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This paper aims to discover how consumers process an innovative set of systematically varied service trial offers and how this affects their learning and interaction as precursors to customer engagement.

The research uses experiments that manipulate pricing, type of service and delivery method. A repeated-measures design was used with a sample of 396 participants.

Free (as opposed to cost or full price) service trials were more likely to be accepted, with perceived truthfulness of the trial offer and perceived obligation mediating the relationship. Credence service trials generate higher levels of perceived obligation than experience service trial offers, while personal services are more likely to lead to trial adoption.

The research can be extended to well-recognized brands and further mixed service contexts.

Trial offers of new services are best targeted at buyers who are in the likely buyer group. The trial offer may accelerate time to purchase and relieve perceived risks. The trials of credence services need further signals of quality in the trial itself for consumers to adopt the full service. With personal service trials, skeptical consumers need assurance as to what will happen after the trial experience. Free trials may actually devalue a service, threatening engagement.

Uniquely, service trial offers are systematically manipulated using experience versus credence and personal versus impersonal trials to determine their effect on acceptance of the trial offer and the full service. Additionally, the study compares free, cost price and full price trial offers.

To investigate whether strategic orientation affects the evaluation of specific market research projects in for‐profit firms.

A small‐scale follow‐up survey was conducted, building on qualitative and quantitative research among a sample of the top‐1,000 marketing managers in Australia. The study used an existing market research evaluation tool, the USER scale and items generated from the qualitative research, to investigate the firm's most recent market research project.

Four market research performance factors were identified – market research as a knowledge enhancing (KE) function, the internal political use of market research, the misuse of market research and the generation of market understanding. The Miles and Snow strategy types were related to these factors, with Prospector types more likely to use market research rationally and less likely to use it for internal political purposes. Tactical projects were more likely to be misused than were those with a strategic orientation. Prospectors were far less likely and Analyzers far more likely to misuse tactical research projects. Prospectors were more often satisfied with the performance of their most recent market research. The Porter typology was less successful in predicting market research performance.

The study was based on a small sample of market research projects in Australian for‐profit firms. Future studies need to study these phenomena more intensively using ethnographic methods and more extensively using larger multi‐country samples.

Market research suppliers should learn the nature of their client's strategic intent to improve their effectiveness. Defender firms should carefully monitor the use of market research, especially that of a tactical nature, which may be wasted or misused.

The paper contributes to an understanding of how strategic orientation relates to the ways market research information is used within the firm.

Discusses the pressure being placed on survey respondents through growing numbers of contact attempts, long‐winded questionnaires and research topics that lack relevance. Suggests that marketing academics and other social researchers will have limits placed on them by government if practices are not improved. Discusses a number of difficult, but feasible, long term solutions to the problems identified.

This paper seeks to investigate the influence of Porter's strategy types on the use of customer relationship management (CRM) techniques and traditional market research, against theoretical and empirical evidence that differences in strategy types may result in variation in favoured marketing information sources and procedures.

Depth interviews generated a series of scale items, which were combined with others derived from the literature in a questionnaire measuring strategy types, the roles of market research, and the characteristics of CRM systems. Responses were obtained from 240 senior marketing managers in Australia, and applied to the testing of five research propositions.

ANOVA found no differences in CRM usage among the strategy types. Variation was widespread, however, in four roles of traditional market research: enhancing strategic decision making, increasing usability of existing data, presenting plans to senior management, and achieving productivity and political outcomes.

Future researchers using the Porter strategic types should separate “marketing differentiators” from “product differentiators” because they function and compete differently.

All organisations can benefit from CRM systems, but “marketing differentiators” exhibit a relatively higher usage of traditional market research. This is likely to be because they compete by creating softer product differences, while others do so on harder characteristics such as price or product functionality.

This is the first study to use the Porter types to explain differences between the roles and uses of market research and CRM within organisations.

Frontline employees (FLEs) are a key source of competitive advantage for organizations and have a significant impact on the quality of customer–firm interactions. This study aims to use the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model as a theoretical lens to examine whether internal communication (IC) (stimulus) evokes FLEs’ organizational identification (emotional) and job satisfaction (cognitive), and whether these in turn shape FLE customer-oriented behavior (response). The study also tested whether these mediated relationships are moderated by perceived communication formalization.

The hypothesized mediated and moderated effects were tested using data collected from a cross-sectional survey of 293 full-time salespeople working for a large general insurance company.

Both organizational identification and job satisfaction simultaneously mediate the relationship between IC and customer-oriented behavior. Perceived communication formalization was found to weaken the mediated relationship between IC and customer-oriented behavior, but only when this is via job satisfaction.

