Laurentino Bello Acebrón

The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic cues to expected and experienced quality: an empirical application for beef

Abstract This study explains how consumers form in-store expectations about beef quality, and how these insights can help us to determine optimum levels of beef quality. Consumers infer the quality of beef on the basis of intrinsic (colour, freshness and visible fat) and extrinsic (price, promotion, designation of origin and presentation) quality cues. During consumption consumers evaluate experienced quality based on expected quality and quality attributes such as taste, tenderness and juiciness, confirming or disproving their previously formed expectations. Expected quality is a partial predictor of experienced quality, which confirms the importance of sensory perception at the time of consumption.

Postmodern approaches in business‐to‐business marketing and marketing research

Most conventional research methodologies both in consumer and business‐to‐business marketing are modernist in nature, but their applicability in an increasingly postmodern business setting is decaying. Postmodern conditions are particularly prevalent in the business‐to‐business arena but, although new postmodern research methods are slowly growing in popularity in consumer markets, their use by business‐to‐business market researchers is still almost nonexistent. The article contributes to filling the existing vacuum in the business‐to‐business marketing literature and provides a framework for the use of postmodern research methods in industrial markets. A short case is used as illustration of this use.

The untapped potential of marketing for evaluating the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations: a framework proposal

Evaluation of the effectiveness of public benefit charitable nonprofit organizations (NPOs), both in terms of organizational performance and social impact, has been increasingly on demand. However, and due to different reasons, nonprofit effectiveness evaluation is still an unresolved issue in practice for many of those organizations. This paper reviews some of the most frequently used evaluation approaches with a double purpose in mind. First, to demonstrate that the application of marketing concepts, particularly those of market orientation and relationship marketing, has still a strong potential in the specific field of practitioner-oriented measurement and evaluation in NPOs. Many of the available frameworks are operations-, accounting and control-, or finance-driven; and therefore risk missing the market- and multi-stakeholder orientation that is crucial to improve the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations in pursuing social innovation, and also the centrality of mission and societal values for nonprofits. Second, the paper outlines and proposes a marketing-based and practitioner-oriented framework for approaching the evaluation of nonprofit organizational effectiveness. The main underlying thesis is that nonprofit effectiveness ultimately depends on the capacity of NPOs to become market oriented and to build and effectively manage relationships with relevant stakeholders over the long-term. The proposed framework combines two different aspects: the first measures the perceived value obtained by beneficiaries/customers, donors, partners and other relevant stakeholders; the second puts a value to the outcomes of those satisfactory relationships in terms of enhanced trust and commitment, ultimately leading to long-term impact.

A proposal of the buying model for fresh food products: the case of fresh mussels.

Abstract This paper develops a model of buying intention for food products based on consumer information, habits and prior experience, contrasting it with a perishable product such as fresh mussels. The model studies what influence the attitude and confidence shown by the subject have in evaluating the product in the intention to buy. Also analysed is the influence that habits and previous experience have on the formation of consumer preference and the intention to buy the product. A structural equation model is used to identify these variables and constructs as well as the relations established between them. Furthermore, strategies are presented for both consumers and managers designed to reduce the perceived risk associated with buying fresh mussels. The purpose of this is to reduce the risk perceived by consumers and prevent it from curtailing mollusc purchases.