Nikoletta-Theofania Siamagka

Do Marketers Use Visual Representations of Destinations That Tourists Value? Comparing Visitors’ Image of a Destination with Marketer-Controlled Images Online

The study explores visitors’ image of a destination using online visitor-generated photography and compares the findings with images of the same destination that marketers create and control on the Internet. The two studies are conducted with Taiwan as the context-destination. Online visitor-generated photography yielded more than 100 photographs from visitors to Taiwan, and indicates that visitors’ holistic image encompasses notions of Taiwanese uniqueness, ancientness, and authenticity through their perceptions of the natural landscapes, traditional local cuisine, and culture. The second study yielded 1,526 visual image representations of Taiwan collected from a variety of website sources, and findings highlight the disparities between the holistic image construed by visitors to Taiwan and the image created by marketers on the Internet. The findings yield important implications for the effective positioning and promotion of tourism destinations as managers should consider visitors’ holistic images in their attempt to create destination images through online visual representations.

Revisiting Consumer Ethnocentrism: Review, Reconceptualization, and Empirical Testing

Prior research has suggested that many consumers prefer domestic to foreign products, even when the quality is lower and the price is higher. Such bias is attributed to consumer ethnocentrism. This study critically examines the current conceptualizations of consumer ethnocentrism and proposes an extension of its conceptual boundaries and measurement. It determines that consumer ethnocentrism is a multidimensional construct that encompasses five dimensions: prosociality, cognition, insecurity, reflexiveness, and habituation. Empirical evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States demonstrates that the extended measurement instrument better predicts consumers’ preferences for local brands at the expense of foreign brands.

A typology of internet users based on comparative affective states: evidence from eight countries

Purpose – The role of affective states in consumer behaviour is well established. However, no study to date has examined online affective states empirically as a basis for constructing typologies of internet users and for assessing the invariance of clusters across national cultures. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – Four focus groups were carried out with internet users to adapt a set of affective states identified from the literature to the online environment. An online survey was then designed to collect data from internet users in four Western and four East Asian countries.Findings – Based on a cluster analysis, six cross‐national market segments are identified and labelled “Positive Online Affectivists”, “Offline Affectivists”, “On/Off‐line Negative Affectivists”, “Online Affectivists”, “Indistinguishable Affectivists”, and “Negative Offline Affectivists”. The resulting clusters discriminate on the basis of national culture, gender, working status and perceptions tow...

Consumers’ intention to donate to two children’s charity brands: a comparison of Barnardo’s and BBC Children in Need

Purpose – This paper aims to examine consumers’ non-profit brand image, brand typicality and past behaviour as determinants of intention to donate to two children charity brands. Design/methodology/approach – Data for this study were obtained from two separate studies via a questionnaire, both in the context of two children charities, one for Barnardo’s and the other for BBC Children in Need charity. A theoretical model is developed, tested and compared across the two charity brands. Findings – Findings highlight that different factors influence intentions to donate time and money according to the charity brand. Brand typicality is a key determinant of time donations, while the impact of non-profit brand image dimensions on time and money donations differs across the two charities. Past behaviour affects intentions to donate money in both charities but impacts time donations in only one of the two charities investigated. Research limitations/implications – The study examines specific dimensions of non-pro...

The impact of comparative affective states on online brand perceptions: a five-country study

Purpose – The extant literature highlights the significant role of brand perceptions in buying behavior and brand equity. Despite the importance of brand perceptions and the proliferation of online brands, research in an online context is still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating the effect of positive and negative comparative affective states (online vs offline) on online brand perceptions. Consistent with existing evidence, highlighting the role of culture on brand perceptions and affective states, this research is conducted in a cross-national setting to identify the stability of the hypothesized relationships among countries. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses consumer survey data from five countries (UK, USA, Australia, Canada and China). After imposing metric and factor variance invariance, we used multi-group CFA to test the hypotheses regarding the impact of positive and negative comparative affective states on online brand perceptions across the fiv...

