Proceedings of the 2002 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference

Spurred by deregulation, the needs of professional service firms have changed dramatically over the past few decades. These changing needs have led to the use of business concepts previously avoided by such firms. As previously regulated industries have become more competitive, professional service firms have begun to rely upon services marketing concepts to maintain and/or strengthen their position in a widely expanding competitive arena.

While researchers have examined the impact of retail promotions on purchase acceleration in the past, the distinction between time-limited and time independent promotions has not been made in this context. Thus, for example, Neslin et al (1985) found that coupons have no significant impact on purchase acceleration. In this paper, we argue that promotions of short durations (time-limited) such as store coupons will accelerate purchases whereas promotions of longer durations (time independent) such as manufacturer's coupons will have no such impact. We test this hypothesis for two categories of consumer goods using scanner panel data. In a separate study, we also examine the impact of semantic cues indicating the time-limited nature of promotions (such as "10 Hours Only Sale") on purchase willingness, intent to search further for deals and attitude towards the deal.

I propose a simple model summarizing the key drivers of customer loyalty of one of the most important tourism destinations of Argentina: Mar del Plata. I outline a set of issues for further research related to the quality-value-loyalty chain specifically for a tourism destination in a developing country, like the concept of seasonability, habits, emotional intentions and age.

This paper provides a unique analysis of the visitor profile to a wine festival staged in the Swan Valley. It attempts to identify the major factors that contribute to staging successful festival in the Valley. Results indicate location as being of primary importance for events managers when staging festivals in urban-rural peripheral zone.

Waiting for service in a retail store is an experience that can lead to consumer dissatisfaction (Katz, Larson and Larson 1991), which in turn can result in negative effects on store patronage behavior (Hui, Dube and Chebat 1997). Previous studies on the effects of waiting have tended to focus on consumer responses to delays under conditions of actual or simulated waits (e.g., Hui, Dube and Chebat 1994; Taylor 1994). In these studies, subjects actually experienced a wait situation. However, before retail customers choose to wait, they are likely to estimate how long that wait will be based on cues they observe in the store environment. If their observations lead to an

expectation

that the wait will be too long, they may not even enter the store, or stay long enough to experience a wait. Thus, there is a need to understand the antecedents of wait expectations and the role of these expectations on patronage intentions. We use inference theory as a conceptual foundation for building our model, and generating hypotheses to test the model.

Hypercompetition affects organizations in an industry, influencing their structure and relationships with other entities. The presence of hypercompetitive firms in an industry discourages the use of long-term, cooperative alliances, favoring instead short-term, transactional relationships (Lengnick-Hall and Wolff 1999). Retail cooperatives, a unique form of organization in the retail industry, are composed of individual, independent retailers cooperating voluntarily to build scope and scale advantages. They depend on long-term cooperation between and among their many members to build efficiencies that allow them to compete effectively against larger, more powerful competitors (Ghosh 1994). The strength of a member's desire to behave in a manner that benefits the cooperative as a group, rather than in a way that may benefit only the individual member, is represented by the concept of group identification (Lembke and Wilson 1998). A member's level of identification with the group is a key indicator of their commitment to that group (Albert, Ashforth and Dutton 2000). In a segment of the retail industry exhibiting signs of hypercompetition, what effect does group identification, a sign of loyalty to the group, have on member perceptions of the cooperative group? At a time when long-term, alliance relationships are believed to be a liability to a firm (D'Aveni 1994), are retail cooperatives perceived to be an effective form of organization by their members? This study assesses the influence of a member's level of group identification on that member's perceptions of cooperative group structure and relationship effectiveness. Implications will benefit management of cooperative groups who are seeking the appropriate role of these organizations in a hypercompetitive market. Retailers who are considering whether or not to join a cooperative group in the current environment may also benefit.

This conceptual paper reviews the place of technology in services marketing and technology-based self-services (TBSS) in a general classification schema for services. This is followed by a discussion of benefits and challenges of TBSS for retailers. Finally, a research agenda, which incorporates company, customer, employee and technology point of views is presented.

Why study interface & design in digital environments? This is probably only one of many determinants of the success and/or failure of digital ventures amongst other variables such as business model used, competitive environment, external communication effort etc. However, from a consumer behavior perspective, it is an important dimension impacting on an emotional level as researched and evidenced in the Atmospherics literature (Kotler 1974; Baker et al. 1992; Sherman et al. 1997). Think of the physical space contained within a computer screen as the setting where transactions are likely to occur, not unlike a physical retail environment. Accordingly, as in a physical retail setting, a gamut of additional peripheral cues are going to affect how consumers perceive stimuli exposed to them such as brands, metaphors, iconic representations etc. Given this, we can rightfully ask the research question: is the site design actually

furthering

or

hindering

the original business goals and objectives? The resulting consumer reaction to the peripheral stimuli is likely to impact on attitude toward the site and brand, the probability of revisit and probability of transaction (Lohse and Spiller 1999; Mandel and Johnson 1999). To understand the true nature of these effects, one has to draw from a diversity of literature streams, namely human/machine interface, usability, consumer-oriented design and cognitive psychology. The purpose of this special session is to present some results of empirical research conducted by marketing scholars involved in this specific area and to critically examine what research agenda lies ahead.

