Roberta Crouch

Food advertising, children's food choices and obesity: interplay of cognitive defences and product evaluation: an experimental study.

Objectives:To investigate the role of product evaluations, nutritional and persuasion knowledge on children’s food choices conducted because of limited evidence about the role of product evaluations on consumer choices in conjunction with cognitive defences.Design:A randomised controlled 2 × 2 factorial experiment with an exposure to a food and a control (toy) advertisement conducted in a non-laboratory setting at an annual event traditionally visited by families.Subjects:Children aged 7–13 years with biometric/weight data representative of the general Australian population.Measurements:Height and weight (converted into body mass index z-scores) measured in addition to children’s nutritional and persuasion knowledge, product evaluations, age and gender.Results:The factors that undermine children’s cognitive defences relate to taste, social appeal of foods and low nutritional and persuasion knowledge. An interplay between the above-mentioned factors was also observed, identifying four groups among young consumers, alluding to a complex and at times impulsive nature of children’s decisions: (1) knowledgeable children with less positive product evaluations choosing a healthy snack; (2) knowledgeable but hedonism-oriented children seeking peer conformity choosing an advertised product; (3) knowledgeable children who chose a snack belonging to the same product category; and (4) less knowledgeable children with positive product evaluations and low nutritional knowledge choosing snacks from the advertised product category. Obese children were more likely to belong to a cluster of less knowledgeable and hedonism-oriented children.Conclusions:The problem of consumption of less healthy foods is complex and multiple factors need to be considered by health practitioners, social marketers and parents to address the issue of childhood obesity. Nutritional knowledge alone is not sufficient to ensure children make healthier food choices and emphasis should also be placed on persuasion knowledge education, targeting of peer norms, self-efficacy and stricter regulation of advertising aimed at children.

Children and energy-dense foods – parents, peers, acceptability or advertising?

Purpose Studies to date have focused on one or very few factors, rather than exploring a host of influences associated with children’s consumption of energy-dense foods. This is surprising as multiple agents are relevant to children’s food consumer socialisation (parents, peers, social norms and food advertising). This study aims to address these gaps and offers the first comprehensive empirical assessment of a wide cluster of variables. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study was undertaken with children aged 7-13 years and their parents/main carers, collecting family metrics from parents and data directly from children. Structural Equation Modelling was used to estimate a series of interdependence relationships in four steps, revealing the increased explained variance in children’s consumption of energy-dense foods. Findings The inclusion of multiple potential factors increased the percentage of explained variance in children’s consumption of energy-dense foods. The models explicate which factors relate to frequent consumption in children, and clarify various indirect influences on children through parents. Originality/value For the first time, a wider range of variables was integrated to maximise the percentage of explained variance in children’s behaviour, providing policy makers and social marketers with novel insights regarding areas that need to be prioritised for consumer education. Both direct and indirect relationships were assessed. Data were collected from parents and their children to provide an original methodological contribution and richer data for investigation.

Can Country of Origin Branding be a Competitive Advantage for Agri-Products from Emerging Countries?

Country of origin research continues to generated interest and remain relevant in spite of the wide body of existing literature realised from studies generate around the world over many decades. The chapter presents a proposed conceptual framework of consumer decision pathways respective to agriculture based products, particularly those produced in emerging, underdeveloped economies. The proposed model illustrates the possible mediating effects of country of origin cues via low versus high involvement/motivations associated with low tech versus highly technical product endowment. The model further suggests that higher levels of technical product endowment will require more cognitively based assessments by consumers as compared to products based on lower levels of technology (like Agri-products) that will be assessed with a more affective approach. The chapter expands these concepts to present a possible matrix showing some suggested strategic approaches in the use of COO cue in country branding to leverage expected consumer responses and processing modes.

Emotional advertising to attenuate compulsive consumption: qualitative insights from gamblers

Compulsive consumption behaviours such as smoking, drinking, and gambling are serious public health concerns that impact consumers globally. Research examining emotional advertising appeals that specifically induce help-seeking in the problem gambling context remains limited. A qualitative study through the use of focus groups was conducted to inductively explore gamblers’ perceptions of effective health messages, investigating how, why, and which emotional advertising appeals would best impact on their decision to seek help. Participants proposed that positive, negative, and mixed emotional appeals can be utilised to most effectively communicate with gamblers. In addition, response efficacy (the extent people believe a recommended response effectively deters or alleviates a health threat), self-accountability (an assessment of the degree to which oneself is responsible for the situation), and perceived benefits (beliefs about the positive outcomes associated with help-seeking behaviour) are also highlighted as important message elements. This study should serve as a starting point to develop effective health messages in compulsive consumption contexts, including gambling.

