Search results

Marketing Management, Entrepreneurship.

This case meant for advanced undergraduate students, taking courses of marketing management that covers the topics related to pricing strategies. With regard to strategic marketing class, this case can be used to explain how pricing strategy plays significant role in attracting and retaining customers.

This case teaches about the importance of understanding the marketing strategies pertaining to pricing. Nora the entrepreneur of Baby Dreams focusing on baby items was in a dilemma in deciding the appropriate pricing strategy for her business. She was in doubt whether her low-price strategy which she believed was appropriate for the low- and middle-income groups was the best strategy for her business. The drastic decrease in sales pushed her to think about the effectiveness of her pricing. All together, Nora owned three Baby Dreams’ outlets. However, due to poor sales, she had to shut down two outlets in 2013. For the last outlet, she had to take an immediate decision in terms of pricing, as the start-up money was depleting, and with no improvement, it was expected to be finished by May 2014.

Using this case, students will be able to have an intellectual openness in accepting different ways of finding a solution for a particular problem. This case illustrates the importance of understanding the marketing strategies pertaining to pricing. Moreover, it is also highlighted that, offering low price is not the panacea of sales decrease. It is also necessary for the small business’s survival to look at competitors’ pricing effort to come up with a better pricing policy.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

This study aims to identify the key factors that influence the intention and behavior of Chinese consumers toward purchasing organic food. The extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) model is adopted as the underlying theory to explore the relationship between attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC) on consumers’ intention and behavior to buy organic food. Trust (TR) and the moderating role of short food supply chain preferences (SFSCPs) were integrated to address the research gap.

Three hundred three questionnaire responses were received from organic food buyers in China using a convenience sampling method. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and to examine the relationship between the various constructs.

The results demonstrated that the purchase intention (PI) of Chinese consumers correlates positively with ATT, SN, PBC and TR. Additionally, the results show that consumers’ SFSCPs positively moderate the relationship between PI and purchase behavior (PB).

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for marketers to develop compelling messages that evoke positive ATT, establish consumer TR and integrate short food supply chains to drive PB. The study can also be useful to policymakers and other supply chain participants.

An increased understanding of the factors influencing Chinese organic food consumption can contribute to promoting healthier food choices, supporting sustainable agriculture and fostering environmentally friendly consumption habits.

This research contributes to the existing pool of knowledge by incorporating TR into the conventional TPB. The study also introduces SFSCP as a moderating variable on the relationship between PI and PB.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of green trust (GT), environmental quality awareness (EQA), green self-efficacy (GSE) and environmental attitude (EA) towards green purchase behaviour (GPB). The mediating effect of EA is also investigated.

Attribution theory and the attitude-behaviour gap model were used to develop the research model. Data were collected through an online survey, which yielded 321 complete and usable responses. The partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM; SmartPLS, Version 3) technique was used to test the study hypotheses.

The analysis revealed that GT, GSE and EA affect GPB positively. It was also found that EA mediates the relationship between “environmental quality awareness and green purchase behaviour” and “green self-efficacy and green purchase behaviour”. However, EA did not mediate the link between “green trust and green purchase behaviour”.

The findings of this study provide insightful implications for social and green marketers, including an understanding of the complex customer behaviour in purchasing green products, which will eventually enable them to formulate better green marketing strategies.

This study is amongst the pioneers in investigating the effect of EQA in relation to GPB. Furthermore, the mediating effect of EA in the link between “environmental quality awareness and green purchase behaviour”, “green trust and green purchase behaviour” and “green self-efficacy and green purchase behaviour” is also a new contribution to the literature. Finally, this study explains the drivers of consumers’ GPB, thereby providing a novel understanding of the field.

The purpose of this paper is to offer empirical evidence on the role of self-esteem and social bonding in explaining citizenship behaviour of students at international university branch campuses (IBCs).

A sample of 400 students from four IBCs in Malaysia was administered in a questionnaire. Data were analysed using SPSS and partial least squares 3.0.

This research demonstrates that students’ self-esteem and social bonds have positive direct effects on customer citizenship behaviour (CCB). Moreover, self-esteem has an indirect effect on CCB via intervening of attachment, commitment and involvement of social bonds.

CCB of IBC students can be explained by self-consistency theory via mediation of social bonds from social bonding theory.

To encourage CCB in IBCs, university management should target students who have high self-esteem, closely tied to parents and lecturers, committed to university, highly involved in co-curricular activities and comply with university regulations.

