Jo Padmore

Marketing in small and medium sized enterprises

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a full‐scale testing of the role of marketing and its relevance in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The objective is to present the results of a rigorous assessment of a new model of marketing in SMEs.Design/methodology/approach – A positivist approach relied on the use of the hypothetico‐deductive method to produce the theoretical model. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied to investigate the model. This paper reports on a large‐scale questionnaire survey, follow‐up interviews with SMEs owner‐managers and the use of published accounts to show how companies have performed during this study.Findings – The role and relevance model of marketing in SMEs has been thoroughly investigated and tested. The model offers a straightforward way of diagnosing the situation within an SME. The simplicity of the model allows for a clearer understanding of what is often a complex and messy situation within these companies and their bus...

Using consumers' perceptions for the cognitive analysis of corporate-level competitive structurse

As the battle for future growth in saturated and post-saturated industries and markets intensifies, competitors must develop the means for ensuring that they maintain the loyalty of their existing customers, whilst seeking to attract new customers from rival firms. To this end, the present paper reports the findings of an empirical investigation which explored consumers’ mental models of competitive structures in the UK grocery retail industry. A similarity tree analysis was performed in conjunction with non-metric multidimensional scaling, in order to reveal the bases on which consumers differentiate various competitors. The findings suggest that consumers distinguish two groups of competing stores, primarily on the basis of quality and convenience. The competitive structure identified through the cognitive analysis was validated using various behavioural, attitudinal, demographic and socioeconomic indicators. It is argued that the analysis of consumers’ mental models of corporate level competitive struc...

Mapping Consumers′ Cognitive Structures: A Comparison of Similarity Trees with Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster Analysis

Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques are commonly employed for the analysis of consumer perceptions of products. However, within the past 10‐15 years, a growing volume of research has shown that the processes underlying similarities judgements of stimuli are incompatible with the fundamental underlying axioms of these techniques. A series of papers in the psychometrics and cognitive psychology literatures by Tversky and his associates have demonstrated the inability of these procedures to handle similarities data from many domains by virtue of the restrictive assumptions they impose on the data. Recently, several procedures have been proposed that overcome the limitations of traditional multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques. The potential benefits are illustrated of applying two of these newer techniques, additive similarity trees (ADDTREE) and extended similarity trees (EXTREE) in the context of marketing research. Consumers′ similarity judgements data are presented from three disparate product domains (newspapers, shops and breakfast cereals). In each case, non‐metric multidimensional scaling and average linkage cluster analysis yield less interpretable solutions than ADDTREE. In the case of the newspapers data, much richer insights are obtained with reference to EXTREE. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for market research studies and the development of consumer behaviour theory.