Anahit Armenakyan

Cue incongruity in wine personality formation and purchasing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and interaction effects of brand name (BN) of wine and country‐of‐origin (COO) on perceptions of the personality image of the wine, expected price, and willingness to engage with the wine.Design/methodology/approach – A field experiment in which label information for a fictitious wine was presented to wine consumers with a questionnaire on wine perceptions and response measures. The label information was manipulated across subjects using four BNs and three COOs.Findings – The study confirms BN and COO effects on perceived wine personality and responses to the wine. Findings also indicate the effects of BN and COO as well as a BN‐COO interaction effect on price expectations.Research limitations/implications – Findings link different personality dimensions to the two different cues, suggesting greater independence of the cues than originally expected. However, some BN‐COO incongruity effects are found particularly regarding price perceptions. A sm...

Value-creating mechanisms within the market orientation–performance relationship: a meta-analysis

The authors use meta-analysis to identify organizational mechanisms within the market orientation-performance relationship and to assess the implications of correlations between market orientation and complementary organizational orientations for that relationship. The meta-analysis is based on an integration of extant research of the relationships between market orientation and value-creating marketing capabilities as well as between organizational performance and market orientation, complementary organizational orientations, and value-creating marketing capabilities. The meta-analysis identifies the unique contribution of market orientation to organizational performance. Relationships between market orientation and specific organizational orientations detract from the necessity of market orientation as a precursor to organizational performance. Consistent with expectations, market orientation was found to relate differentially but still more strongly to specific types of firm-level value-creating marketing capabilities than to organizational performance. Results indicate that market orientation may affect performance primarily through its relationships with value-creating marketing capabilities.

Trust building in wine blogs: a content analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify trust‐building signals and signaling patterns of commercial and non‐commercial wine bloggers within a trustworthiness framework and assess prominence of balanced versus unbalanced resource‐based or compensatory approaches for the management of consumer trust beliefs and the facilitation of positive trust intentions.Design/methodology/approach – Development and validation of theory‐based signal‐classification scheme and two‐stage content analysis of trust‐building signals embedded in wine blogs.Findings – It is found that wine bloggers manage consumer trust beliefs using an unbalanced signaling approach emphasizing ability over character. Ability sub‐dimension signals vary by commercial orientation. Also, character signaling varies with commercial orientation.Research limitations/implications – Only English‐language wine blogs were studied. Limitations of content analysis procedures preclude direct evaluation of signal efficacy in absolute or contextualize...

Does hosting the Olympic Games matter?: Canada and Olympic Games images before and after the 2010 Olympic Games.

A cross-national, longitudinal study of Canadian and US respondents examined impacts of the Vancouver Olympic Games (VOG) on images of the host country, Canada, and the Olympic Games (OG) itself. Questionnaires were completed before and after the VOG on four distinct attitude objects: Canada as a vacation destination, the country/people of Canada, and the VOG as a destination and an event. Repeated measures MANOVA indicated positive impacts of the VOG but differences across the two populations. Little change was seen in OG images and interest among Americans, but major improvements occurred among Canadians. Differences in perceptions of the domestic and foreign populations towards the host country appeared, confirming earlier research on domestic bias effects. Results indicated hosting the OG contributed to improved images for Americans of Canadians, Canada as a country and as a destination. Canadians evidenced increased pride in their own country. Findings indicated mutual positive benefits for Canada and the OG images and interest.

“Tell me who’s your host and I’ll tell you who you are”: Olympic Games image before and after the 2008 and 2010 Olympic Games

The purpose of this paper is to explore the images of the Olympic Games and their host countries, as a country and as a tourism destination, before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (BOG) and 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games (VOG). The attitude changes towards the three image objects and relationships among them are examined in a combined ‘country − destination − mega-event’ model. The paper reports on a questionnaire-based study completed by 1,292 American respondents who were approached two months before and two months after both the 2008 and 2010 Games. Results indicate a significant decrease in the attitudes towards the OG in the case of the 2008 BOG and some improvement in the case of the 2010 VOG. This contrast between the OG hosted in a developed country and one held in a developing country is an important contribution to the sport events literature. Further, regression analysis shows that evaluations of the OG as a destination are influenced (mediated) mainly by the evaluations of the host country as a destination.

