Geoff Lancaster

Communicating in the new interactive marketspace

Purpose – The proliferation of the internet and world wide web (WWW) in recent years has resulted in the creation of new social and marketing spaces, and a new form of interaction and identity formation. This paper aims to investigate this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approach – Whilst cost benefits and profit derivation from the internet and other hypermedia mediated communication environments have been the focus of much research, the majority of these assessments have left many assumptions unarticulated. Questions of how contemporary communication content and interactivity is different from the singular “one‐to‐many” communication models have been avoided in this research. This paper investigates these deficiencies and goes on to suggest how academics and practitioners can realign their thinking in the light of these findings.Findings – Computer mediated marketing environments provide organisations with a medium that can be used to deliver content in a variety of ways to consumers. This capability high...

An exploration of consumers' response to online service recovery initiatives

The focus of this paper is on levels of service failure and recovery strategies in relation to UK online fashion retailers. In a changing social, political and economic environment the use of information technology has permeated all forms of organisations: from private to public, local to global, old and new. Parallel with this development, companies have developed and experimented with new means of interacting with customers, and have devised and applied a variety of marketing strategies. The deployment of the internet, along with its subsets, has created a number of new opportunities, as well as a range of uncertainties and burdens, particularly on consumer perceptions of service quality, service failure and recovery. This paper contributes to extant knowledge and offers an understanding of behavioural-related issues, e.g. understanding consumer behaviour in the development of innovative business models in the industry.

Leadership marketing: an exploratory study

In an era when collaboration is the key to business prosperity, the ability to develop one truly coherent and agile brand lived by its employees and delivered to external stakeholders has become extremely challenging. Unity between the internal brand and a company’s external image, when change is the only constant, has almost ceased to exist. The marketing function is frequently underemphasised at board level and its role is often devalued in leading organisational change. This paper concerns how marketing can partner with organisational leadership for a mutually beneficial exchange of skills and capabilities to be able to reinvent organisations rapidly enough to cope with shifts in the external business environment and create a sustainable future for the business. This paper explores the concept of “leadership marketing” from an interpretivist perspective which challenges the conventional view of marketing and leadership as two separate fields and offers a holistic approach for business management and brand alignment.

Corporate social responsibility: towards a context-specific perspective in developing countries

Purpose - – This paper aims to empirically test, in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, the external perceptions which hold that a firm that has acted in a socially irresponsible manner can have negative consequences, as an organisation’s success and very survival depends, in part, on satisfying normative expectations from its environment. Design/methodology/approach - – A purposive sample of 28 respondents was selected from three communities within the region. In addition, 20 in-depth interviews took place with oil workers, community leaders and elders within the region. These interviews lasted for approximately an hour and were transcribed verbatim. Findings - – Drawing on qualitative research methodology, it is proposed that socially responsible investment could promote and facilitate business and social cohesion between corporations and broader communities that impinge on the company, rather than simply viewing business practice exclusively from an economic or political point of view. Research limitations/implications - – This study has examined a small range of companies from an interpretivist ethnographic position in the Niger Delta region using data collected from interviews and observations. Future research could take a more positivistic position and explore a wider range of companies using a variety of data collection methods. Practical implications - – Understanding corporate social responsibility (CSR) tends to be contextually bound, and should be divorced from the mechanistic Western perspective prevailing in most extant literature. Despite this context-specific notion to CSR relevance, there is still an overwhelming dominance of the understanding of CSR from the Western perspective, so companies should more closely consider local issues when drawing up CSR policy guidelines in a non-Western environment. Originality/value - – Forty-eight individuals in the Niger Delta region have been interviewed, and their opinions on CSR issues have been reported.

