Search results

This paper aims to investigate the paradox of whether prestigious goods help or inhibit a consumer’s social affinity. The goal of this research is to explore whether pursuit of prestigious goods increases consumers’ social affinity or decreases their social affinity, and, more importantly, to understand the mechanisms that drive this process.

Three laboratory experimental studies and a social network study are conducted to show that consumers hold inconsistent beliefs about the social implication of prestigious goods.

In Study 1, the authors showed that prestigious goods evoked stronger social affinity for the self than for the other. In Study 2, the authors showed that people evaluated themselves high in social affinity when they brought a prestigious wine to a party compared to when they brought a cheaper, generic wine, but evaluated others low in social affinity when they brought the same prestigious wine. In Study 3, the authors showed the mediating effects of social image and boastfulness on social affinity. Study 4 utilizes social network study to further validate previous findings in a field setting.

For high-end retailers, the authors suggest framing their promotional messages to explicitly highlight how owning prestigious goods will benefit them (i.e. social image). It is important that these retail managers (and salespeople alike) make it more salient on how their prestigious goods socially benefit the consumer (the self). Thus, it is important to get consumers to think about how a prestigious item looks on them and not on others. However, marketers must be prudent when constructing these messages, as the link between prestigious consumption and network development is merely perceptual.

The findings demonstrate that consuming prestigious goods increases social affinity via positive social image for the self. When evaluating others, the authors demonstrate that consuming prestigious goods decreases social affinity via boastfulness. In sum, owning prestigious items may seem beneficial socially to the self, but people have negative perceptions (boastfulness) of those who own the same prestigious goods. Hence, there seems to be a discrepancy in how the authors evaluate themselves versus how they evaluate others with the same prestigious goods.

The South African wool industry is integral to the country's agricultural sector, particularly sheep farming and wool production. Small-scale farmers play a vital role in this industry and contribute to employment and food security in rural communities. However, these farmers face numerous challenges, including a lack of funding, poor farming practices and difficulty selling their wool at fair prices. This study aims to address these challenges, the University of Free State launched a wool value chain project for small-scale farmers.

In this project, one of the studies conducted assessed the effectiveness of different detergents suitable for traditional wool scouring methods for small-scale farmers who lack access to sophisticated machinery. The investigation was conducted by scouring 160 wool samples using three different detergents and filtered water as a control. The wool samples were then evaluated for their cleanliness, brightness and fibre properties through a combination of scanning electron microscopy, spectrophotometry and statistical analysis at different scouring times (3, 10, 15 and 20 min, respectively).

The results showed that the combination of scouring time and the type of scouring solution used could significantly impact wool quality. It was found that using a combination of standard detergent or Woolwash as a scouring solution with a scouring time of 10–15 min resulted in the best outcome in terms of fibre property, wool colour and scouring loss.

This study demonstrated that traditional wool scouring methods could be an option for small-scale farmers and anyone who want to learn how to scour wool without expensive machinery to make wool products.

THIS month the Editor finds himself in rather a quandary. Since the number of staff that may justifiably be employed on a specialized journal of relatively limited circulation is not large, there must inevitably be some overlapping of the various functions involved in its publication, and we therefore have occasion to concern ourselves to some extent with the subscription side of The Library World, as well as with its production. We have been glancing through some of the 1957 issues of the journal, which at that time were appearing some three months later than their publication dates, and noting also the circulation figures of those issues. We then turned to the issues for the first six months of 1959, the second half of Volume 60, and their circulation, which showed an increase of roughly 20% on the earlier figures.

“Masstige marketing” is considered as a market penetration strategy for medium and large enterprises, particularly in foreign markets. The author redefine “masstige marketing” strategy in this paper and map the concept as a new model for brand building. Second, the author examine the effectiveness of “masstige marketing” strategy with reference to marketing mix theory (Four Ps=product, price, place and promotion). The purpose of this paper is to introduce a theoretical model to help the companies to implement “masstige marketing” strategy.

The author introduce a scale, called “Masstige Mean Score Scale” to measure the mass prestige value of brands. Both secondary and primary data used in this study. The author collected data from 590 young women consumers living in Japan and France to measure the “masstige” value using the new scale developed. The marketing strategy of European luxury sector multinational brand LV, has also been discussed as a method.

Masstige value is the best indicator of long-term brand value. In other words, higher the masstige value (MMS) of a brand, the higher the likelihood to succeed. The author also found that a brand can create mass prestige with “masstige marketing” strategy by appropriately mixing the four Ps in marketing – Product, Price, Promotion and Place in a distinct and culturally different market.

The author develop a pyramid model and measurement scale for “masstige marketing” as a theoretical framework to stimulate further research and as a tool for practitioners for better decision making. Besides, the author posit that higher the Masstige Mean Score (MMS) of a brand, higher the likelihood that potential customers recall that as a “top of mind” brand. Lower MMS implies that the firm has to go long way in their efforts to build the brand.