Geoff Soutar

Factors enhancing word-of-mouth influence: positive and negative service-related messages

Purpose – This study aims to examine the effects interpersonal, service product and message factors has on positive and negative word of mouths (WOM) influence. The study also sought to address the impact WOM had on changes in peoples willingness to use a service provider. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 495 consumers who had received positive WOM and 505 who had received negative WOM in the prior 12 months completed an online survey. The sample was recruited through a national online consumer panel provider. Findings – Positive WOM was more effective and positive WOM messages had a greater effect on peoples willingness to use a service than did negative WOM. Paradoxically, the strength of WOM and interpersonal factors had more impact on the influence of negative WOM, while brand equity enhanced positive WOM and acted as a buffer to negative WOM. Research limitations/implications – The study was conducted in a services context and may not necessarily be generalizable to product contexts. Furth...

The selection of international retail franchisees in East Asia

Purpose – Although international franchising has occurred in East Asia over the past 20 years, surprisingly very little academic research has been undertaken to understand key dynamics of this marketing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to examine franchise resources, which is a key construct in the internationalization of retail franchising.Design/methodology/approach – A multiple case study approach has been adopted to generate rich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities inherent within such an international marketing relationship. The data were drawn from five US food service retail franchises, which are household brands across East Asia, operating in Singapore.Findings – This study presents several interesting findings for the retail franchise industry. First, consistent with resource scarcity theory, international franchising relationship begins with a high degree of franchise dependency on the local franchisees. Next, international franchisors will be well served to select the...

Comparing traditional focus groups with a Group Support Systems (GSS) approach for use in SME research

This study examined the use of Group Support Systems (GSS) technology as a tool for soliciting perceptions, or ideas, from a target audience. We compared this approach to a more traditional focus group methodology, and concluded that GSS technology has a number of advantages. First, the relative anonymity of responses encouraged participation from the more timid group members, ensuring vocal individuals did not dominate. Second, the GSS technology made the findings available to group members immediately, so that clarification, correction and some quantitative analysis of responses could take place during the session. Third, the GSS approach allowed ideas to be separated from the person, ensuring that any subsequent discussion was depersonalized. Fourth, the results were available immediately after the session. Finally, the GSS technology was more cost effective because the additional cost of using this approach was more than offset by the savings from not having to transcribe participants’ responses.

Value drivers and adventure tourism: A comparative analysis of Japanese and Western consumers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers of customer value, and their respective relationships with customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions, between two culturally distinct groups of adventure tourists.,The study adopted a descriptive design and compared data from 301 Japanese and Western adventure tourists who experienced the same adventure tour. The respondents were split into two groups, and a path modeling approach was used to examine similarities and differences.,The results indicated that Japanese tourists attached more importance to emotional value and novelty value. Western tourists, however, attached relatively more importance to the utilitarian dimension of price value for money.,The main implication of this study is that tourism operators should account for differences in value perceptions between Japanese and Western tourists when planning tour operations, training tour guides, and managing tour itineraries. Operators should also consider customizing their tour products to fit the specific needs of these different cultural groups. This reinforces the adaptation argument when marketing tourism to international consumers.,This study highlights that different value drivers affect the satisfaction and behavioral intentions of Japanese tourists, relative to Western tourists. The need for adaptation of tourism products toward certain international tourists is thus necessary. The research also reinforces the importance of conceptualizing and measuring customer value as a multidimensional construct in an international adventure tourism context.

Effects of country and delivery mode on perceived risk in international higher education

Higher education is an increasingly competitive global market. Consequently, it is crucial that universities fully understand students’ motivations in university selection. While past research mainly focused on university-level attributes, this study extends the factors used to evaluate different international universities to include both the universitys country and the programmes mode of delivery. Following a qualitative stage, conjoint analysis was used to examine the relative importances and part-worth utility scores of these attributes on students’ perceived risk (performance, financial and social) when selecting an international university. The study found that country of origin and delivery mode contributed significantly to all three risk types, in particular to social risk. With an enhanced understanding of factors affecting these risk perceptions, higher educational marketers are better placed to implement suitable marketing strategies that minimise risk perceptions, helping to attract more international students.

Market research in Australian SMEs: An empirical study

Abstract This paper discusses the role of market research in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australia, examining the market research practices (if any) adopted by such businesses and the purpose for which it is used. Over 700 Australian SMEs were randomly chosen from a business enterprise database. Using a mail survey, data were obtained as to their marketing and intelligence gathering (market research) practices, as well as a demographic profile of these businesses and their owners. The results obtained suggest that Australian SMEs engage in very little formal intelligence gathering and rarely used external consultants. However, there was a wide variation in responses. In the present sample, larger SMES tended to use market research more than smaller or micro businesses. Customer contact was the main source of information gathering for most firms and personal contact with non-customers also appeared to be a major way of generating new business. Generally, market research was viewed as too involved and too complicated, exclusively in the realm of educated market researchers and generally used by consultants to make money. Some respondents who attempted market research with consultants appeared to have spent money without getting positive results, adding to their negative perceptions. Many respondents also perceived market research to be an abstract concept and could not see how it could help them. Respondents felt that most of their income was generated from personal contacts and word of mouth. Consequently, there was no need for generalised market research. Their view was that, as long as personal contacts were maintained and word of mouth channels were open, there was no problem. These findings have several implications for marketers and marketing educators. It appears that market research will have difficulty in the SME sector unless research is tailored to meet their needs. At present, most market research principles come from the large business domain and there is a need to reshape such thinking to take account of the nature of Australian SMEs. Added to this, there is a need to modify SME managers’ perceptions of the value of market research. Further, given the number of ‘business researchers’, the intuitive nature of marketing compared to other disciplines such as accounting or finance which require rigorous treatment, and the unregulated nature of the industry with no representative, high profile body, there is a strong impression that no formal training is required to undertake market research.

Linking social media to customer relationship management (CRM): a qualitative study on SMEs

Australian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) owner-managers were interviewed to understand the underpinning factors of social customer relationship management (social CRM), customer engagement behaviors, and social CRM as dynamic capability. Findings show that SMEs’ customers use social media to generate content, influence other customers through positive reviews, and mobilize others’ actions toward the brands or products. However, SMEs tend not to use social media for making important strategic decisions or calculating CRM indicators. Key issues are around a lack of resources, data management, and privacy and control. Resource constraints force SMEs to manage their social media on a reactive and ad hoc basis. This study confirms that social CRM can be characterized as a dynamic capability in SMEs, and recommends that automated and sustained ways of collecting and integrating social data with CRM can help SMEs realize the true benefits of social CRM, and thus outweigh their resource constraints in the long term.

Personal Value Characteristics as Representative of Destination Values: An Abstract

Destination branding has become an important way to differentiate destinations in highly competitive holiday markets (e.g., Morgan et al. 2004; Ekinci & Hosany 2006; Pike 2012). Prior studies have also found that people are able to perceive brands as having personal values that reflect Schwartz (1992) higher-order dimensions (Torelli et al. 2012). In this study, we examine whether destinations are perceived as having human values across and within people’s perceptions.