Search results

I AM HUNGRY (IAH), a free mobile App for the iPhone and Facebook, was introduced in early 2010 by a small Web 2.0 startup business. This location based App provided users with a list of restaurants and food specials within a one-mile radius of their current location. It offered significant benefits to both restaurants and end users, yet IAH struggled to generate a sustained revenue stream. The case is set in late 2010 when co-founders Markarian and Kravets evaluated IAH performance and considered their options. The two segments, Mom and Pop restaurants and college students, presented different challenges. In the restaurant segment, IAH faced a dilemma not uncommon to Web startups. Should they push for growth (number of restaurants) at the expense of revenue (offering the App free) or should they charge for the App at the expense of growth? Focusing on the end user, the case discusses the outcomes of an IAH promotion at Collegefest, a heavily attended back-to-school event. Data from Google Analytics and Facebook Insights revealed that the event was a success in terms of user traffic. But, was that enough? The case asks students to deliberate on the appropriate performance metrics for evaluating next steps.

Argues that in today′s competitive marketplace, service providers have to compete with goods marketers in addition to other service providers in contexts where different brands of tangible goods serve as substitutes for services. Examines various mixed choice sets composed of goods and services alternatives. Describes various kinds of mixed choice sets and lists various factors that transform them. Draws implications for service providers for dealing with choice sets differing in the market position of services vis á vis goods alternatives.

Posits that companies offering services that directly compete with products are particularly interested in whether the form of the offering ‐ service or product ‐ affects the behavior of consumers. Compares in two tightly designed and rigorously implemented experiments, consumers’ information search behavior for services that compete with products. Finds that: the critical difference between services and products is not that personal sources are used more for services but that impersonal sources are used less; there are similarities between products and services in search patterns; and with greater knowledge about the service, product and service search does not look very different. Finally discusses implications of these findings for managerial action.

The brand management literature argues that the standardization of branding strategy across global markets leads to consistent and well‐defined brand meaning. The paper aims to challenge this thesis by empirically examining whether and how global brands travel with consumers. The paper studies how consumers create brand meanings at home and abroad as well as the impact of context (e.g. place) on the meaning of global brands for the same consumers.

The paper takes a qualitative approach to examine brand meanings for two prototypical global brands, McDonald's and Starbucks, at home and abroad. Data were collected through photo‐elicited interviews, personal diaries, and essays with 29 middle‐class American consumers before, during, and after a short‐term trip to China. Interviews lasted from 30 to 90 minutes and the data were analyzed using a hermeneutic approach.

Taking a cultural branding approach, the paper demonstrates that despite perceived standardized global brand platforms, consumers develop divergent brand meanings abroad. While at home, global brands have come to symbolize corporate excess, predatory intentions, and cultural homogenizations; abroad they evoke meanings of comfort, predictability, safety, and national pride. In foreign contexts, global brands become dwelling resources that enable travelers to sustain daily consumption rituals, evoke sensory experiences of home, as well as provide a comfortable and welcoming space.

The paper challenges the brand management literature assumption of a consistent brand image for standardized global brands. It shows that the cultural context (e.g. place) impacts consumer‐derived brand meanings even among the same group of consumers. Further, it argues that standardization offered by global brands provides an important symbolic value to mobile consumers of serving as an anchor to the home left behind.

This paper calls attention to the profound differences between personal inventory decision making and the corresponding decision making of business organizations. It is argued first that the motivations and criteria being used by consumers are vastly different from the assumptions of models such as the well known EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) model. Next the implications for marketing are discussed. A research agenda is then proposed for filling in some of what is currently unknown.

The purpose of this study is to conceptualise the relationship between information disclosure and Waqif commitment, taking into consideration the role of level of trust (mediator variable) and communication and type of payment (moderator variables).

The conceptual framework is developed from the theory of social exchange (mediated philanthropy model) and selected previous literature concerning commitment.

According to previous empirical research, a conceptual framework was developed to facilitate further analysis in the study. Nine propositions were raised in this paper where the factor of communication and payment method is proposed to no longer the factor that determined commitment but as moderator. There is five antecedent of information disclosure proposed, which is basic information, financial information, non-financial information, future information and governance information. Also, trust is offered to be the mediator variable between information disclosure and Waqf commitment.

By realising many factors that may influence the commitment of waqf such as demonstrable utility, emotional utility and familial utility, this study only focusses on the effect of information disclosure.

This paper provides an opportunity for further empirical studies to prove the relationship between information disclosure and Waqf commitment. This paper also brought opportunities to investigate both conceptually and empirically, other factors that could affect Waqf commitment.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, few studies have been done concerning donors commitment. While there are none yet, the research examined Waqf commitment. The originality value of this study is that there is a gap in knowledge regarding the analysis of Waqf commitment, the level of trust among waqif is the information that Waqf expected, the preferred communication between Mutawalli and Waqf and type of payment that Waqf favoured. This study is believed to be a novel based on the framework developed.