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Although integrated marketing communication (IMC) is generally accepted as the way forward by academics and practitioners, there is a shortage of research into the challenges that clients face in implementing the process, particularly in the UK. This paper aims to address these issues by examining how UK clients perceive the barriers to implementation, with reference to the conflict theory of decision-making and the social exchange theory from the change management literature.

The study adopted a critical realism approach and collected data through an on-line questionnaire to an expert panel of UK clients, which generated some rich qualitative data. The experts were asked to comment on four statements developed from the literature which captured the main challenges identified in previous research.

The results indicate that UK clients are facing similar barriers to those evident in other countries more than a decade ago. Three main obstacles are identified. First, some clients still find IMC difficult to understand and therefore may avoid change because of the high level of risk involved. Second, marketing departments lack control or influence over other parts of the organisation, due in some cases to lack of representation at board level. Finally, agencies do not have a clear role in the implementation of IMC.

The paper is of value because it specifically investigates the UK client perspective, which is presently sparse in the literature and updates the knowledge on barriers to implementation. It underpins this discussion with reference to change management theories. The paper also examines the support being provided by industry bodies and questions their effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to create a conceptual framework to demonstrate the role of universities as knowledge partners in place branding networks.

This research adopts a case study strategy to explore the perceptions of institutional and community stakeholders in Northamptonshire. The objective is to examine the regional activities and engagement of a single-player university in a peripheral region and explore its potential for widening stakeholder participation. Qualitative data was collected through interviews and focus groups and thematically analysed.

The university played a complementary “partnership” role to other institutional stakeholders, particularly the public sector. As a knowledge partner, the university filled gaps in information (know-what), skills (know-how) and networks (know-who). The last two aspects are potentially unique to the university’s role in place branding networks and require further development.

The conceptual framework demonstrates the potential of a single-player university in a peripheral region to enhance the capabilities and skills of stakeholders in place branding networks and widen stakeholder participation. Future researchers can use the framework to develop recommendations for universities’ role in place branding based on their unique situation.

There has been limited research on how universities participate and influence participation in place branding. The exploration of this topic in the context of a rural, marginalised region is also novel.

Although there is an increasing amount of research in the services advertising area, results from content analyses suggest that there is a discrepancy between services advertising theory and practice. Explores this discrepancy by interviewing creative directors in UK advertising agencies to establish their views. More specifically, the interviews examine first how the directors classify products and services and secondly how they think services should be advertised. The results reveal that the directors are not influenced by the product/service characteristics. The main influence on the creative work is the advertising objective. If any classification takes place it utilises the utilitarian/experimental divide or the involvement continuum. These exploratory findings provide an explanation for the discrepancies found in previous studies and bring into question the relevance of examining services advertising separately from advertising in general. Advertising may be one element of the marketing mix that is not influenced by service characteristics.

This paper examines two fields of research, services advertising theory and advertising theory. These two areas would seem to be obvious stable‐mates, yet an overview of the literature identifies very little commonality. The paper explores the reasons for this disparity and proposes that the integration of general advertising models into the services advertising literature may provide a useful underpinning for future research. To illustrate this point, the FCB grid is examined in the context of services. The grid provides a practical framework for classification and amalgamates a number of disparate fields of study. It also discloses subject areas which may be fundamental to our understanding of services advertising but have yet to be explored, such as the impact of involvement on advertising strategy and the similarities, which may exist, between certain groups of goods and services.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the components that make up an effective service advertisement.

This is achieved by examining a sample of service advertisements that have been recognised for their success. The advertisements are analysed with reference to two areas of discussion; the use of rational and emotional appeals and the presence of three executional tools, i.e. physical representation, documentation and showing the service encounter/provider. The methodology uses a combination of case study approach and a content analysis of effective service advertisements. The appeals are classified utilising the Pollay (1983) list of advertising appeals. The three executional tools are taken from an overview of the main conceptual frameworks.

The majority of advertisements utilise emotional appeals for not only experiential but also utilitarian services. They also provide physical representation of the service and an illustration of the service encounter. The level of documentation in all the advertisements is low.

The research is based on a small sample of UK TV advertisements.

The findings provide practitioners with an analysis of service advertising campaigns that have been recognised for their effectiveness. It is possible to identify common characteristics in these advertisements which should be considered when creating service advertisements in the future.

A study of real‐life service advertisements that have been classified as “effective” has not previously been undertaken. The findings are therefore of value to advertising academics and practitioners in that they contribute to our understanding of how advertising works.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the involvement levels and the information search activity of consumers purchasing credence services, in terms of the extent of the search and the information sources used.