Greater understanding of students’ citizenship behaviour may help transnational universities to improve relationship marketing strategy and enhance students’ campus experience.

During the past two decades, a tremendous increase in the trend of purchasing and consuming halal food has been witnessed both among Muslims and non-Muslims. However, the research on halal food is still inchoate and needs further exploration. Moreover, there is a dearth of research addressing the impact of intrinsic motivation on halal food purchase intention. This study aims to explore intrinsically motivated halal food purchase behaviour, by means of “self-determination theory,” which is based on innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness.

A total of 308 responses were yielded from online questionnaires. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was then used to analyze the gathered data.

The results reveal that relatedness is the strongest driver of halal food purchase intention, followed by competence, while autonomy is found to be the weakest predictor of halal food purchase intention. The findings give marketers a new line to develop intrinsically motivated strategies with a special focus on close relationships.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is considered the first to explore the impact of “autonomy,” “competence” and “relatedness” on halal food purchase intention.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Indonesian Muslim millennials’ decision-making process in purchasing halal food by introducing knowledge variable into the theory of planned behavior framework and education level (EL; i.e. low vs high) as the moderating variable.

There were 400 questionnaires that were distributed to obtain responses from Indonesian Muslim millennials consumers. SmartPLS was used as the structural equation modeling approach to perform the multi-group analysis.

EL plays an important role that determines Indonesian Muslim millennials’ decision-making process to purchase halal food.

The EL was distinguished based on the Indonesian formal education system, which excluded the religious education system from the analysis.

The information conveyance of halal food product attributes should be conducted gradually according to the millennial consumers’ EL. Millennial consumers with higher EL are more likely to internalize the credence attributes of halal food compared to the lower EL counterpart.

This study found the significant differences in terms of halal food purchase decision-making between the two groups of lower EL and higher EL.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the variable of halal food knowledge (HFK) into the theory of planned behavior framework to investigate Malaysian non-Muslim consumers’ decision-making process in purchasing halal food.

Data were collected through 350 distributed questionnaires toward non-Muslim consumers on five most visited grocery stores (hypermarket-based) in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. The collected data was analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and SmartPLS.

Purchasing halal food remain an uneasy task for the non-Muslim consumers, thus rely on their personal evaluation and closest relative’s approval.

This study is focusing only on two halal food credence attributes namely health attribute and animal-friendly attributes.

Both health and animal friendly credence attributes of halal food should be the main message to be conveyed to the non-Muslim consumers. In addition, the inclusion of non-Muslim consumers within the Malaysian halal ecosystem might provide a solution to tackle the resistance of halal food from foreign countries.

The value of this study is the finding of halal food credence attributes of health and animal friendly, which are the dimensions of HFK.

This chapter focuses on the challenges that the Malaysian AIDS council (MAC) have been facing in creating the social awareness. Moreover, this chapter briefly discusses the HIV epidemic in Malaysian context. The harm reduction and prevention campaigns as well as the intervention programs taken by MAC are then highlighted. Finally, the challenges associated with implementing such programs are also discussed.

Meeting the patients' requirements as customers of the health care sector is crucially important as a social responsibility. According to the resource constraints, only an efficient utilisation of health services can provide that purpose. This study aims to develop a quantitative assessment framework for radiology centres as a vital section in healthcare to translate the patients' requirements into service quality specifications. This would help to achieve quality improvement by emphasising the voice of customers.

A literature review is conducted to specify the service quality criteria and the patients' requirements related to healthcare and hospitals. Based on the experts' opinions, these criteria and requirements are later customised for the radiology centres. Moreover, the requirements are categorised into five dimensions of SERVQUAL. The interrelations between service elements are also determined through expert group consensus using Pearson correlation. Afterwards, by applying the QFD method, the relations between the requirements and criteria are explored. Additionally, a customer satisfaction survey is executed in Tehran public hospitals to prioritise these requirements and provide an importance-satisfaction analysis.

Based on the result of the case study, service elements are prioritised for improvement, and practical suggestions are provided using the Delphi technique for quality improvement. In addition, a cause-and-effect diagram is presented to highlight the improvement area and provide enhancement suggestions.

This study is the first empirical attempt to benefit from the VOC in evaluating and enhancing the quality of service delivered to radiology patients. In doing so, the study applies a hybrid approach of QFD and SERVQUAL as well as other tools to highlight the improvement area and provide enhancement suggestions. The findings can be readily used by the practitioners.