Although channel integration is an important topic in international marketing literature, several issues related to the topic are not fully addressed. First, mature products have received much attention in previous research and entry mode choice for new product export is not adequately examined. Second, among prior studies few explored the impact of channel integration on product market performance. Third, previous studies placed an emphasis on the effect of asset specificity on channel integration. However, their asset specificity was examined in the context of investment in service industries or general business and the findings are not readily applicable to investment in new product development in emerging industries.

For the long-term success of a business, creating and maintaining a sustainable strategic position is crucial. Being everything to everybody is not sustainable, as it does not protect the company from imitators. According to Porter (1996) and Tellier & Pecaut (1995) trade-offs are necessary to create a sustainable position because they force the company to make choices and limit what they offer. These authors assert that managers have been led to believe that operational effectiveness eliminates the need for trade-offs, however the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. Porter (1996), for example, states that through the years managers have concentrated on achieving operational effectiveness rather than strategy development. Management tools, such as TQM, benchmarking and outsourcing have replaced strategy. Even though both - operational effectiveness and strategy - are necessary for superior performance, they play different roles. Operational effectiveness is performing similar activities better than competitors, while strategy means performing different activities from competitors or performing similar activities in different ways. Operational effectiveness is an interesting issue as it exemplifies what a vast majority of companies are doing. All companies seem to be interested in being at the forefront of the productivity frontier, without considering that even though constant improvement in operational effectiveness is necessary for superior profitability it is not enough for overall competitiveness. Tucker et al (1987) state that competitive benchmarking -one of the tools used to achieve operational effectiveness - is not capable of identifying a competitive advantage. The only thing it achieves is identifying ways in which a company can imitate the best in their industry.

Past research has clearly demonstrated the importance of information search within the consumer buying process (e.g., Thorelli et al., 1975). Scholars have identified several sources used by consumers in order to obtain information relevant to their purchase situation. The rich literature dealing with this topic has also suggested that, in general, people tend to use only a limited number of the sources available to them in an effort to keep the search costs low (Midgley, 1983). Among the various information sources, interpersonal non-commercial sources seem to play an important role in consumers' choice decisions (e.g., Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Price and Feick, 1984). The purpose of the present study is to investigate possible influencers of consumer preference for interpersonal information search. This preference refers to consumers' tendency to favour the use of interpersonal, noncommercial, sources as a means of obtaining product-related information.

Previous research on numerical and verbal information has examined its impact on either high or low involvement products individually. However, there is a need to examine them together in order to understand how it would vary across products because consumers are looking for different types of information when shopping for products. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous research by exploring the impact of presenting information in numerical and verbal formats across high and low involvement products.

Transparency, the disclosure and sharing of an abundance of information, has been championed as a more desired quality of business markets over the last decade, particularly in connection with financial markets, electronic business exchanges, supply chain management, and buyer-seller relationships. Recent attention given to transparency has been driven by advances in information technology, globalization of business, financial events, rising norms for disclosure and data exchange standards, and the development of closer supply, distribution, and customer relationships. The article focuses on transparency at market and business relationship levels, where there is public, market, or, at least, relationship disclosure of information about prices, costs, volume, suppliers, buyers, subsequent customers, and product and service features.

The emerging use of the Internet and Computer Mediated Communication in the buyer-seller interface is an important topic to marketing practitioners and academics. The aim of this manuscript is to propose an exploration of the increasingly complex choice set organizational buyers are faced with when communicating with vendors based on theoretical foundations from communication and management. Information richness theory and the social influence model are utilized to develop a propositional framework for future investigations into this phenomenon.

The convergence of forces such as the globalization of markets, the escalating pace of technological change, and growing pressure from investors provides a catalyst for the emergence of brand management with supply chain partners as an important factor for determining a firm's competitive advantage. Many companies are rationalizing their supplier bases, significantly reducing the number of potential trading partners in favor of building stronger relationships to assure supply of critical resources in an increasingly turbulent business environment. The failure to successfully manage the firm's brand with supply chain partners is now seen as a potentially fatal obstacle to success of the brand (Shocker, Srivistava and Ruekert 1994). However, a systematic review of the marketing literature reveals that our understanding of brands has been built through studies of consumer relationships with brands, and there is very little research devoted to understanding brands in the business-to-business (B2B) context.

