Australasian Marketing Journal

The purpose of the present study is to (a) measure the extent to which selected contextual variables have an impact on the adoption of strategic pricing by industrial service providers and (b) determine the effect of the adoption of strategic pricing on the process that industrial service providers use for levying their prices. The current study represents the first attempt to empirically examine the aforementioned topics in an industrial service context. Data were collected from 120 industrial service providers operating in four different service sectors in New Zealand through a mail survey. Moreover, qualitative research through 16 in-depth interviews was carried out. Regarding the antecedents of strategic pricing, customer orientation, interfunctional co-ordination and higher formality were found to boost its adoption. With reference to the effect of strategic pricing on the pricing process used, differences were found among low and high strategic prices.

This article considers the role of the four Ps marketing mix model in social marketing, arguing that given reconfiguration of the marketing mix in the mainstream marketing discipline, and the characteristics of social marketing, a re-thought and re-tooled social marketing mix is required. A brief review of the four Ps marketing mix model in the mainstream marketing and social marketing fields is presented. Criticisms of the four Ps model are then examined. It is argued that the four Ps marketing mix model is outdated for application to social marketing, and an alternative approach to the social marketing mix is proposed. It is posited that an expanded approach recognizing strategies such as relational thinking, and upstream social marketing activities would offer a more suitable approach. Using a more open minded social marketing mix less reliant on the four Ps model can help guide social marketing research and practice.

This study is concerned with consumer involvement in fashion clothing. Amidst the consumer objects that facilitate everyday life, fashion clothing is an important and meaningful object for many consumers. In the extant consumer literature few studies have attempted to examine fashion clothing involvement, particularly in terms of its causes and outcomes. This study then focuses on building a reliable nomological network to bring a greater understanding to this facet of consumer behaviour. To achieve this, materialism and gender are examined as drivers of fashion clothing involvement. Recreational shopper identity, ongoing information search, market mavenism, and purchase decision involvement are explored as outcomes of fashion clothing involvement. Data were gathered using an Australian Generation Y sample resulting in 200 completed questionnaires. The results support the study's model and its hypotheses and show that materialism and gender are significant drivers of fashion clothing involvement. While also, recreational shopper identity, ongoing information search, market mavenism and purchase decision involvement are significant outcomes of fashion clothing involvement.

Understanding the effective adoption of technological innovations, such as e-business, is arguably one of the key challenges facing organizations. The literature indicates that the relationship between firm capabilities and firm performance is mediated by the effects of the adopted innovation (e.g., e-business). However, the complementarity effects of capabilities on the adoption of innovation have received little attention. Drawing on the Resource Based View, this paper examines the complementarity between two firm-specific capabilities [i.e., Market Orientation (MO) and Technological Opportunism (TO)] with regard to e-business adoption (EBA) as well as the mediating effect of EBA on the capability-performance relationship. A moderated mediation analysis revealed that the relationship between MO and EBA is moderated by TO and that EBA partially mediates the effects of MO and TO on firm performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed regarding bundling capabilities and subsequent complementarity to increase causal ambiguity in order to increase both EBA and firm performance.

With increasing pressure on businesses to digitalize and integrate their internal communications, intranet portals are becoming popular as knowledge banks that distribute tailored information throughout organizations. However, user acceptance of intranet portals is often an issue that could lead to failure of core business functions. This study provides increased understanding of the uptake of intranet portals by developing and testing an intranet portal usage (IPU) model containing antecedents to user acceptance of a recently introduced intranet portal. SEM was used to test the relationships between prior experience, Internet self-efficacy, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intention to use and usage. Results from a survey of university students indicate that internal marketing communications focused on portal experience and functionality provides the greatest value to the acceptance and use of intranet portals within organizations, while Internet self-efficacy leveraged through portal experience provides a complex relationship to perceived usefulness. Ongoing collaboration between marketing and IT departments benefits the perceived usefulness of portals as users gain familiarity

This article represents a brief history of the development of franchising in Australia and its regulatory framework and links this to an analysis of relevant research. Findings indicate a disparate ad hoc approach to research including scoping studies at the embryonic stage of franchise development; significant evidence of census style research culminating in a trajectory of disparate studies utilising more sophisticated research methods. For franchising research to advance there appears to be a need to interface with other research domains in SME and entrepreneurship research, extend the range of issues which are the subject of franchising research; begin longitudinal studies in order to better understand change over time; promote studies which have a sectoral focus in order to improve knowledge and understanding at that level of analysis; and, increase the representation of cross-border/cultural research in the volume of work being undertaken.

This paper examines the reasons that people give for switching services. It is designed to test previous work and to extend knowledge by showing how the frequencies of different reasons vary by type of service. Unlike previous work using Critical Incident Technique (CIT), surveys are used to gather data on switching reasons. It is argued that CIT tends to select in favour of event-related reasons and against condition-related reasons.

The research reveals a much lower frequency of event-related reasons for switching and more condition-related reasons compared with earlier work, particularly when services are delivered at a specific location. The research is extended to different types of switching. When customers have to switch, they often cited conditions; when they switch because of dissatisfaction with a supplier, they give more event-based reasons; when they discover a better supplier without previous dissatisfaction, they most often cite competition reasons.

These findings have practical implications. First, previous work has claimed that service switching is preventable because event-related reasons can often be avoided by management; the present work, by showing that avoidable reasons are rarer, shifts the focus from customer retention to customer acquisition. Second, this work informs practitioners about the reasons that are likely to be given by defectors in their service category; this assists strategy decisions on retaining and acquiring customers.

Private labels are becoming more sophisticated, spanning many price-quality tiers and categories. As such, private label branding is evolving and retailers have to pay greater attention to factors that affect private label perceptions. One of such factors is the value-for-money perception of the supermarket, which is important both in terms of its competitiveness and the private labels it carries. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between value-for-money perceptions of a supermarket and perceptions that the private labels it offers are also value-for-money. We find a positive relationship between value-for-money perceptions of a supermarket and value-for-money perceptions of its private labels, which is stronger for private label non-users. Given that most private labels are not advertised, knowing that non-users of private labels form associations based on the store image is important for private label managers who want to grow the customer base of their private labels. For premium private labels we find that if a premium private label is the only private label in a category, it is perceived just like the traditional private label, suggesting a benefit in offering at least two tiers of private labels. Our findings provide implications for retailers in regards to their private label branding strategies.