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1 – 4 of 4Chebli Youness, Pierre Valette-Florence and Cynthia Assaf
The purpose of this research is to extend the results of previous studies regarding corporate reputation scales and identify new and specific items relevant for studying global…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to extend the results of previous studies regarding corporate reputation scales and identify new and specific items relevant for studying global corporate reputation from a customer’s point of view.
Design/methodology/approach
This research was based on the qualitative projective “Album on Line” (AOL) technique. The authors used a sample of 12 French consumers distributed equally between affective and cognitive scenarios. An individual-difference multidimensional scaling approach (INDSCAL) was applied to display the overall semantic space among generated items.
Findings
The exploratory AOL approach generated 62 items related to both cognitive and affective orientations characterizing online and offline corporate reputation. The results uncovered six semantic clusters for each scenario. All in all, seven new items could be added in the process of building a new global corporate reputation measurement scale by adding: avant-garde, singularity, exclusivity, savings, return policy, freeness and speed.
Research limitations/implications
This research makes it possible to propose a new global corporate reputation measurement scale with sound psychometric properties. This scale will be adapted for click and mortars and pure players. This paper unlocks future perspectives by suggesting a causal model that integrates online corporate reputation and its main antecedents and consequences.
Practical implications
From a managerial perspective, this research offers insights to managers with the main orientations surrounding the components of global corporate reputation. Moreover, the AOL mappings delineate which quadrants the managers would like to be fitted into or avoid, and hence define more precisely which key elements should be stressed or discarded.
Originality/value
This research outlines AOL, an original qualitative projective technique that can be used to understand customers’ thoughts, which are stocked and collected as images. Moreover, this research intends to analyze the gathered data using both INDSCAL and fuzzy k-means cluster analysis to reduce conventional biases related to subjectivity.
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Amira Trabelsi-Zoghlami and Mourad Touzani
This paper aims to explore the virtual experience to understand its components and its effects on consumers’ real world.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the virtual experience to understand its components and its effects on consumers’ real world.
Design/methodology/approach
Our approach relies on a rarely used projective method: “Album-on-Line” (AOL). This technique allows identifying consumers’ representations of their experience. It uses images to immerse participants in a virtual experience and to lead an individual reflection, then a group reflection.
Findings
Virtual experiences have utilitarian, hedonic, psychological and social dimensions. When immersing in virtual experiences, consumers’ perception and consumption of products and services change. A projection occurs leading to an identification to virtual characters. This projection also leads to a consumption aiming at finding back the excitement and challenge lived during virtual experiences.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of this research relates with the fuzzy distinction between the virtual and the electronic in consumers’ minds and even in the literature. Future work should propose a multidisciplinary definition of the virtual experience, considering its specificities and components.
Practical implications
This research offers companies a better understanding of consumers’ motivations to live virtual experiences. It may bring insights on how to provide a more customized offering and a more adapted communication.
Originality/value
Compared to previous work, the present research offers a better understanding of the components of online and offline virtual experiences by considering the virtual in its broadest meaning. The use of the AOL technique enabled a closer look at the specificities of the virtual experience as perceived by consumers. It was also possible to explore the “post-experience” stage by understanding the effect of virtual experiences on consumers’ perceptions and consumptions.
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Stéphane Ganassali and Justyna Matysiewicz
This paper aims to present the assessment of different self-reported approaches that can be used to identify and measure consumers’ emotional responses towards brands. The goal is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the assessment of different self-reported approaches that can be used to identify and measure consumers’ emotional responses towards brands. The goal is to determine whether visual and spontaneous protocols are able to generate deeper insights than only closed groups of scales, and to consider pictorial tools as innovative and challenging measurement techniques for brand value assessment.
Design/methodology/approach
Three versions of the same consumer online survey dedicated to identifying some brand-related consumer emotional insights were created to be compared in terms of quality of responses, interviewees’ evaluation and richness of insights.
Findings
Visual protocols provide more specific emotional responses and are considered as useful for “capturing deep contextual meanings of consumer experience”. They clearly provide deeper insights and better emotional granularity. It can be generally concluded that different emotions’ self-report measurements are adapted to some diverse research questions or situations.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is based on research with a limited number of participants. It focuses on the use and consumer emotional insights delivered by three tested protocols rather than detailed analysis of the specific profiles of consumers.
Practical implications
The authors provide some recommendations of different research techniques, which can be used to identify and measure consumers’ emotional reactions towards brands.
Social implications
Their paper encourages a critical reflection about researchmethods that are deployed for marketing and consumer behaviour purposes. Their work promotes a hybrid and not dogmatic approach, centred around the perception andmotivation of the respondentsmore than on the expectations of the researcher only.
Originality/value
Research outcomes among different self-reported protocols using internet technologies are compared. Quality of responses and richness of insights are measured in a quite innovative and comprehensive way. The paper also gives detailed recommendations to researchers interested in consumers’ emotional reactions towards brands measurements.
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Hamida Skandrani, Norchène Ben Dahmane Mouelhi and Faten Malek
This paper aims to better understand the effect of store atmospherics on the employees' cognitive, affective and physiological responses. It tries to build on store atmospherics…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to better understand the effect of store atmospherics on the employees' cognitive, affective and physiological responses. It tries to build on store atmospherics literature to gain more insights on how these store atmospherics – often handled to produce positive outcomes among consumers – affect employees' attitudinal and behavioural reactions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted an explanatory approach. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 13 employees working in internationally reputed clothing stores. A content analysis was carried out.
Findings
The study reveals that employees could adopt avoidance behaviours because of the environmental factors. Specifically, it suggests that the lack of variation in the musical program, incongruence of music genre – salespersons musical preferences, long exposure to the same rhythms, task complexity, crowding, might affect the employees' attitudinal and behavioural responses. In addition, the relationships between the sales force team are found to influence employees' reactions.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the complexity of the subject matter and the research approach adopted, the study findings may lack generalisability. Further studies are required to test the suggested framework in different service settings.
Practical implications
The study finding stresses the need that in an attempt to produce positive reactions from consumer, clothing stores managers should also devote attention to employees' responses to store atmospherics as they might inhibit the quality of the service delivery process.
Originality/value
This paper fulfils a recognized call to thoroughly understand the impact of store atmospherics on employees' reactions in services marketing. The study enlarges the scope of store atmospherics research in marketing to encompass not only the consumer's reactions but also the employee's ones.
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