James Reardon

Undergraduate Marketing Students, Group Projects, and Teamwork: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?

The ability for students to work within a team environment has long been a skill set prized by most marketing educators and practitioners. What has not been altogether clear is how to best learn such skills. Some educators would argue that along with the “good,” there is truly some “bad” and “ugly” inherent in the framework many use to teach teamwork. The authors of this study focus on the use of group projects in the classroom. Results suggest that educators need to reexamine this issue to ensure that marketing students are developing both discipline-related and support skills.

Alternative Modes of Measuring Store Image: An Empirical Assessment of Structured versus Unstructured Measures

Store image has been measured frequently by means of structured scales. Some researchers exhort against the use of structured scales for the measurement of this construct and recommend the use of unstructured measures instead. They argue that structured scales are inadequate for capturing the “gestalt” associated with the perception of a store image. This research attempts, for the first time, to investigate empirically the relative efficacy of the structured scales and the unstructured measures of store image. The results reveal that the two types of measures have similar properties and that the structured scales are more correlated with a set of self-reported behavioral measures. Thus practitioners should feel more comfortable utilizing structured, semantic differential scales to assess their store image.

The effects of ethnocentrism and economic development on the formation of brand and ad attitudes in transitional economies

Purpose – The aim of this research was to investigate how ethnocentrism and economic development within transitional economies affects the formation of brand attitudes and attitude toward the ad.Design/methodology/approach – Kazakhstan and Slovenia were chosen as representative transitional economies – Kazakhstan in the early stages and Slovenia highly advanced. A random sample of adults was surveyed in both countries and in the USA, which served as a control group. Questionnaires were distributed that contained measures of ethnocentricity (CETSCALE), attitude toward the brand (Ab) and attitude towards the ad (Aad). Expectations based on theory and previous studies suggested the following: ethnocentricity leads to negative Aad and Ab for foreign products and ethnocentricity will have a greater effect on Aad and Ab in new transitioning economies. All hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (LISREL).Findings – Ethnocentricity did result in negative Aad, but only for Kazakhstan, not Sloveni...

Determinants of International Retail Involvement: The Case of Large U.S. Retail Chains

Although retail operations traditionally have been considered poor candidates for international expansion, firms in mature retail markets are increasingly turning to international markets as a means for strategic growth. In this study, the authors examine how internal determinants affect the international ventures of large U.S. retail chains, comparing internal characteristics of international and domestic firms. The authors use the behavioral internationalization paradigm to develop a model of international retail involvement, which serves as a conceptual framework for the study. Through a logistic regression model, the results support the relevance of six of eight explanatory determinants of international retail involvement. The findings highlight the powerful influence of the strategic management characteristics, competitive advantages related to retail concept and logistics, and a retailers size. In contrast, neither previous experience in direct foreign sourcing nor competitive advantages related to retail merchandise were significant in this model.

Domestic consumption: rational, affective or normative choice?

Purpose – This study focuses on consumer choice behavior in the context of a new European Union (EU) member state by examining cognitive, affective and normative mechanisms in consumer preference formation for domestic vs imported products.Design/methodology/approach – Data is drawn from a survey of 714 adult consumers. The research instrument included construct measures adapted from previous studies. The measurement model of domestic consumption was tested via covariance analysis. Once the construct reliability and validities were established, the structural model was evaluated to test the hypothesized relationships.Findings – The findings suggest that affective and normative constructs (i.e. consumer ethnocentrism and patriotism) are stronger determinants of domestic consumption than rational considerations (the cognitive mechanism) such as perceptions of relative product quality of domestic vs imported products. The role of patriotism and cosmopolitanism as factors fuelling ethnocentric tendencies are ...

A consumer model for channel switching behavior

With the phenomenal growth of direct order marketing with the Internet and catalogs as alternative channels, customers increasingly face more choices of where to purchase goods and services. This paper develops a formal consumer model to explain channel switching behavior. Becker’s theory of time allocation is expanded to consumer decision making between distribution channels. The final model suggests that consumers face a tradeoff when deciding where to buy goods and services. From this tradeoff an indifference curve is developed where the consumer chooses between alternative distribution channels on the basis of the relative opportunity costs of time, costs of goods, pleasure derived from shopping, perceived value of goods, and relative risk of each channel. Strategies for direct and multi‐channel marketers are developed using this model.

Integrating Business Technology and Marketing Education: Enhancing the Diffusion Process through Technology Champions

Basic and discipline-specific technological competencies are needed by marketing and business school faculty, students, and their employers. Integration of basic technologies is common and easily accepted among younger students and readily supported, at least philosophically if not practically, by most business schools. Conversely, many marketing and business faculty face difficulties and problems with integration of new and discipline-specific technologies. The authors propose that these difficulties are most likely due to limited budgets and time, nonspecialized technical support, and lack of a formal process. This article presents the diffusion of innovations theory as a process for accomplishing a more formal integration of discipline-specific technologies into a marketing and business program. The use of “technology champions” is proposed as a means of enhancing the technology diffusion process.

Developing Self-Marketing Skills: Are Marketing Students Prepared for the Job Search?

Sooner or later, most marketing and business students realize that today’s job market is competitive, challenging, and requires substantial effort in order to pursue successfully. This article presents the authors’ observations, job market statistics, relevant academic literature, and survey results concerning the marketing and business student job search process. The research findings guide several recommendations for developing student self-marketing and job search skills, with the perspective of teaching students to apply what they have learned in their marketing courses.

The effect of information technology on productivity in retailing

Abstract As labor costs rise faster than both inflation and sales, retailers are attempting to increase productivity by substituting information technology for labor. However, there exist disagreements over the potential benefits of adopting this strategy. The purpose of this study is to examine whether information technology contributes to the productivity of retail institutions. The results indicate that information technology is a productive input for retailers. Also, evidence exists that retailers are underutilizing information technology.

Antismoking Messages for the International Teenage Segment: The Effectiveness of Message Valence and Intensity Across Different Cultures

Based on an experiment among more than 2000 students in nine culturally diverse countries, this article investigates how the cultural characteristic of uncertainty avoidance moderates the impact of valence and intensity on the effectiveness of antismoking messages. The results show that adolescents with high uncertainty avoidance respond more favorably to loss-framed advertisements than to benefit-framed advertisements, whereas the opposite holds for those with low uncertainty avoidance.