Search results

Family consumption studies have been criticised for using an individualistic or dyadic approach to explore the types of influence strategies that children use to sway parental decisions. In this study, attention is refocused on the voices of South African families within twenty-first-century familial interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the prevalence of pester power in South Africa, and to understand the influence strategies used by children and the different categories of products that children attempt to influence the purchasing of. Parental responses to these strategies are also explored to determine their effectiveness.

An exploratory research design using quantitative, but mainly, qualitative data, was used to draw insights from 135 families to understand intra-familial negotiation tactics within the context of family consumption and everyday family life. Thematic content analysis was used to extract themes from the responses.

The findings suggest that children use everyday family interactions as a resource to select successful pester and negotiation tactics. These children have a relatively deep understanding of how to influence their parents by using different tactics, such as emotional appeals, product requests, purchase justifications and bad behaviour. Children were found to have an awareness regarding the circumstances during which these tactics are more effective.

The contribution offered by this paper is first to build on calls for perspectives in the African context, when marketing to children and second, to add deeper understanding of the categories that children from South Africa influence, and the negotiating tactics that they use. This also contributes to an understanding of the intra-familial interaction processes leading to the eventual emergence of influence strategies and concomitant consumption behaviour.

What consumers know about a product affects many aspects of their behaviour and is particularly important for marketers to understand when it comes to developing marketing strategy. The purpose of this paper is to understand the components of consumer knowledge of wine and to investigate these as a potential basis for wine market segmentation and targeting.

A quantitative, descriptive research design is adopted. An online survey consisting of three sections, measuring objective knowledge, subjective knowledge and classificatory variables, was developed and fielded, and data were collected from US wine consumers via Amazon.com’s MTurk platform. The psychometric properties of the measures used were determined, and a two-dimensional segmentation typology was developed.

The study supported the positive relationship between objective and subjective wine knowledge, while the combination of the two components led to the identification of four groups of consumers titled: neophytes, snobs, modest and experts.

In a market that is highly fragmented, consumer knowledge about wine has been shown to provide a useful basis for wine market segmentation allowing for different marketing activities to target the four groups identified.

While other research has considered either objective or subjective knowledge on its own, this study’s major contribution is the investigation of the wine consumer segments on the basis of the combination of objective and subjective consumer knowledge. A consumer knowledge type grid is developed that has implications for marketing segmentation and targeting. Implications of this new typology for future research are identified.

With the increasing mobile activity of the Generation Z market (born after 1994), marketers’ interest in this social group is rising. This research paper aims to uncover the relatively unknown attitudes and behaviour of the youth market in an emerging market, South Africa, towards branded mobile applications (apps). Previous studies on mobile marketing have focused on Generation X and Generation Y and generally with a quantitative focus.

This study is based on the theoretical framework of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model 2. The study used a qualitative framework with stratified focus groups, aged between 18 and 21 years old at a private tertiary institution in South Africa.

The findings indicate that these South African Gen Z participants mainly used WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Uber and Snapchat. The participants had more positive than negative attitudes towards mobile apps. The findings also showed that privacy was a major concern for the participant’s attitudes and behaviour towards mobile apps. The findings supported the UTAUT2 model, but also discovered new themes. As a recommendation, the issue of privacy and its effect on mobile app adoption is a factor to be researched in the future. The research also provides recommendations for marketers and app developers.

This study was of a qualitative nature, and thus, the sample size was smaller than that of a quantitative study. Future research could add to this study by increasing the sample size and adding a quantitative method such as surveys.

Marketers of mobile apps targeted towards the Gen Z market should aim to be convenient for their users, as well as be entertaining, functional, time-efficient while avoiding excessive in-app adverts, being honest upfront about their pricing strategy, incorporate an element of connectivity into the app and respect their privacy. This paper also provides practical recommendations for mobile app developers (targeted towards Gen Z users) including minimising notifications and updates within the app, developing a mobile app that requires less usage of data (due to the high expense of data in South Africa for the price-conscious Gen Z market) as well as less usage of memory space on the phone and incorporating universal symbols within the mobile app.

