Anssi Tarkiainen

The effect of website usage and virtual community participation on brand relationships

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of website visits and virtual community participation on the development of brand relationships. Building on the literature on relationship marketing, we model brand trust as a mediator and brand loyalty and Word-of-Mouth (WOM) as the final outcomes in our research model. The hypotheses are tested with structural equation modelling on four independent datasets collected from the consumer magazine industry. The results are identical in all four datasets: Both the frequency of website visits and the time spent on the website per visit strengthen brand trust and consequently also brand loyalty and WOM. However, neither posting nor lurking on the virtual community has an effect on brand trust. All in all, the results provide support for the mediating role of brand trust between consumer-brand online interactions and brand loyalty and WOM. The study contributes to the existing literature on relationship marketing by showing that consumer-initiated online interactions also support the development of the brand relationship.

The Effect of Magazine Web Site Usage on Print Magazine Loyalty

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of magazine Web site usage on print magazine loyalty and word-of-mouth intentions. Thus, the key question is whether active Web site visitors are more likely to buy the magazine in the future. The research framework builds on the literature on relationship marketing and brand relationships, and is tested on a sample of the online users (n = 2,351) of 24 Finnish consumer magazines. This study uses structural equation modeling (LISREL 8.50) and simultaneously tests the hypotheses on 2 sub-samples: current subscribers of the magazine (n = 1,068) and non-subscribers (n = 1,283). Significant differences were found between the 2 samples. Most important, the impact of Web site usage on print magazine loyalty was found to differ. There was a negative effect in the non-subscriber sample, whereas there was no evidence of such an effect in the subscriber sample. Thus, it seems that magazine Web site usage may substitute the print magazine for non-subscribers.

Managerial cognition and dominant logic in innovation management: empirical study in media industry

Increasing number of innovation and organisational researchers have suggested more emphasis on socio-psychological aspects of innovation and management processes such as managerial attitudes and beliefs, sense-making capabilities, and individual and shared representations affecting organisational management processes. Researchers have become increasingly interested in cognitive drivers of innovation management. It has argued that innovation is a socio-cognitive process involving social as well as cognitive aspects, including an interactive motivated social context (e.g., firm) and representations of knowledge of external reality (i.e., shared cognitions). Shared cognitive maps of the management store the dominant logic of the firm that channels attention to organisational activities, e.g., innovation activities, and shape the strategy of the firm. The main argument of the study is that the dominant logic and innovation activities do not have a direct independent impact on business performance, but their interaction has. The problem is approached by taking the relationship between the firms dominant logic and innovation activities and further effects on innovation outcomes under scrutiny among the media industry firms.

How the source of word-of-mouth influences information processing in the formation of brand attitudes

ABSTRACT Word-of-mouth (WOM) can be a powerful, persuasive source of information, but relatively little is understood about how consumers utilize information in service evaluations and how the source of WOM (e.g. friends, family) affects attitudes. The importance of WOM is acknowledged in the services context; however, the research field of higher education has found some inconsistent results concerning the impact of WOM. The aim of this study, with its focus on information processing, is to enhance the understanding of these varying results with data from international masters degree applicants. By means of structural equation modeling, the results suggest that the processing of WOM differs depending on the source and the difficulty of evaluation criteria. Information through some sources of WOM is mainly cognitively processed, whereas in others information is processed more as simple cues. Overall, insights are provided into the impact of WOM, and higher education marketing.

The positive outcomes of a sense of virtual community

This study examines how an experienced sense of virtual community affects relationship-marketing-related outcomes. Based on social identity and relationship marketing theories, a research model is developed and structural equation modelling is used to test the relationships between a sense of virtual community, brand-loyalty intentions, brand-community intentions, and word-of-mouth intentions on a sample of 342 active members of a Finnish business-newspaper brand community. The findings suggest that a sense of virtual community strengthens brand-community, brand-loyalty and brand-related word-of-mouth intentions. Hence, the results imply that a sense of virtual community reflects positively on the brand hosting the online community and results in positive business-related outcomes.

Online content: who is willing to pay and for what?

Many newspapers are struggling to convert their online news into profitable products, and one of the means to this end is to charge fees for using online news services. At the same time, however, consumers have not been willing to pay for online news services. According to recent findings, consumers do not choose between online news and printed newspapers, but they use both types of news media simultaneously. In this study, we identify four consumer segments, based on their multiplatform media use patterns, and assess whether these segments differ in their levels of willingness to pay for online content. Our empirical work indicates that the consumer segments, which use interactive or entertainment content in the online news services are more willing to pay for online content compared to those who only seek news in both media. Also, implications with respect to customer value and online content development are discussed.

