Stephen Graham Saunders

Banking patronage motives of the urban informal poor

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the banking needs of urban informal poor consumers in South Africa. These consumers find it difficult to obtain access to banking products.Design/methodology/approach – A survey of consumers was undertaken in a large informal settlement outside Johannesburg. A qualitative exploratory pilot study was undertaken first to gain a better understanding of these consumers and to develop a research instrument. Second, a quantitative analysis was undertaken among 200 households.Findings – Banking products used by the sample are discussed as well as all their patronage motives. It was established that the majority of consumers did have a bank account and there was a significant association between having an account and various demographics such as income level, employment status and level of education.Research limitations/implications – Each informal settlement may have unique characteristics and therefore it may be difficult to generalize the fi...

Measuring and applying the PAKSERV service quality construct

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the PAKSERV service quality measure in a South African cultural context.Design/methodology/approach – In order to test and confirm the dimensionality of the PAKSERV service quality construct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used. The data were collected through a survey of over 300 Black South African banking customers.Findings – The results of the CFA confirmed that PAKSERV is a valid measure of service quality in a South African cultural context, consisting of six dimensions: tangibility, reliability, assurance, sincerity, personalisation and formality.Research limitations/implications – A major limitation of this study is that PAKSERV was only validated for the banking sector. To ensure validity across a variety of industries and cultural contexts, further replication would be needed.Practical implications – By measuring and evaluating service quality dimensions that are culturally relevant to customers, marketing managers can focus on the dimen...

Redefining social marketing: beyond behavioural change

Purpose – This paper aims to present a definition of social marketing that considers the purpose and role of social marketing beyond behaviour change. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews present social marketing definitions and then bolsters its underlying theoretical structure with insights distilled from three schools of thought: macromarketing, transformative consumer research and the capability approach. Findings – Guided by the three theoretical streams, we introduce our definition, namely: social marketing is the application of marketing principles to enable individual and collective ideas and actions in the pursuit of effective, efficient, equitable, fair and sustained social transformation. Practical implications – We present a list of practical implications derived from our definition of social marketing. We stress that our social marketing definition better reflects the need to balance the effects (efficiency and effectiveness) and the process (equity, fairness and sustainability) of...

Scenario planning: a collage construction approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to suggest and recommend an alternative visual technique to collect scenario planning information. This visual technique is known as collage or papier colle.Design/methodology/approach – A case study example of using collage construction to collect scenario planning information is presented.Findings – Collage construction was deemed well suited to scenario planning as it overcome some of the problems of verbal communication techniques, providing an additional technique that allows the scenario planner to analyse information from multiple angles and sources. Through using multiple techniques, the scenario planner is able to increase “trustworthiness” of the data and analysis and build confidence that the future scenarios are “authentic”, “believable” and “applicable”.Research limitations/implications – A major limitation of this study is that only one case study is presented. To ensure “trustworthiness” across a variety of industries and cultural contexts, further rep...

Improving community health through marketing exchanges: A participatory action research study on water, sanitation, and hygiene in three Melanesian countries

Diseases related to poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) are major causes of mortality and morbidity. While pursuing marketing approaches to WaSH to improve health outcomes is often narrowly associated with monetary exchange, marketing theory recognises four broad marketing exchange archetypes: market-based, non-market-based, command-based and culturally determined. This diversity reflects the need for parameters broader than monetary exchange when improving WaSH. This study applied a participatory action research process to investigate how impoverished communities in Melanesian urban and peri-urban informal settlements attempt to meet their WaSH needs through marketing exchange. Exchanges of all four archetypes were present, often in combination. Motivations for participating in the marketing exchanges were based on social relationships alongside WaSH needs, health aspirations and financial circumstances. By leveraging these motivations and pre-existing, self-determined marketing exchanges, WaSH practitioners may be able to foster WaSH marketing exchanges consistent with local context and capabilities, in turn improving community physical, mental and social health.

Marketing‐driven philanthropy: the case of PlayPumps

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through a comparative historical analysis, the impact of a shift to a marketing‐driven (business‐oriented) philanthropic funding structure on NGOs, international businesses that fund charities, and the recipients of the funding for a water pump system in southern Africa.Design/methodology/approach – The study deconstructs and dissects the introduction and acceptance of the PlayPumps water pump system by generating four historical funding‐structure models that typified the philanthropic funding at the time. Each time period is critically examined to investigate how changes toward marketing‐driven philanthropy affected the viability of the project.Findings – The key finding is that by shifting to a marketing‐driven (business‐oriented) philanthropic funding structure, NGOs risk fundamentally disconnecting the funders and the recipients of the funding. Serious concerns arise regarding the role of businesses in driving the “overcommercialisation” of market...

Service employee evaluations of customer tips: an expectations-disconfirmation tip gap approach

Purpose – Many service employees rely on non-contractual voluntary customer tips as a major source of their income. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the relationship between the service employee’s cognitive evaluation of the tip (expectations-disconfirmation tip gap), affective state (AS) and displayed emotions (DE) toward customers in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach – An experimental, between-subjects, scenario-based research design was conducted on 107 waiters in the US restaurant industry. A simple mediation model was first tested, before testing a more complex moderated mediation model that was developed to investigate if employees self-control (SC) moderates the relationship between the employees tip gap, AS, and DE. Findings – An employee’s negative disconfirmation tip gap negatively influences the employee’s AS, which in turn results in negative DE toward customers in the workplace. However, an employee’s positive tip gap does not positively influence the employee’s AS, r...

Markets and marketing research on poverty and its alleviation: summarizing an evolving logic toward human capabilities, well-being goals and transformation

Marketing practitioners and business scholars now view some of the world’s poorest communities as profitable growth markets. Hence a market-based approach to poverty alleviation has gathered momentum. This article traces the evolution of such a market-based approach over four decades and highlights a gradual trend away from a deficit-reduction approach (focused on constraints and justice) towards an opportunity-expansion approach (focused on capabilities and well-being). This trend is summarized in an analytical framework of human capabilities, well-being goals and transformative impact evolved from the literature. The framework is then used to analyse the practice of sanitation marketing, which has emerged as a key method in one of the highest priority domains in international development discourse – sanitation. The article concludes with a discussion of how contemporary work can further take forward the key tenets of the framework and guide the development of ‘good markets’ for the poor.

Ethical performance evaluation: an extension and illustration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate over time the ethical performance of a multinational foods company – Nestle – operating in a highly dynamic, complex, and often ambiguous environment in a crisis torn Zimbabwe.Design/methodology/approach – The case study applies an ethical performance evaluation (EPE) managerial framework to evaluate the actions of Nestle Zimbabwe at various critical decision‐making time periods.Findings – While consumer pressure groups and international rights activists in Europe condemned Nestles actions in Zimbabwe as unethical and unacceptable, this research found that by exploring the events over time (i.e. longitudinal research) as the context of the event (crisis in Zimbabwe) evolved, it was shown that Nestle faced a major ethical dilemma; and may have acted ethically and indeed acceptably given the unfolding crisis in Zimbabwe.Research limitations/implications – An EPE managerial framework is a useful tool to provide insight and knowledge of a particular event, h...