Linda W. Lee

Don’t believe the hype: a grounded exploratory six country wine purchasing study

ABSTRACT The purpose of this exploratory study was to understand the extent that consumers report purchasing wine on mobile devices and to empirically examine potential drivers of m-wine purchasing across six countries to guide theoretical research enquiry moving forward. Purposive sampling was employed. An online survey involving 2853 respondents from France, Germany, Greece, Canada, US and South Africa forms the basis for the current study. The results of the study indicate that though mobile phone usage, wine consumption and purchasing rates are high, mobile-wine purchasing prevalence is low within all six countries. While technology hype has us believe an online presence is essential for business revenue growth and performance; the current study indicates wineries should carefully consider consumer readiness towards mobile-wine purchasing. Limitations and recommendations for future research are identified.

Luxury Branding in Emerging Markets

In March 2012, Gap entered the South African market, but with a different pricing strategy to the one followed in the USA. While the brand is known as an affordable clothing brand in the USA, its goods were priced substantially higher in South Africa than in the USA. The same Gap T-shirt sold for

Customer Cohort Climate: A Conceptual Model for Group Service Encounters: An Abstract

16 in the USA was being sold at

Are Health Websites Ready For the Mobile World? A Study of Readability Among Traditional and Mobile Websites

40 in South Africa. The positioning of the Gap brand as a luxury brand in the South African market suggests that what constitutes a luxury brand is not the same across global markets. This paper explores whether this mode of market entry is a sustainable business model or if the mode of entry is only viable for short-term success. In pursuing this line of thinking, the concept of the opportunistic luxury brand is presented. An opportunistic luxury brand is defined as a brand that is not normally known as a luxury brand in other markets (i.e. other countries) and is adopting a luxury brand positioning in a particular market. This paper develops and offers a research agenda for luxury brands in emerging markets.

Winery website loyalty: the role of sales promotion and service attributes

Group service encounters, when multiple customers are intentionally batched and involved in the delivery and consumption of a service, are common in tourism and hospitality, recreation, and education. In such service settings, customers will accept, expect, and sometimes even desire to share and consume the service experience “with” other customers. Thus, in group service encounters, customer-to-customer interactions are often integral to the service being provided.

Toward an understanding of customer-to-customer interactions in group service encounters

By 2015, mobile devices will be more popular than personal computers to access online information. This expected shift is particularly important for health information, as the near ubiquitous penetration of mobile phones will present new opportunities to disseminate information to traditionally hard-to-reach populations. This study asks whether the mobile websites of health organizations have taken into consideration the greater difficulty of reading text on the small screens of mobile phones. Specifically, this study examines readability scores of traditional websites and mobile websites among 55 American health organizations.