Creating Loyalty Towards Magazine Websites: Insights from the Double Jeopardy Phenomenon

For years, magazine publishers have been developing their online presence, pursuing a range of different goals and strategies for their websites. One of the key questions in creating online presence is whether to allocate resources on developing the offline print brand and expect brand equity transfer to the online environment or to allocate resources on developing the online brand for new audience. In this paper the authors propose an application of double jeopardy approach for assessing this issue. Finnish secondary data is used to test two competing research hypotheses. The analysis reveals that the magazine publishers who have been able to build market share in online environment seem to have more loyal customer-base in their websites. Market share of printed magazine does not predict loyalty towards magazine websites.

Strategic interpretation on sustainability issues – eliciting cognitive maps of boards of directors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of cognitive diversity on strategic issue interpretation among the boards of directors making sense of sustainability management. The study also investigated the centrality of the corporate sustainability issues to identify common interpretative patterns in the shared cognitive maps among the companies. In addition, the aim was to advance quantitative methods for the analysis of decision-makers’ cognition. Design/methodology/approach – The research was an exploratory study analyzing 43 individual cognitive maps collected through surveys from the boards of nine cleantech companies. For the elicitation of the cognitive maps, the study used the hybrid cognitive mapping technique. The diversity of the shared cognitive maps was analyzed using the distance ratio formula and the graph analysis method with eigenvector to measure the centrality of the strategic issue interpretation in the maps. Findings – This study provides evidence through the analysis o...

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: The Paradox of Unethical Sales Behaviour

The objective of this study is to shed further light on the occurrence of unethical behaviour within the salesforce. While it is accepted effective marketing fosters relationship building and added-value to customers, problems with unethical selling behaviour still concern managers and academics. The antecedents of ethical judgments and behaviour have been studied for decades, and several antecedents for unethical behaviour have been recognized. Salesperson-specific antecedents are for example personal moral philosophies (e.g. Tansey et al. 1994) and role stress (e.g. Yetmar and Eastman, 2000), while managerial antecedents include sales managers’ control behaviours (e.g. Robertson and Anderson, 1993) and sales managers’ personal moral philosophies (e.g. Cadogan et al., 2009). However, these studies all rely in the analysis of single-source data, which does not allow study of the possible interactions between salesperson-specific and managerial antecedents of unethical behaviour. Further, managerial antecedents have to date only been conceptualized as direct influences on salesperson unethical behaviour, whereas it is highly likely that there are critical mediating factors at work in such situations.

A Literature Review of Ambivalence in Consumer Research: An Abstract

Despite the importance of ambivalence in consumer behavior, its varying and fragmented definitions have made it challenging to understand what ambivalence really means to consumer researchers. This is problematic because the lack of precise conceptualization hinders scientific progress (Teas and Palan 1997) and leads to validity and measurement issues, ill-advised understanding of relationships between concepts, and reduced credibility of research findings (MacKenzie 2003). Thus, in search for greater clarity of the consumer ambivalence concept, this paper first analyzes how ambivalence has been defined in consumer research and subsequently divides the definitions into categories and subcategories of consumer ambivalence. Systematic literature review is used to meet this goal, following a standard procedure of (1) database search with the keyword combinations “consumer” and “ambivalence” and “consumer” and “mixed emotions,” (2) exclusion of papers not in scope of the review based on predefined exclusion criteria, and (3) analysis of the conceptualizations used in the papers. Based on this process, a categorization of different types of ambivalences is developed, including the categories of attitudinal ambivalence, mixed emotions, and consumer culture theory-based ambivalence and their subcategories. Finally, a synthesizing view of consumer ambivalence is suggested based on the review and categorization of the definitions, which takes into account the wide spectrum of consumer research. This paper thus advances theoretical discussion of ambivalence in consumer research by providing a clear structure for what is meant by ambivalence in different streams of consumer research, and how these conceptualizations can be synthesized under the umbrella of consumer ambivalence. Finally, a research agenda for consumer ambivalence is developed, including suggestions for more thorough research on the temporal aspects of consumer ambivalence as they relate to consumer decision-making processes, the measurement of ambivalence, and the relationships between consumer ambivalence and other types of consumption-related conflicts.