpersonal Influence', as proposed by Bearden, Netemeyer and Teel [1989]. Results showed that interpersonal orientation of spouses is an important determinant of their influence in the decision of visiting a fine dining restaurant. Also, children and 'others' were seen to play negligible roles in the service sub-decisions. Implications for restaurant marketers are discussed.     

Effective Nonverbal Communication Techniques

Developing effective marketing strategies for profes- sional service firms presents many unique challen es and is an im- portant area of practice development that many &ns often wer- look. Professional service firms ossess very distinctive P characteristics which differentiate them rom other service firms and require specialized marketing strategies. The purpose of this article is to assist practitioners in their efforts to develop promotional strat- egies which will enhance their firm's professional image and in- crease the firm's ability to engage new clients. These strategies arc aimed specifically at certified public accountants, lawyers, archi- tects, and other professionals.     

Multi-Attribute Dimensions of Service Quality in the Fast Food Restaurant Industry

Abstract

As the fast food restaurant industry grows in the Western industrialized world, it has also become increasingly competitive. In such an environment, marketers are concerned about how to increase or maintain market share through better service quality and effective segmentation strategies. This paper reports a two-phase exploratory study conducted to determine the dimensions of service quality in the fast food industry, from the consumer's perspective. Factor analysis revealed 10 dimensions made up of 57 different attributes. The 10 dimensions were able to discriminate among three groups of fast food patrons, namely: frequent, less frequent, and more frequent patrons. Managerial implications of these findings, for market segmentation, targeting, positioning, and promotional strategies are discussed.     

Customer share,value, and business success

Two books on strategies that are likely to shape business success in the twenty‐first century are reviewed. One is about a change in focus by marketers from pursuing a share of the market to going after a share of the customers' total spending money. The other is a collection of research articles by faculty at leading business schools on how entrepreneurial marketers might address the business challenges of the new millennium with effective strategies that create value for customers. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Assessing corporate demand for sponsorship: marketing costs in the financial services industry

Despite increased interest in nontraditional marketing activities such as sponsorship, the ability of brand marketers to quantify the return on investment from such approaches is a continued challenge. Given their proprietary nature, investigations of sponsorship costs are particularly sparse. Therefore, this study utilizes a dataset of more than 700 sponsorships undertaken by competitors in the financial services industry to investigate the influence of a variety of factors on costs. Results indicate that costs are not simply reflective of firm size, and costs of title and naming rights sponsorships are significantly higher. Evidence of agency conflicts are found in increased costs for sponsorships of events, organizations, and venues residing within the marketers’ home market. Sponsorships of sport organizations are significantly more costly than those of arts, entertainment, and nonprofit organizations, presenting a challenge for marketers seeking to engage today’s consumer via sport sponsorships in an increasingly competitive environment.     

Self-Regulatory Safeguards and the Online Privacy of Preteen Children

Online advertisers are increasingly enjoying the ability to target messages to specific segments based on information collected at Web sites. Information collection, particularly from children, has been an ongoing concern of regulators, consumer advocates, and advertising industry organizations. Although the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has advocated the implementation of safeguards (such as warnings, threats, and barriers) designed to limit children's online disclosure of sensitive information, little research to date has examined the effectiveness of these safeguards. We address this issue by first examining the current state of online safeguards for Web sites that target preteen children, a group shown to be particularly vulnerable to the persuasive efforts of marketers. We then present a quasi-experimental investigation of online safeguard types and how their effectiveness in limiting preteen information disclosure is moderated by the mediation strategies of parents. Implications for advertisers, policymakers, parents, and educators are discussed.     

Buzz marketing for movies

In today's dynamic entertainment environment, movies are struggling to stay afloat and remain profitable. Challenges such as piracy, digital theft, competition, overlapping movie campaigns, media fragmentation, and audience saturation are forcing marketers to stretch their film budgets and make every dollar as effective as possible. With more and more entertainment options crowding peoples' lives, marketers must search for innovative ways to reach movie audiences. By breaking through the daily clutter and noise, and capturing peoples' attention to the point that talking about a movie becomes an enjoyable experience to share, buzz marketing is one such promotional posture that drives audiences to theaters. In order to achieve success with buzz marketing, however, marketers must recognize the role it plays in the context of movie differentiation strategies to support the company's overall approach. To that end, this article analyzes buzz marketing as it pertains to six movie differentiation strategies (differentiation with cosmetic movie features, differentiation to reach market segments, growing a movie segment, positioning to support the movie image, positioning to extend the movie image, and differentiation via non-traditional channels) and offers steps for its successful implementation.     

Public partnerships,governance and user involvement: a service user perspective

This paper explores public partnerships and governance from a service user perspective, drawing both on the author's own involvement in service user organizations and movements and on material associated with and produced by these organizations and movements. It addresses the ambivalent relationship between service user organizations and movements and the idea and practice of ‘partnerships’, and explores their preference for ideas of ‘alliance’. It charts the different approaches to and ideologies underpinning user involvement and their implications for partnership between state and service users and their organizations. It offers a set of components for improving such partnerships as well as highlighting the growing interest of service users' organizations and movements in developing and extending alliances.     

