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Sponsorship can be an effective strategic marketing tool yet it attracts criticism as a corporate indulgence shaped by the personal interests of senior executives. While research into the outcomes of sponsorship is extensive, the practices involved in sponsorship selections have been largely ignored. Today, sponsorship selection in large corporations is recommended to be a formal process involving evaluation criteria aligned to corporate policy and strategic priorities. Yet, in reality, corporate culture influences sponsorship selection, as do sponsorship managers’ beliefs about sponsorship types and motivations. The purpose of this paper is to explore sponsorship selection practices and to consider the interplay between corporate culture and sponsorship managers’ beliefs about sponsorship types and their motivations. The findings provide not only new interpretation of the literature but also reveal a detailed picture of sponsorship selection.

This exploratory qualitative study comprises in-depth interviews with senior sponsorship managers from eight large Australian companies that use sponsorship as a strategic marketing tactic.

This study concludes that the sponsorship selection process is strongly influenced by corporate culture as well as the sponsorship manager’s beliefs about sponsorship types and their motivations.

This study contributes to the sponsorship management research stream by providing important insights into under-researched factors that influence the sponsorship selection process.

Global spending on sponsorship continues to rise and many companies now establish portfolios containing a range of sponsorships across sport, arts and cause-related activities. Yet a lack of practical methodologies for the measurement and comparison of sponsorship performance within a portfolio context remains a challenge. Sponsors often rely solely on proxy measures for brand exposure drawn from advertising. These do not capture the higher-level outcomes of sponsorship awareness and goodwill transfer, often attributed to sponsorship as a ‘halo effect’. This paper aims to present a matrix tool that combines consumer awareness of and goodwill for a sponsorship so the halo effects of sponsorships within a portfolio can be quantified and compared.

This archival analysis study is based on six years of brand tracking data (comprising some 15,500 consumer surveys) supplied by a large Australian company. A sponsorship portfolio matrix is developed to measure the halo effect.

This study demonstrates that a sponsorship’s halo effect can be measured and comparisons can be drawn across sponsorship types within a portfolio. The study shows that despite the significantly higher levels of brand awareness achieved by commercially oriented professional sports sponsorship types, community relations oriented sponsorship types achieve a greater halo effect because of their more positive impact on the sponsor’s brand attributes.

The matrix provides a valuable tool by which sponsorships can be compared, evaluated and managed to meet the longer-term brand and marketing objectives of a company.

Value Chain Analysis (VCA) is established as a diagnostic tool. The purpose of this study is to extend existing applications and develop an iterative and relational method. to facilitate the application of VCA to agri-food chains as a strategic process rather than a diagnostic tool.

Using a multiple case study design, the new approach to VCA was applied to four Australian prawn fisheries. These fisheries varied in size, location, management structures and marketing arrangements and allowed the general applicability of the approach to be explored.

The application of the revised VCA revealed the importance of undertaking a strategic approach, with the outcome for all fisheries being a greater understanding of their consumers and an enhanced realisation of commercial opportunities. Two fisheries completed the revised VCA, and the findings show that a relational approach is crucial in creating value. In addition, it was shown that formalised structures and the informal behaviours of the value chain members have a strong positive impact on the relationship process.

The research furthers the value chain literature and contributes an iterative approach to the application of VCA. The research also shows that obtaining improvements is not achievable for all chains, and, if the entire chain is not engaged with the process, the value of the results will be compromised. Further research is needed to confirm the validity of findings in other food industries.

The relational approach is an original contribution to the area of VCA research and provides industry with a blueprint for creating successful value chains. Specifically, the areas of implementation and evaluation make an original contribution to the theoretical and practical knowledge of value chains.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer knowledge of seafood sustainability and how that knowledge influences the purchase of seafood products.

Using an online survey (n=1,319), the authors investigated Australian consumer knowledge of seafood sustainability and the drivers of purchase choice. Objective knowledge categories were developed through the qualitative analysis of unprompted, open-ended responses and compared with other surveyed measures of objective knowledge. The relationship between these knowledge categories and the importance of sustainability in the purchase decision was tested.

A significant group of consumers either had no knowledge of seafood sustainability (17.8 per cent) or gave an incorrect response (15.5 per cent), while 25.1 per cent demonstrated simple and 41.6 per cent complex knowledge. Further, the knowledge was positively related to importance of sustainability when making purchase decisions. Sustainability moved from the lowest ranked attribute for the no knowledge group to the highest ranked attribute for the complex knowledge group.

The results show that the consumer knowledge about sustainable seafood cannot be assumed and that the level of sustainability knowledge influences the importance of sustainability in the purchase decision.

The results suggest that information-based strategies based on a universally shared definition of sustainability in the seafood industry designed to drive sustainable consumer behaviour for seafood must take the account of consumer knowledge.

This paper identifies and provides a classification framework for levels of consumer knowledge about sustainable seafood and demonstrates a positive relationship between knowledge and the importance of sustainability in consumer decisions with regard to purchasing seafood.

This study aims to examine the effect of country of origin (COO) on customers' value expectation and willingness to pay by employing signalling theory and cue utilisation.

The data were collected from 386 customers via an online survey in the context of Australian food retail franchise stores in China.

