Search results

This study aims to examine the effects of enhanced visualization of intangible service value through integration of means-end perspectives on advertising effectiveness.

Banking advertisements, incorporating message stimuli derived from salient values desired by the financial consumers and designed to assist message elaboration and stimulate personal relevance, were developed to examine the influence of cognitive connectivity on vividness of intangible service benefits and service advertising effectiveness.

The findings demonstrate that greater cognitive connectivity positively affects perceived tangibility, attitude toward the advertisement and attitude toward the brand. Additionally, the results indicated that perceived personal relevance has higher influence on envisioning service components, compared to one’s ability to connect visual cues to perceived benefits and to immediate end-goals.

This study incorporated visual stimuli limited only to financial security and social recognition. Future research should aim to examine the effects of different types of values on consumers’ elaboration process and their ability to visualize financial services.

This study extends knowledge of the means-end chain by proposing a means-end cognitive connectivity construct which influences the degree that consumers are able to mentally picture intangible service attributes. This study also provides insight that different values have different degree of influence on one’s ability to visualize service.

Notes that changes in the charity environment mean that fundraisers need to increase income from donations. Argues that to move forward donor behavior research needs to look not only at “why” people make donations but also at the process of “how” donations are made. Proposes that valuable lessons may be learnt through consideration of advances made in the field of consumer behavior where researchers have long focussed on decision‐making processes as a concept which is central to the understanding of how consumers behave. Suggests that taking account of the circumstances in which the consumer acts will give insight into donor behavior, which avoids losing sight of the reality of donation occasions.

“Social eating initiatives” are framed as a specific type of community-based food service that provides opportunities for people to eat together in local spaces using surplus food. These initiatives provide a meal that is fresh, affordable and more environmentally friendly than fast or convenience foods. In this research, we build upon the food well-being model to explore how food consumption is experienced in these community settings and the role of social eating projects in shaping the different dimensions of people's foodscapes. We adopted a community-based participatory approach and engaged in a series of dialogues with staff volunteers and coordinators at four “social eating initiatives”. We also conducted 45 interviews with service users and volunteers at three sites in the Midlands region.

The role of community-based food initiatives responding to hunger by utilising surplus food to feed local populations is often conceptualised critically. However, closer attention to the experiences of staff, volunteers and customers at these spaces, reveals them as sites where knowledge and experience of food is being developed with this contributing to a sense of well-being beyond nutrition. Shared food practices and eating together contribute to social capital and are important dimensions of food well-being that are significantly restricted by food insecurity. The “food well-being” model envisages a shift in focus from health, defined as the absence of illness, towards well-being as a positive relationship with food at the individual and societal level. In the concluding remarks of this article, it is suggested that this holistic conception is required to understand the role and function of social eating initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to add clarity to current conceptualisations of attitudes towards giving versus not giving and to identify an approach that better informs interventions that seek to promote particular types of pro-social consumer behaviour. Despite a considerable body of research that provides insights into why people give to charity, there is comparatively little understanding of the reasons why others decide not to give. More generally, existing applications of attitudinal models do not differentiate between decisions to perform and not to perform a behaviour. This paper challenges the assumption that attitudes towards performing and not performing a behaviour are logical opposites. Drawing on reasons theory, the paper examines the incremental and discriminant validity of attitudes for charitable giving versus attitudes against charitable giving, and the extent to which they correspond to different rather than opposite underlying reasons.

A mixed-method approach with two different study stages was adopted. Stage 1 comprised an elicitation study that sought to identify reasons corresponding to a comprehensive range of motives for and barriers to charitable giving. This assisted in the development of a survey instrument that was used in Stage 2 to test the study’s hypotheses. The study used the Index of Multiple Deprivation with a view to provide a sample representative of the UK population (N = 243). Results were analysed through exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and step-wise regressions.

Results showed that reasons against charitable giving included logical opposites of reasons for charitable giving (complementarity assumption)as well as separate motivational factors. Attitudes for and against were in turn explained by distinct sets of reasons. The paper contributes by adding clarity to current conceptualisations of cognitions in relation to doing versus not doing. Identifying underlying reasons, rather than just attitudes, affords specific insight for marketing communications and public policy interventions.

The paper introduces to the marketing and consumer behaviour literature the previously neglected non-complementarity assumption and provides a more complete test of this assumption in the context of charitable giving.

Describes car boot sales as an alternative retail format focusing on consumers’ shopping motives and related shopping behaviour in this type of retail setting. Concludes that car boot sales appeal more to middle and lower social class groups. Further concludes the growth of the car boot sale is largely due to the functional needs and non‐functional wants of these sub‐groups.

One of the greatest challenges facing managers of medical charities today is to distinguish effectively their cause and their organization in an environment of rapidly increasing competition. Investigates consumer attitudes, identifying those that serve to discriminate among different types of medical charity. Results reveal that those characteristics which best serve to discriminate between competing types of charity are: whether they are perceived to deal with a condition that is due to a genetic or birth defect, as opposed to an acquired condition; the extent to which the charities are perceived to be reputable organizations; whether the charities offer hope in the long term by adopting an educational approach; and whether the problem concerns the whole society. Illustrates the results by the positioning of the charities with regard to these criteria on a perceptual map. Discusses the reasoning for their respective positioning and the use of the results for marketing purposes.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

My focus in this paper is on the meaning that rock music has for fans of Lou Reed. I use the comments following his death as my primary data. These data were posted on the New York Times website in the comments section following the report “Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ‘n’ Roll.” From these data I develop what I call “the marginal self” in reference to how rock music helps self-identified marginalized persons to deal with their social exclusion and alienation. Drawing on Kotarba’s (2012) analytic categories of the self, I will show how these data give insight into a wide range of existential meanings related to the music of Lou Reed. For many who wrote these comments their reading of Lou Reed has been an essential transformative part of their life in similar ways to baby boomers as outlined in Kotarba’s (2012) Baby Boomers Rock ‘n’ Roll Fans: The Music Never Ends. I first show how Kotarba’s (2012) core concepts of the musical self provide insight into how fans of Lou Reed develop a sense of self through Reed’s music. I then turn to a discussion of the marginalized self as a development of Kotarba’s (2012) categories of “authenticity work” and “becoming of the self.” Suggestions for future research are noted.