Australasian Marketing Journal

The recovery of marketing's “seat at the boardroom table” is determined in part by the satisfaction of senior executives with marketing's contribution to firm performance. This study of senior executives in high-technology firms examines the relationship between top management perceptions of marketing performance measurement ability and marketing's stature within the firm. Confirming and extending earlier studies, results indicate that marketing enjoys a higher status among top management when it is perceived to be accountable. Findings underpin the importance of current research attention on marketing accountability and metrics.

Drawing on Social Facilitation theory and Affiliative Conflict theory, this three study paper investigates the social and spatial influence customers have on other customers present in a social servicescape–cafes. Unobtrusive, naturalistic observation is used to identify, categorise and evaluate the behaviour of customers on other customers across two empirical studies. In total 242 episodes were observed and analysed from 40 separate observation sessions, ranging from 60 to 150 min across three settings. A third study, comprised of four focus groups explores the why of the observed behaviours of Studies 1 and 2, and supports their key findings.

Our findings show not only that the presence of customers influences the duration of the stay (social influence) of other customers, but also that customers influence other customers spatially (spatial influence). Specifically, individual customers and couples chose to be spatially close to other customers present for non-business meetings. Conversely, for business meetings customers tend to choose to be spatially apart from other customers.

Managers and service personnel need to understand that customers influence other customers present even when there is no direct contact. First, service providers should recognise the occasion (business/social) and nature of the party (single/couples/group). Second, customers like to be spatially near other customers when they are on their own or as a couple and when they are there for a social, rather than business, occasion. Third, the duration of stay can be influenced either positively or negatively by other customers.

This experiment examines the effect of option choice framing on short-term regret from actions and inactions, using 124 Singaporean and 96 Thai working adults who add options to a base model (additive framing) or delete options from a full model (subtractive framing) in a condominium purchase scenario. The results qualify past findings, showing that in both cultures, in additive framing, participants anticipate more regret from taking actions (adding options) than inactions, whereas in subtractive framing, they anticipate more regret from taking inactions (not deleting options) than actions. The implications for marketers are as follows. First, in the additive framing condition, to avoid regret consumers may prefer not adding options and hence lower revenues for marketers. Second, in the subtractive framing condition, to avoid regret consumers may prefer deleting options, hence lower revenues for marketers. Third, marketers can minimize consumers’ anticipated regret by, for example, allowing consumers to change their mind without any penalty after they have added/deleted options, accelerating them to make decisions so that they have less time or no time to anticipate regret, providing them with a lot of information to process so that they have little cognitive capacity left to anticipate regret, and putting them in a distracting environment (playing loud music, playing movies, and providing snacks/foods).

Wine labels comprise images and words. Are there different image and word preference combinations for a wine cohort? Are images important and what are their nature? Do combinations of communications display metaphor or non-metaphor patterns? In this paper, we explore these questions via a discrete choice experiment incorporating different types of image and word expressions. Respondents were defined as 18–30 year old emerging wine drinkers and were prompted to think of the occasion of choosing a wine to have at home with friends. Firstly, we undertake a latent class analysis on the data to assess differences in the choices. The results show the latent class solution of three classes to improve significantly on the aggregated model – there are differences in the choice preferences for the cohort. Generally, we find that images and statements have higher importance amongst the three classes than the traditional cues of grape variety and region. However, we find a multivariate approach to choice. Further, we find that wine furnished with wine related images and words that describe the product perform better than metaphorical expressions.

The volume and impact of positive and negative word of mouth (PWOM, NWOM) are investigated in relation to the market shares of brands. We find that the volumes of PWOM and NWOM are closely related to market share. By contrast, the average impact of instances of PWOM and NWOM shows no direct relationship with market share. When the direct influence of market share is removed, we find that small brands have somewhat more WOM than is warranted by their size, whereas large brands have slightly less, and this effect is stronger in the case of NWOM. The evidence presented here provides norms for evaluating WOM data and assists in the development of WOM metrics.

This study tests the different and combined roles of involvement and ambivalence in the satisfaction–repurchase loyalty relationship. The study analyses survey data from 922 Vietnamese consumers. The study uses structural equation modelling for testing mediator and moderator effects. The results indicate that satisfaction has both positive direct and indirect effects on repurchase loyalty via involvement. Ambivalence has negative direct effects on both satisfaction and involvement, but does not directly influence repurchase loyalty. Empirical evidence also reveals that ambivalence and involvement are both moderators in the satisfaction–repurchase loyalty relationship. However, the moderating mechanisms of the two constructs in this relationship are different. While involvement moderates positively the direct effect of satisfaction on repurchase loyalty, ambivalence moderates negatively the indirect effect of satisfaction on repurchase loyalty via involvement. This result means that the indirect effect of satisfaction on repurchase loyalty through involvement is weaker under high ambivalence than low ambivalence. The results of this study indicate that ambivalence and involvement, as well as the combined role of these constructs, are important to understanding and explaining the relationship between satisfaction and repurchase loyalty.

Academic research in marketing has made significant strides in improving the methods by which it seeks to understand consumers’ behaviour and their response to management actions. Yet, at the same time there is some evidence that these advances may be occurring at a cost of accessibility of its approaches and findings to practising managers. This paper considers how research in marketing might be focused to better meet to needs of practitioners without losing the benefits that come from a rigorous and careful grounding.

