Search results

Campaigns to promote the COVID-19 vaccination messages to vaccine-hesitant consumers in the late stages of the pandemic are often met with resistance. This study aims to explore a way to leverage positive emotions induced from entertainment media consumption to promote vaccination messages to this audience group.

An online experiment was conducted with vaccine-hesitant consumers (N = 409). Participants viewed personally relevant entertainment music videos or mundane videos and vaccinated messages embedded in user-generated comments.

Data revealed that feelings of inspiration and nostalgia induced from entertainment media consumption increased vaccination intentions via increased risk perceptions and reduced anti-vaccination attitudes.

Social marketers should consider leveraging the combined effect of entertainment media-induced positive emotions and user-generated comments to motivate behavioral change among vaccine-hesitant individuals in the late stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The present study adds to social marketing literature by showing mechanisms that positive emotions induced from entertainment social media consumption might lead to health behavioral change.

This paper aims to analyse if the family influence on the firm and the relational dynamics inside the family and the firm could create specific familiness resources, which lead to a stronger market orientation (MO) of the family firms (FFs).

This study is based on a cross-industry sample of 374 managers in 174 Spanish FFs. Structural equation modelling is used to test the research hypotheses.

The climate of family relationships is going to affect the firm’s MO through the influence that this climate has on two relational social capital variables, one in the family area (the identification of the family managers with the FF) and the other in the business area (the level of trust between the members [family and non-family] of the top management teams [TMTs]).

This study contributes to the literature on the under-researched topic of MO in the FFs by going beyond earlier studies focusing on FFs’ explicit attributes, such as their names, as potential explanatory variables of their marketing behaviour. This study also proposes and analyses new internal antecedents of MO based on the social capital of the firm.

Business families should promote the adequate governance mechanisms to enhance the quality of family social capital to promote the firms’ social capital and ultimately their MO. With the same aim, family managers should try to orientate their leadership behaviour to transmit their own organizational identification to the rest of the firm’s employees. Also, open communication and shared values should be promoted within TMTs to reinforce firms’ social capital that leads to MO.

This paper integrates social capital literature with MO literature. It also contributes to the literature on FFs, and specifically to the issue of familiness, by analyzing the effect of specific FF characteristics on MO.

Increasing and maintaining the population’s consumption of healthful food may hinder the global obesity pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether it is possible for healthful sub-brands to achieve higher consumer behavioural loyalty than their less healthful counterparts.

The study analysed three years of consumer panel data detailing all purchases from five consumer goods categories for 15,000 UK households. The analysis uses best-practice techniques for measuring behavioural loyalty: double jeopardy, polarisation index, duplication of purchase and user profile comparisons. Each sub-brand’s healthfulness was objectively coded.

Despite the level of healthfulness, all sub-brands have predictable repeat purchase patterns, share customers as expected and have similar user profiles as each other. The size of the customer base, not nutrition content, is, by far, the biggest determinant of loyalty levels.

Consumers do not show higher levels of loyalty to healthful sub-brands, or groups of healthful sub-brands. Nor do they buy less healthful sub-brands less often (as a “treat”). There are also no sub-groups of (health conscious) consumers who would only purchase healthful options.

Sub-brands do not have extraordinarily loyal or disloyal customers because of their healthfulness. Marketers need to focus on growing sub-brands by increasing their customer base, which will then naturally grow consumer loyalty towards them.

This research brings novel evidence-based knowledge to an emerging cross-disciplinary area of health marketing. This is the first study comparing behavioural loyalty and user profiles towards objectively defined healthful/less healthful sub-brands.

Studies on cross-culture marketing often focus on either localization or globalization strategies. Based on data from pre-communist China (1912–1949), product hybridization – defined as a process or strategy that generates symbols, designs, behaviors and cultural identities that blend local and global elements – emerges as a popular intermediate strategy worthy of further inquiry. After examining the mechanisms and processes underlying this strategy, a schema for classifying product hybridization strategies is developed and illustrated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Critical historical research method is applied to historical data and historical “traces” from pre-communist China’s corporate documents, memoirs, posters, advertisements, newspapers and secondhand sources.

Strategic interactions between domestic and foreign companies in pre-communist China fostered products and a city (Shanghai) containing Chinese and non-Chinese elements. Informed by historical traces and data from pre-communist China (1912-1949), a 2 × 2 classification schema relating company type (i.e. foreign or domestic) to values spectrum endpoint (i.e. domestic vs foreign) was formulated. This schema reflects the value of communication, negotiation and cultural (inter)penetration that accompanies cross-culture product flows.

Cross-culture marketing strategies meant to help companies satisfy diverse marketplace interests can induce a mélange of product design elements. Because product hybridization reflects reciprocity between domestic and foreign companies that embodies multiple interests and contrasting interpretations of product meanings, researchers should examine globalization and localization synergistically.

Strategies adopted by domestic and foreign companies in pre-communist China (1912–1949) can help contemporary companies design effective cross-culture marketing strategies in a global marketplace infused with competing meanings and interests.

Examining historical strategies adopted in pre-communist China (1912–1949) can inform contemporary marketers’ intuitions. Understanding product hybridization in global marketplaces can improve marketing efficiency.