Today is the triumph of international marketing. Market economies are more efficient than planned economies. We see the abolishment of state monopolies, the opening of national economies towards the world market, and global rules and laws to ensure competitive market conditions. Yet, the academic field of international marketing bears up very unsteadily under the weight of these laurels. Some researchers doubt their abilities to explain international marketing phenomena. Many practitioners ignore the academic encouragement of internationalization and refuse to participate in the global market. Most visible is the discontent of consumers. Many view international marketing and its agents, the marketers, as exploiters, destroyers, and Americanizers.

While the debate about the pros and cons of globalization continues, most agree that it is irreversible and inevitable. As country after country embraces the mantra of market driven economic reforms, an interesting phenomenon seems to emerge - countries are vying with one another for the multinational investment. In this era of economic liberalization, the government plays a critical role by providing the needed leadership in the drive towards globalization. However, governments need to be cognizant of the effects of various public policy enactments and public opinion is one measure of such effects. In this study, we argue that the public opinion concerning the antecedents and consequences of market driven economic reforms at the local government level is extremely complex, multidimensional, and are inextricably linked. The present study empirically explores the relationship amongst economic restructuring and its antecedents and consequences. The various constructs were operationalized as perceptual measures using a public opinion survey. The investigation was contextualized at a local government level (as against national level) and the focus was to understand how a local government can interact with and benefit from the globalization process. To this end we propose:

Pl:

Public perceptions regards the outcomes of the economic reforms, i.e., an enhanced perception of quality of life and financial security, is likely to be positively associated with their perceptions of the process itself. In other words, people generally happy with the outcome factors such as quality of life, etc. are likely to be more satisfied with the process involved in the economic reforms.

P2:

Public perceptions regards the outcomes of the economic reforms, i.e., an enhanced perception of quality of life and financial security, is likely to be positively associated with their perceptions regarding foreign enterprise and their motivations. In other words, people generally happy with the outcome factors such as quality of life, etc., are likely to be more satisfied with the factors such as foreign investment apprehension, attractors, and justifications.

One of the oldest concerns of international marketers is whether the "foreignness" of a product makes it less preferable to consumers (Schooler 1965, 1971). A number of studies have documented that a bias against foreign products and in favor of domestic ones does in fact exist (for reviews see Bilkey and Nes 1982; Ozsomer and Cavusgil 1991; Papadopoulos and Heslop 1993; Peterson and Jolibert 1995; Verlegh and Steenkamp 1999). This type of bias (referred to as “domestic country bias” (DCB) from now on) is manifested in both product perceptions and buying intentions (Peterson and Jolibert 1995). The prevailing explanation for DCB is based on individual differences in terms of a “trait-like property” of an individual's personality called “consumer ethnocentrism” (CE) (Shimp and Sharma 1987, p.280). Holders of this property tend to exhibit higher levels of DCB and, hence, are less favorably disposed towards foreign products (Shimp and Sharma 1987; Sharma, Shimp and Shin 1995).

To enhance our understanding of fear of success (FOS) in a diverse sales environment, differences in gender and age are explored. Two samples revealed no differences in FOS on gender for either sample. The samples were then combined; the results show that fear of success decreases with age.

This paper proposes a curvilinear relationship between expatriate (guest worker) salesperson performance and actual turnover. Also, the relationship is moderated by expatriate salesperson adjustment. Utilizing a single event-history (or survival) analysis technique, we test the relationships with a sample of 308 expatriate salesperson-manager dyads. Results indicate that the relationship between expatriate salesperson performance and actual turnover is indeed curvilinear and the three dimensions of expatriate adjustment do moderate the curvilinear relationship.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the generalizability of previous research concerning negotiation and influence communications behaviors to sales interactions in the retail setting. In order to accomplish this goal, the paper (1) discusses the unique contingency factors of the retail setting in order to conceptualize the unique structures of the retail environment, (2) examines the ways in which these contingency factors relate to the retail sales situation using sociological theories of structure and culture, and (3) provides a brief review of the negotiation and bargaining literature and an extensive review of the interpersonal communication influence/persuasion literature in marketing to examine the shortcomings of prior literature. Combined, these objectives help to build a simple conceptual model that provides an initial direction for exploring the complex personal selling communication issues in the retailing setting.

This study explores the relationship between the emotional intelligence of salespeople and salary as a measure of sales performance. Results indicate that salespeople with higher salaries (high-performing salespeople) have higher levels of emotional intelligence than do salespeople with lower salaries (low-performing salespeople.)

