Clare D’Souza

Green decisions: demographics and consumer understanding of environmental labels

This research examined the demographic profiles of Australian green consumers in relation to their satisfaction of environmental labelling. It examined consumers’ understanding of labelling and empirically investigated the association of demographic profile of consumers with their attitudes towards such labels. The results indicated that some of the demographic variables were significant, which is largely consistent with earlier findings by other researchers in this area. Label dissatisfaction was higher in the older and middle age respondents. However, some respondents disagreed that labels were accurate while commenting that labels were easy to understand. The key issue arising from the findings is that in order to provide perception of accuracy in labels, it is an option to use Type I or Type III labelling on products. These labels are, arguably, more credible because they are endorsed by third party labelling experts. This would come at a cost and for green products that use third party labelling, they will also have to bear in mind to keep the prices competitive.

Green advertising effects on attitude and choice of advertising themes

The aims of this article is to analyse whether there are differences in green advertisement attitudes between high involved and low involved consumers, to compare high and low involvement consumer’s cognitive responses and affective responses towards advertisements and examine the extent of the importance on certain themes that both high involvement and low involvement consumers consider. Themes such as company image, environmental labels, and product recycling symbols. A random sample of 207 consumers was taken from Victoria (Australia). The study shows that there are differences between the two groups in terms of their attitude towards green advertising with respect to all the dimensions and the low involved customers appear to have a stronger disregard for the green advertising across all the perceptive measures towards green advertising. The findings provide useful insights to practitioners as to the type of themes preferred for green advertising.

An inference of gift-giving within asian business culture

This paper attempts to provide an understanding of gift‐giving for a more systematic assessment of relationship building to succeed in an Asian realm. This study proposes to examine the underlying linkage between the intensity of gift‐giving and constructing relationships. The goal is to provide both researchers and businesses an insight into how to successfully manage profitable relationships in a culture‐rich environment that is growing ever more demanding and complicated. Gift‐giving is seen as an act of reciprocity, and often misconstrued as bribery by Westerners, yet it appears to be an important constituent of the Asian culture and can be seen as a form of relationship investment, that if cultivated well, can uplift interactions between businesses.

The nexus between industrialization and environment

India’s rapid industrialisation growth in small and large enterprises has had its impact on the environment; this has now become a major concern to the economy. The government, concerned about economic development and raising the standard of living of its people, has actively supported the development of the small enterprise sector. Due to their labour intensity and importance in generating employment opportunities for the less well‐off members of Indian society, they have been encouraged and given assistance by the Indian government. However, small enterprises tended to be the worst polluters and, as the findings indicated, gave the least attention to environmental issues as part of their operations. Reasons for not installing pollution‐control equipment were related to the fact that such expenditure did not contribute to the bottom line. Although existing environmental legislation is similar to that in industrialised countries, i.e. they all serve the same purpose of protecting the environment, laxity of enforcement and corruption have generally prevented effective regulation of environmental pollution. This paper compares a sample of small and large enterprises in two of the most highly industrialised states in India, to determine whether there were any significant differences in the way they approach environmental issues. Some recommendations are suggested.

Bridging the communication gap: dolphin‐safe “ecolabels”

“Ecolabels” without advertising support are communicating the environmentally friendly message. This article investigates the general belief and evaluation consumers have about ecolabelled products. In conventional markets, labelling conveys to the consumer information about the product. Appropriate communication in the form of symbols reinforces messages. Ecolabels enable consumers to articulate their preferences for environmental friendly products. Consumer beliefs are highly regarded as they serve to simplify the cognitive process of decision making. This study examines the impact of communicating the environmental friendly message by the dolphin‐safe symbol on four brands of tuna. It examines the effectiveness of brand perception on environmentally friendly products. Results indicate that consumers are favourably influenced by the presence of these labels regardless of type of product, thus supporting an affective evaluation process. Consumer perceptions of the two top selling brands are perceived to be more environmentally friendly than the other brands.

