Australasian Marketing Journal

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is widely used in industry to measure loyalty and predict revenue growth. The mechanisms underpinning this revenue growth are thought to be (i) positive recommendation from loyal customers to potential customers, and (ii) increased purchases from the existing base of loyal customers. These claims are controversial, with both the methodology and the performance of NPS being challenged by a number of researchers. The present study adds evidence to this debate through the analysis of a repeated cross-sectional data set (n = 2785) from a services company operating in a business to business context in the New Zealand primary sector. The data include recommendation scores matched to past, current and future revenue, at both the aggregate and individual level, over a five-year period. The analysis of this data provides directional support for the association between NPS and company revenue growth, and confirms that promoters do spend more in the current year. However, the analysis shows promoters to be a relatively minor and inconsistent source of same-customer revenue growth, with same-customer growth mostly arising from a general increase across the whole customer base.

Although service recovery tactics have been extensively investigated, little is known about what firms should do when service recovery fails (i.e., double deviation). It is primordial to understand whether and how customer trust may be recovered after a double deviation. The results of an experimental study show that it is possible to recover customer trust through improvements in organizational processes (i.e., regulation) and discounts (i.e., financial compensation). Remarkably, regulation and financial compensation lead to similar trust levels, which means that these trust recovery tactics are equally successful. Moreover, attributions of benevolence explain why regulation and financial compensation can recover customer trust after a double deviation.

Managers cannot afford to ignore social media and have stepped up their involvement in the belief that social media activities extend the brand's reach and engagement with consumers. Facebook is the preeminent social medium with an ever increasing branded content. One hundred brands selected from the Interbrand “Best Global Brand Report” form the basis of this study to test research propositions about the ability of branded Facebook pages to expand and engage users. Data captured from branded Facebook pages was supplemented with socialbaker's data. No correlation is found between the size of a brand and the number of Facebook fans, and there is no consistent relationship with user engagement and brand size.

The authors discuss broadening reach, improving engagement, interaction and activity and the implications for social media strategies and make recommendations for managing Facebook presence. Paid advertising is required to increase brand reach to all potential category users.

Consumers consider various product attributes when they evaluate products. Researchers and practitioners have used multi-attribute models to understand which product attributes are important for consumers. However, in those models, product attributes are limited and are determined by researchers at the time of the inquiry. In this study, using a longitudinal study of hotel reviews over 6 years, the top 30 important hotel attributes from the perspective of consumers are identified and examined as to how the importance of these hotel attributes has changed over time. Our findings show that staff is the most important attribute with a positive effect on ratings at all times and that other attributes show consistent positive (negative) effects with small changes of importance over the years. Our study provides managerial implications of what attributes hotel managers need to maintain or improve for customer satisfaction.

This research study aims to investigate the role of creativity and project management as important aspects of service quality. The context is the advertising industry which is highly competitive and its clients have very specific needs and expectations. Data was collected using indepth interviews with marketing managers and project leaders who were responsible for the advertising needs of their organisations. The findings provide detailed insights into the nature of creative competence, project management process and project outcomes from the clients’ perspective. Creative competence includes an assessment of the creative work produced by the advertising agencies and their staff. The project management processes reflect the need for detailed plans and budgets to be developed and communicated, as well as having a clear process for change management once the project scope and plan have been signed off. This study is the first of its kind using a qualitative approach to investigate the role of creativity and project management in enhancing the service quality of advertising agencies.

Using real data acquired from transaction receipts at a cafe, the present research examined individuals’ menu choices made in a group setting. Building on previous research, the present research proposed and examined what we call the group referencing effect, and found that individuals’ menu choices were more likely to conform to the precedent menu choices made by the others in their group. A unique empirical contribution of the present research is that conformity was assessed and emerged at two levels: end-choice level (whether the choices are the same) and attribute-level (whether the attribute(s) of the choices are the same, independent of whether the end-choice is the same; i.e., similarity). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

To the best of our knowledge, the research reported here represents the first attempt to analyze how beliefs and attitudes toward one's own abilities influence business form choice. We present a set of five hypotheses associated with an individual's perception of their own business acumen, business purchase determination, self-efficacy, self-regulatory focus and attitude toward customers that serve to predict an individual's choice of either franchising or independent business ownership. We also examine how these pre-entry orientations may or may not predict survival or failure across the two business models. The analysis of data gathered from 1186 Australian business operators reveals that the variables of interest do, in fact, predict business model choice but results also suggest that other factors are more predictive of survival or failure. We conclude that the key to marketing channel efficacy resides within the complementarity, or “fit”, between human form and structural form.

Four issues that can affect statistical conclusions from mediation analysis are presented here: The implications of omitting mediators; not conducting reverse mediation analysis; using inappropriate measures; and not considering a wider array of experiment-based methods. Suggestions for addressing each of these are advanced. Previous issues of AMJ, JMR and JCR are then examined to gauge the extent to which these suggestions were used. Less than half of the published papers inspected (44.4% of the total) endeavored to address at least three of the four issues raised above. AMJ authors will realize higher statistical as well as theoretical rigor if they consider these suggestions.