Service-for-equity arrangements: Untangling motives and conflicts

Many professional service organizations have adopted a little understood contractual form: service-for-equity. Based on in-depth case studies of 12 major professional service providers with a combined experience of 179 equity-for-service deals, this paper documents 18 intended and unintended consequences, emanating from and expanding beyond agency theory, of adopting such a contractual form. Six propositions are developed which speculate how these consequences, categorized under client development, service operations, financial management, and organizational behaviour, affect long run performance. Assuming these propositions cannot be rejected through empirical analysis, the paper also provides managerial guidance for effective implementation of equity-for-service arrangements.     

Teens' consumer interaction styles: the impact of assertive and aggressive behaviour on attitudes towards marketing practices

Over half‐billion global teens between the ages of 13 and 18 years represent a dynamic opportunity for marketers who wish to grow their businesses and build consumer loyalty. Consumer interaction styles are the consistent behaviour patterns that individuals employ in transactions or exchanges in the marketplace. Assertiveness and aggressiveness represent two distinct interaction styles that enable individuals to achieve a desired outcome. Because teen consumers are an important consumer segment and subscribe to the notion that their voices must be heard, understanding their interaction styles is necessary for businesses and marketers. The purpose of this study was to examine teens' consumer interaction styles according to specific demographic and lifestyle characteristics and investigate the impact of assertive and aggressive interaction styles on attitudes towards marketing practices (i.e. product, retailing, advertising, and pricing). Data were collected from a US teen sample (n = 467) at both rural and urban high schools. Independent t‐tests compared the propensity of teens' assertive and aggressive consumer interaction styles according to specific demographic and lifestyle characteristics. Structural Equation Modeling using AMOS 6.0 program was performed to test the hypothesized relationships. Results indicated that an assertive interaction style was pervasive among US teen consumers, while the aggressive interaction style had disparities according to unique demographic and lifestyle characteristics. Assertive and aggressive interaction styles demonstrated negative influences on teen consumers' attitudes towards products and retailing practices. By interpreting the negative impact of teens' assertive and aggressive consumer interaction styles, marketers can develop effective strategies that appeal to this demanding consumer.     

The influence of emotions displayed and personal selling on customer behaviour intention

The impact of employee performance on customer behavioural intentions and consumption behaviour is important to service marketers. In many service settings, service organizations require emotional display and personal selling to stay competitive in todays market. Based on a review of service literature, this study investigates the effect of emotions displayed and personal selling on customer purchase amount and re-patronage intention in convenience-goods retail service settings. This work applies mystery shopper methods to data collected from a Taiwan bakery chain. Analysis of the results from 519 responded questionnaires in this study reveal that positive emotions displayed by contact personnel are unrelated to consumption expenditure, but do affect re-patronage intention. Further, the results show that personal selling negatively influences consumption amount. This study suggests that service managers consider enhancing their emotional display perspective in human resource practices, and focus on performing personal selling as a consumer need, in different service industries.     

The Development and Testing of a Measure of Skepticism Toward Environmental Claims in Marketers' Communications

Marketers' claims about the environmental effects of products and their packaging are becoming more pervasive. Consumer organizations, government, and marketers have long realized that consumers receive such claims with some degree of skepticism. An investigation of how consumer skepticism affects the response to “green” marketing claims would be facilitated by a reliable and valid measure of skepticism. This paper describes a two-stage research project and the resulting four-item measure of skepticism toward environmental claims made in advertising and on packages. The scale has acceptable levels of reliability and validity.     

Quality and productivity: role conflict in the service context

This article presents a qualitative study exploring service employees’ experiences of quality–productivity tensions in the workplace, and how they cope with such conflicts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 service employees. Content analysis suggests that organization-level conflict derives from the different channels that service organizations use to convey the importance of quality (e.g. training) and of productivity (e.g. rewards) to employees. During service interactions, employees experience conflict when standardization is violated and productivity is threatened. Our results demonstrate and explain employees' strategies for coping with the conflict between productivity and quality and with the ‘double message' they receive about these two goals. Many of these strategies are intended to ensure quality while maintaining productivity. We discuss the study's contribution to service science, and explain existing organizational mechanisms and processes for communicating the importance of quality and productivity to employees. Implications for service management are discussed.     

Examination of Credence and Noncredence Service Advertisement Strategies in the United States and India

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the differences in advertising strategies of services marketers in two culturally distinct markets by classifying services on the basis of search, experience, and credence attributes. A content analysis of 221 service print ads revealed that the type of service serves an important role for using appeal and service quality cues in service ads. In the case of credence services, ads in India are more likely to contain a reliability dimension of the service quality, and ads in the United States are more likely to utilize responsiveness cues.