This study uses a path model to investigate and assesses organizational and motivational determinants in successful, creative marketing campaigns by analyzing a sample of Korean marketing practitioners. Our primary findings suggest that a supporting work environment for creativity generally boosts the intrinsic motivation of Korean marketing practitioners to plan and work hard, and thus results in creative and effective outcomes. The job performance is well predicted by creativity, working hard, and intrinsic motivation in this model. However, considering its low explained variance, campaign creativity, which is defined here as practical and outcome oriented, may be predicted by factors other than the organizational and motivation factors used in the present study.

This paper develops a typology for market windows with the objective of providing insights on the proper timing of new product launches across multiple generations. The typology is based on the concepts of rhythms for a market's receptivity for new products as well as a firm's new product launch readiness.

Interdepartmental interaction has attracted much attention due to its impact on firm efficiency and profitability. It is useful to understand the nature of interdepartmental interaction between marketing and accounting due to the “tensions and misunderstandings” between these functions. The primary objective of this study is to examine the antecedents and outcomes of interdepartmental interactions by analysing the differences between firms that exhibit high versus low levels of interdependence. Our model is based on risk aversion, organisational structure and reward systems as antecedents of interdepartmental interaction leading to performance outcomes which include market performance, customer satisfaction and information exchange. A four-item scale is used to measure interdependence and to classify the respondents into two groups based on a sample of 95 larger Canadian firms.

I approach every course as a unique opportunity to deliver value to my students' professional careers. My courses always deal with some aspect of managerial decision- making: sales managers, marketing managers, marketing strategists. My teaching, research, and professional business experience are interconnected. All have strong ties to managerial decision-making and strategy development. I believe that the successful professor seeks out and nurtures common ground across the various components of the job. I look at my job as creating a forum where students can practice thinking like a manager. The courses I teach suit my teaching style very well, because they afford me the chance to work with students in small teams in more of a professional development setting. I become familiar with each student's individual goals, strengths, and weaknesses and can operate from more of a consultative style to help them reach their own potential.

Teaching is a lifelong endeavor which extends beyond the classroom. It is a continual learning process, since to be an effective teacher one must be an effective learner. My teaching philiosophy has been developed and refined over a number of years and I apply it to my own children as well as to my students. This philosophy is based upon five specific principles, which I try to intertwine with the subject I am teaching. These principles are:

A personal teaching philosophy I have taught most aspects of marketing, as well as some aspects of business policy, strategy and management to undergraduates, post-graduates, MB As, Ph.D. students and executives over a period of over twenty years. My class sizes have ranged from two or three, through thirty, fifty, ninety to nearly four hundred, on all five continents. My teaching has been at little-known schools that I won't mention, to some of the world's best known, which I will — Columbia, University of Chicago, and London Business School. My ratings have ranged from truly dreadful (fortunately not on many occasions, and then I could not sleep) to perfect fives (on a number of occasions, and when I again, could not sleep). My first love is case teaching, and I have finally begun to believe that I know what makes it work! My other great passion is to bring new members to our wonderful profession and I like to believe that I have excelled at that. The great majority of my graduate level PhD students have done well, and some have made me less than modest (if its true that when the student is better than the teacher, the teacher is good — then I'm probably not bad).

My teaching philosophy comprises two parts. First, I hope to help each student improve his/her "skillset" (critical thinking, decision-making, written and oral communication) by offering an educational experience that provides real-world insight about business, specifically, marketing. After taking a course with me, I hope each student walks away saying, "I really got some useful skills from Professor Wilson's class."

The basic practice of retailing has undergone remarkable, fundamental changes in the past 20 years. With the rise of non-store retailing (e.g., person-to-person, catalog, telephone, internet, etc.), coupled with consumers' increased willingness to buy via these alternate channels, traditional brick-and-mortar stores are not necessarily a requirement in today's retailing environment. Given the rather dramatic changes affecting retailing in general, the question “What makes a successful retail establishment?” is relevant for practitioners and researchers.

This paper presents an exploratory field study on consumers' store price perceptions — a phenomenon that hitherto has received little attention within marketing research. In the study, consumers' perceptions of the price levels of grocery stores are compared to the actual price levels in these stores. The results indicate that the correspondence between actual and perceived prices, on average, is fairly good, although the variance in price estimation accuracy as well as price perception on the individual consumer level is large.

In many different industrial and service providing sectors customer satisfaction is regarded as the key to customer loyalty. However, this relationship is influenced by several other variables, such as the congruent perception of brand personality, switching barriers or the attractiveness of products and services provided by rival companies. Therefore, a structural equation model with latent variables is developed in order to provide a theoretical rationale and empirical validation of these complex relationships. Additionally, the paper points to the existence of different segments in the retail banking market as defined by the extent of variety the customers are searching for. Consequently, the postulated relationships are examined simultaneously in two distinct groups: the group of variety seekers versus the group of non-variety seekers. To test the model empirically, a written survey among 709 adult customers of a leading retail bank was carried out in June 2001. Finally, 241 customers, which corresponds to a response rate of 34%, provided data for analysis.

