The aim of this two-part DProf is to produce a portfolio of research approaches to: Understand how mainstream brands can effectively access and engage Middle East consumers across the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), comprising Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates; Lever mainstream luxury brands to access and engage Middle East Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI) across the GCC; Develop a training programme for Brands on insights of Middle East consumers, including UHNWI; Develop a website communication platform to act as a catalyst for enquiries. In achieving the aim of the project, the objectives were to: Review literature in relation to ‘hard-to-reach’ communities in the emerging market context, in particular the Middle East; Undertake a 600-strong face-to-face questionnaire survey of Middle East consumers across the six GCC nations; Undertake six gender-split focus groups across the GCC; Undertake a series of cognitive interviews with Middle East shoppers; Critically review five research projects undertaken in the Middle East; Carry out five in-depth interviews with brand influencers in the West and three practitioner influencers in the Middle East. The tangible outcomes that arose from the project included: A portfolio of new communication approaches pertaining to reaching Middle East consumers that incorporates a cognitive interview product and a culturally pertinent luxury brand health model; A refined ‘Middle East Millionaire Panel’ research product that appealed to Western brands. A number of distinct questions were the focus of this study: How can cultural features associated with Middle East consumers’ norms impact upon the suitability of research methodologies? What are the most appropriate qualitative and quantitative approaches that serve to maximise consumer engagement across research studies? What enhancements to research approaches can be developed to maximise consumer engagement by Middle East consumers? What will attract Western brands to take up the Middle East Millionaire Panel? How can the Panel and associated services be marketed in local and international markets? Whilst the products represent innovations for engaging consumers across this segment, they also recognise that rigour, validity of analysis and statistical significance have to be reconciled with tools that articulate novel ways of clustering and configuring heterogeneous Middle East consumer tastes and preferences.

The following technological trends have occurred in parallel and together positioned and enabled the execution of my research: (a) The field of consumer behaviour that focuses on intuitive judgment and perception biases has developed significantly in recent years, (b) Speech and voice technologies have reached a commercial stage, and (c) The Big Data boom and other proprietary data that are owned by large corporates have located the industry in a better position than traditional academic bodies in terms of research capabilities. These global developments have created the opportunity to conduct this research which aims to explore the relationship between voice and speech attributes and consumer behaviour in the context of telephone based call centre interactions. The access to call centre recordings and their derivative analysis has enhanced this research with the unique experience of a practitioner rather than being limited to an at arm’s length theoretical analysis. The research questions aim to identify voice and speech attributes that affect (positively or negatively) customer satisfaction levels, and ways in which a company can utilize these attributes to change the way its call centre staff operate. The research methodology is based on a qualitative survey through which I collected data from a real-world call centre (auditory observation), and a triangulation of this data with that of a focus group session. The data went through a correlation test through a sample survey and a synthesis that processes the research findings into theoretical, published literature. Following these research insights, I have developed a Hidden Forces Model which is based on the findings arising from the research. This model offers an alternative way to operate call centres considering adjustments in social interaction by the service staff in order to impact and optimise customer satisfaction for the benefit of the company.

E-government began to take shape at a local level in the UK at the beginning of the last decade, promising a transformation in the delivery of public services. A core element of this transformation effort entails the implementation of new organisational technologies; of particular note is those designed to support customer relationship management (CRM). The main protagonist (rhetorically at least) in the unfolding of local e-government – the public services’ customer – is of chief concern in this thesis. While there is a well-established academic critique of customer-focus in public sector contexts, little is known about how the notion is being played out in the practice of e-government – it is here that this thesis is located. The single case study research design is underpinned by a social constructionist epistemology and employs a discourse analysis approach. The methods used are open-ended interviews, observation, and document analysis. In addition to the significant role played by CRM-supporting technologies, the research findings identify a multi-faceted customer-focus framework – in the shape of a new institutional home, the restructuring of roles and responsibilities, the reorganization of workflow, and a cultural reorientation – which is serving to scaffold and ‘perform’ the public services’ customer. Thus, in the face of organizational ‘resistance’ and the academic critique, it is argued that the linguistic and material instantiation of a customer-focus narrative is a significant discursive achievement, one that relies on the remarkable appeal and versatility of the ‘customer’. It is claimed that the thesis’ findings and its explanatory framework constitute both empirical and theoretical contributions to a number of disciplines. In conclusion, implications are drawn for the relationship between state agencies and the individual and it is argued that a more ambitious relationship requires more innovation and, crucially, more imagination.