Sport mega-events and tourism: contrasting the influence of host country and event

This is an empirical, descriptive study of tourists at sport mega-events. Its purpose is to describe tourists who attend sport mega-events. As an empirical study, it surveys tourists at two major sport mega-events in two different countries: the 2008 Olympic Games in China and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Building on a growing body of literature related to the marketing of sport mega-events, results support that both the place (China versus South Africa) and the attraction (Olympic Games versus FIFA World Cup) influence - across a number of place image variables - the nature and composition of the tourists who are attracted to the sport mega-event. The findings suggest that the sport mega-event can be used by the host country to target potential tourists who have limited interest in the event. Further, this research finds that the tourist view of the sport mega-event is influenced by the host country and the nature of the event. The research responds to a key need in both the literature and in practice, where understanding of tourists in the SME context is needed for countries, regions and communities.

The Role of Involvement and Expectations in Olympic Games Attitudes: A Cross-National Study

The Olympic Games (OG) is a mega-event on many dimensions, including participants, audience, expenditures, and national rivalries. As such, it creates branding opportunities for the Games themselves, host countries, athletes, and corporate sponsors. This study explores the impact of expectations and involvement levels on attitudes and evaluations of the OG as a sport mega-event and as a destination from the perspective of domestic (i.e., Canadian) and foreign (i.e., American) residents in the context of the XXI Winter Olympic Games. Data were collected from national samples using an on-line commercial panel two months prior to the OG. Hypothesis testing indicated the role of expectations and involvement in relation to beliefs about, evaluations of and behavioral intentions towards the Games. In the research process we introduced and applied a Mega-Event Involvement Inventory. The results provide input to how what people take into the mega-event can impact successful mega-event attitude outcomes.

The Role of Expectations, Confirmation, and Perceived Performance in Olympic Games Attitudes: A Cross-National Longitudinal Study

The Olympic Games (OG) is a mega-event on many dimensions, including participants, audience, expenditures, and national rivalries. As such, it creates branding opportunities for the Games themselves, host countries, athletes, and corporate sponsors. This study explores the impact of expectations and their confirmation on attitudes and evaluations of the OG as a sport mega-event and as a destination from the perspective of domestic (i.e., Canadian) and foreign (i.e., American) residents in the context of the XXI Winter Olympic Games. Data were collected from national samples using an on-line commercial panel two months prior to and two months after the OG. Hypotheses testing indicated the role of expectations which have direct positive influence on the perceptions of performance. Expectations and perceived performance are found to be directly influencing the evaluations of the OG. The study showed that the attitudes towards the OG as a destination and as an event differ among people with different levels of individual association. The results provide input to how what people take into the mega-event can impact successful mega-event attitude outcomes.

Olympic Games: Does the Host Location Matter?

The Olympic Games (OG) are unique activities that attract a large number of visitors to a country and generate intensive media-coverage and international broadcasting, providing a host country with a powerful tool to communicate desirable country-image messages broadly to the international community. Pairing a mega-event with a destination engenders image transfers between the event and the host, leading countries/regions to compete with each other for the privilege of hosting mega-events with a hope of improving their images, increasing the flow of tourists, and realizing other related benefits. This bilateral transfer of images between a mega-event and a host country can be conceptualized as a co-branding image-transfer exercise with one side being the consolidated image of the country (the people, physical/social aspects of the country, destination) and another side being the image of the mega-event (nature, scale, and uniqueness of the event). The degree to which the images of the mega-event and host country fit together affects the level of effectiveness of the co-branding exercise. Hence, the goal of the current research is to examine and compare the results from the XXII Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games (SOG) vs. XXI Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games (VOG) to identify effects of host-country image on the image of the OG.

Consumer Ethnocentrism in Modern Armenia

Since the publication of the seminal scholarly piece by Schooler (1965) on product bias in the Central American Common Market, the field of consumer behaviour had been flourishing with the studies investigating the effects of product place origin, or country-of-origin (COO), on consumer decision making process. The studies have shown that consumers use the COO cue as a surrogate indicator of the quality (Han 1989). Further exploration of the field of consumer behavior revealed that consumer decision making is also influenced by ethnocentrism, measured by CETSCALE (Shrimp and Sharma 1987). While the number of studies on COO and ethnocentrism effects on consumer behavior has been steadily increasing, the majority of these studies were focused on Western or Asian consumers leaving the Central/Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries a largely untapped territory.