Marketing Commons^™

Outsourcing Of Customer Relationship Management: Implications For Customer Satisfaction, Michael Graf, Bodo B. Schlegelmilch, Susan M. Mudambi, Stephen Tallman

Management Faculty Publications

If knowledge about customers is a central driver of strategic marketing success and customer relationships lie at the heart of a firm’s competitive advantage, why do many firms outsource aspects of customer relationship management (CRM)? This paper addresses this question by developing a conceptual model based on transaction costs economics (TCE), tests it with a cross-industry sample of managers, and draws out the implications for theory and practice. TCE-based antecedents explain most, but not all, CRM outsourcing decisions, with the resource-based value of the firm (RBV) and real options theory offering potential explanations for relationship between CRM outsourcing and technical …

What Impact Does Cause-Related Marketing Have On Professional Sports Teams?, Christina Damore

Honors Theses

In today's competitive business climate, firms must find new and innovative ways to differentiate their brand from others in their field. American Express Credit Card Company discovered such a marketing tool in 1981 when they sponsored the Statue of Liberty Restoration Project by donating a predetermined percentage of their card sales. The purpose of the sponsorship was twofold: American Express wished to increase card usage as well as support a cause to gain an overall better corporate image. In the end, American Express experienced a 28% increase in card usage and was able to donate $1.7 million to the Statue …

Amazon.Com: Offering Everything From A To Z, Stephanie Lang, Logan Tinder, Jarett Zimmerman, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

Amazon’s focus on customer service has led to an impressive record of growth and profitability. However, late in 2012, the company posted a quarterly loss. This asks whether the company may be sacrificing profits in the interest of growing rapidly. It also explores the incredibly competitive environment Amazon faces.

Self-Image Congruence With Communication Channels And Its Impact On Reward Program Loyalty, Orie Berezan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Loyalty programs have become products in and of themselves. They need to maintain member loyalty in order to survive. It is proposed that communication has a larger impact on program loyalty than previously thought. This study utilizes structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the influence of communication typologies and dimensions on hotel reward program loyalty via self-image congruence, service quality, satisfaction, and trust. Moreover, this dissertation presents a communication identity model, which focuses on promoting hotel reward program loyalty via self-congruence with communication channels.

Newly discovered significant paths were found between: communication style and self-congruence with communication channels; self-congruence with …

Evaluating The Impact Of A New Casino Loyalty Program On Gaming Volume, Ji Hye Min

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Using two years secondary data gathered from a Las Vegas hotel and casino, the effectiveness of a new casino loyalty program is examined on both daily slot coin-in and table game drop. Based on a theoretical model advanced to estimate the effects of a new loyalty program, simultaneous multiple regression analysis with Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) terms is used to analyze the data. The results indicate that the loyalty variable significantly increases slot coin-in at a rate of $302,455 per day, while table game drop is not significantly affected by the introduction of the new loyalty program. The coin-in increase …

Ethical Sales And Marketing For Small Businesses, Margaret E. Gonzalez

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the importance of ethical sales and marketing in relation to small businesses. Most research in this area has focused on large businesses and therefore ignores the importance of factors such as financial and time limitations. Because of these limitations, many small businesses are viewed as having cutthroat sales and marketing teams that ignore basic ethics and are primarily motivated by business and financial growth. The thesis examines ethical marketing in relation to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Habermas’ Discourse Ethics, and Pearce’s Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM). A content analysis was completed to determine how small businesses can ethically …

Rhetorical Analysis Of Successful Brands In Social Media Discourse, Maja Stevanovich

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

The expression "content is king" is a sentiment those in the marketing and public relations industries live by. When it comes to social media, still considered a newer form of communication, not all brands are sure of what makes for successful utilization of the medium. This study performed a rhetorical analysis on three brands considered to be social media standouts in their respective industries, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines and the U.S. Army and identified patterns on what makes these brands successful in their social media discourse. The study proved that social media discourse has much to do with sound communication principles …

Exploring The Factors Affecting The Perceived Program Quality Of International Sports Education Programs: The Case Of A Chinese Sports University, Luke Lunhua Mao, James Zhang