When I was awarded my first professorship, the British Rail Chair of Marketing at the University of Wales, Swansea, I was asked to give an inaugural lecture. Then, back in 1989,1 chose to address the topic "Green, Ethical and Charitable: Another Marketing Ploy or a New Marketing Era? " The lecture sketched the rapid development of the field of business ethics from three angles: academia, companies and consumers. In academia, the fast growing interest in business ethics was reflected in the ballooning of the business ethics literature and the establishment of new professorships and research centres in the UK, the US and Continental Europe. Within companies, attention was placed on the development of corporate codes of ethics and, more widely, on the quest to portray the firm as a good citizen though emphasizing ethics, charitable contributions and environmental responsiveness in their communication. Consumers, finally, remained highly skeptical about the sincerity of such communication efforts and largely dismissed them as another marketing ploy. A paper with the same title as the inaugural lecture was later published much later in 1994 in Perspectives on Marketing Management [Paper No. 1]. Although I also turned to other topics during my subsequent academic career, I maintained an interest in this field until today. But how is it possible to stay faithful to these issues for nearly 20 years? In the following pages, I will attempt to trace my research involvement in the areas of business ethics, consumer ethics, charitable giving and related environmental issues.

Historians of consumption have perpetuated a specific reading and interpretation of early modern commodity branding, in which the relationship between proprietary interest and final consumer has been privileged. In addition, its primary goal has been portrayed as a means of differentiation in a market of homogenous goods. As such, 'branding'™ has been established as a nineteenth-century phenomenon, which resulted from the advances in industrial technology that enabled mass production to take hold. Similarly, historians have been content to adopt the view promoted by present-day marketing agencies and scholars, that 'branding'™ was fairly simplistic in purpose and function until after the Second World War. In contrast, this thesis uses an interdisciplinary approach to combine a plethora of non-textual material culture and documentary evidence to demonstrate that commodity marking practices were of a more diverse nature than has been acknowledged, both prior to, and throughout, the industrial revolution. Multiple identities marked, read and appropriated these symbols upon products. In so doing, this thesis complicates the established historiography of consumption. It also integrates commodity branding into wider histories, including the construction and display of personal identity, as well as contributing towards interpretations of state formation, 'nationhood'€™ and governmentality.

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Understanding consumers' preferences is central in marketing. Their tendency to prefer products of domestic rather than foreign origin, and the impact their emotional and affective state has on their purchasing decisions are well-documented in the literature. This thesis connects these two research themes by examining the impact feelings of nostalgia have on ethnocentric product preferences. The focus on nostalgia is not accidental. Advertising and marketing campaigns of several multinational companies have recently attempted to trigger such feelings amongst consumers in order to promote their products. The thesis begins by offering a more robust investigation for the presence of country of origin effects and the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on it, using a multi- cultural sample and measuring individuals' actual preferences. Using separate inducements for nostalgia - at the 'personal' level, referring to past events the consumers experienced alone, and at the 'collective' level, referring to past events the consumers experienced in the company of others - it proceeds by providing evidence suggesting that feelings of nostalgia significantly increase preferences for domestic products, as well as ratings of their perceived quality. Both inducements have similar effects on preferences and ratings. Subsequently investigating the underlying psychological mechanism responsible for the effect of nostalgia on ethnocentric product preferences, the thesis provides evidence that self-reported 'meaning of life' - a composite measure previously linked to nostalgia - is a significant mediator of this effect; having a significantly positive indirect effect on both preferences for and ratings of domestic products. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications these findings have for man- agerial practice and outlining future directions for marketing research in this field.

As technologies become more complex and competition becomes tougher than ever before, manufacturers in the developed world acknowledge the significance of a competitive strategy in increasing sales to their customers. These strategies not only include offering the products, but also offering service contracts and integrated bundles of products and services, where the supplier is responsible for the required engineering services, typically for a relatively long period of time. This is also known as Product-Service Systems (PSS). For many commercial and governmental organisations, purchasing PSS remains challenging. Despite the considerable work that has been conducted to investigate and improve the methodological applications of the concept of PSS from PSS providers’ perspective, purchasing PSS positions the PSS customers halfway between PSS providers’ strategies and the PSS customer traditional strategies. Little effort in the literature describing how to assist PSS customers in the selection and evaluation of the PSS offerings has been observed. Consequently, this research attempts to satisfy the gap in the body of knowledge by proposing a decision-making framework to enable PSS customer to evaluate and select from the various PSS offers. The research began by reviewing the state-of-art of PSS, followed by the identification of the most likely characteristics exhibited by PSS customers. Then, the research investigates the existing PSS frameworks and analyses it to identify its appropriateness for use by PSS customers. The basis of the PSS framework is initially structured on the findings from the literature review, then modified by the result obtained from the field study in Saudi Arabia. The PSS framework is refined through expert feedback. Then, a computerised software tool was developed for the purpose of validation. Finally, the proposed PSS framework is validated by conducting five case studies. The proposed framework can guide purchasing practitioners through a step by step process, from evaluation to selection the most suitable PSS offers, by considering the degree of fitness between the PSS offerings and customer’s characteristics. This research has satisfied the industrial need and filled the gap in the literature, and has made a significant contribution to the knowledge on PSS customers to overcome the challenge of purchasing PSS.