Heterogeneity lies at the heart of the issue of whether marketing academia is losing its way. On the one hand, critics point to research studies that address trivial themes and non-problems. Giving grounds for optimism, on the other hand, are the hundreds of research studies that investigate significant managerial problems in ways that are rigorous, relevant and accessible. Looking ahead, we should re-think the significance of marketing, encourage industry collaboration, streamline journal publication processes, give extra weight to management-relevant criteria when refereeing journal articles, and reflect these practices in the way future generations of marketers are trained.

Reibstein et al. (2009) view that the needs of industry and the efforts of academia represents a growing gap and identify some “researchable topics” that would help fill this gap. In this article I discuss the considerable amount of well known research already undertaken in the four identified areas, which offers an excellent grounding for extending these research streams further. While not agreeing with all points in their article, I believe that their article is provocative and timely, prompting academics to reflect on their research priorities. I also discuss the needs of industry that I identified in Western Australia and how a top down approach is needed to reduce this industry-academia gap.

With respect to the question raised whether marketing academia is losing its way, the author provides answers from a German perspective. It is argued that the assessment differs whether one looks from a business-to-business (B2B) or a business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing point of view. Contrary to its practical relevance B2C marketing is dominating in academia. Thus, a huge part of the current marketing research focuses on topics which have no or only a restricted relevance for greater areas in practice with the effect that many of the problems mentioned by Reibstein, Day and Wind are also relevant in Europe. But in contrast to their statement with regard to the U.S., the domain of academic marketing in Europe and especially in Germany has been steadily increasing. And due to the fact that the academic systems in Europe and especially in Germany have just recently shifted more or less towards the usages that are common in the US, the implementation problems are more or less the same.

I suggest that a solution to Reibstein et al. (2009) diagnosis that Academic Marketing is losing its way is to seek creative connections with marketing intermediaries (consultancies and market research firms) that can provide access both to problems and to data. That access should help the field find its way back to the path that leads to rigorous academic research on real and important problems.

While the academic business practice divide in marketing is not new it has recently been getting increased attention. It is the suggested the balance between applied problem solving research and basic research can be achieved by placing more emphasis on problem oriented research. To achieve this, academics need to place a greater emphasis on following and interpreting practice rather than thinking they need to always lead practice.

Recessions provide challenges to managers seeking to develop and justify an appropriate level of market-facing activity. The literature on the topic offers limited guidance on what strategy is most appropriate. We briefly review the literature on the topic and report on recent results that show (a) that R&D spending by B2BGoods firms and B2BServices firms in recessions increases both profits and stock returns, while advertising spending decreases both profits and stock returns; (b) for B2CServices firms, both R&D and advertising spending in recessions increases profits and stock returns and (c) for B2CGoods firms, R&D spending in recessions increases profits and stock returns, while advertising spending increases profits but decreases stock returns. Further, these effects are either strengthened or weakened depending on the firm's market share and financial leverage.

This article questions whether once the world recovers from the Global Financial Crisis of the late 00's, major Fast Moving Consumer Goods will return to the same playfield as before. If the GFC is essentially riding a recession, marketers and retailers could expect their old successful approaches to the consumers to work again well. If the GFC is essentially revealing a hidden and ripening mutation of the socio-economic environment which once having come out will not go back in hiding, then the marketing world of FMCGs will have durably changed and marketers, both on the manufacturing and retailing fronts, will need to deeply change their approaches to the consumers’ pocketbooks. The article contends that a mutation is indeed what the world is currently living through.

The value chain networks created by international marketers criss-cross cultures and jurisdictions across the globe. Some of these jurisdictions are plagued by inadequate institutions or behavioural traffic rules, which do not promote flourishing lives for affected parties. As marketers facilitate these exchanges, there is a temptation to take a limited view of one's responsibilities for possible adverse consequences of these exchanges. A primitive approach to responsibility would be an individual cost/benefit analysis of the sticks and carrots involved in the transaction and a move as close to the minimum requirement as possible. A more mature marketer may consider her own culture's conventions as well as the conventions of the local culture when considering the nature of the exchange. Finally, one can seek to apply basic ethical principles to the exchange, which would require an analysis that would be relatively free of cultural conventions and a short term sticks and carrot analysis. It is the purpose of this paper to present a framework for analysis that would be useful for international marketers as they seek to facilitate exchanges between jurisdictions with inadequate institutions.

A serious limitation of work in the field of ethical consumerism and social consumption is the contextualization of the research, independent of the methodology. In this article, we hint at how we can resolve these dilemmas by applying techniques that give us information involving trade-offs amongst a larger range of issues across a broader sample of people. In doing so, we also show that the complexity that we see in individual decision making is in evidence at the macro level as well. Just as individuals refuse to follow the idealized patterns represented by “ethical consumerism” in purchasing, so, too, do they fail to conform to simple rules around general social, economic and political preferences.

In an effort to respond to the challenges faced by the environment and society, a plethora of social marketing campaigns have been launched to encourage the adoption of sustainable living patterns. We argue that the majority of these campaigns appeal to existing, self-interested or materialistic values that may lead to limited behaviour change. All too often these campaigns leave fundamental systematic environmental challenges unchanged, and may even undermine any considerations that people have around the change direction. We suggest that changing behaviour is ultimately about helping society and individuals reframing their identity. A systems theory approach, which acknowledges society as a complex adaptive system, is suggested as providing a useful framework for social marketing campaigns in supporting new identities and increasing sustained behavioural change.