The significance of CRM to the strategies of hotel companies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify how customer relationship marketing/customer relationship management (CRM) can be a strategic solution to hotel companies or part of their tactics.Design/methodology/approach – Secondary data from academic and news sources are discussed and analysed, together with empirical data collected previously by the first author during the course of her own doctoral research.Findings – The essence of a customer‐focused environment is a preliminary indication of how the hotel industry can truly benefit from a strategic and focused approach to CRM. Hotel companies have in evidence had recourse to elements of CRM for a variety of strategic and tactical reasons. It is argued that the success of a strategy depends not only on the ability of a company to identify and understand what its target customers genuinely need and want, but also on the companys ability to deliver enhanced value in terms of these specific needs and wants.Research limitations/implications – Both t...

Leveraging the co-evolution of offline and online video games: an empirical study

Abstract Considerable research has been carried out on online shopping and the implications of this purchasing format for consumers and retailers. Most of these studies have focused on consumer attitudes towards online shopping, and how these can be useful predictors of online shopping adoption. Notwithstanding these insights from adoption theory, existing research has yet to distil the most effective means of understanding consumers’ attitudes towards online video game purchases. Based on a qualitative study, our study contributes to literature on adoption theory by presenting some explanations involving online video games purchases by identifying salient perceptions of online and offline motivations and advances ideas on the facilitating role of incentives in making purchase decisions.

Understanding technologically-induced customer services in the Nigerian banking sector: the internet as a post-modern phenomenon

Any discussion on technological adoption and use produces a diverse range views from both academics and practitioners. This has prompted some questions on its nature and understanding in developing countries like Nigeria. Assessing modernist and post-modernist perspectives through phenomenological hermeneutics and a capability-based model, this study examines the level of technologically induced customer services in the banking services sector on salient issues in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a specific hermeneutical approach and the origins of modernist and post-modernist perspectives in developing societies, this paper examines this issue from a Nigerian perspective. A contemporary sub-Saharan e-business model is proposed. Results indicate that customer services in technologically-induced environments are increasingly becoming adopted in the context of financial services. As an embryonic mode of transaction, several variables are reported and some of these are hampering the development and adoption of this medium in Nigeria compared to those of developed countries.

Augmented Reality Adoption by Tourism Product and Service Consumers: Some Empirical Findings

There are evidences that, tourist adopt Augmented Reality (AR) for purchasing tourism products and services. Few holiday operators make this technology available for their customers. Arguably, AR as innovative technology supports tourists in pre, during and post-holiday mode and offer them better experiences. As far as, AR turns into an important research area, very few known studies are conducted. Thus, on the empirical ground, this study aims to bring out factors of AR adoption by tourists. Findings classify two different factor sets: positive factors of AR adoption by tourists and negative factors of not adopting AR by tourists. Innovativeness and user-friendliness features appear as the dominant reasons and positive factors of AR adoption by tourists while availability issue and technological issue appear as the negative factors of not adopting AR by tourists. This research offers some theoretical and managerial implications and thus a unique contribution to the limited knowledge of responsible factor studies of AR adoption by tourists.

Exploring the locus of internal marketing

Abstract Service and business-to-business companies have remained at the forefront of studies into internal marketing due to close contact between employees and customers. Marketing academics and practitioners have shown particular interest in the supermarket sector over recent years due to fluctuations in performance that have been reported. Consumers have negligible switching costs, so the risk of them purchasing substitute products is a problem to marketers where there is insignificant product differentiation. There is little evidence to support the benefits of internal market orientation in the food retail industry, and the main reason is difficulty of measuring its value. Although the UK food retail industry has been extensively researched, researchers have yet to address it properly in regard to internal market orientation. There is now an opportunity to create sustainable competitive advantage by providing a variety of offerings.

Exploiting online social gambling for marketing communications

Abstract Internet technology provides a new approach to how gambling is conducted in postmodern times. Drawing on constructivist research and utilising a single case study strategy, this paper examines online social gambling and real money gambling marketing communication practices, as well as offering some insights into the development and implementation of effective marketing communication programmes. In contrast to existing studies, this paper, in part, proposes integrative and higher levels of marketing communication programmes between online social gambling and real money gambling environments. The paper reveals the implicit structure of meanings underlying the link between online social gambling activity and real money gambling practices.