This study focuses on how technology turbulence affects the exhibited customer orientation of retailers. Customer orientation of the retailers is measured through the customer route. The findings reveal that customers perceive similar levels of customer orientation from retailers selling high-tech products and those selling low-tech products. The study also establishes that customer orientation affects customer satisfaction of retailers.

The Internet provides an alternative method for reaching retail consumers, and E-tailing is attracting considerable attention from practitioners and scholars. The present study aims to develop a better understanding of Internet shopping (with a special emphasis on explaining consumer patronage behavior). Our focus is on the “C” side of B-to-C commerce.

Jurisdiction entails the power of a court to hear a given case and to require that businesses and/or individuals try the case before the court and face its judgment. This paper examines online jurisdictional issues to help marketers avoid problems that can arise from jurisdictional exposure.

Smith, Milberg, and Burke's (1996) scale of concerns over information privacy concerns is adapted to the Internet. Results show that concerns over data collection and errors are directly adaptable to the Internet, while unauthorized secondary use of data collected and improper access to collected data merge into one factor.

This paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis uncovering similar groups of articles and establishing the positioning of four major marketing journals (JAMS, JM, JMR and JCR) in terms of what was actually published between 1996 and 2001. A census of the 694 articles published in JAMS, JM, JMR and JCR between 1996 and 2001 was conducted followed by a factorial, hierarchical cluster and correspondence analyses. The results reveals that each periodical has its own distinct personality except for the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science that carries a dual positioning. First, JAMS appears to have established itself in terms of conceptual articles and literature reviews. Furthermore, JAMS competes head to head by sharing JM's positioning in terms of publications regarding organizational/distribution channels dynamics intimately related to the structural equation modeling of theoretical constructs underlying manager's decision making processes. This may constitutes a surprise for many academicians in addition to the large proportion of those studies SEM and managers (178 out of all 233 articles appear in JM/JAMS). The analysis also identified a trend exclusively related to the Journal of Consumer Research; indeed the number of studies required nowadays before being published must now reach close to three by article on average (excluding regular pretests).

This paper revisits writings of economists as well as critics of management and management education. It calls for “academic entrepreneurship” among management/marketing educators and development of a new academic focus on capitalism as an evolutionary process which significantly alters the balance of economic and political power and shapes cultural and attitudinal values throughout the global economy.

The paradigm shift from instructional to experiential learning (Bobbitt et al. 2000) has led marketing instructors to include “real-life” projects in their courses. While some prefer working with local businesses, others favor nonprofit organizations and argue that, due to the needs and audiences of such nonprofits, marketing for these organizations is much harder and thus the learning experience is enhanced (Petkus 2000). Accordingly, one purpose of this article is to discuss the pros and cons of working with for-profit versus nonprofit organizations to add value to the learning experience. A second purpose is to describe the benefits students and instructors can derive from starting their own nonprofit organization as a teaching tool.

The CRM industry is set to be worth $16.8bn by 2003 but almost 50% of firms are dissatisfied with the performance of their systems. Evidence suggests that CRM activity is currently concentrated on segmentation - a necessary precursor to fully developing differentiated customer relationship strategies. The time is ripe to examine in some detail the reliability and validity of cluster analysis, the statistical technique most widely used to identify segments. If ways can be suggested to improve the application of the technique, then this may render improved performance from CRM systems. This paper reports the findings of a study which subjected a data set designed for segmentation purposes to a series of rigorous validity and reliability tests and went as far as to randomise the data to ascertain whether current methods could detect "false" data. Our findings highlight that cluster analysis is a contentious methodology, exploratory in nature and relying extensively on subjective interpretation. Whilst the cluster solution based on the randomised data did, in fact, break down ultimately this was only after subjecting the procedure to a very rigorous series of tests. The question which arises is whether marketing managers faced with cluster solutions from CRM applications would test their data with such vigour. If they do not then they run the danger of seeking out relationships not with real groups of people but with meaningless computations of data.