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

This study explored and tested factors affecting the perceived quality of international sports education provisions in the context of a Chinese sports university. Based on a comprehensive literature review, on-site observations, interviews with students and administrators, and a test of content validity by a panel of experts, a questionnaire was developed and administered to 61 international students attending a sports university in China. An exploratory factor analysis produced five factors related to perceived program quality, with 22 items retained (i.e., leaning environment, service orientation, administrative professionalism, content assurance, and academic growth). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that these program quality factors …

Impact Of The 2003 Illinois Gaming Tax Rate Increase On Marketing Spending And Cross-State Substitution, Mikael Bengt Ahlgren

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this research was to investigate three potential consequences related to the 2003 Illinois Gaming Tax rate restructuring. The first section presents the assessment of whether a higher tax rate motivated an Illinois casino operator to reduce of marketing/promotional expenditures in an attempt to negatively influence revenues. The second establishes if the surrounding state gaming operators reacted to the increased Gaming Tax rate in Illinois, by raising their marketing spending. The last section clarifies whether the changes to the Illinois Gaming Tax Schedule impacted gaming volumes in the neighboring/competing states of Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri.

The analysis relied …

Moral Foundation Theory And Marketing, Steve Lemay, James Coleman, Dave Mcmahon

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

In setting the stage for Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), Jon Haidt (2004) identified five foundations of intuitive ethics: 1) harm/care; 2) fairness/reciprocity; 3) ingroup/loyalty; 4) authority/respect; 5) and purity/sanctity. Each foundation could have implications for the content of marketing messages, but this research is the first attempt to test those implications in specific markets with specific products. This research explores the practical, promotional uses of John Haidt’s Moral Foundation Theory. Haidt’s work shows a strong relationship between his moral foundations and political orientation. Since marketers can readily get political data at the county level in the United States, these foundations …

2012 December, Office Of Communications & Marketing, Morehead State University.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for December of 2012.

Divided We Stand: Defying Hegemony In Theory And Practice, Anne Gregory, Gregor Halff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The last decade has seen the world becoming increasingly complex. One way of dealing with complexity, according to Schwab (2010a), is to look for certainties or solutions that impose order by simplifying. The authors contend that this is also happening in public relations practice and the academy. They criticise attempts to produce global models which lead to hegemony and argue for maintaining a diversity that reflects reality. They take the cases of the UK and Singapore as respective exemplars where hegemony has succeeded and where it needs to be resisted. They call for a professional and epistemological stand against hegemony.

Melbourne Mandate: Key Document Defining The Direction Of The Global Pr Industry And Endorsed By 160 000 Professionals, Jurrien Gregor Halff, Daniel Tisch, Anne Gregory, Jean Valin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Macro Socio-Economic Drivers And Fiscal Policy On Expenditure Allocation And Attribute Preferences, Anirban Mukherjee, Andre Bonfrer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Our article investigates the effect of macro socio-economic drivers on Australian households’ allocation of expenditure in a category (household appliances) and conditional on the allocated category expenditure, preferences for products (clothes washers) within the category. At the category-level, we quantify the effect of changes in social mobility, disposable income, housing prices and the 2009 stimulus payments on purchase propensity and expenditure. At the product-level, we investigate how households trade off between price, energy efficiency and loading capacity conditional on allocated category expenditure, measuring nonhomotheticity in preferences. We use the model to study a number of hypothetical scenarios, where we simulate …

Incorporating Environmental Stimuli Into The Service Profit Chain In A Retail Grocery Context: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach., Treasa Kearney

Doctoral

Several theoretical contributions are highlighted; firstly that employee environmental stimuli construct contained five sub-factors, these were termed, E-design, E-music, E-lighting, E-olfaction and E-layout. This highlights the complexities of the environmental stimuli for employees. Furthermore this research found a significant direct link between employee environmental stimuli and employee satisfaction. Considering the literature examining the effects of environmental stimuli on employee behaviour is astonishingly scant (Skandrani et al., 2011), this is an important contribution to several literature streams. Secondly, examining a global configuration of the environmental stimuli can provide a fuller framework for understanding and exploring customer and employee behavioural responses. In …

An Enhanced Model For Managing Change In Organizations, Thomas A. Pollack, John M. Lanasa, Dorene Ciletti