This study has shown that where IC is positively viewed by FLEs, it can be leveraged as a key driver by organizations to evoke simultaneous positive emotional and cognitive reactions, leading to increased customer-oriented behavior.

This study informs both theory and practice related to effective IC among customer-contact FLEs.

The study shows how IC can simultaneously produce two simultaneous emotional and cognitive reactions leading to FLE customer-oriented behavior and how these mediated relationships can be moderated by perceived communication formalization. The study used the S-O-R model as the theoretical lens to test these relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to test the efficacy of disclosing unit pricing and increasing the type size of complex terms and conditions in advertising. This is in line with recommendations made by global telecommunications regulators, including in Australia, to protect consumers in selecting mobile plans.

The authors employed a 2 (unit price disclosed: no, yes)×3 (type size: nine-, 12- and 15-point terms and conditions) full factorial, between-subjects experimental design using a scenario and fictional advertisements for 24-month mobile phone plans. This was complemented by 24 in-depth interviews with consumers who had recently purchased “real” plans and their assessment of these.

Extra information in the form of unit pricing has a positive influence on consumers’ value perceptions, but not on perceived confusion or risk. Presenting complex terms and conditions in larger type increases consumers’ perceived confusion and risk, but not perceived value, as consumers have difficulty understanding the complicated information presented.

This study focused on a single country market for one product type of mobile phones, using a limited range of mobile plans.

Public policymakers and providers are advised to pre-test planned changes to advertising’s informational content prior to implementation to identify the efficacy of proposed changes to protect consumers. Consumers may also need to be educated to accurately interpret complex plans.

The study contributes to the domain of informational content in advertising as a form of consumer protection. The effect of unit pricing and larger type for terms and conditions on consumer perceptions has not been examined previously in complex product settings.

This study aims to contribute novel insights into understanding and mitigating the harmful consequences of abusive supervision (AS) by examining the association between AS experiences, revenge, forgiveness, and the moderating role of emotional intelligence (EI). The key argument is that employees' EI can influence the AS experience through affective processes, countering supervisors' abusive behaviors.

A between-person scenario-based experiment was conducted with 366 participants divided into AS and control groups. The study explored the association between AS experience and revenge/forgiveness, mediated by core affect (valence and activation). EI abilities were measured as a moderator. Data analysis examined the relationships and interactions among AS, revenge/forgiveness, EI, and affective experiences.

The study reveals significant findings indicating that AS experiences were positively associated with revenge and negatively associated with forgiveness. The mediation analysis confirmed the role of core affect in these relationships. EI emerged as a moderator, shaping the association between AS experiences and revenge/forgiveness. Importantly, participants with higher EI exhibited lower revenge intentions, demonstrating the potential of EI to mitigate the adverse effects of AS. Unexpectedly, individuals with high EI also expressed fewer forgiveness intentions.

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of how employees can effectively counterbalance the impact of AS through higher levels of strategic EI. Examining core affect as a mediator offers novel insights into coping mechanisms in response to AS experiences and their consequences.

The study acknowledges several limitations, as the scenarios may only partially capture the complexities of real-life AS situations. The focus on a specific context and the sample characteristics limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research should explore diverse organizational contexts and employ longitudinal designs.

The findings have practical implications for organizations as enhancing employees' EI skills through training programs interventions and integrating EI into organizational culture and leadership conduct.

Over the last 30 years a range of empirical generalisations has been developed about the performance of competitive brands in frequently purchased product categories. These generalisations have been based mainly on European and US data, and this paper addresses the question of whether they also hold in Australia and New Zealand. We examined consumer panel data from four different markets (supermarkets, department stores and retail fuel in Australia and retail fuel in New Zealand) and found similar patterns to those in Europe and the USA, although there were some minor exceptions, and also some interesting variations between markets. Our results suggest that there is much that Australasian marketers can learn from using models such as the Dirichlet, which was developed in the Northern hemisphere, to identify norms and exceptions in their own markets.

This article presents an investigation of the suitability of using quantitative or qualitative data for individual competencies assessment. Specifically, the primary purpose of this article is to identify if the results provided by quantitative and qualitative instruments focused on individual competencies are convergent.

In order to do the investigation proposed, a survey on individual competencies comprising a group of employees of the administrative area of a steel company was carried out. A total of 268 evaluations were collected and analyzed.

The analysis of the employee's performance appraisals provided by ratings and narrative comments indicates a low correlation between these assessments. The reasons for such low correlation include the qualitative assessments variability, the restricted list of competencies used in the quantitative assessments and the analytical format of quantitative assessments.

The study indicates that quantitative and qualitative assessments should be carried out jointly so that they can generate more comprehensive results. When the combined use is not possible, the quantitative approach is better suited for assessing performance, while the qualitative approach provides more valuable insights for boosting people development processes.