Search results

This chapter integrates research that highlights and demonstrates the importance of the marketing mix and customer attitudinal metrics in influencing the customer’s path to purchase. A key objective of this chapter is the provision of an integrative conceptual framework that links marketing actions to customer mindset metrics along the consumer’s path to purchase and the identification of the mechanisms by which customer mindset metrics contribute to consumer purchase journey. Specifically, it delineates two routes for the effects to manifest on sales: the “mindset route” where marketing actions influence customer mindset metrics, which in turn influence brand performance, or the “transactions route” where marketing actions influence market performance directly without influencing the intermediate mindset metrics. A second objective is to identify empirical patterns on incorporating marketing mix and mindset metrics along the path to purchase by reviewing key papers in this domain. Finally, the chapter concludes with the formulation of a rich, forward-looking research agenda on the customer mindset metrics – path to purchase link.

5S is a commonly used Lean tool that focusses on creating an organized work environment, but the effects of 5S on safety climate are not as well studied. The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of a 5S event on safety climate.

This pre-test post-test study examines the effect of implementing 5S on safety climate of the packaging area of a manufacturing plant. Two groups of employees (case and control groups) completed a safety climate questionnaire (Safety Climate Assessment Toolkit) prior to the 5S event, one month after, and two months after.

Total safety climate significantly improved for the case group but remained unchanged for the control group over the study period. Specifically, management commitment and involvement dimensions of safety climate improved for the case group.

These results show that two important aspects of safety climate (management commitment and involvement) can be significantly, positively influenced by successful 5S events, which may translate to improved safety overall.

Prior literature on 5S speculates a positive impact of 5S on safety and safety climate, but this assertion is not well supported with empirical evidence. This study provides quantitative measurement of positive safety climate changes that resulted from a successful 5S event. The results provide additional incentive for management to continue 5S and other Lean activities with the possibility of also improving safety.

This research is based on the hypothesis that the supply of appropriate perceptual and conceptual information through compensatory sensorial channels may assist people who are blind with anticipatory exploration. The two main goals of the research are: evaluation of different modalities (haptic and audio) and navigation tools; and evaluation of spatial cognitive mapping employed by people who are blind.

In this research the BlindAid system, which allows the user to explore a virtual environment, was developed and tested. The research included four participants who are totally blind.

The preliminary findings confirm that the system enabled participants to develop comprehensive cognitive maps by exploring the virtual environment. The BlindAid system could be used as a training‐simulator for O&M rehabilitation training, as a O&M diagnostic tool, and to support people who are blind in exploring and collecting spatial information in advance.

This preliminary study aims to highlight which VE properties could provide perceptual and conceptual spatial information and allow users who are blind to gather and expand their spatial information.

Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management.

MBA, Management/Executive development programs.

This case study can be used effectively for understanding the nuances of employee loyalty, especially if there is a cost of employee loyalty. While Anand Finance is happy that its workforce has largely been loyal, the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times force it to chart new course of action. The newly appointed Business Head, Ashok Singh's challenges compound when he finds that there was not’t a single innovation or best practice adopted over the past three years. Given his mandate to make Anand Finance as the Walmart of financial services, can he aspire to rally the forces behind the new mission? This case study facilitates an interesting discussion on the significance of operational and strategic alignment at organizations in the backdrop of an interesting story of Anand Finance, one of the leading non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) in India. The non-alignment was noticed by Ashok Singh (Singh) who took over as the Business Head of Anand Finance. While the company boasted of long-standing employees, Singh was quick to notice that the company had been paying a cost for employee loyalty. What was the cost of employee loyalty? Singh could also sense that the company was in a state of active inertia. Expected to make Anand Finance Walmart for financial services by 2025, Singh had a big task at hand given the lack of strategic orientation of the employees. What would be the likely course of Singh's actions? As the case study deals with strategic dilemmas related to the organizational culture, it can be suitably used for organizational behavior and strategic management courses. This case study is meant highlight that even if an organization is operationally sound and successful, it cannot afford to be strategically disoriented, as its strengths may prove to be its weaknesses with changing business conditions.

At the end of this case discussion, the participants are expected to know the merits and demerits of employee loyalty and the implications of the same for organizational change; whether employees’ relatively longer stints at companies would contribute to active inertia (as defined by Donald N. Sull in Harvard Business Review article, “Why Good Companies Go Bad”); and the ways to align operational orientation with strategic mindset, especially in the case of employees who rose through the ranks and had been serving the company for relatively longer period.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of price and products on the promotion (through in-store temporary displays) on consumer sales in an emerging market context (i.e. Brazil) in different regions with contrasts in the market and store formats analyzed.