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

Change has become a “way of life” in organizations. The pace of change has increased substantially in recent years as a result of issues such as the pressures of global competition the impact of the Internet, customer demands and ever changing enhancement of technical capabilities. These changes affect what people do and how they fulfill their responsibilities, and therefore, there are varied reactions Historically, failures in change implementation have not been attributable to a lack of technical feasibility and functionality but instead have been the result of employee resistance. The difficulty of implementing organizational change has presented an ongoing challenge …

Consumer Response To Outsourced 1-800 Calls: It’S The Solution Not The Country, Richard Feinberg, Wenti Xu, Leigh Hokama

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

The growth of call center outsourcing and its emergence as a political and economic issue may have obscured some very important business and consumer issues. It is believed by many that consumers cannot be satisfied when calls are outsourced (offshored to India for example). The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between where a call is answered and what happened on that call. In this study call outsourcing is placed within the well understood area of country-oforigin effects. Two experiments were completed in which outsourced country was manipulated with call outcome (resolution or no resolution). The findings …

Social Media And Negative Word Of Mouth: Strategies For Handing Unexpecting Comments, Jane B. Thomas, Cara O. Peters, Emelia G. Howell, Keith Robbins

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Increased usage of social media by consumers impacts businesses that find it necessary to participate to connect with customers. Because social media is conversational in nature, marketers have little control over the message, unlike more traditional forms of marketing communication. The purpose of this paper is to flesh out the tensions that exist as marketers deal with consumer-generated negative social media messages and present possible responses for marketers dealing with this form of negative word of mouth (WOM). Its contribution lies in unpacking options for companies dealing with such negative social media. Case studies and a conceptual model identifying possible …

Smokers’ Vs. Non-Smokers’ Attitudes Toward Tobacco Usage, Jeff W. Totten, Betty J. Cayton

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The purpose of the study was to collect attitudinal and behavioral data on a sample of college students from a Southern state university regarding tobacco usage. The sample was designed to include both smokers and non-smokers. A non-probability sample of 508 college students was collected by handing out surveys in classes and in campus buildings. The questionnaire was designed by the students and the authors and included half of Pechmann and Shih’s (1999) smoking perceptions scale items. Users made up 36.6% of the sample. The average length of time reported using tobacco products was five years, with 78.3% stating they …

Cleaning Up Dirty Politics: A Social Marketing Perspective On New Jersey's Clean Elections Program, Amy H. Handlin

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper reviews the outcome of a state electoral reform initiative in terms of the four-stage behavior change process used by social marketers to gauge the effectiveness of their techniques. While the Clean Elections initiative was moderately successful in its Action and Contemplation stages, the author argues that realization of its full potential could be significantly hastened by utilizing the social marketing tools of segmentation, communications research and pretesting.

Reflections On The Market-Oriented Theory In The Behaviour Of Real Organization, Michal Felcman

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper presents market-oriented marketing concept which is reflected in the case study describing the behaviour of existing organization. An initial theoretical section of the paper introduces the reader to the market-oriented theory throughout the literature review, which provides different scholastic approaches to this theory. The practical section focuses on the qualitative assessment of the real organization and its behaviour. It starts with the description of the organization itself and it is subsequently expanded into the assessment of the organization´s behaviour in the light of the market-oriented theory. The goal of this assessment is to present benefits and challenges which …

An Empirical Analysis: Wine And The Consumer Price-Perceived Quality Heuristic, Freddy S Lee

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Does price have anything to do with Wine? The consumer price-perceived quality has always been used by consumers when they gauge the quality of a product or service. Three propositions are developed which show how the consumer uses the price-perceived quality in the wine industry. For all types of wines, there will be attributes like ratings, brand name and word of mouth that will affect the purchase. The goal in this paper is to empirically validate propositions pertaining to the factors that influence how consumers use the price-perceived quality heuristic to determine which wine is worth the money that they …

Second Life In The Classroom: Interacting With The Modern College Student, Stef Nicovich

Atlantic Marketing Journal

How do we engage our students to actively learn? That is a question that educators are asking more and more often. New techniques and philosophies are constantly being developed and tried in the classroom yet we still come back to the same observations. Students are generally unprepared for college level studies and often seem unwilling to put in the required effort needed to succeed. Perhaps one reason students seem disengaged is because they may not see the value of what they are learning. The connections between their studies and how they will benefit them later in life may not be …