Investigating the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals to Prompt Help Seeking in At-Risk Gamblers: The Moderating Role of Problem Gambling Status: An Abstract

This research examines the moderating role of problem gambling status (low-risk gamblers, moderate-risk gamblers and problem gamblers) on the processing of fear appeals in a sample of Australian gamblers.

Talking with You—Not at You: How Brand Ambassadors Can Spark Consumer Brand Attachment?

Strongly supported forms of online and offline consumer networking strategies have the potential to reach consumers adverse to traditional forms of mass media advertising (Trusov, Bucklin and Pauwels 2009). Whilst such channels may offer important opportunities for marketers, brand managers must fully understand how to exploit them for maximum benefit (Kucuk 2010). Consumers engage in online interactions to satisfy their cognitive, social and emotional needs in a way that emulates traditional face-to-face contexts (Jae Wook et al. 2008). The impact of such consumer-to-consumer interactions and, information exchange on brand attachment and subsequent buying behavior is well documented in the literature with reported flow-on benefits such as enhanced attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, positive word of mouth (WOM), willingness to pay a premium price (WPPP) and brand defense (Jae Wook et al. 2008). However, the ability to stimulate and build brand attachment via the satisfaction of consumer needs in the context of brand-initiated, as opposed to consumer initiated, interactions is unknown. This is because such contexts have typically excluded marketers’ direct brand involvement. Usually, where brands have been involved, contact has been through forms of sponsorship or via a paid endorser, where direct interaction between consumers and brand representatives is extremely limited, scripted or non-existent. This is due to consumer skepticism stemming from their fear that brand participation in their conversations is motivated by the opportunity to ‘sell’. Consumers also often wish to keep their conversations ‘private’ in order to speak freely or even, sometimes, criticize products as well as praise them. Consequently, direct interactions between brands and consumers, both on and offline, are not truly co-created experiences where value is given and derived by both parties.

Decomposition of Country of Origin Effects in Education Services: A Conjoint Analysis Approach

Research in the area of international marketing has shown that consumers’ assessments of product quality may change (positively/negatively) according to country of manufacture, country of design and/or country of parts of the products. While this notion has been established in the product context, no research has attempted to isolate similar effects of the country of origin construct in relation to service offerings. This research deconstructs the country of origin (COO) construct for international services along country of origin of the brand (COB), country of origin of where the service is delivered (COSD), and country of origin of the person providing the service (CPI). A total of 143 respondents participated in the online survey undertaken in Australia. The service to be evaluated in the experiment was education service. Results of conjoint analysis in education service confirmed the effects and the importance of the proposed COO dimensions on consumers’ expectations of service quality. More specifically, the experiment revealed that CPI is more important than COB and COSD on consumers’ expectation of service quality.

Contemporary Young Consumers and Food Consumption—Implications for Social Marketing Research

Marketing has undergone profound changes during the past 30 years with a shift from television advertising to digital marketing and development of more engaging campaigns between brands and individuals. This change has also affected young consumers (i.e. children aged less than 13 years), who attracted marketers’ attention in the mid-1980s, who have ever since been marketing aggressively to this group across multiple media channels, engaging in the so-called “cradle-to-grave” marketing. Research shows that exposure to food advertising is associated with biased product evaluations extending into adulthood and the last two decades have also noted a substantial increase in the rates of childhood obesity and overweight levels worldwide. Although research about young consumers and their food consumption started more than 40 years ago, current discussion centres predominantly around the impact of food advertising on children and extant knowledge remains fragmented and inconclusive in relation to a number of external, as well as internal influences. In particular, it is still unclear how children choose healthy and less healthy foods under the influence of different socialisation agents and their own consumer knowledge about advertising or nutrition. Extant gaps impede effective policy development and successful social marketing campaigns since the full extent of children’s susceptibility to food advertising remains unclear. This paper was inspired by work conducted under PhD candidature supervision by Prof. Pascale Quester and provides a review of social marketing literature to highlight the gaps in our knowledge and delineate important directions for future social marketing research in relation to young consumers’ food consumption.

