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This research aims to examine the moderating role of consumers’ persuasion knowledge (PK) on the persuasive effect of combined advertising and publicity within the same medium. The synergistic effect experienced when two messages are thus combined is reversed for readers with high PK who are first exposed to publicity then to advertising. Believability of the message is found to be a mediator within this context.

Based on a review of the appropriate literatures on PK and integrated marketing communication (IMC), this paper tests the hypotheses using two experimental studies.

The results of two experiments show that publicity-then-advertising yields poorer persuasion than advertising-then-publicity, especially under a high PK condition. The reduced synergistic effect of combinations of advertising and publicity is found especially when consumers activate temporary PK and/or when they have chronically high PK. A mediator for a decrease in the synergistic effect of combinations of advertising and publicity, believability, is examined.

This study contains significant managerial implications for marketing communicators about how to most effectively combine and coordinate publicity and advertising in the implementation of an IMC strategy.

Other than making a contribution to the IMCs’ literature, this research extends understanding of the power of PK within an IMC framework. The research contributes yet another extension to the original PK model of Friestad and Wright (1994) by suggesting an underlying theoretical mechanism to explain how PK works in the IMC domain.

Many consumer behaviour researchers have concluded that using self reports in the measurement of influence in family decision making may provide data which is not reflective of actual influence among family members. This suggests the need for different methods of obtaining influence data. This paper reports the development and preliminary application of an observed influence scale; a scale developed to measure actual influence using content analysis of videotaped family interactions. This observational method determines the relative influence of family members over three stages of the decision making process. The scale is tested on nuclear families with two adolescents, 89 from New Zealand and 24 from Singapore. The analysis indicates the scale has strong predictive and face validity.

Urry’s model of Tourism Gaze as described by Woodside is problematic, in that tourist participant observers change the phenomenon they observe. The purpose of this study is to present an alternative model that better represents the dialectic between tourists and the destination culture.

A story-telling technique, based upon personal experience and introspection that matches the story told by Woodside, is used to illustrate the theory development and formulate an alternative model.

A new model is proposed that acknowledges that the more a tourist lives their tourism experience and becomes immersed in the destination culture, the greater the affect he/she has upon the destination. The issue of authenticity is discussed in relationship to this new model, as – in a sense – the experience of a one-time traveler is as authentic as those of a long-term stay tourist.

The practical implications are both for tourist operators and policymakers. Cultures change, regardless of any tourism activity; but, such activity is a major change-agent, especially so as the emerging Asian countries discover the pleasures of “globe-trotting”. Although the cultural experience of tourists will remain authentic, large-scale tourism projects will inevitably change the culture the tourists sought to experience in the first place. The value of alternate tourism strategies based on the tourist’s impact upon the host culture is becoming increasingly critical.

The new model is simple but effective, and is more pragmatic and accurate than the original tourist gaze model of Urry. The introspective, story-telling, methods used are more typical of academic marketing than tourism research, but serve the purpose here well by making the conceptual idea readily available to the reader.

A study is reported, which investigated Singapore consumers’ price thresholds and saturation points for price discounts. The study shows that consumers discount the offered price discount, i.e. they lower the dollar gain value. This discounting of discounts increases significantly with the increase in advertised discounts. Very similar patterns of responses are obtained for products and services. The study also indicates that the saturation point for price discounts of 20 to 30 percent is found to be the same in Singapore and the USA. However, a price threshold of less than 10 percent is found for Singapore consumers, compared to 15 percent in the USA. Frequent price promotions in Singapore may have lowered the products’ expected price and appear to lead consumers to defer purchases when regular prices are offered.

Science fiction is that demonic creature lurking in the depths of every human subconscious waiting for the chance to emerge and destroy, with ecstasy, mankind's literary taste. It condemns the reader to an endless array of spaceships, hyperdrive, alternate universes, and alien beings — the really fun things in life. Unfortunately, not all readers or critics hold this view. To many literary critics, science fiction is something to keep in the closet, ignore, and generally not discuss in front of frail women or young children.

The relationship between knowledge and power appears to be assumptive in marketing; the study reported here attempts to justify this assumption.

The study is set in a family decision context. The research divides families according to the domain‐specific internet use of sons, and then the analysts inspect family decision‐power patterns for a range of products. Analysis is by factor analysis in the first instance, followed by ANOVA to test the research hypotheses.

The relationship between the internet‐enabled, domain‐specific knowledge acquisition of young consumers and their consequent increase in power in group decisions is supported.

Academics need to adjust their existing beliefs about family decisions, given the impact technology is having on knowledge patterns.