Traditionally, service marketing scholars and organisations have tacitly conceptualised value co-creation as a set of processes or activities where participants know how to act, or „know the score‟ – however, this is not always the case. This dissertation questions such conceptualisations; in particular Service-Dominant (SD) logic‟s tenth foundational premise (FP10) which states that value is uniquely and phenomenologically determined by consumers, and argues for a greater consideration of the wider socio-cultural context from which value emerges. In order to address this gap, this is the first grounded study of value as it arises from multiple practices in a collaborative consumption context, specifically orchestral consumption. Framed by a relational constructionist approach, the study explores how multiple participants – musicians, conductors, audience members, and staff – experience value co-creation in the context of their participation in 47 orchestral, educational and outreach events facilitated by the London Symphony Orchestra. Participant narratives were collected using 47 depth interviews, 375 short interviews, and non participant netnography over a six month period. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, 20 value co-creation practices and 13 value experiences were induced from the data. The research integrates experiential and practice based perspectives of value by illustrating that value emerges from the shared understandings between conductors (service organisation managers) and participants (regular, novice and potential service consumers, front and back office service personnel and other service providers within a service value network) participating in a multiplicity of value co-creation practices. Value co-creation practices maintain, sustain and reinforce the sacred on behalf of participants and frame their experiences. Co-creating value therefore requires service organisations to deconsecrate or „open up the score‟ for novice participants; specifically, to share the understandings, engagements, and procedures embedded in such practices. These concern not just how-to-act but also how-to-interpret, which in turn may be negatively experienced by expert participants. The dissertation concludes with a proposed refinement of SD logic‟s FP10: namely, that value is both socially constructed and intersubjectively and phenomenologically determined.

This research investigates the efficacy of communications in matters germane to sustainable practices within the UK independent music festival sector. To do this the study identifies Triple-Bottom-Line based sustainability and/or marketing practices adopted by stakeholders and how they (and consumers) perceive related communications. The ‘sector’ is complex, fast changing, a major contributor to the UK creative economy and is forecast to grow. It is typical of the creative economy where a small number of large firms counterbalances a large number of essentially local, micro-enterprises. Largely independent, these smaller festivals comprise a variety of multi-stakeholder businesses with differing aims and objectives. Micro-enterprises have different characteristics (to larger companies), which dictate their marketing approaches. However sustainability studies often focus on larger manufacturers, which mirrors how most extant approaches to marketing were developed i.e. from experiences in larger companies. Stakeholders must align their values with changing consumer behaviour (e.g. increasing ethical and environmental spending patterns). Festival organisers must communicate with a diverse range of stakeholders and this case study investigates perceptions and attitudes germane to the communication of sustainable practices. Festivals are unlike other events or services as they are based almost entirely upon high degrees of consumer engagement often in areas of outstanding natural beauty. Despite this scholars have largely ignored them. Festivals are temporary townships, generally transitory, occurring infrequently and limited in time. Governments regard them positively owing to the economic sustainability generated, their ability to generate a sense of collective responsibility and encouraging community involvement. Many researchers apply functional ‘silo-based approaches’ to events. The customer-centric disciplines have largely failed to embrace sustainability. This study is inter-disciplinary being located in the overlap between sustainability and customer centric disciplines. Sustainable Marketing (SM) is gaining credence and increasingly adopted by progressive marketers. This research identifies recognised marketing and sustainability practices adopted by those micro-enterprises who ‘deliver’ festivals. Festivals operate in an increasingly competitive environment hence the implementation of effective marketing approaches is a priority. This study provides insights into marketing communications (‘marcomms’) and positioning that will prove useful for practitioners and academics. Few studies of the adoption of sustainability within services or arts exist. This study seeks to address this, contributing to the growing area of research into sustainability within the services and leisure economy. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 19 stakeholders representing enterprises delivering 7 independent music festivals in the 2014 festival season. Parallel to this 119 festivalgoers were surveyed which enabled triangulation and provided useful insights.