Robin Ritchie

The Defensive Consumer: Advertising Deception, Defensive Processing, and Distrust

The authors show that deceptive advertising engenders distrust, which negatively affects peoples responses to subsequent advertising from both the same source and second-party sources. This negative bias operates through a process of defensive stereotyping, in which the initial deception induces negative beliefs about advertising and marketing in general, thus undermining the credibility of further advertising.

A framework for an industry supported destination marketing information system.

Abstract This article provides guidelines for the establishment of a comprehensive state/provincial destination marketing information system (DMIS). More specifically, it describes the process by which the tourism industry in Alberta, Canada developed a framework for the acquisition of timely research and intelligence to maintain and enhance its competitiveness as a travel destination. In keeping with a government mandate for greater public–private sector partnership, consideration was given to two equally important, but functionally distinct end users: (1) Travel Alberta, the provinces destination marketing organization, which uses information to guide strategic marketing priorities and create cooperative marketing opportunities for industry, and (2) local tourism operators, who demand information to improve their marketing decisions in service of individual business objectives. The needs of these key audience groups were identified and addressed using a comprehensive three-step approach: (1) Interviews were conducted with key industry players to identify research and intelligence needs, (2) information sources were sought to respond to the identified needs, and (3) solutions were identified to deliver high-quality information at an affordable cost. The end result of this process is a framework that can serve as a useful model for other jurisdictions seeking to develop a DMIS. While the Alberta framework will require ongoing evaluation to ensure its validity and accuracy, it possesses an important quality frequently lacking in this type of endeavor: the broad-based endorsement of tourism operators.

Tourism experience management research: Emergence, evolution and future directions

Purpose – The essence of tourism is the development and delivery of travel and visitation experiences. This paper aims to provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of articles in major tourism journals in order to enhance our understanding of the tourism experience, with a special emphasis on the management issues associated with delivering these experiences to destination visitors. Design/methodology/approach – Several leading tourism journals were evaluated to identify the articles that focused on tourism experiences. Content analysis was used to determine the quantitative extent of the contributions and the qualitative nature of the articles published in each journal. Findings – Despite growth in the total number of articles published by each major journal, there was no substantial increase in experience-related papers. The findings suggest that, despite its fundamental importance, experience-related research remains under-represented in the tourism literature. Research limitations/implications...

Marketing interactions in subsistence marketplaces: A bottom-up approach to designing public policy

In many developing countries, buyer–seller exchange among the poor occurs mainly in unique, socially embedded environments that are essentially informal markets. This article describes the findings of an in-depth, in situ study of an informal-economy subsistence marketplace in South India. Through interviews with consumers and owners of survivalist microenterprises, the authors identify seven themes that characterize the subsistence marketplace context, buyer–seller interactions within them, and specific elements of exchange. Drawing on these findings, along with theories of social capital and consumption in poverty, they make the case that business policy in developing countries should aim to empower subsistence entrepreneurs and consumers, embrace emergent solutions, help build bridges between informal and formal economies, and adopt a bottom-up orientation to policy development. The studys findings offer important insights into policy that can help microenterprises of the informal economy become engines of economic growth in these countries.

Designing Marketplace Literacy Education in Resource-Constrained Contexts: Implications for Public Policy and Marketing

This article describes the findings of an immersive program of field research on consumers living in poverty in South India and the lessons learned from the development and operation of educational interventions designed to enhance the marketplace literacy of these consumers. Whereas extant research and practice have traditionally addressed two key factors that facilitate market participation for the poor—market access and financial resources—the current research focuses on a third critical and complementary factor—namely, marketplace literacy. The authors contend that to sustainably benefit from enhanced market access and resources, (1) people living in subsistence conditions need to develop tactical or procedural knowledge, or concrete “know-how,” regarding how to be an informed consumer or seller, and (2) this know-how must be grounded in conceptual/strategic knowledge, or “know-why” understanding, of marketplace exchanges. To that end, the educational program outlined begins by familiarizing participants with the purpose and logic of marketplaces and then transitions to the tangible aspects of how these marketplaces function. The article concludes with reflection on the implications for consumer policy, marketing research, and business practice.