Inconsistencies in the Behavioural Effects of Consumer Ethnocentrism: The Role of Brand, Product Category and Country of Origin

Purpose Despite the well-established impact of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) on purchase intentions, extant literature offers limited evidence on actual purchase behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap by investigating the factors underlying variations in CET behaviour using reported brand purchases. Product category, product cost and visibility, brand and country of origin (COO) of purchased products are investigated for their impact on the differences in the behavioural effects of CET. Design/methodology/approach This study uses survey data collected in the USA from a sample of 468 consumers. Self-reported brand purchases are used and involve ten product categories, 432 brands, and 22 countries of origin. Logistic regressions for repeated measures are used to test the hypotheses formulated. Findings The results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of CET. CET also has a significant impact on purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than frequently purchased convenient items. Contrary to existing empirical evidence, cultural similarity does not mitigate the negative effects of CET and product visibility does not strengthen the behavioural effect of CET. Practical implications The study results should enhance managers’ understanding of the determinants of ethnocentric behaviour. The results caution managers about the value of self-reported measures and indicate that product features other than COO may be more effective in mitigating the negative effects of CET. Originality/value This study contributes to extant literature on CET and COO by investigating, for the first time, the problem of inconsistent predictions of purchase behaviour in the context of foreign vs domestic brands. For this purpose, the study adopted a novel methodological approach to investigate actual brand purchases.Purpose – Despite the well-established impact of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) on purchase intentions, extant literature offers limited evidence on actual purchase behaviour. This study addresses this gap by investigating the factors underlying variations in consumer ethnocentric behaviour using reported brand purchases. Product category, product cost and visibility, brand and country of origin of purchased products are investigated for their impact on the differences in the behavioural effects of CET. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses survey data collected in the United States from a sample of 468 consumers. Self-reported brand purchases are used and involve 10 product categories, 432 brands, and 22 countries of origin. Logistic regressions for repeated measures are used to test the hypotheses formulated. Findings – The results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of CET. CET also has a significant impact on purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than frequently purchased convenient items. Contrary to existing empirical evidence, cultural similarity does not mitigate the negative effects of CET and product visibility does not strengthen the behavioural effect of CET. Practical implications – The study results should enhance managers’ understanding of the determinants of ethnocentric behaviour. The results caution managers about the value of self-reported measures and indicate that product features other than country of origin may be more effective in mitigating the negative effects of CET. Originality/value – This study contributes to extant literature on CET and country of origin by investigating, for the first time, the problem of inconsistent predictions of purchase behaviour in the context of foreign versus domestic brands. For this purpose, the study adopted a novel methodological approach to investigate actual brand purchases.

Social Media in Higher Education: An Investigation into UG Marketing Education in the UK

Undoubtedly social media (SM) is currently one of the hottest topics in marketing circles (academic and practitioner). Its scholarly importance is reflected in the growing number of special issues of journals (e.g., Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Business Ethics) and themed conferences around SM and various aspects of marketing. Also, employers of marketing graduates are increasingly seeking candidates adept in SM platforms because of the potential of the aforementioned tools in marketing (e.g., Rapp et al. 2013; Walker et al. 2012; Michaelidou et al. 2011; Kozinets et al. 2010). Notably, the majority of today’s university students are “digital natives” (Prensky 2001), representing one of the most active user segments of the internet and Web2.0 technologies. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the Marketing and PR functions of most Higher Education (HE) institutions have devised SM strategies to target and attract new students (Constantinides and Stagno 2011).

The Impact of Comparative Affective States on Online Brand Perceptions: The Moderating Role of Cultural Dimensions

While a significant body of research has hitherto highlighted the importance of isolated affective dimensions for Internet usage and shopping (e.g., Elliot and Fowell 2000; Lim et al. 2008), there is little systematic research to date that examines affective states as a whole in the online environment. This study builds on the recent work by Christodoulides et al. (2013), which identifies comparative (online/offline) affective states as an appropriate base for segmenting online users. In particular, this research investigates the role of affective states and culture on online brand perceptions. A model is developed and tested using multilevel data from five countries.