Investigating Emotional Advertising: Fear Mixed with Challenge Appeal and its Influence on Information Processing Modes and Behavioural Intentions

Through the current research which aimed to evaluate the System Group Company’s managers’ performance by using 360 degree feedback method, some information have been gathered related to managers’ merit appraisal by using structured questionnaire (researcher-administered survey), from 3 points: self-assessment and evaluation of the managers under supervision of superior manager and evaluation of the superior managers. The stability of the questionnaire is 0/938 which was tested via The Cronbachs (alpha) coefficient. The questionnaire includes 72 questions and has designed to assess 7 main merits of managers: communication, planning, organizing, controlling, leadership, decision making and team work. The statistical population consists of 75 managers, 44 people were selected by systematic (random) sampling method. The data was collected through, at least, 23 under supervision managers, 16 middle managers and 5 superior managers involve the manager (who is evaluating). Testing the hypothesis which included 1 main hypothesis and 8 subhypotheses was conducted by using One Way Anova and LSD technique and the following results, whether prove or reject the hypothesis, achieved. Main hypothesis was: “there is no significant differentiation among “the self-assessment results” and “superior managers-evaluation results” and “middle managersevaluation results” and “under supervision managersevaluation results” in System Group Company.” (The hypothesis rejected at 95% and 99% level of the significance. The results of hypothesis testing show that the managers of the System Group Company had significantly evaluated their merits; in the other word, there is no differentiation among the superior managers’ viewpoints and the middle managers’ viewpoints and under supervision managers’ viewpoints.T purpose of this research is to propose an integrative national identity-based model of consumer behavior through an examination of how citizens as consumers make sense of, interpret and negotiate what their nation and their national identity mean to them not only in routine times but also in times of crises when the national identity has been wounded or threatened by outsiders. Additionally, it attempts to increase the understanding of how consumers position themselves in relation to national symbols or national rhetoric and how these help shape buying behavior. This integrative analysis presents the theories of self-concept, social identity and intergroup relations as roots for consumers’ feelings, attitudes and behavioral manifestations linked to national identification. In particular, it demonstrates the effects of activating consumers’ national identity (NI) on evaluation of advertising and associated products in two contexts (NI activated through media context, and NI activated through advertising appeals).F active users are estimated to be nearly 1.44 billion per month. In 2012, its number surpassed 1 billion. Over half a billion use it only on the mobile phone. It is estimated that 71% North-American adults using Internet have an FB profile. Multi-platform usage is growing fast. People from all over the world are adopting Facebook as “the place to be”. Facebook is multi-directional. Likes, shares and comments, give it a huge range of possibilities for marketing products and services. For sure, Facebook is right now a must for any company.T objective of this study is to find out factors, which enhance salespersons’ ability to influence purchase decisions of customers. Furthermore, it also aims at identifying the impact of Emotional Intelligence, Customer Orientation, Adaptive Selling and Manifest Influence on sales performance. This study was conducted in Telecom sector of Pakistan where data was collected from a sample of sales representatives. Before conducting final survey, a pilot test was incorporated in order to check questionnaire validity and reliability. Total of 600 questionnaires were distributed to target sample from which 436 was useable for data analysis. Study reveals that emotionally sound salespersons are successful to identify customer needs and alter their emotions, accurately evaluate customers’ emotions are more likely to perform better in different perspectives. Theoretical implications, Evaluating salespersons abilities and capabilities only in Telecom sector may result as generalisability. There are valid chances might occurred that the salespersons belongs to other industries might answer differently to research questionnaire. Therefore, this theoretical framework should be tested in other industries as well. This research study has multiple managerial implications, mainly related to marketing and sales department. First, sales executives should consider customer orientation essential to be part of their sales and marketing teams. For sales executives to improve the performance of their respective departments, they required to keen about the role of customer orientation in creating departmental innovativeness. Through improving customer focus, executives can support their team members to come up with unique and divers ideas, which might result as in minimizing conflicts among team members.S the beginning of Internet advertising, publishers, advertisers and agencies have been searching the Holy Grail of the performance marketing: How to really attribute sales or conversions to each channel or player used in the Digital Marketing Mix. With the explosion of Search (mainly Google Ad words Advertising), the digital industry has been pushed to use different models to attribute sales or conversions: Leaded by Google, most of these models were built around Google Ad words, making it the last mile of attribution: From Last click or last exposure to Linear, Weighted, Time Decay or models based on position. The 1st part of the speech has the objective to find the reality of each one of them and show the results. On the 2nd part, my goal is to show that the Digital Marketing industry has to move from Attribution to Contribution Modeling. Contribution Modeling can show how an Omni Channel Marketing mix can have real distribution of conversions based on pieces of technology using Games theory. I will analyze new technologies like Abakus Attribution and New Double Click Attribution Models in order to show can an Omni channel Campaign can be optimized.