Australasian Marketing Journal

Digital breakthroughs continue to challenge prevailing understandings of markets and marketing practices, bringing exciting opportunities to reimagine our offerings. Looking through the lens of digital surrealism, we identify key trends emerging in the field: (1) Is AR (Augmented Reality) for real?; (2) There is no better PR than GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation); (3) A persona is not a persona; (4) Min(e)d your language, and; (4 ¾) Raise your voice. Maybe. Based on these trends we develop an agenda for future research that enables the realization of the opportunities that the digital space offers.

The present research examines the effect of background colour on attitude and behavioural intentions in various promotional activities taking into consideration the moderating role of mood and involvement. Three experiments reflecting different promotional activities (window display, consumer trade show, guerrilla marketing) were conducted for this purpose. Overall, findings indicate that cool background colours, in contrast to warm colours, induce more positive attitudes and behavioural intentions mainly in positive mood, and low involvement conditions. Implications are also discussed.

Cultural diversity is the norm in today's society, and past research has shown that ethnic cues in advertisements are effective in targeting ethnic consumers. This study extends this research stream by examining how ethnic identify impacts ethnic consumers’ perceptions of advertising in ethnic versus mainstream newspapers. The results show that ethnic consumers with higher ethnic identity have more positive responses towards advertisements with ethnic cues, particularly when the advertisements appear in ethnic newspapers. By contrast, for the same advertisements, mainstream media appears less effective in eliciting positive responses. Ethnic consumers with higher ethnic identity are also more likely to purchase and recommend products advertised in ethnic media. These findings offer insights to marketers and businesses who are targeting ethnic consumers. They shed light on when and how to use ethnic cues, particularly in ethnic media, in order to achieve desirable marketing and communication strategies that target ethnic consumers.

The study examined the impact of green packaging on consumer behaviour. It was measured through willingness to pay since it acts as a proxy for actual behaviour. Using a sample of 343 respondents, the study empirically confirmed the effect of six factors grounded from “theory of consumption values” and “customer value creation framework” that offered uniqueness to green packaging and influenced buyers’ willingness to pay a price premium.

Many have noted the unique response of the Indonesian society to the bombing attacks that happened in Jakarta in January 2016. Whereas other societies have shown a variety of responses ranging from displaying regional solidarity to counter-aggression, Indonesians took to social media with irreverent, consumption-themed messages against the perceived terrorist agenda. We used symbolic interactionism as a lens to frame an analysis of Indonesian social media and news articles following the attacks to investigate the underlying factors influencing the gestation of this unique response. We found the interplay of various Indonesian cultural characteristics were influential in the collective negotiation of identity against the worldview threats of terrorism. This research is thought to be the first to investigate a phenomenon where the idea of consumption itself is used as an instrument of social resilience.

The use of web-based surveys is currently increasing due to its cost-effectiveness and agility as it provides access to market researchers to web-connected populations who are unlikely to answer through traditional survey methods. However, survey response rates in market research are in general decline and among survey platforms, web-based surveys have the highest rates of non-response. Thus, there is a need to address the declining response rates for web-based surveys particularly unit response rates – the likelihood the respondent would answer the survey. This paper proposes a respondent prequalifying framework that reduces unit non-response rates of web-based non-probabilistic surveys. A checklist of respondent characteristics influencing the likelihood of unit non-response was developed. The framework was then adopted for its applicability by replicating the recruitment phase of two case studies wherein the prequalifying checklist was applied with consideration to the respondent profile requirements of each study. While this paper does not intend to provide robust empirical evidence to the proposed framework, it demonstrates a promising framework that can be used to increase unit non-response rate by comprehensively integrating the pre-qualifying factors in the domain literature and carefully developing such framework to the most plausible direction a web-survey can be implemented. Findings suggest that (1) the proposed respondent prequalifying framework increases the unit response by prequalifying the sample in the recruitment stage, and (2) increasing the threshold value may increase unit response rates with careful consideration to some significant issues such as the weights assigned to the prequalifying factors, the quality of the background information of the respondents in relation to the prequalifying factors, and the sensitivity of the survey topic. The proposed framework is developed with strong theoretical grounding and detailed discussion for its practical use is also provided. The framework benefits market researchers by reducing unit non-response costs and increasing efficiency in social media-based market surveys.

Cultural diversity is the norm in today's society, and past research has shown that ethnic cues in advertisements are effective in targeting ethnic consumers. This study extends this research stream by examining how ethnic identify impacts ethnic consumers’ perceptions of advertising in ethnic versus mainstream newspapers. The results show that ethnic consumers with higher ethnic identity have more positive responses towards advertisements with ethnic cues, particularly when the advertisements appear in ethnic newspapers. By contrast, for the same advertisements, mainstream media appears less effective in eliciting positive responses. Ethnic consumers with higher ethnic identity are also more likely to purchase and recommend products advertised in ethnic media. These findings offer insights to marketers and businesses who are targeting ethnic consumers. They shed light on when and how to use ethnic cues, particularly in ethnic media, in order to achieve desirable marketing and communication strategies that target ethnic consumers.

This paper explores consumer advocacy for luxury brands in relation to brand satisfaction, brand loyalty and luxury brand attachment. Data were collected from an online consumer panel (n = 393) in Australia and were analysed through structural equation modelling. Luxury brand attachment has been found to have a stronger effect on consumer advocacy than that of brand satisfaction and brand loyalty. In addition to the moderating role of brand loyalty, luxury consumers’ dilemma with consumer advocacy has been discussed in this paper. These findings provide insight into the consumer advocacy for luxury branding academics and practitioners.

What makes consumers adopt energy-sustainable innovations? Drawing from psychological research on environmental behaviors, we propose a model integrating attitudinal factors, normative factors and self-control to explain the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs) by consumers. Specifically, we utilized structural equation modeling to develop a model to identify relationships between perceived values, green attitudes, normative factors, and self-expressive benefits and purchase intention of EVs. An empirical study was carried out to test the conceptual framework and 11 hypotheses were developed based on literature. The model was tested with survey data from 205 Hong Kong respondents from the automobile community. SEM analyses confirmed that perceived value, trust in EV, responsive efficacy, and willingness to pay had significant and positive influence on purchase intention of EVs. This study offers insights into the development of marketing program for EV in Hong Kong. The findings will help EV manufacturers to facilitate EV purchases. Future research opportunities are discussed.

This study investigates the tendency of consumer ethnocentrism, the role of market mavenism and interactions between these two constructs within a social structure. A total of 215 responses were collected online using the snowballing technique. This study finds that younger consumers are less ethnocentric but demonstrate more mavenism than their counterparts. The social network analysis shows that within the 2-clique, the market mavens outnumbered the non-mavens. This paper provides a holistic view by incorporating the relationship among three concepts with six-degrees-of-separation theory, adding new insights into the constructs which was not previously addressed within the literature.

This paper explores a path for those of us in the university classroom to re-think our approach to the millennial students we teach. The research question ponders what foremost initiatives we may implement to advance our students’ learning. A signposted series of ideas is posted and prompted by the first four letters in the alphabet. “A” is for “Activating our Millennial Learners.” This is call to set our students up for success at the start. “B” stands for “Building Bonds of Knowledge Retention” for core discipline knowledge. What long term learning should our students take forward? The third initiative is “Collaboration” and urges us to work more closely with those co-responsible for delivering the learning. The final initiative is “Data Analytics”. How can we prioritize our students to leverage analytical skills around big data? In conclusion, the challenge is to shift our focus away from being an ‘instructor’ to becoming a ‘partner in learning.’