Marketers not only must be cognizant of the increasing power of youth in family purchase decisions as technology changes knowledge structures, but also must realize the potential of technological promotion channels for reaching this newly empowered target audience.

The concept that knowledge leads to power is not original, but the application of the idea to consider the structure of group decisions in a family context is. Most observers accept that the youth market is large and growing in its own right. It also seems possible, though, that many young consumers will have even more importance than previously considered because of their increasing influence within their family group.

The purpose of this paper is to report the use of decision system analysis (DSA) mapping the streams of communications (i.e. interactions), thoughts, actions and decisions involved for advertising agencies as executives in these firms gain client approval, and design creative, promotional and media strategies.

This study uses DSA. This little‐used technique requires protocol analysis, interviews and observation before transcription of the organizational decision processes into flow charts.

The research first identifies four models, describing four specific decision types, then derives a general model from them. Executives from four agencies not in the original sample later confirms the models. The models generally confirm the existing knowledge base, with a few minor exceptions.

This qualitative technique suffers the common malady of the researchers losing objectivity because of their immersion in the case‐companies. Wherever possible the research employs quantitative techniques to verify observational judgments.

The “thick description” and the summary charts of the advertising agency decision processes have the potential to aid agency decision makers to better structure their decision processes.

The findings themselves are of significance to those involved in the advertising industry, and there is an element of originality in the classification and the thick descriptions of advertising agency decision systems. The resurrection of DSA and the demonstration that the technique is viable and valuable is also a contribution of the study.

In most markets it is possible to identify a brand leader and a number of brand followers. The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: “Why should any consumer purchase a ‘second‐best’ option?”

Consideration of the way in which these two groups of consumers (brand leaders and followers) trade off product attributes (utilitarian benefits, hedonistic benefits and price fairness) during the choice process is made in the study by path analysis of the appropriate structural equation models and then a consideration of the level and the differences between the means of the three variables.

The paper finds that utilitarian attributes are of paramount importance to satisfaction with the brand. This is not in accordance with conventional wisdom, which leads us to believe that price is most important to buyers of second‐tier brands and hedonic considerations most important to buyers of leading brands.

The model fit attained is only good enough for exploratory work (GFI =0.88/0.90) so replication with a larger sample would be appropriate. In addition, the research is carried out in South Korea – although we know of no reason why this should affect the results it would be of interest to generalize the results to a western economy. Nevertheless, the method of first fitting the model then trading off the attribute levels is unusual and quite interesting.

Marketers of leading brands should not concern themselves about price but merely stress the benefits, whereas marketers of follower brands should make much of the price differential.

The importance of utilitarian benefits have hitherto not often been stressed when marketing premium brands – this research suggests that this is wrong.

Cyber‐brands are regularly valued but, to date, there has been no reported research designed to understand the derivation of cyber brands’ equity, so that attempts can be made to increase their brands’ equity efficiently. This research aims to address the issue.

To measure the strength of cyber brands, prior off‐line research is replicated, taking a customer focus to identify determinate variables. These customer‐focused variables are tested against cyber consumers’ stated satisfaction and site‐visit intention behavior, using regression analysis.

The results satisfactorily justify the suggested model, which has a predictive power ranging from 62 to 72 per cent.

The study shows that practitioners intent on raising the power of their cyber brand can be guided by the same model as used off‐line.

The major theoretical contribution of the study is to show that there is little difference between measuring and increasing brand power on or off‐line.

This paper aims to conceptualize consumer impulsiveness (CI) as a global trait to explore its influence on a wider range of consumer behaviours and also presents a revised CI scale. Prior research on CI focuses on the impulse buying context and does not establish the cross-cultural invariance of the CI scale.

Two studies with undergraduate and MBA students in Singapore, UK and USA were used to develop the revised CI scale and to test its cross-cultural measurement invariance and predictive validity.

CI is a three-dimensional construct with cognitive (imprudence), affective (self-indulgence) and behavioural (lack of self-control) dimensions. However, self-indulgence and lack of self-control positively (do not) correlate for consumers with independent (interdependent) self-concepts. These three dimensions also vary in their influence on different types of self-regulatory failures.

The student participants used in all the studies may be relatively younger and better educated compared to average consumers. Hence, there is a need to test the revised CI scale with diverse consumer populations.

The revised CI scale would help future researchers study the influence of CI across diverse cultures and self-regulatory failures in a reliable and rigorous manner.

Our findings may help control the onset and spread of self-regulatory failures among young consumers by early identification of their psychological origins.

This paper extends the scope of CI beyond impulse buying to study its impact on self-regulatory failure across five diverse behavioural domains (driving, eating, entertainment, shopping and substance abuse).