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The purpose of the paper is to analyze what notions of infants parents are visually met through addressed direct marketing. Questions discussed are: How are infants visually constructed as a category? and How are they argued to be in need of consumption?

Unsolicited direct marketing sent to three Swedish first-time parents during their child’s first year has been collected and analyzed. Using critical visual discourse analysis, attention is paid to recurring visual patterns and contradictions in how infants are visualized and described at the intersection of materiality, image and text.

The analysis shows three dominant visual commercial discourses of infants, here called “the angel”, “the adventurer” and “the transformer”. These discourses are articulated in such a way and with such a strong claim to truth that it appears as if it is not the marketer that is arguing for consumption, but that it is the infant’s character that demands and drives parents toward consumption.

As the visualizations of the age category infants, as well as of parents, are shown to be very uniform and that the marketing play on especially mothers’ fear of not providing the optimal conditions for the child, the study highlights the necessity of a critical dialogue between marketers, producers, parents and other actors in the child consumer business about their respective responsibilities and needs.

The youngest children are practically invisible in childhood studies as well as in the field of consumer culture. The paper thus contributes to those fields and to the study of visualization of children.

Investigates customer attitudes towards the direct marketing strategies employed by banks in relation to how attitudes toward the marketing media used and response channels influence the customer’s intention to purchase. Marketing media include mail promotion, telephone, and e‐mail promotions. Response channels include mail order, telephone and e‐mail orders. A total of 153 customers of bank services and products completed a survey questionnaire on their attitudes. Research indicates that customers generally evince a negative attitude toward banks using direct marketing strategies. They have mixed feelings about response channels, and low intention to purchase as an outcome of direct marketing. Purchase intention is significantly influenced by attitudes toward direct marketing media rather than response channels. Attaching promotions to communications a customer is expecting to receive can strengthen purchase intention. No demographic differences indicate that attitudes may have a stronger association with purchase intention. Revealed dilemmas faced by bank managers, marketers and researchers.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

The aim is to describe the analysis conducted by a leading company in the dairy (yogurt and fermented milk) sector in Brazil regarding the decision to implement a door‐to‐door distribution channel, in which one of the authors was involved.

A brief overview of the marketing channels is presented and the descriptive case study method was used to present the main company information.

The paper describes the decision‐making process that was used to define how basic services like breaking bulks, product variety, special convenience and wait time should be performed in this case. It also emphasizes the main channel decisions, the channel objectives and the chosen door‐to‐door structure for the company described in the case study.

Even though case analysis has a theoretical background, the decision process used here cannot be generalized, being only a guide for academics and practitioners about how company A addressed the direct marketing issue.

The paper presents specific analysis of the Brazilian yogurt market and use as theoretical background the strategic environmental analysis. As a real case, it can be useful for practitioners as reference for decision making, as well for teaching purposes for case studies with college and MBA students. Finally, the paper presents as main contribution a “method for developing new marketing channels”.

This section contains a range of topics from diverse, international, primary journals, including: an evaluation of PR effectiveness; a look at total quality management at Girobank, which was the first bank to win a British Quality Award; an examination of the principles of competitive marketing based on a case study; a discussion of how companies can sustain competitive advantage; and a report on retail‐oriented risk for bank branch operations.

In this special marketing abstracts issue of Marketing Intelligence & Planning a variety of topics of interest to the marketer are highlighted from the international selection of journals which feature on the Anbar coverage list. The value of a forum such as this is that quality material can be brought to the attention of the reader to which they would not otherwise be exposed. For example, would you normally take Datamation, Industrial Engineering, or The Ohio CPA?

The purpose of this article is to empirically examine the influence of consumer involvement on perceived relational benefits across service types.

Based on Bowen's service typology, responses from patrons of fast‐food restaurants and hairdressers/stylists were used to assess the influence of consumer involvement on relationship marketing, specifically perceived service benefits and response behaviors.

Results indicate that highly involved consumers perceive greater relational benefits when engaged in a high contact, customized service (i.e. hairdressers/stylists) versus a more standardized, moderate contact service (i.e. fast‐food restaurant).

Care should be taken when generalizing these findings to other service settings as this study only addressed two service types. Thus, an opportunity for future research could add moderate contact, non‐personalized services to determine if there are significant differences between the three service categories. Additionally, this study was based in the USA, thus cultural differences may influence perceived benefits of service firms selected.

The results of this study suggest that a service firm providing a more standardized service offering is better served by hiring and training competent and trustworthy employees than by adopting relational benefit programs. On the other hand, high contact customized service providers are encouraged to engage in relationship activities with highly involved consumers, specifically those related to confidence benefits.

This study confirms the recommendation that relationship marketing may be inappropriate for all service firms. More importantly, the level of consumer involvement with the service has a significant moderating effect on perceived relational benefits.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the European Journal of Marketing is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing, Europe and International Business; Marketing Strategy; Supply Chain Management; Product Management; Services Marketing; Marketing in the Public Sector; and Marketing and Information Technology.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of promotional mix in terms of advertisement, website and direct sale on job performance during the political crisis in the Middle East.

Data were collected from 121 Jordanian employees working in hotels in Aqaba city, using a self-administrated questionnaire including 35 items. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the research hypotheses.

The results of the current study revealed that there is a significant impact of hotels’ advertisement and hotels’ direct sale on hotel performance, whereas hotels’ website has no significant impact.

This is the first study that examines the effect of promotional mix on hotel performance during the political and economical crises in the Middle East and clarifies the most important elements that affect the countries’ economy, especially those involved in political conflicts.

本论文主要研究中东地区政治危机时期的促销组合对酒店绩效的各种影响, 其中促销组合是指广告、网站、和直接销售。

本论文采用35个问题的自助问卷形式采集数据。数据样本取自亚喀巴城的121名约旦员工。本研究采用多元回归分析法以测量研究假设。

本研究结果表明酒店的广告和直接销售对酒店绩效有显著作用, 但是酒店网站对于酒店绩效的作用并不显著。

本论文是首篇研究中东地区政治危机时期的促销组合对酒店绩效影响的文章。

This study aims to investigate stakeholder orientation’s influence on firm’s performance and analyze four types of stakeholder orientations: customer, competitor, employee and shareholder. Moreover, this research extended the previous literature by examining perceived market uncertainty’s moderating effect, which can influence the effects of the orientation to all four stakeholder groups’ effects on firm performance.

The study collected questionnaire data from 370 small and medium-sized enterprises in the steel fabrication industry in Thailand, and hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The results of the main effect analysis indicated that customer, competitor and employee orientation affected firm’s performance positively and significantly; however, the analysis did not support shareholder orientation’s significant contribution. Moreover, the analysis of the moderating effect showed that perceived market uncertainty moderated customer and competitor orientation’s effect on firm’s performance positively and significantly. However, perceived market uncertainty moderated employee and shareholder orientation’s effects on firm’s performance negatively and significantly.

This study advances prior research by showing that stakeholder orientation’s role in firms’ performance may be contingent on the nature of market conditions that firms experience. In particular, this research demonstrated that not all aspects of stakeholder orientation may be beneficial for firms to maintain high performance under high market uncertainty.