Use Of Counterfactual Thinking For Understanding The Impact Of Personal Value Orientation On Blame Assignment And Customer Complaint Behavior, Nusser Raajpoot, Arun Sharma, Jean Lefebvre

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Counterfactual thought processes are being increasingly studied in the context of consumer experiences. For example, recent research demonstrated that have used counterfactual thought process to understand the composition of comparison standards and related feature mutability to identify the factors thought to be responsible for negative experiences (McGill 2000). We extend this of research by examining the impact of personal value system on blame assignment, and subsequent post-experience consumer behavior. Our study in the context of a service experience demonstrates that personal values affect counterfactual thinking. Specific marketing implications are discussed.

The Effects Of Television Food Advertising On Childhood Obesity, Aleathia Cezar

Nevada Journal of Public Health

Children’s food choices are influenced by the media, television advertising, focusing directly at infants and toddlers. This literature review presents multiple studies that explain how TV advertising of fast food, sugary cereals and other foods high in calories, fat, sugar, sodium and low in nutrients are contributing to the increase rates of childhood obesity. It is concluded that children are exposed to high amounts of food advertisements which affect young children’s food choices and poor food consumption. Due to the growing numbers of hours that children sit in front of the television, less physical activity and the epidemic of childhood …

Select Readiness: Assessing The Clinical Learning Environment Of A Regional Branch Medical Campus, Margaret A. Hadinger Edd, Ms, Erica T. Mahady Ma, Edward Norris Md, Fapm, J Alan Otsuki Md, Mba

Department of Education

No abstract provided.

The Use Of Indicators For Unobservable Product Qualities: Inferences Based On Consumer Sorting, Matthew G. Nagler, Fredi Kronenberg, Edward J. Kennelly, Bei Jiang, Chunhui Ma

Publications and Research

We propose a method for measuring the conjectural errors that inexpert consumers make relative to experts in using observable product characteristics as surrogate indicators of a valued unobservable characteristic. Observations on the unobservable characteristic, available to the researcher but not consumers, are used to divide the data into high- and low-quality subsamples. Separate hedonic estimation on the subsamples enables measurement of the relative valuations and conjectures of experts and non-experts with respect to indicators under the assumption that consumers sort across quality grades based on their appraisal expertise. The method is demonstrated using a small sample of SKU-level data on …

Consumer Purchase Decisions Regarding Screw Cap Wines, Lauren M. Jeter

Master's Theses

Screw cap wine closures provide many benefits in maintenance of wine quality over time, however acceptance of their use by purchasers has varied. This work first investigates how factors like age, gender, income and education affect the decision to purchase screw cap wines and to what extent these factors impact consumer decisions to bring screw cap wine to various social settings. The results of a questionnaire pooling attitudes and behaviors of wine purchasers (n=319) indicate that factors such as age, wine knowledge, income and gender influence a consumer’s decision to purchase screw cap wine. Education and income positively impact the …

Do Sensory Ad Appeals Influence Brand Attitude?, Sung-Joon Yoon, Ji Eun Park

Business Faculty Publications

This article presents two studies that investigate whether or not sensory appeal preferences in advertisements affect brand attitude. Study 1 seeks to discover empirically whether self-referencing and positive affect mediate sensory appeals to influence consumers' attitudes toward a brand, and whether such mediation effects differ across various ad formats. Study 2, a case approach, attempts to derive core sensory concepts through qualitative techniques as applied to an established specialty coffee brand. The results indicate that self-referencing and positive affect both have significant mediating effects between sensory appeal preferences and attitudes toward a coffee brand. Moreover, the finding that sensory preferences …

The Global Engineering Consultancy Market., Andrew C. Gross

Business Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to assess and analyze the size and characteristics of the engineering consultancy market in select Western nations and worldwide. A secondary goal is two-fold: to look briefly at the training required for careers in this field and to evaluate the strategies of the participating firms. This sector has grown in the past half-century to about U.S.$550 billion revenue globally, with nearly 3 million establishments and about 500,000 employees. There are giant, multinational firms that span across regions; but the sector is still highly fragmented, and the top 10 firms have less than 15 percent …