Pavel Štrach

Brand corrosion: mass‐marketing's threat to luxury automobile brands after merger and acquisition

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the practical implications of brand management decisions, particularly those involving the combination of luxury and mass‐market brands within the same organization through merger or acquisition. The aim of the paper is to expand brand theory by linking it to administrative heritage in the context of the increasingly integrated global automobile industry.Design/methodology/approach – Integrated case studies of Jaguar, Mercedes‐Benz, and Saab illustrate the effects of brand extension and dilution through the lenses of brand development, luxury brands, and administrative heritage theories. The recent history of acquisitions and mergers involving luxury automobile brands provides background to the in‐depth examination of these three specific instances. Conclusions are reached by comparing and contrasting the experiences of these firms relative to their mass‐market siblings.Findings – The blending of luxury and mass‐market automobile brands in one corporate...

Knowledge transfer within Japanese multinationals: building a theory

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the theoretical underpinnings of knowledge transfer within Japanese multinationals. To that end, a conceptual model of knowledge transfer within Japanese multinational companies and their overseas affiliates is proposed.Design/methodology/approach – In the first part, theoretical models of knowledge transfer within multinationals in general are explored through a literature review. Next, related knowledge management practices utilized by Japanese companies, specifically in their overseas subsidiaries, are introduced. The third section develops a conceptual model proposing how knowledge is disseminated within Japanese multinationals. The discussion is based on the assumption that Japanese firms consciously apply the same knowledge management methods abroad as at home only to the extent to which they consider them appropriate for transplanting into a foreign environment.Findings – Distillation of prior research has led to the conceptual model proposed her...

Measuring website quality: asymmetric effect of user satisfaction

Website quality measurement tools have been largely static and have struggled to determine relevant attributes of user satisfaction. This study compares and contrasts attributes of user satisfaction based on usability guidelines seeking to identify practical easy-to-administer measurement tools. The website users assessed business school homepages according to six criteria and fulfilled a randomly assigned yet typical task. After completing the task, respondents assessed the same six website quality/satisfaction criteria again. The consumer–product relationship seems similar to the link between a user and a website. User satisfaction, just like consumer satisfaction, is asymmetric and non-linear. Content and navigation have been identified as key ingredients when users judged website quality, alerting web designers and website practitioners to focus more closely on those attributes. Similar lessons can be drawn for marketing professionals, who typically supervise or determine the content, structure and other website facets.

Transforming research case studies into teaching cases

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to encourage consideration of the multiple factors affecting dual use of case studies for both research and teaching, and conversion between the two types; to encourage development of a case transformation protocol to add rigor to this process.Design/methodology/approach – Literature review with discussion.Findings – Noting that insularity diminishes the potential contribution of the research underlying either teaching or research cases, this paper advocates establishment of more formalized conversion approaches.Practical implications – Dual use of case studies can provide economies of scale for academics, conserving time, effort, and funding, but involving greater care and advance consideration of the implications of differences between teaching and research cases.Originality/value – By highlighting key issues and proposing solutions, this paper advances understanding of the potential for transformation of cases and the importance of advance consideration of their p...

Cultural differences in online beer marketing: findings from automated attention analysis

The impact of culture on consumer behaviour has been an important research area for decades. The rise of e-commerce prompted the importance of culturally bound differences between websites. Web designers are compelled to adjust website development to the cultural characteristics of the target audience and to reflect local perspectives. The actual target users are often invited to provide valuable feedback on e-commerce applications. However, user tests are extremely costly and time consuming. Tools for automated web design assessment have only recently been introduced and have provoked debate regarding their ability to simulate human interaction. In this article, 40 leading beer-brand-related websites from four different groups (countries) are analysed. The aim of this study is to discover if automated tools predicting user eye activity are able to distinguish between websites from different cultures. The findings indicate that automated tools provide quick and inexpensive results for initial assessment of the website interface, clearly differentiating between websites from different cultural backgrounds, resonating with the current literature.

Language-Independent Sentiment Analysis with Surrounding Context Extension

Expressing attitudes and opinions towards various entities (i.e. products, companies, people and events) has become pervasive with the recent proliferation of social media. Monitoring of what customers think is a key task for marketing research and opinion surveys, while measuring customers’ preferences or media monitoring have become a fundamental part of corporate activities. Most experiments on automated sentiment analysis focus on major languages (English, but also Chinese); minor or morphologically rich languages are addressed rather sparsely. Moreover, to improve the performance of machine-learning based classifiers, the models are often complemented with language-dependent components (i.e. sentiment lexicons). Such combined approaches provide a high level of accuracy but are limited to a single language or a single thematic domain.

Gender Differences in Online Customer Satisfaction: The Asymmetric and Nonlinear Effect

ABSTRACT The article aims to determine the extent of gender-related differences in user satisfaction with websites with a focus on the asymmetric and nonlinear effects of customer satisfaction. An experiment was conducted with 15 men and 15 women who undertook a typical task (scenario) on 44 websites. Overall, 1,320 evaluations of website quality attributes were obtained and analyzed. The results reveal that men and women differ in their website quality assessment. Marketing professionals should consider their target audiences gender when designing a quality website, or even devise ways of approaching both gender groups through distinct means.

Gathering Research Evidence in the Information Age: Qualitative Research Through Narrative Analysis

Qualitative methodologies provide more in-depth and contextual information about a research problem, however qualitative methodologies are far less frequently utilized in research studies published in acclaimed business journals. Instead, primary survey-based data collection and subsequent statistical analysis have become a norm in many social science disciplines. The fol-lowing paper offers a discussion on various qualitative methodologies, reflecting on particular experience and sharing experiential trajectories from business research. A reconciliation for the inherent dichotomy between telling a story and finding a structure is offered to researchers for further consideration.

Automated Attention Analysis Across Brands and Cultures in Online Beer Marketing

This chapter presents an extended study focused on application of automated attention analysis in online marketing. The research question we are trying to address is whether automated tools can be used to depict differences between brand related websites of beer companies. Automated and quick comparison of websites from different markets and cultures might provide stimulating and instructive feedback and thus become an invaluable tool for online marketers. In spite of being exploratory in nature, the study and indicates that the automated tools instead of human-centered attention analysis could be an inexpensive yet relevant tool for brand site development.

Key concerns for website quality: Reflecting on user views

The study compares and contrasts attributes of user perceived quality with information websites. It concerns a study of the formation of website quality, its nature and evolution based on the fulfillment of typical tasks. Based on empirical study based on 44 information websites, information value and navigation have been identified as key ingredients perceived by website users when judging website quality. Color scheme assessment was found to predict successful task fulfillment.