Natalia Vila-López

Competitive positioning and market orientation: two interrelated constructs

Aims to interrelate two lines of research: market orientation and strategic groups identification. Suggests that degree of market orientation of an enterprise should be connected to its competitive strategy and, also, to its final levels of performance. Identifies, in a highly competitive Spanish sector, groups of homogeneous enterprises with regard to their market orientation degree to see if the identified groups differ significantly in the competitive strategy mainly followed by their members and, also, in their economic profile. Uses cluster methodology and the analysis of variance. Also applies multidimensional scaling to visually represent the position of each enterprise in a perceptual space. Recommends some guides to get a market orientation status and also a competitive position in the competitive space.

Gender role portrayals and sexism in Spanish magazines

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to analyse the male and female stereotypes in Spanish magazine advertising during the last three decades of the twentieth century in order to determine if they reflect or not the important cultural changes of Spanish society in these years.Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis of 1,033 different advertisements randomly selected. To ensure reliability two independent codifiers of opposite gender worked together, one as an analyst and other as a judge. Three agreement indices were calculated.Findings – Use of male and female portrayals has undergone relevant changes in the last 30 years in accordance with the social evolution of Spain. For both men and women stereotypes persist but there has been a move from the portrayal of the character in situations considered socially traditional to less traditional scenarios. At the end of the period analysed, Spanish magazines show low and decreasing levels of sexism.Research limitations/implications – Only one advertisin...

Event‐brand transfer in an entertainment service: experiential marketing

Purpose – One of the channels a brand can use to create experiences is events. The brand promoting the event and its sponsors can obtain various benefits in the form of brand image, personality and notoriety. The main aim of this research is to evaluate the effects that experiencing an event has on experience with the promoting brand.Design/methodology/approach – The study analysed the musical event MTV Winter Festival 2010, considering the opinion of 127 attendees to discover the impact of experiencing the MTV entertainment television channel event in three areas: improved brand experience, improved brand personality and increased brand reputation. EQS was used to test the proposed model.Findings – Regarding event experience antecedents, “immersion” has been identified as the most important one and brand experience as an important effect. Also, brand experience has been found to have a positive impact on exciting brand personality and exciting brand personality in turn on brand reputation.Originality/val...

How can mega events and ecological orientation improve city brand attitudes

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine to what extent emotional experiences lived in mega-events and ecological orientation of citizens could act as direct antecedents of city brand attitude improvements. In addition, it addresses the effect in terms of a perceived quality of life that a city brand consolidation would be able to bring the citizens of a particular place. Cities must manage and administer their geographical territories as if they were brands, seeking to increase the benefits to society. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study was performed by collecting information from 398 residents of Aguascalientes (Mexico) during the National Fair of San Marcos in 2011. Findings – Results show how in order to increase city brand attitudes, both the focus on mega-events and the ecological orientation are two successful ways. Moreover, improvements in city brand attitudes can bring significant benefits on the positive perception of quality of life among citizens. Originality/value – Th...

Designing a packaging to promote healthy and low-fat foods: Adolescents versus young-adults

Packaging is a relevant tool when adolescents and young adults search for low-fat and healthy foods. However, the power of a packaging is not homogenous. In this framework, two main objectives guide our work: (i) to investigate to what extent visual cues (size, colors, images etc.) are more important than informational cues (label); (ii) to analyze if adolescents and young adults pay equal attention to both packaging cues. 590 adolescents between 12 and 18years of age were interviewed at the door of both public and private schools. Additionally, 300 young adults between 19 and 25years of age were contacted. Their opinions were analyzed twice using structural modelling techniques: (i) without considering age differences and (ii) splitting the sample into adolescents (590 participants) and young-adults (300 participants) to compare their perceptions. Our results have showed that when looking for healthy and low-fat aliments visual cues (size, colors, images etc.) are more important than informational cues (label design, easily understandable words, size of the letters). Additionally, age is a pertinent variable to explain alternative packaging strategies, because adolescents and young adults do not pay equal attention to both packaging cues.

Tourism Marketing As a Tool to Improve Quality of Life Among Residents

Quality of life can be achieved improving certain subjective factors, such as attitudes, rather than emphasize objective factors. The born of this concept and the concern to use systematic and scientific methods for its evaluation are relatively recent.

Designing food packaging for the Spanish market: Do motivations differ between involved and non-involved adolescents?

This paper investigates the relationships among food choice motivations and the relevance of packaging elements (visual and informative elements) in the adolescent market. In addition, these relationships are re-tested in two different frameworks: high-involved consumers and low-involved consumers. 590 young consumers between 13 and 17 years were interviewed at the door of their public or private schools. Structural Modelling was used to test our hypotheses. The first analysis was done considering the global sample. The second one split off the sample into two groups: 351 high-involved adolescents and 239 low-involved adolescents. Our results showed, on one side, that weight control and familiarity motivations do significantly affect the relevance of visual packaging cues. On another side, price motivations and weight control motivations do affect the relevance of informative packaging cues. The rest of food choice motivations are not linked to packaging cues. Second, regarding involvement, our results could not demonstrate that high-involved adolescents will also be higher food choice motivated consumers with a greater concern with the packaging decisions.

Excellent products or servitisation? Analysing retailers’ preference before and after a loyalty programme

This paper compares two manufacturer strategies focused on their retailers: (i) product strategy and (ii) service process strategy (before, during, and after selling). Additionally, the role of time in the manufacturer–retailer relationship is measured, testing the relevance of both strategies: before and after a loyalty programme. To this end, a sample of 51 international retailers who work with a furniture manufacturer throughout the time were contacted in two different periods of time: in 2009, before implementing a loyalty programme, and in 2012, after implementing a loyalty programme. Results probe the importance of the service strategy compared to product strategy to explain retailers’ satisfaction. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the length of time does not strengthen the manufacturer–distributor relationship. That is, the efficacy of loyalty programmes to strengthen retailers’ satisfaction and loyalty could not be probed in this paper, may be due to the situation of the current economy and the size of our sample.

Packing decision for low fat aliments: a review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give some recommendations about how to design a low fat food aliment packaging. Design/methodology/approach – A review of previous studies that have analysed food packaging decisions considering personal and product influences was done. Findings – For low fat foods, a good or a poor performance is not sufficient; you have to perform better than those competitors whose competitive capacity is strong enough to influence strategic decision taking. Low fat products must be focused to a particular target. A product of these characteristics cannot be launched for all the markets at the same time, and under the same conditions. Some personal factors do really affect food buying process: socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, income and education), involvement, time pressure or motivation. A possible recommended target for law fat aliments could be: an old/medium age women, with a medium/high economic position, educated, involved in food buying and worried about ...

Posicionamiento de marcas políticas a través de la web .

El hecho de que un partido politico sea percibido como innovador gracias al apoyo de las nuevas tecnologias aumenta su atractivo. Esta innovacion se puede concretar en la prestacion de servicios electronicos diferenciados y en la mejora del atractivo visual del partido y sus candidatos gracias a la funcionalidad de su Web. En este trabajo realizamos un estudio para determinar en que medida los aspectos innovadores de la Web de un partido politico aumentaran: (i) la calidad percibida, (ii) la confianza hacia el servicio del sitio Web, (iii) la lealtad hacia la pagina Web y (iv) la predisposicion a recomendarla (boca-oreja). Para ello entrevistamos a un total de 217 usuarios que valoraron su experiencia con la Web de un determinado partido politico, obteniendose la confirmacion de los cuatro efectos apuntados.