Relational marketing has enjoyed a rich literature stream since Dwyer, Schurr, Oh (1987) wrote one of the discipline's seminal articles. As reported by Gruen, Summers, and Acito (2000), most of the research studies on relationships in marketing have centered on relationships between members of a marketing channel (c.f., Brown, Lusch, and Nicholson 1995; Kumar, Scheer, and Steenkamp 1995; Morgan and Hunt 1994). In the relationship marketing literature, it appears as if most researchers assume that the relationship exists between organizations. Specifically, it is assumed that the relationship exists between the selling organization and the buying organization. For a positive relationship to develop between two entities, it is logical to assume that the relationship evolved due to a series of positive outcomes. Looking at relationship marketing from the buyer's perspective, the buyer must have experienced positive outcomes with some combination of the seller's product(s), the seller's boundary personnel (salesperson/people) or the selling organization as a whole. The question becomes “ to whom does the buyer attribute the positive outcomes. In addition, the buyer has two levels at which the relationship can lie, the individual buyer, or the entire buying organization. Therefore, the possible permutations of relationships in this scenario are:

Distinct differences in professional services include one-on-one interactions involving repeated, frequent encounters with the same professional service provider. These services also differ with respect to there: 1) complexity; 2) intimate nature; and 3) co-production of service outcomes. The unique nature of professional services may exaggerate customer reliance on social aspects of the relationship to drive positive outcomes for the service provider, such as client satisfaction, loyalty, and recommendations (Gronröos 1990). Plausibly, social aspects of professional service relationships (SAPSR) may also encourage client compliance with professional advice, thereby generating positive results for the client.

The business of professional soccer-clubs is based on mass-based enthusiasm. Knowing the spectators' needs is essential in order to successfully realize a spectator-oriented framing of the soccer-event as a total product. With the changing of soccer as an original leisure-time-activity into a full-scale commercial concern new demands for the management of professional soccer-clubs gained currency. In order to produce spectator-enthusiasm nothing else is necessary but 22 soccer-players and a ball. The entrepreneurial environment should be designed as to create a profitable connection for all those involved. Thus, while respective investors add to their economic benefit, spectators are satisfied in their need for having experienced a great soccer-event. Only by means of detecting the product-features that carry greater importance for the customer in terms of need can the soccer-event as a total product be profitably realized. In doing so, this economic interests can be combined with the views of customers and spectators respectively. By means of an exemplary empirical study of a professional German soccer-club the beneficial attributes of the “soccer-event” as a total product will be registered in order to provide a deeper understanding of the new demands peculiar to the field of sports-clubs management.

The objective of this paper is to outline the tremendous tourism potential in the Indian subcontinent and also to identify the benefits of eco-tourism especially from the developing countrys' perspective. The paper also attempts to elaborate on the eco-tourism initiatives undertaken by two of India's leading states and analyzes the possible impact both on the tourism and economic development as a result of these initiatives

This paper describes the emerging concept of destination branding, which although it is not yet widespread, holds tremendous potential for both new and existing tourism destinations. While researchers have recognized the possibility of branding destinations, the concept has never been formally proposed or clearly delineated, nor have the difficulties of doing so been explicated. One of the major issues of concern to tourism managers has been the issue of control of the destination brand given the complexity of the tourism product and the numerous parties involved in its operation. This paper begins the process of developing an understanding of the destination branding process as well as the factors influencing its applicability.

There are still certain trust domains that have not been explored sufficiently, such as the measurement and evaluation of multiple informants and asymmetric interactions of mutual trust in service encounters. This means that only the buyer’s or seller’s perspective has usually been taken into consideration. Furthermore, only matched pairs of buyer’s and seller’s perceptions have been generally explored. Finally, multiple informants are rarely used in quantitative trust research, if at all.

The topics of response rates, corresponding nonresponse rates and the associated nonresponse bias are, or should be, of interest to all researchers using survey instruments (Struebbe, Kernan, and Grogan 1986). Given that ad hoc (i.e., one-shot) mail surveys, in comparison to other survey methods including mail panels, have traditionally suffered from much higher nonresponse rates (Visser et al. 1996), both practitioners and academicians conducting mail surveys of this type are generally very concerned with nonresponse rates and normally report these rates in their research output (Yammarino, Skinner, and Childers 1991). These researchers also generally state whether they were able to detect nonresponse bias. That is, they acknowledge that it is important to determine the error that results from a systematic difference between those who responded to a mail survey and those who did not respond, because such a systematic difference raises serious doubts concerning the accuracy of the results (Lambert and Harrington 1990).

The ontological debate over truth and reality has been a widely discussed issue in marketing. The purpose of this paper is to take a fresh look at what truth is. In doing so, the paper aims to provide a new perspective, eclectic relativism, to understand the nature of truth and to reconcile the problem of incommensurability in marketing.

In the marketing and advertising literature very few studies have looked into the issue of web site standardization or localization, and there seems to be a debate as to whether web is a culturally neutral or culturally sensitive document. To address this confusion and deficit in the literature, the research proposes to study cultural values, as reflected on U.S. and Mexican web sites. The results from the content analysis of U.S. and Mexican web pages indicate that there are significant differences in depiction of local cultural values on the web.