A stakeholder approach to corporate social responsibility, reputation and business performance

Purpose - – This paper aims to investigate business managers’ assessment of stakeholders’ influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. The key stakeholders included “employees” and “unions” as internal and “public”, the “media” and the “government” as external stakeholders. The purpose was to estimate the influence of stakeholders that managers perceive as important. Moreover, the study sought to identify association between the CSR construct and corporate reputation and in turn whether this influences business performance. Design/methodology/approach - – This study uses a mail survey with a random sampling of senior managers sourced from Dun & Bradstreet’s Australian business database, focusing on large organizations (i.e. minimum

Environmental threat appeals in green advertising: The role of fear arousal and coping efficacy

10 million p.a. reported sales and minimum 100 employees) as the selection criteria. A conceptual model was developed and tested using structural equation modeling. Findings - – The results identified that “employees” and the “public” are perceived to be the influential stakeholder groups in CSR decision-making. There was evidence of a positive relationship between the CSR construct and reputation, which in turn influenced market share, but not profitability. Research limitations/implications - – This study examined a cross-section of organizations using Dun & Bradstreet’s database of Australian businesses and may not fully represent the Australian business mix. The effective response rate of 7.2 per cent appears to be low, even though it is comparable with other research in the CSR area. There may have been some self-selection by the respondents, although there were no statistically significant differences identified in the corporate characteristics of those invited to participate and those responding with usable questionnaires. Practical implications - – Managers can adopt a stakeholder-influenced CSR strategy to generate strong corporate reputation to improve business performance. It is important to ensure that the interests of “employees” and “public” stakeholders are addressed within organizational strategy. Respondents were less concerned about government stakeholders and thus government involvement in organizational CSR may need to be revisited. Social implications - – The major concern that emerges from these findings is the absence of the perceived importance of regulatory stakeholders on firms’ CSR activities. Regulatory controls of CSR messages could reduce or eliminate inaccurate and misleading information to the public. Originality/value - – The analysis explains the perceived relative influence of stakeholders on CSR decisions. It also provides an understanding of the link between organizational CSR reputation and organization’s performance.

Challenges Relating to RFID Implementation within the Electronic Supply Chain Management - A Practical Approach

This study addresses the behavioural effects of cognitive threat appraisal, emotional fear response and perceived coping efficacy in threat appeal based green advertising. While most existing theories attribute fear arousal a secondary role as a moderator of cognitive effects, or consider fear detrimental to persuasion, the proposed framework integrates fear response as a principal behavioural antecedent. An experimental online survey of a representative sample of the Australian population reasserted the role of fear arousal, indicating that both cognitive threat level beliefs and fear arousal from exposure to climate change related environmental threat appeals significantly increase pro-environmental intentions. Cognitive threat level beliefs and emotional fear response were highly correlated. Perceived coping efficacy did improve persuasion effects for one of the two studied behaviours, but providing efficacy information also significantly lowered fear responses.

The dynamics of exploring future market potential of genetically modified foods

The use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology can be employed for not only reducing companies management costs but also to track uniquely each shipping container, pallet, case, and product being manufactured, shipped and sold, to increase visibility and accountability in the supply chain. RFID technology connects the supply chain players (i.e., suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers) and allows them to exchange data and product information. Despite these potential benefits, there are challenges and obstacles with the deployment of a RFID-enabled system in the global supply chain. The paper outlines the major RFID issues faced by supply chain management. In this paper, we also present a case study on pharmaceutical supply chain management (SCM) applications by addressing and examining the issues of RFID implementation in a SCM system.

Cultural impact on investment destination choice of US‐multinational corporations in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to express a general review on how best in the present time can one market genetically modified (GM) foods in the face of the controversial arguments faced globally. Despite the importance of marketing, many organizations though they understand its worth, fail to find radical strategic solutions for the problems encountered by their products. In fact most of them find that disclosing GM ingredients will prohibit consumers from buying their products, whilst, the few GM foods that were proactively marketed indicated the potential of effective marketing and successful product placement.Design/methodology/approach – To be able to market GM foods, an understanding of customer value and problems customers envisage is discussed. The paper attempts to provide a general global perspective on consumer’s views about these issues and with the help of a conceptual model it attempts to identify some of the problems related with marketing GM foods.Findings – The findings indicate t...