Inconsistencies in the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism

Purpose Despite the well-established impact of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) on purchase intentions, extant literature offers limited evidence on actual purchase behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap by investigating the factors underlying variations in CET behaviour using reported brand purchases. Product category, product cost and visibility, brand and country of origin (COO) of purchased products are investigated for their impact on the differences in the behavioural effects of CET. Design/methodology/approach This study uses survey data collected in the USA from a sample of 468 consumers. Self-reported brand purchases are used and involve ten product categories, 432 brands, and 22 countries of origin. Logistic regressions for repeated measures are used to test the hypotheses formulated. Findings The results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of CET. CET also has a significant impact on purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than frequently purchased convenient items. Contrary to existing empirical evidence, cultural similarity does not mitigate the negative effects of CET and product visibility does not strengthen the behavioural effect of CET. Practical implications The study results should enhance managers’ understanding of the determinants of ethnocentric behaviour. The results caution managers about the value of self-reported measures and indicate that product features other than COO may be more effective in mitigating the negative effects of CET. Originality/value This study contributes to extant literature on CET and COO by investigating, for the first time, the problem of inconsistent predictions of purchase behaviour in the context of foreign vs domestic brands. For this purpose, the study adopted a novel methodological approach to investigate actual brand purchases.Purpose – Despite the well-established impact of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) on purchase intentions, extant literature offers limited evidence on actual purchase behaviour. This study addresses this gap by investigating the factors underlying variations in consumer ethnocentric behaviour using reported brand purchases. Product category, product cost and visibility, brand and country of origin of purchased products are investigated for their impact on the differences in the behavioural effects of CET. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses survey data collected in the United States from a sample of 468 consumers. Self-reported brand purchases are used and involve 10 product categories, 432 brands, and 22 countries of origin. Logistic regressions for repeated measures are used to test the hypotheses formulated. Findings – The results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of CET. CET also has a significant impact on purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than frequently purchased convenient items. Contrary to existing empirical evidence, cultural similarity does not mitigate the negative effects of CET and product visibility does not strengthen the behavioural effect of CET. Practical implications – The study results should enhance managers’ understanding of the determinants of ethnocentric behaviour. The results caution managers about the value of self-reported measures and indicate that product features other than country of origin may be more effective in mitigating the negative effects of CET. Originality/value – This study contributes to extant literature on CET and country of origin by investigating, for the first time, the problem of inconsistent predictions of purchase behaviour in the context of foreign versus domestic brands. For this purpose, the study adopted a novel methodological approach to investigate actual brand purchases.

An Investigation into the Driving Mechanisms of Consumer Engagement

Consumer engagement has received a lot of attention as an innovative strategic approach to managing consumer–brand relationships (Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek 2011; Kumar et al. 2010; Mangold and Faulds 2009; Van Doorn et al. 2010). The beneficial effects of an engaged consumer base are believed to be numerous and include enhancement of viral marketing activities (Harvey et al. 2011), increased brand support through product recommendations (Brodie et al. 2013), greater brand exposure in consumers’ social networks, and finally potential prospect acquisitions (Kumar et al. 2010). Despite the established relevance of consumer engagement particularly in brand-supporting behavior, extant literature mainly addresses the conceptualization of consumer engagement (Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek and Chen 2014; Van Doorn et al. 2010; Kumar et al. 2010), investigating the consequences of engagement (Bowden 2009; Chan and Li 2010; Gruen et al. 2006; Gummerus et al. 2010; Hollebeek 2011). What remains under-researched however are the driving forces of consumer engagement, surging the necessity to work in this direction (Bolton 2011; Verhoef et al. 2010). This research comes to address this gap by developing a conceptual framework that includes various content characteristics and empirically testing it using four brands that have a social media presence.