Australasian Marketing Journal

Leading Edge Users have been attracting increasing attention in the study of innovation. Their effect is hypothesised to be threefold: in the development of new product concepts; their role in early adoption and thus cash flows for the firm; and acting as a catalyst for the diffusion process. Urban and von Hippel (1988) demonstrate the first, Morrison, Roberts and Midgley (1998) test the second. In this paper we examine the degree of opinion leadership that Leading Edge Users (LEUs) have so we can estimate their potential to do the third.

This paper shows that Leading Edge Status (LES) is related to opinion leadership as long as the organisation is well connected to the network. We found strong evidence that organisations with high LES were more likely to play a bridging role with organisations outside the industry than were Innovators (measured by Rogers’ time of adoption). This implies that LEUs are extremely useful in bringing information about technology into the industry from outside. When this is added to the Opinion Leadership role of LEUs, it is seen that they can play a positive role in speeding up the diffusion process.

Managers’ increasing use of sponsorship has not been parallelled by a growth in either their knowledge of evaluation methods or the sophistication of those they employ. Studies documenting management practice have revealed widespread use of informal sponsorship feedback measures and, where more formal measures are used, these relate only indirectly to sponsorship objectives. Given that most marketing actions are undertaken to change, modify or reinforce consumer’ behaviour, it is logical to examine whether sponsorship has any behavioural consequences. This paper outlines a choice modelling experiment designed to investigate how sponsorship affected consumers’ choice behaviour for two products: milk and bank investments. In both categories, sponsorship had a strong influence on the behaviour of a small group of consumers. However, overall, its influence was slight compared to the other attributes examined, and depended heavily on the cause promoted.

The aim of this paper is to test a structural model of creativity in print advertising called the Remote Associate Matching (RAM) model. This model states that the essence of creativity lies in being able to associate seemingly remote, or unusual ideas together, such that they are linked to the attribute or benefit of the advertised product. Three essential components of the RAM model are the conveyor (ie. the unusual picture in the ad), the product-representation (ie. the advertised product or service), and the attribute-benefit prompt (ie. the headline or copy).

The main hypothesis is that the more remote the ad, the more likely it is perceived to be creative, provided the target audience can make the attribute or benefit link between the conveyor (ie. the unusual picture in the ad) and the product-representation (ie. the advertised product or service).

In an experiment using 6 print ads for two product categories, three levels of remoteness and two levels of resolution were manipulated. The predicted effect was consistently found across two product categories, thus supporting the new theory.

Understanding consumer's behaviour must take into account both product usage and the situation in which it is used. Little research has combined these two areas. Means-end chains are used to gather information on the attributes, consequences and values associated with product choice and how the use of these vary across occasions. We categorise over 600 chains derived from wine purchases into eight occasions. Our analysis shows the most important elements for each occasion and demonstrates the dominant means-end chains for three occasions and the use of the major chains for positioning and promotion. We conclude that situation-based usage behaviour can be analysed using the means-end chain methodology.

The present study extends the export market orientation research examining the impact of industry environment on the relationship between export market orientation and export performance using responses of 783 exporters. Our approach yields a better predictive validity for performance than earlier studies, and explains how the environment moderates the relationship.