This study supported the UTAUT2 model effects of performance and effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value and habit on the behavioural intention of users towards a new technology, i.e. GenZ students’ attitudes and behaviour towards branded mobile apps in South Africa. However, an additional condition was discovered in this study, i.e. privacy and its impact on the attitudes and behaviour of GenZ mobile app users. Therefore, this study extends the UTAUT2 model framework. Furthermore, this study uses a qualitative design, which has not been used in previous studies, with a focus on the under-researched Gen Z market, and in particular in an emerging market, such as South Africa.

Gender bias in artificial intelligence (AI) should be solved as a priority before AI algorithms become ubiquitous, perpetuating and accentuating the bias. While the problem has been identified as an established research and policy agenda, a cohesive review of existing research specifically addressing gender bias from a socio-technical viewpoint is lacking. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine the social causes and consequences of, and proposed solutions to, gender bias in AI algorithms.

A comprehensive systematic review followed established protocols to ensure accurate and verifiable identification of suitable articles. The process revealed 177 articles in the socio-technical framework, with 64 articles selected for in-depth analysis.

Most previous research has focused on technical rather than social causes, consequences and solutions to AI bias. From a social perspective, gender bias in AI algorithms can be attributed equally to algorithmic design and training datasets. Social consequences are wide-ranging, with amplification of existing bias the most common at 28%. Social solutions were concentrated on algorithmic design, specifically improving diversity in AI development teams (30%), increasing awareness (23%), human-in-the-loop (23%) and integrating ethics into the design process (21%).

This systematic review is the first of its kind to focus on gender bias in AI algorithms from a social perspective within a socio-technical framework. Identification of key causes and consequences of bias and the breakdown of potential solutions provides direction for future research and policy within the growing field of AI ethics.

The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0452

This paper aims to examine the relationship between feelings toward buying wine on mobile phones and m-commerce website loyalty by examining the mediating role of sales promotion and the moderating role of service attributes of the m-commerce websites in influencing the mediation.

A total of 3,318 completed surveys were collected. Drawing on a large non-probability criterion-based purposive sample across six countries (France, Germany, Greece, South Africa, USA and Canada), mediation analysis was performed to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Results show that sales promotion mediates the relationship between feelings toward buying wine on mobile phones and m-commerce website loyalty. Moderated mediation reveals that the indirect pathways (sales promotion) through which feelings toward buying wine over mobile exert its effect on m-commerce website loyalty are dependent on the value of service (wine delivery) attributes of the website. The results demonstrate that sales promotion and service are of paramount importance to wineries and wine marketers.

Wine producers and retailers should consider the use of sales promotion to enhance sales and loyalty to m-commerce websites.

Wine producers and retailers should consider use sales promotion (such as SMS or push notifications) to enhance sales and influence consumer feelings and hence their loyalty.

Wine m-commerce studies are limited, especially with an international perspective comparing six different countries: three from the old world (France, Germany and Greece) and three from the new world (North America with USA and Canada; and South Africa). Altogether, these six countries represent around 40 per cent of the world’s wine consumption.

Outlines Leavitt′s Diamond, which postulates that it is rare for any change to occur in isolation. Of four interdependent variables – tasks, structure, technology, and people – change to only one or two of the variables will cause problems. Applies Leavitt′s theory to the changes which have taken place in the Management Information Centre of the British Institute of Management over the past ten years, which included relocation, computerization and charging, all of which impacted on services immediately. Changes to the organization structure took place only much later. The case study also shows the impact on staff and services when structure becomes the first of the variables to be changed and concludes with some comments on the significance of management style in managing change.

This paper aims to determine whether exploratory wine purchasing behaviour is affected by consumers’ objective and subjective wine knowledge.