DURING the past year no little stir was caused by Lord Rosebery's speech at the opening of the new Mitchell Library. Comments on the speech were world‐wide; the “Cemetery of Books” appealed to the imagination of all. The halfpenny papers and the high class literary journals alike opened their columns to innumerable letter writers. After it is all over now and the opinions calmed down the following sentence is not far wrong: “There is little doubt that Lord Rosebery was in facetious vein, but it is curious that (in spite of the ‘surgical operation’ supposed to be necessary) only the papers north of the Tweed seem to have realized this.”

Podcasting is one of today's most prominent trends in media and computing, but until now, factors predicting its adoption in higher education settings remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to examine students' perceptions of enhanced podcasting as a review and exam preparatory tool, through the use of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

The responses from a structured, self‐administered questionnaire were used to develop an understanding of the role of perceived ease of use, usefulness and enjoyment on behavioral intention to use enhanced (audiovisual) podcasts.

The statistical analysis indicated that perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment were positively related to intention to use video podcasts, whereas perceived usefulness was not emerged as a strong prognostic indicator of user acceptance. Results also revealed that perceived ease of use is a strong predictor of perceived usefulness, supporting thus the view that perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment are the two main drivers in regard to willingness to adopt podcasting as a learning tool.

Although previous research has found positive attitudes towards educational podcasting, most studies were focused on measuring student acceptance without using an established theoretical framework. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the drivers of student acceptance of educational podcasting, by integrating key variables from TAM found in literature concerning technology acceptance in higher education.

Existing business model frameworks show weak conceptual unification, a paucity of measurement focus and limitations when applied in emerging economies. The study proposes a new business model framework – “Start-up Evaluation Calculus Using Research Evidence” (SECURE). The purpose of this study is to allow the measurement of the impact of business model design on start-up performance in emerging economies.

Data collected from 713 entrepreneurs in select cities of India, Oman and the United Arab Emirates is analyzed through structural equation modeling. The study uses measurement and structural models to examine the validity of measures and additionally tests the five hypothesized relationships proposed in the study.

The SECURE’s components comprising desirability, marketability, feasibility, scalability and viability showed validity and reliability. They synergistically demonstrated a statistically significant effect on a mix of financial and non-financial start-up performance outcomes. An alternative structural relationship that examined the impact of SECURE on only financial performance outcomes showed a weaker model fit. The findings indicate that a business model framework is useful when its ex ante measures show a positive causal effect on the desired performance outcomes.

The scores obtained by the SECURE framework serve as an evaluative tool that informs entrepreneurs and start-ups on the readiness of their proposed, incubated or existing start-ups.

Replacing subjective judgments with objective assessment criteria, SECURE is one of the first quantitative and performance-driven business model frameworks that contain measures from all functional domains of a start-up business. Start-ups can evaluate their business models against the SECURE model’s research-driven quantitative criteria and assess their impact on start-up performance.

When scientific information is unclear about the health benefits of foods, people choose to react in different ways. Using a posttest-only control group design, the authors tested how balanced and nonfactual information available on YouTube influences public perception of organic foods.

The authors randomly assigned participants (N = 640) from a southern US land grant university to watch one video: balanced news, nonfactual news, or control. All participants indicated changes in perception about organic foods immediately after the video. The authors analyzed the data using one-way and two-way ANOVA.

The nonfactual news video had the most influence on public perception of organic foods. Results confirmed that the effect of nonfactual information was more for individuals with preexisting beliefs consistent with the message communicated and individuals exposed to average to high levels of health and diet news.

The authors recommend regulatory changes in marketing strategies related to organic foods in the US that encourage balanced information about organic foods rather than promoting credence attributes of organic foods using persuasive information.

The authors findings suggest that, when scientific information about the health benefits of foods is unclear, communication activities should aim to increase healthy skepticism considering the audience's preexisting beliefs and frequency of health and diet news exposure.

Public perception of health benefits derived from organic foods is often misaligned with scientific evidence. This study aims to examine the factors affecting public perception of scientific information about organic foods.

The authors conducted multinominal and multiple linear regression analyses to examine associations between public perception of scientific information about organic foods and 19 factors using data from a descriptive survey (N = 763).

Perceived benefits of organic foods, trust in scientists, communicator credibility, preexisting beliefs and events related to science (e.g. COVID-19) were significant predictors of public perception of scientific information about organic foods.

Cognitive dissonance and recreancy theoretical frameworks help describe relationships between beliefs, science, trust and risk. These theories intersect when purchasing credence goods (i.e. organic foods) whose qualities cannot be observed during or after purchase. Hence, public trust of scientific information about perceived health benefits of organic foods may conflict with strongly held beliefs that contradict scientific findings.

Scientists can more effectively share research findings after trust is established through the listening, asking and sharing values process. Therefore, by following the path of listening, asking and sharing the endogenous/exogenous factors in this study, scientists and the public can have meaningful conversations about perceived health benefits and nutritional values of organically and conventionally grown foods.

Current research on perception factors about organic foods often examined consumers' perceptions and purchase intentions but rarely considered perceptions of scientific information about organic foods. This study examined relationships between public perception of scientific information about organic foods and endogenous/exogenous factors.