In low context cultures, such as in the United States, we attempt to de-contextualize everything. Business contracts, for example, attempt to breakdown every possible aspect of anything that could possibly arise during the contract period. In high context cultures, often a handshake is enough and the person's “word” is considered much more binding and trustworthy than any written agreement. In high context cultures much more emphasis is placed on symbolic gestures than what is written or said.

This study used an experiment to examine the effects of cross-cultural differences on consumers' reactions to Internet advertisements. Internet users from three countries were recruited to investigate whether cultural factors influence Internet advertisement effectiveness. Results indicate that online shopping interest, rather than cross-cultural factors, influenced respondents' reactions to Internet advertisements.

Over the last decade, marketing researchers have increasing directed attention toward the evaluation of brand extensions (see, e.g., Aaker 1990; Buday 1991; Loken and Ward 1990; Romeo 1991; Smith 1992; Smith and Park 1992; Sullivan 1990).. Well-conceived extensions of a core service brand can reinvigorate a company's portfolio of offerings, enabling the firm to retain its market position in the face of competitive alternatives.

This study uses the attribution theory to develop a conceptual framework to explore consumers' reactions to waiting in lines as a result of service delay. Consumers' attributions are an important link in understanding the relationship between service failure and service evaluation. This paper uses two dimensions (locus of control and stability) to generate four attribution variables: attributions to ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. These four attributions are used to develop a conceptual model that explains and predicts consumers' reaction to service delay. From the conceptual framework several propositions were generated regarding the relationships among service delay, waiting in lines, and consumers' satisfaction.

We explore how individualists and collectivists use internal and external information sources to form should and will service expectations. Our focus is airlines and subjects are experienced consumers. We measure individualism and collectivism at the subcultural level, test for invariance using multigroup comparison, and suggest directions for future research and implications for service providers.

The increased wealth of individuals within a society, along with their occupation, possessions and class-consciousness, often brings with it a change in the social stratification and class system of that society. Individuals tend to acquire, own, use, and display certain goods and services to enhance their sense of self, to present an image of what they are like, to represent what they feel and think, and to bring about the types of social relationships they wish to have. Whilst this may be perceived as being a relatively recent phenomenon of modern society, an examination of archaeological remains seems to suggest otherwise. Using such evidence, this paper discusses the rise and fall of the Great Zimbabwe Empire. We provide evidence of a complex prehistoric society engaged in a trade network, which contributed to the formation of distinct social class segments within that society.

The topic is a generic deficiency in the theory generation within the business philosophy of supply chain management (SCM). The author argues that there is a crucial and challenging necessity to extend and reverse the current approach of theory generation in the field of SCM, from mainly upstream supply chain perspectives towards genuine downstream demand chain perspectives. The point of departure in the theory generation within the business philosophy of SCM should be at least from the customer's perspective, and eventually from the ultimate consumer's perspective, i.e. an ultimate consumer-driven theory generation of SCM. Furthermore, there is a lack of adequate theoretical frameworks and concepts in the current theory generation of SCM that take into consideration the ultimate consumer's perspective. Therefore, a selection of generic and classical marketing concepts and frameworks, such as the marketing concept, the marketing mix, and the marketing myopia, should be introduced and taken into consideration in the theory generation of SCM.

The business environment of the 1990's saw companies focusing more on building and maintaining closer relationships with suppliers and customers due to the many benefits that could be realized. While building closer relationships requires a great deal of time and effort from the parties involved, they are thought to increase efficiency and effectiveness and are among the most durable of advantages because of their inherent barriers to competition. The emergence of business on the Internet in the mid-1990s brought a new set of challenges for supply chain relationships. Because e-commerce encourages direct and immediate contact between companies with reduced transaction costs, it was initially believed that producers of goods and services would bypass middlemen and use the Internet to sell to customers directly, or disintermediate (Carr 2000; Vandermerwe 1999). However, the intermediary function remains although the nature of intermediation is changing. Internet-based intermediaries offer a variety of traditional as well as new services without maintaining an asset base. These companies, termed

hypermediaries

(Hawkins, Mansell and Steinmueller 1999), deliver value to the supply chain.

The cumulative research on retail atmospherics clearly shows that the environment has an effect on shopping behavior (Turley and Milliman 2000). However, most of the work in this area has focused on a single atmospheric variable from a very complex environment. In addition, most of the work in this area has avoided any theoretical explanation for how a retail atmosphere influences consumer behavior. The present paper, while recognizing the strides that have taken place in this literature stream, identifies issues that should be addressed in future research. These issues discussed in this paper include providing theoretical explanations for atmospheric effects, studying the interaction between atmospheric elements, exploring the salience of particular atmospheric elements, cross-cultural research in this area, atmospherics and segmentation, shopping center atmospherics, simulating store environments in labs, and atmospherics versus servicescapes.