A survey was undertaken (n=400) examining consumers ' information search practices for a range of credence services in comparison to non-credence services (search and experience services).

Involvement in the search process is high in terms of importance but not interest. Somewhat surprisingly, consumers of credence services do not undertake a more comprehensive information search than non-credence service purchasers in terms of the use of external sources of information. They do, however, depend more on the opinion of salespeople, the experience of friends and the content of consumer reports.

The results of this study differ from similar work that was previously undertaken with students and also in the USA. It would be useful to establish more strongly whether age and culture have an impact on information search.

This is the first time that the information search patterns of consumers of credence services have been undertaken for a wide range of common purchases in the UK. It is also original in this area of research in that it utilises a cross section of the population and not students. Its findings are important to the providers of credence services when considering their marketing communications campaigns because it reveals which marketing communication tools are considered by the consumer to be influential.

The purpose of this study is to examine the concept of consumer power, in particular the power or bloggers in the online environment and how this might be applied to the regulation of advertising.

Utilising Denegri‐Knott's (2006) four on‐line power strategies, a content analysis of weblogs of Tourism Australia's “Where the bloody hell are you?” advertising campaign is undertaken. Blogger behaviour towards this controversial campaign is documented and consumer power strategies are examined.

This study reveals that bloggers are circumventing the traditional self regulatory process by distributing information, opinion, and even banned advertising material, thereby forming power hubs of like‐minded people, with the potential to become online pressure groups, augmenting the traditional powers of consumers in the self regulatory process.

Limitations include a single case context and its exploration of a single media tool (weblogs). Also, bloggers are not representative of the general public, but do provide an alternative to the general category of complainants.

The paper provides evidence that bloggers are defacto regulators in the online environment providing judgements on advertising campaigns, supporting those with like‐minded views and disciplining others, and even making banned advertisements publicly available. Advertisers should be mindful of this activity in developing campaigns, especially in formulating controversial campaigns aimed to be disseminated online.

The paper is the first to relate consumer power in the online environment to self‐regulation. It is also first to study a new group of advertising complainants – the bloggers.

This paper aims to explore, and is the first in a series, whether it is possible to use risk-taking activities as way of identifying potential entrepreneurs. The research examines the motivations of individuals to engage in deviant consumer behaviour, in this case illegal downloading and the link between this behaviour and possible entrepreneurial characteristics.

The methodology approach was of a quantitative nature using a 32-item questionnaire disseminated to 215 undergraduate students at a UK university.

Although there was strong evidence of entrepreneurial traits existing across the participants, including risk-taking propensity, no relationship could be found between risk-taking propensity and illegal downloading. Reasons put forward for these findings were that the level of risk involved was too low to be identified as such by the downloaders, even though the non-downloaders were worried about being caught and, therefore, were not participating in it. Attitudes towards this misbehaviour change when it is not for their own consumption and very few students participated in that activity.

This study is limited to a cohort of undergraduate students at only one university. This study begins to understand the potential link between misbehaviour and entrepreneurial traits.

This paper examines the possible link between consumer misbehaviour, in this case illegal downloading and the display of entrepreneurial risk-taking characteristics. The implication of “consumer misbehaviour” through illegal downloading being “entrepreneurial” has, to our knowledge, not been previously tested and could be a useful and inexpensive way of identifying future entrepreneurs and consequently directing relevant support and training to the right people.

Off-price fashion retailers are expected to dominate the retail sector over the next five years. Surprisingly, selling excess designer labels, in what some describe as a disorganized manner, appeals to certain shoppers who enjoy the “thrill of the hunt.” Recent research conceptualized consumers, whose motivation for, and outcomes from, fashion shopping set them apart from previously reported shopper types. Referred to as “Sport Shoppers,” they view fashion shopping as an achievement domain. The purpose of this paper is to quantify such shoppers through the development of a valid psychometric scale.

Four studies, comprising depth interviews and online surveys, across two countries were employed to develop a three-dimensional scale of the sport shopping experience. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were used to analyze and test a theoretically hypothesized model.

Study 1 generated items aligned to the three theoretical dimensions of the sport shopping experience. Study 2 confirmed reliability and factor structure of the psychometric scale. Study 3 provides evidence of convergent and discriminant validity with previous shopper types. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates nomological validity through a theoretically hypothesized model of the sport shopping experience.

This is the first study to employ achievement goal theory in a consumer behavior context to delineate an emergent shopper type. The developed scale is the most comprehensive, multi-dimensional measure of the experience of this new consumer type. As such, it represents a valuable contribution to fashion retail and consumer behavior literature. The scale enables practitioners to quantify target markets and identify relationships to other factors, such as overall satisfaction and brand repurchase intentions.