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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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the antecedents of organisational performance (OP), both financial and marketing, and the influence of holding a strategic market orientation (MO) where customer‐base volatility is taken into account.

A sample of 167 marketing organisations in Australia was surveyed to test the hypothesised model. Structural equation modelling was employed in the data analysis.

Use of the world wide web (Web) reported by organisations in this study indicates that there is still separate use of the Web and that it has yet to be fully integrated into the marketing strategy of many organisations. The study finds that traditional marketing effort mediates the relationship between holding a MO and OP in terms of financial indicators.

A major limitation of this study is that it surveys organisations from many industries rather than selected industries. This tends to mask some of the possible outcomes.

The findings in this study suggest that traditional and online elements of marketing effort each mediate the influence of holding a MO on OP, but differently. Innovation culture is found to influence both marketing practice and marketing performance, directly. A single measure of environmental turbulence – customer‐base turbulence or churn – negatively affects marketing performance, and ultimately financial performance.

A major contribution of this study is the examination of use of the Web in marketing effort and how this usage influences financial and marketing performance.