Researchers recently recognized the importance of e-satisfaction and of e-loyalty. As a matter of fact, consumer loyalty is more important for a e-retailer than for a traditional retailer, mainly because the costs of acquiring a new customer are often considerably higher in e-commerce than in traditional retail channel and new customers purchase less than repeat customers (Reicheld and Schefter, 2000). The purpose of this research is to study consumer satisfaction with the electronic catalogue visit. Based on researches on attitude toward a web site, we make a parallel between the visit hedonic and utilitarian values (Babin, Darden and Griffin, 1994).

One of the primary objectives of managing customer relationships focuses on customer retention. In all mature markets, the battle to retain customers is fierce as genuine “new” customers are few and far between. Even in the newer, growing arena of e-commerce, retaining customers becomes paramount as shaky advertising-based business models give way to the more stable subscription-based model.

The central aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between advertising and editorial and self-reports of eating disorder and body image dissatisfaction among Hong Kong females. The Eating Attitude Test (EAT) and Body Dissatisfaction sub-scale in the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) are employed in a survey of females in Hong Kong. The analysis indicates that overall media consumption is a positive predictor of eating disorder and body image dissatisfaction.

This paper describes the preliminary studies of the effect of advertising and promotion on purchases using the British single-source database Adlab. STAS and logit modeling are the two measures studied. Results from the two measures have been compared to determine the extent to which, they give occasion for the same conclusions. The results indicate that the two measures largely give occasion for similar conclusions.

Since its introduction in 1994, Kompas has been a very successful value measurement system used for media-planning, marketing strategy formulation and many other purposes. It has been used particularly in the Nordic countries, but also in Poland and Israel, and recently, it is coming into use in other countries also. The Kompas is unique, in the sense, that it is based upon people's ordinary opinions, interpreted in terms of underlying values, and it is easy to use, because it works with an easily interpreted two-dimensional solution traditional vs. modern, and social vs. individual.

WebCT was used to facilitate group assignments for on-line and on-campus students undertaking the same marketing subject. On-line group assignments were experienced as very challenging, but did not lead to lower grades. Better technologies and more training of students and instructors in on-line group processes were indicated.

This paper reports the findings of oral presentation assessment criteria used in the introductory marketing tutorials in an Australian university. Four groups of items explaining 63.4% of variances emerged as a result of factor analysis. Six of the 14 items showed significant differences on gender, age group and home country.

The purpose of this research was to measure differences in student learning and student satisfaction between marketing classes taught in the traditional method versus the distance learning method.

Attitude, preference, and choice models in marketing still continue to be based on the multi-attribute paradigm despite the acknowledgement of affect (feelings and emotions) in brand attitude. Although voluminous work has been done in the area of affect, there has been a lack of research effort to unify the two streams within the attitudinal and choice framework. The objective of this paper is to unify the two streams of research and develop an integrated model of attitude and choice. We define “attitude” as a summarized evaluative judgment based on cognitive beliefs and its evaluative aspect (traditional multi-attribute model), and “affect” is reserved for valenced feeling states and emotions (Cohen and Areni 1991; Erevelles 1998). Our conceptualization of affect is drawn from category-based affective processing in the categorization literature. Fiske and Pavelchak (1986) distinguish between piecemeal versus category-based affective processing. The top-level affective tag may come from a conditioned response to the category label or may be the summation of lower level attribute-based affective tags (Cohen and Areni 1991). Drawing also from categorization theory, the essence of the proposed model is the parallel processing of brand-based attributes and holistic affect and their joint interaction (Fiske and Pavelchak 1986; Dabholkar 1994). For both overall attitude and choice, interaction effect is modeled at the multidimensional expectancy value component (EVC) level. Incorporating interaction effect in the proposed integrated model is a central theme of this study.

Social Alliances (or business/nonprofit collaborations) have shown tremendous growth in recent years and demonstrate the potential to grow at an even faster rate. However, these alliances have typically been examined in specific and limited contexts, e.g., cause-related marketing, sponsorships, etc. It is only recently that there have been attempts to take a unified approach to investigate this topic, but without examining how social alliances should be communicated to consumers. With the growth in new forms of social alliances, it is necessary to identify the consequences for both organizations when they communicate to consumers through social advertising.

Media hype and strong positioning by activist groups continue to contribute to the negative image of Genetically Modified or “Frankenstein Foods” (GMF). This study investigates whether consumers display more positive perceptions about GMF when positive trade-offs are made more salient in the purchase decision process. Results indicate that Genetic Modification in food products has a negative impact on attitudes and more importantly, the presence of an additional product benefit (such as increased shelf longevity), is not enough to offset this negative view.