The data originate from retail market audits conducted over three years and are broken down by a region and a channel for a product category that has experienced increased competition and growth and is highly distributed throughout the analyzed regions and channel formats (i.e. the ready-to-drink juice category). This study uses a panel vector autoregression framework and an impulse-response function to determine the effects on sales over time.

The results suggest that price sensitivity and the effects of promotions on sales vary with the type of store format rather than through structural differences between regions with lower vs higher levels of economic development in an emerging market.

Managers should consider differences in store format more than the heterogeneity among regions when making price and promotion decisions. Additionally, this paper highlights the importance of in-store product visibility through temporary displays of promoted products, especially in smaller stores in an emerging market.

By considering the challenges of managing a consumer brand for which market heterogeneity is key, this paper extends the current research by contrasting consumer price and in-store promotion decisions across two heterogeneous regions and store formats within an emerging market.

This paper aims to study the consequences of listing national brands in discounters. Is the discount channel a promising outlet for manufacturer brands? Is it an effective means to attract new buyers? Which combination of brand and discount destination at which price is best suited for this strategic move?

Based on a unique dataset (tracking grocery purchase behavior for a representative sample of German households) and employing both descriptive and multivariate statistical techniques, the authors examine the outcome for 134 national brands introduced in six discount chains in Germany between January 2003 and July 2004.

Both the manufacturer and discounter are able to grow their total performance in excess of the market following the introduction for the majority of the brands. Hence, potential cannibalization is more than offset by incremental revenues. It is found that, on average, close to 80 per cent of national brands' sales at a discounter is from new brand buyers. Discounters typically benefit less, as only 29 percent of brand sales are from new category buyers at their store.

Including manufacturer brands into a discount assortment will benefit both the manufacturers and the discounters. Examination of the substantial cross‐brand differences reveals that manufacturers and discounters attract more new customers with brands for which market penetration is still modest. Also, discounters gain more from adding branded offerings in underperforming categories, and benefit from brands that enjoy higher customer loyalty. Finally, national‐brand prices should be set carefully at discounters. It is advised to maintain their price premium even at a discounter.

Discounters are the fastest growing grocery format in Europe. Lately, many discounters add national brands to their private‐label dominated assortment, a move widely discussed in media with substantial implications for grocery channel management. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of that trend.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate explicitly consumer heterogeneity into market response models estimated with store‐level scanner‐data.

Latent structures in market response to a product category using aggregated scanner data registered by a supermarket are identified. Specifically, latent consumer segments with diverse preferences towards brands and different responses to marketing stimuli from data consisting of daily marketing actions (i.e. price, promotions, advertising, etc.) and sales of competing brands are identified.

The existence of different latent segments with diverse preferences and response patterns to marketing stimuli were detected. More specifically, the fit of the statistical analysis for the different model possibilities made it possible to identify four market segments. It was also found that the intrinsic brand attractiveness as a measure of consumer brand preference is different between segments. Finally, the price sensitivity is also different between segments.

The time cost necessary to obtain the parameter estimates is too high, which is usual in the models estimated with iterative EM algorithms.

This work deepens one's knowledge of the identification and selection of latent market structures, specifically latent segments with different purchase patterns and behaviours. The possibility of developing the analysis with aggregated data at the store level increases the potential utility for academics and marketing managers.

Although most applications use weekly data, this proposal models daily fluctuations in sales – as a result, making it possible to obtain consumer segments based on daily changes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how consumers respond to price promotions in stores and on internet channels during a holiday season. Since holiday shopping has long been considered promotion intensive and multichannel shopping is increasing, it is important to understand whether consumers respond differently to price promotions from these two different channels. The paper aims to examine whether the extent of price promotions that consumers perceive in online and offline channels and their sensitivity to such price promotions influences their holiday spending in each channel.

A public telephone survey was conducted to collect data during the month of December 2006. Using random sampling in Florida, a total of 501 responses were collected.

Overall, the findings support the effectiveness of price promotions during holiday periods. Such awareness of the extensive practice of price promotions at stores can encourage holiday spending offline; additionally, sensitivity to price promotions on the internet can be transferred into increased holiday spending online.

The results of this paper extend knowledge of how holiday price promotions affect consumer spending and provide important insights into how retailers should develop price promotion programs that are well tailored to consumer behaviors in different channels.

This paper addresses an untapped issue on how price promotions are perceived in multichannel holiday shopping contexts.