A questionnaire was developed using recognised scales for exploratory consumer tendencies, objective and subjective wine knowledge. The survey was administered using the MTurk platform. A factor analysis was first used to test the psychometric properties of the measures of the three constructs. Once the robustness of the measures was ascertained, cross-tabulations and testing via ANOVA’s of the demographics of age, gender, weekly wine consumption and education on the constructs was undertaken. In addition the causal relationship of subjective and objective wine knowledge on exploratory purchase behaviour was investigated via the use of multiple regression analysis.

The results show that consumers with more real (objective) knowledge of wines are more likely to participate in exploratory wine purchasing. Objective wine knowledge is greatest amongst older consumers and those who consume more wine.

While attempts were made to limit biases due to the research approach, the results may lack generalisability because a US sample only, was used. Recommendations for future research extending the sample population as well as for changes to the question formats are suggested.

The findings of this study have implications for wine marketers in that marketing strategies and activities (labelling, distribution, media, etc.) may need to be adapted depending on the exploratory purchasing behaviour and wine knowledge of their target customers.

Exploratory wine acquisition behaviour is important to wine marketers. This behaviour encourages trial but, at the same time, impacts brand loyalty. This paper identifies the characteristics of consumers in terms of wine knowledge, consumption and demographics most likely to exhibit this behaviour and provides support for the need for marketers to identify these consumers and adapt their marketing activities targeting them.

This paper aims to explore 15 UK adult social care workers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper’s 15 open-ended interviews with adult social care workers are complemented by digital ethnography in COVID-19 social media forums. This data set is taken from a global mixed-methods study, involving over 2,000 participants from 59 different countries.

Workers reported a lack of planning, guidance and basic provisions including personal protective equipment. Work intensification brought stress, workload pressure and mental health problems. Family difficulties and challenges of living through the pandemic, often related to government restrictions, intensified these working conditions with precarious living arrangements. The workers also relayed a myriad of challenges for their residents in which, the circumstances appear to have exacerbated dementia and general health problems including dehydration, delirium and loneliness. Whilst COVID-19 was seen as partially responsible for resident deaths, the sudden disruptions to daily life and prohibitions on family visits were identified as additional contributing factors in rapid and sudden decline.

Whilst the paper’s sample cohort is small, given the significance of COVID-19 at this present time the findings shed important light on the care home experience as well as act as a baseline for future study.

Care homes bore the brunt of illness and death during the first and second COVID-19 waves in the UK, and many of the problems identified here have still yet to be actioned by the government. As people approach the summer months, an urgent review is required of what happened in care homes and this paper could act as some part of that evidence gathering.

This paper offers revealing insights from frontline care home workers and thus provides an empirical snapshot during this unique phase in recent history. It also builds upon the preliminary/emerging qualitative research evidence on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted care homes, care workers and the residents.

This two part article is an account of research that examined the choices that student nurses made, from an intrapersonal perspective, when they experienced difficulty putting theory into practice. The research employed four major data collection tools, these being student diaries, interview schedules, the Personal Orientation Inventory. All of these tools were designed to either allow the student to explore their subjective experience of the theory practice gap in more depth, or to make a statement regarding the individuals level of intrapersonal functioning.Phase one of the research found that those students who had difficulty expressing their anger, fear or sadness had greater difficulty putting theory into practice. This finding was substantiated as the students who had functional scores in relation to feeling reactivity, spontaneity, acceptance of aggression and self‐regard, appeared more able to put theory into practice.In phase two of the research, nine students involved themselves in a peer support group, the purpose of which was to allow the students to explore their intrapersonal choices and work through their dissonant clinical experiences. All of them reported that this forum was a useful tool for the development of the individual nurse and their ability to underpin their everyday practice with theory.The second part of the article to be published in issue 3,3 will focus upon the integrated model for nurse education from a behaviour change perspective and the implications this has for educationalists.