Hearing Voices: The Impact of Announcer Speech Characteristics on Consumer Response to Broadcast Advertising

Virtually every broadcast ad uses the voice of an announcer but, due to lack of guidance from the marketing literature, managers must rely on gut feel when choosing a voice. Drawing on research from psycholinguistics we identify three important voice characteristics, syllable speed, interphrase pausation, and pitch, and link these characteristics to key advertising response variables. By considering these three variables simultaneously, we test competing explanations previously offered to explain the process by which speech rate affects consumer response to advertising. Specifically, we assess whether an increase in speech rate enhances or reduces processing of the advertisement, and whether this effect is driven primarily by syllable speed or interphrase pausation. Consideration of these two aspects of speech rate independently helps us identify whether the changes in processing stem from changes in the opportunity to process and/or the motivation to process. Our results show that a voice with faster-than-normal syllable speed and low pitch produces less negative ad-directed cognitive responses, more favorable ad attitudes, as well as more favorable brand attitudes, lending support to a motivational process explanation. No significant effects were found for interphrase pausation suggesting that the results cannot be accounted for by the reduced opportunity to process in the compressed conditions.

Marketing in Subsistence Marketplaces

Management research has recently begun to shed new light on the role and nature of business innovations targeted at subsistence marketplaces (Viswanathan and Rosa 2007), the four billion poor that have also been referred to as constituting the Bottom of the Pyramid (Prahalad 2005). The notion that ways might be found for business to effectively serve the needs of subsistence markets is gaining increasing currency, and holds promise for both firms and consumers. For firms, it constitutes potential access to a vast, undertapped market for products and services. For subsistence consumers, it includes the promise of affordable access to products hitherto unaffordable or unavailable. Although gaining momentum, this viewpoint still faces many challenges, including the central question of whether business really can help to overcome the problem of poverty. We contend that the best way to begin to address such issues is to develop deep understanding of the lives of individuals living in subsistence conditions. This paves the way for a bottom-up, grounded understanding of the potential for business to contribute to economic and social development among the poor. Our subsistence marketplaces perspective is a bottom up approach to understanding buyer, seller, and marketplace behavior that complements mid-level business strategy approaches, such as the base of the pyramid approach, and macro-level economic approaches to studying business and poverty that currently exist in the literature.

When Do Consumers Avoid Imperfections? Superficial Packaging Damage as a Contamination Cue

Across six experiments, the authors demonstrate that superficial imperfections in the form of packaging damage can engender negative consumer reactions that shape subsequent attitudes and behaviors in ways that are not always objectively justified. Their findings show that these reactions function in a relatively automatic fashion, even emerging under conditions in which the packaging damage does not convey information about a health and safety threat from the product. The authors extend work on contagion to show that superficial packaging damage can act as a contamination cue, automatically activating thoughts of contamination and health and safety concerns. This tendency to avoid superficial packaging damage can be eliminated by counteracting these thoughts of contamination. This can be done with positive brand associations (i.e., by branding the product as organic) or by creating a physical buffer between the packaging damage and the product itself. The authors close with a discussion of implications for marketers, consumers, and public policy makers.

Marketing in Subsistence Markets: Innovation through Decentralization and Externalization

Billions of people around the world live in subsistence conditions. While this has traditionally been treated as a humanitarian challenge, it also represents a business opportunity. Academic research has yet to explore this notion adequately, particularly from the perspective of marketing. In this chapter, we draw on social capital theory to show how rich social ties in otherwise poor populations constitute assets that can be leveraged for the benefit of firms and consumers alike. Building on these ideas, we contend that a decentralized and externalized marketing structure should be more effective in subsistence contexts. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

A TYPOLOGY OF NONPROFIT COMPETITION: INSIGHTS FOR SOCIAL MARKETERS

than twenty-five years, he has conducted research, taught about, written cases, and been involved in managing and advising nonprofit organisations. His research interests include marketing models, arts and entertainment, and marketing strategy. He is co-author of Public and Nonprofit Marketing.