The findings indicate that COO origin is an important determinant of customer expectations including service quality, social value, emotional value, monetary price, behavioural price and reputation. Furthermore, the only social value was a significant predictor of willingness to pay. Although the direct effect of COO on willingness to purchase was not significant, the COO had a significant indirect effect on willingness to pay via social value. Finally, the COO has a stronger effect on monetary price expectation among customers who were aware of the country brands than those who were unaware.

The study extends the body of knowledge related to the effect of COO during the pre-purchase process and provides important implications for retailers who are looking to enter an overseas market such as China.

The purpose of this paper is to assist service management academics and providers of positional services (i.e. services that provide status attainment benefits to consumers) to better understand how the envy reflex of outperformed consumers operates as an endemic emotional theme that, if properly managed, can be harnessed to improve consumer engagement outcomes.

The objectives of the research were addressed via two quantitative studies. In a preliminary descriptive study, the types of services consumers classify as “positional” were identified (n=351) and a measure of consumer perceived positional value was developed (n=179). In the main study, a 2 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design was adopted using a sample of positional service consumers (n=265) with the data analysed via SEM and two-way MANCOVA.

The main study found a significant mediation effect of the envy reflex on the relationship between consumer perceived positional value and the overall likelihood of an engagement intention for outperformed positional service consumers. In addition, specific engagement intentions were predicted for outperformed consumers with a high envy reflex after considering how deserving they perceived a superior performer to be.

This research contributes to the burgeoning scholarly interest in the envy reflex as a consumption emotion by demonstrating its influence on consumer engagement outcomes. The research also demonstrates how tactics informed by appraisal theories of emotion can be used to manage endemic emotional themes in service environments to improve engagement outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the potential benefits of value chain analysis (VCA) improvement projects by evaluating their effectiveness for all chain members.

The study uses an action research approach to extend VCA methodology by implementing an improvement project developed through the VCA process, and the subsequent evaluation of this project using a combination of techniques.

The paper addressed a key research gap around the evaluation of improvement projects and has shown that the implementation of VCA, both as a guiding framework for developing interventions and a basis for evaluating their effectiveness, can provide significant benefits to all industry stakeholders.

The research focussed on evaluating the outcomes of a single project within an industry case study. While the diversity in different industry structures and the range of improvement projects possible makes it difficult to generalise the findings, the methodology and evaluation options make a valuable practical and theoretical contribution.

The case study highlights the advantages of improvement projects guided by VCA and offers a variety of evaluation options for both private and public sector VCA practitioners.

This study is one of the very few to evaluate the implementation of activities identified during the diagnostic phase of an agribusiness VCA.

This research aims to better understand the issues of why individualised communications should be incorporated into customised customer contact service and how customer contact management should be implemented.

The qualitative methodology of case research was used. In total nine Australian service industry case studies, involving 34 in‐depth interviews, were undertaken.

The analysis revealed three themes: optimisation of market factors, the process of implementation, and requirements for smooth customer contact management implementation. These findings showed minor implementation problems with service and organisational requirements driving customer contact management implementation overall. In addition, factors to assist with smooth customer contact management implementation are identified.

Limitations, which could be addressed by future research, include application to other industries, expansion to other countries, the consumer perspective and the need for statistical generalisation.

Key practical implications include the identification of the need for firms to consider customer contact management as an avenue for differentiation and competitive advantage as well as providing guidelines for the successful implementation of customer contact management.

This research builds theory about customer contact management for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is to describe research which tested a Thai model of cause‐related marketing's impact on corporate image.

Data were gathered from 1,071 participants in an established award winning cause‐related program in Thailand and analyzed using multiple regression.

Findings indicated that a cause‐related marketing program can create positive attitudes toward corporate image. One specific demographic characteristic of respondents, household income level, showed a significant influence with participants from lower income households developing more positive attitudes than those from higher income households.

The data were gathered from participants in one program only, hence future research could extend these findings to other programs to test their generalisability.

The proposed model serves as a basis for marketers to understand the influence of a cause‐related marketing program on the attitudes of Thai consumers who participated in the program toward corporate image. The results highlighted the importance of matching the company, its target market, participants in the program and the communication about the program to achieve desired results.

This empirical study contributes to cause‐related marketing research by focusing on a previously unresearched group, the participants in a program. In addition it was undertaken in an emerging market, Thailand.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key characteristics of business-to-business relationships in the early stages of the relationship that will influence the successful creation of value chains. Identification of these characteristics will provide a decision-making tool for continuing the effective development of the value chain process.

Key characteristics necessary to develop strong relationships were identified from the literature. These characteristics will assist the relationship to evolve into a long-standing mature relationship. An expert panel evaluated four value chain analysis (VCA) case studies against these characteristics in order to identify patterns in relationships that could explain the varied performance of these cases.

In total, 15 relational characteristics were identified that must be present in the engagement stage before initiating the next step in the VCA process. An assessment of the activities associated with pre-relationships and early relationships within the value chain provide a strong indication of the chains ability to conduct successful VCA.

This research furthers the understanding of value chains and adds an important and novel contribution of relationship characteristics to the early stages of relationship development within value chains.

The application of relationship development to the engagement of value chains is an extension to the VCA literature. Relationships are a proven foundation component of successful value chains, and yet relationship development research from business-to-business marketing has not been well incorporated into the value chain literature. The framework proposed in this paper facilitates an assessment on the level of chain engagement and readiness to take the next step in the value chain process, thus making a valuable practical contribution.