Raechel Johns

The impact of internet banking on business‐customer relationships (are you being self‐served?)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how technology has dramatically altered the way businesses operate in a business‐to‐business (B2B) context and has had profound influences on services, altering the way services are delivered. It is believed that the increased use of self‐service technologies (SSTs) impacts on B2B relationships. The paper seeks to explore the impact of the use of internet banking on business relationships.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the results and implications of recent exploratory research conducted with a small sample of Australian business bank customers.Findings – It was expected that perceptions of technology would impact on the relationship. However, it was the perception of the relationship which led respondents to develop a perception of the technology. Further research is recommended.Practical implications – Banks are encouraging internet banking to reduce service delivery costs and improve service quality for customers. However, a greater unders...

Generation Y: evaluating services experiences through mobile ethnography

Purpose – This paper suggests mobile ethnography as a method for data collection, where Generation Y customers are integrated as active investigators. The paper aims to contribute to the debate on museums as experience‐centred places, to understanding how the experience is perceived by Generation Y, to identifying the customer journey, to providing an insight into service experience consumption and to deriving managerial implication for the museum industry of how to approach Generation Y.Design/methodology/approach – Mobile ethnography is applied to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra with a sample of Generation Y visitors as the future visitor market.Findings – The paper finds that there is a need to involve museum management in measuring museum experiences, especially with regard to the definition and improvement of the service‐delivery processes. Service experience must be appropriately managed by museum operators by collecting, evaluating, storing and reusing relevant data on customer experie...

The effect of environmental CSR issues on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) (climate responsibility and natural resource utilization) on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability. Design/methodology/approach – Building on extensive literature, a conceptual model of environmental CSR-corporation that includes three factors of consumer behavior is proposed. Findings – The study highlights that environmental CSR has a positive effect on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability. Practical implications – The findings of this study highlight the importance of managing environmental CSR for corporations that intend to gain reputation and profitability. Originality/value – This paper is one of the first to highlight the effect of environmental CSR on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability.

Internationalization and relationship marketing: an introduction

Purpose – This paper aims to integrate the concepts of the internationalization process and relationship marketing (RM). It identifies two stages for internationalization (pre-internationalization and post-internationalization) and assigns RM components for each step. Design/methodology/approach – The study undertakes a review and synthesis of the extant literature examining internationalization and RM. It then identifies two stages of the internationalization process and its steps, associated with RM components. Findings – The study highlights that each step in the internationalization process requires appropriate RM component to be implemented successfully. Practical implications – Findings of this study highlight the importance of managing internationalization for firms intending to enter to foreign market and identify the issues that need to be understood, if firms are to effectively manage their internationalization strategy. Originality/value – The paper is the first to integrate the concepts of int...

Mothers influencing mothers: the use of virtual discussion boards and their influence on consumption

Mothers represent a large segment of marketing dollars and traditionally, word of mouth was spread from mother to mother in a face-to-face environment, such as the school car park or mother’s groups. As families have evolved, so too has the traditional mother’s group. Limited academic studies have explored online mothers’ groups and how they impact on consumption. In order to explore the nature of this online influence and how mothers are influenced by other mothers online, a study was conducted through the use of observation and qualitative questioning. The data suggests that trust between mothers is generally high and mothers tend to trust the opinions of other mothers when they recommend a product. This is similar in other reference group contexts, however, mothers are communicating about brands frequently and influencing behaviour. This leads to a number of managerial and theoretical implications discussed in the paper.

Relationship Marketing in a Self-Service Context: No Longer Applicable?

To explore the impact of the use of self-service technologies on interfirm relationships, a grounded theory study was conducted. This article reviews the results and implications of an exploratory study conducted with a sample of Australian business bank customers and interviews with 6 Australian financial institutions. Findings indicate that 2 customer segments exist—a transaction-oriented segment and a relationship-oriented segment. Unlike existing literature that states that bank customers prefer relationships (K. Eriksson & R. Marquardt, 2001), the present findings indicate that this is only the case for 1 segment of business customers.

Inclusive by design: transformative services and sport-event accessibility

ABSTRACT This paper examines the service dimensions required to be inclusive of people with access needs within a major-sport event context. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities seeks to counter disability discrimination and enable citizenship rights of people with disabilities, including access to goods and services, across all dimensions of social participation including major-sport events (e.g. Olympic and Paralympic Games, world cups in football, cricket and rugby union). Providing for people with disability and access needs is also an emerging tourism focus with initiatives addressing accessible tourism included in the World Tourism Organizations mission and recent strategic destination plans. To enhance the understanding of service delivery for an accessible tourism market in a major-sport event context, a case study of the Vancouver Fan Zone for the FIFA Womens World Cup Canada, 2015 TM is analyzed through the lens of transformative services. From this analysis future research directions are identified to benefit those with access needs who wish to participate in major-sport events.

The power of celebrity: Exploring the basis for Oprah’s successful endorsement of Australia as a vacation destination

In December 2010, Tourism Australia and Tourism New South Wales (respectively, Australia’s national and Australia’s largest state tourism promotion agencies) entered into an agreement with US talk show host Oprah Winfrey (or Oprah) for Ms Winfrey to undertake a celebrity endorsement tourism marketing campaign for Australia. In executing this campaign, Oprah and 300 of what she called her ‘Ultimate Australia Adventure’ viewers visited iconic and less well-known tourism attractions around Australia. These visits were filmed and later broadcast as four episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Show in the United States, Australia, and many other countries during January 2011. Longitudinal studies of subsequent visitation (especially from the United States) showed a delayed but significant surge in tourists, leading to Australian tourism authorities to mark the campaign a success. While celebrity endorsement has commonly been discussed in a marketing context, little attention has been given to celebrity endorsement in a tourism context (Glover (2009) Celebrity endorsement in tourism advertising: effects on destination image. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 61(1): 16–23). This article investigates this issue, in particular, focussing on a close analysis of the content of the broadcasts to explore why the approach chosen for the campaign was successful. Results indicated that Oprah’s celebrity endorsement of Australia positioned the Australian brand effectively. Oprah’s ‘brand image’ had significant value as a celebrity endorser and that Oprah had strong appeal in these roles to the Tourism Australia target market.

Career development in higher education through group mentoring: A case study of desirable attributes and perceptions of a current programme

Although group mentoring is not widely utilised in higher education settings, it has been viewed as successfully helping the research careers of academics (Walkington, Vanderheide, & Hughes, 2008). This paper explores the results of a qualitative and quantitative study about perceptions of one university-based group mentoring programme. The results enable an understanding of challenges that might exist in attracting potential participants to a group mentoring programme. Results indicate that organisations implementing a group mentoring programme need to make sure goals and outcomes of the programme are properly communicated, and that these also need to align with academics’ priorities for career development.

From pre-internationalization to post-internationalization: relationship marketing perspective

Although several aspects of the internationalization process and relationship marketing strategy have been addressed in the literature, there is a lack of a unified theoretical framework that explains the impact of relationship marketing strategy on internationalization process. This study was undertaken as an initial attempt to address the role of relationship marketing in the internationalization process. To understand this concept, the internationalization process is divided into two stages: pre-internationalization, which focuses on overcoming the psychic distance and post-internationalization, which focuses on market entry and positioning. At the different stages of internationalization, different variables of relationship marketing assume relatively greater levels of importance, which are likely to have implications for the implementation of an internationalization process. Through a thorough analysis of the literature, and a review of a number of international examples, three research propositions are provided and streams for further research necessary to understand this neglected area of research are then provided.