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Notes that current thinking places an appropriate culture near the top of the list of important ingredients for successfully marketing services. Examines the concept of marketing culture in detail. Provides a method for assessing the marketing culture of a service firm. Outlines the details of the audit together with possible applications.

With the soaring volumes of brand-related social media conversations, digital marketers have extensive opportunities to track and analyse consumers’ feelings and opinions about brands, products or services embedded within consumer-generated content (CGC). These “Big Data” opportunities render manual approaches to sentiment analysis impractical and raise the need to develop automated tools to analyse consumer sentiment expressed in text format. This paper aims to evaluate and compare the performance of two prominent approaches to automated sentiment analysis applied to CGC on social media and explores the benefits of combining them.

A sample of 850 consumer comments from 83 Facebook brand pages are used to test and compare lexicon-based and machine learning approaches to sentiment analysis, as well as their combination, using the LIWC2015 lexicon and RTextTools machine learning package.

Results show the two approaches are similar in accuracy, both achieving higher accuracy when classifying positive sentiment than negative sentiment. However, they differ substantially in their classification ensembles. The combined approach demonstrates significantly improved performance in classifying positive sentiment.

Further research is required to improve the accuracy of negative sentiment classification. The combined approach needs to be applied to other kinds of CGCs on social media such as tweets.

The findings inform decision-making around which sentiment analysis approaches (or a combination thereof) is best to analyse CGC on social media.

This study combines two sentiment analysis approaches and demonstrates significantly improved performance.

Provides insight into the concept of quality in the service market by investigating possible influences on consumer expectations of quality and how these expectations may be better met. Reports on a study examining the effects of certain stimuli on expectations regarding different types of service. Discovers that significant differences were found regarding the nature of the expectations as the stimuli werevaried, differences which remained after involvement and the removal of personal need effects. Offers recommendations to service providers and includes an explanation of the methodology used in the study.

A relevant, timely issue in the professional services area is that of marketing. Should professional service providers actively market their services? And, if so, how? Many professionals have already stepped into the marketing arena, but without first understanding the nature of their target market(s). This article concentrates on one area of the user market that should be known and understood by all professional service marketers: What level of consumer interest or perceived personal importance typifies the purchase of a professional service?

Explores the segmentation by service marketers of the consumer market on the basis of service quality expectations. Measures consumer expectations and various quality dimensions for three commonly purchased professional and three non‐professional services. Evaluates the effect of various consumers′ demographic characteristics on service quality expectations. Concludes with a discussion of research and managerial implications.

To thrive in today's competitive marketplace, businesses constantly need to search for opportunities to develop and be tuned into consumers as innovators. With this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to further understandings of the ways in which consumers transform ordinary products to serve their everyday needs; and broaden appreciation of the role observational research plays in opportunity identification.

A hermeneutic approach to observational research is adopted, incorporating both subjective personal introspection (SPI) and videography to discover one family's unusual usage behaviours.

Analysis, following Holbrook's typology of consumer value, reveals examples of innovative behaviours for the four active consumer value types of efficiency, status, play and ethics, while identification of the reactive value types of aesthetics, esteem, excellence and spirituality proves more difficult.

This research suggests alternative approaches for future research into opportunity identification, making use of videography and SPI. Moreover, the current work emphasises that innovation and the creative require consideration of the relational rather than just self‐seeking behaviours, needs or events.

This paper illustrates two research methods infrequently used, SPI and videography, positioning both as valuable tools for opportunity identification.

Examines the importance of the marketing culture of a service firm by pinpointing the strength of its association with marketing effectiveness. First, collects data to validate and purify a measure of marketing effectiveness. Second, undertakes a procedure to discover the nature of the relationship between the kind of marketing culture a firm has and its marketing effectiveness. The findings reveal a strong relationship between these two constructs even when the possible effects of firm size and geographical scope are removed.

This study aims to explore consumer brand associations and values derived from a corporate brand and a celebrity brand endorser prior to their endorsement.

This study uses both hierarchical value mapping and brand concept mapping (BCM) to identify brand attributes that translate to personal meaning for consumers and then to identify whether these attributes are encompassed by a specific brand.

Results from brand concept maps and hierarchical value maps show consumers value accessibility and customer service in financial corporate brands. Consumers value expertise in celebrity brands and respect success in both corporate and celebrity brands. A central finding is the importance of brand authenticity. Corporate brand authenticity establishes a sense of security and assists in the development of brand relationships. Celebrity brand authenticity creates consumer attention and enhances celebrity trustworthiness aiding in the development of a consumer – celebrity brand relationship.

The findings have implications for corporate brands utilizing celebrity endorsers. In terms of strategic positioning, corporate brands need to center their marketing communications on desired brand associations at the core of both the corporate and celebrity brand that translate to personal meaning for consumers.

This study uses a combined theoretical and methodological approach, drawing on associative network theory and means-end chain theory, and BCM and hierarchical value mapping methods, respectively, to understand and uncover personal meaning or value derived from brand associations.

Although the verbal components of service encounters have been investigated, the nonverbal aspects of employee‐customer interactions have remained virtually unexplored in the marketing literature. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of service employees’ nonverbal communication during service interactions. Specifically, a conceptual model is presented that links nonverbal communication (kinesics, paralanguage, proxemics, and physical appearance), customer affect, and consumers’ evaluations of service providers (with respect to credibility, friendliness, competence, empathy, courtesy, and trustworthiness). Further, the importance of nonverbal elements is discussed and managerial implications are given.

The purpose of this paper's novel, research‐oriented approach is to embed research‐based activities in a core second‐year course of a university business degree program to support and develop student research capabilities.

The design draws on Boud and Prosser's work to foster participation in a learner‐centred, discipline‐based approach. Activities rely on technology supports and mixed delivery modes to combine diverse theoretical perspectives and research methodologies.

The initial implementations of the design generated improved student learning experiences compared to the previous year. Voluntary participation was high and informal evidence suggested that research activities were a core‐contributing element to positive student outcomes.

A formal evaluation study is required to measure precisely the extent to which research activities like those described in this paper have an effect on students' learning experiences.

The research activities embedded in the course curriculum enriched learner participation and experiences without overtaxing resources and, with minor modification, are transferable to different courses and disciplines.

The technology‐supported environment described in this study allowed for online viewing of submitted research activities and provided students the opportunity to continually review, reflect and share their insights.

Learner‐focused research activities offer students a novel opportunity to experience research firsthand as informants, inventors and interpreters of knowledge. The adoption of research activities within the curriculum structure is a creative and multifaceted effort to extend students' research understanding.