Over the past forty years the corporate identity literature has developed to a point of maturity where it currently contains many definitions and models of the corporate identity construct at the organisational level. The literature has evolved by developing models of corporate identity or in considering corporate identity in relation to new and developing themes, e.g. corporate social responsibility. It has evolved into a multidisciplinary domain recently incorporating constructs from other literature to further its development. However, the literature has a number of limitations. It remains that an overarching and universally accepted definition of corporate identity is elusive, potentially leaving the construct with a lack of clear definition. Only a few corporate identity definitions and models, at the corporate level, have been empirically tested. The corporate identity construct is overwhelmingly defined and theoretically constructed at the corporate level, leaving the literature without a detailed understanding of its influence at an individual stakeholder level. Front-line service employees (FLEs), form a component in a number of corporate identity models developed at the organisational level. FLEs deliver the services of an organisation to its customers, as well as represent the organisation by communicating and transporting its core defining characteristics to customers through continual customer contact and interaction. This person-to-person contact between an FLE and the customer is termed a service encounter, where service encounters influence a customer’s perception of both the service delivered and the associated level of service quality. Therefore this study for the first time defines, theoretically models and empirically tests corporate identity at the individual FLE level, termed FLE corporate identity. The study uses the services marketing literature to characterise an FLE’s operating environment, arriving at five potential dimensions to the FLE corporate identity construct. These are scrutinised against existing corporate identity definitions and models to arrive at a definition for the construct. In reviewing the corporate identity, services marketing, branding and organisational psychology literature, a theoretical model is developed for FLE corporate identity, which is empirically and quantitatively tested, with FLEs in seven stores of a major national retailer. Following rigorous construct reliability and validity testing, the 601 usable responses are used to estimate a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model for the study. The results for the individual hypotheses and the structural model are very encouraging, as they fit the data well and support a definition of FLE corporate identity. This study makes contributions to the branding, services marketing and organisational psychology literature, but its principal contribution is to extend the corporate identity literature into a new area of discourse and research, that of FLE corporate identity

By evolving brands and building on the importance of self-expression, Aaker (1997) developed the brand personality framework as a means to understand brand-consumer relationships. The brand personality framework captures the core values and characteristics described in human personality research in an attempt to humanize brands. Although influential across many streams of brand personality research, the current conceptualization of brand personality only offers a positively-framed approach. To date, no research, both conceptually and empirically, has thoroughly incorporated factors reflective of Negative Brand Personality, despite the fact that almost all researchers in personality are in agreement that factors akin to Extraversion (positive) and Neuroticism (negative) should be in a comprehensive personality scale to accommodate consumers’ expressions. As a result, the study of brand personality is only half complete since the current research trend is to position brand personality under brand image. However, with the brand personality concept being confused with brand identity at the empirical stage, factors reflective of Negative Brand Personality have been neglected. Accordingly, this thesis extends the current conceptualization of brand personality by demarcating the existing typologies of desirable brand personality and incorporating the characteristics reflective of consumers’ discrepant self-meaning to provide a more complete understanding of brand personality. However, it is not enough to interpret negative factors as the absence of positive factors. Negative factors reflect consumers’ anxious and frustrated feelings. Therefore, this thesis contributes to the current conceptualization of brand personality by, firstly, presenting a conceptual definition of Negative Brand Personality in order to provide a theoretical basis for the development of a Negative Brand Personality scale, then, secondly, identifying what constitutes Negative Brand Personality and to what extent consumers’ cognitive dissonance explains the nature of Negative Brand Personality, and, thirdly, ascertaining the impact Negative Brand Personality has on attitudinal constructs, namely: Negative Attitude, Detachment, Brand Loyalty and Satisfaction, which have proven to predict behaviors such as choice and (re-)purchasing. In order to deliver on the three main contributions, two comprehensive studies were conducted to a) develop a valid, parsimonious, yet relatively short measure of Negative Brand Personality, and b) ascertain how the Negative Brand Personality measure behaves within a network of related constructs. The mixed methods approach, grounded in theoretical and empirical development, provides evidence to suggest that there are four factors to Negative Brand Personality and, tested through use of a structural equation modeling technique, that these are influenced by Brand Confusion, Price Unfairness, Self- Incongruence and Corporate Hypocrisy. Negative Brand Personality factors mainly determined Consumers Negative Attitudes and Brand Detachment. The research contributes to the literature on brand personality by improving the consumer-brand relationship by means of engaging in a brandconsumer conversation in order to reduce consumers’ cognitive strain. The study concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and practical implications of the findings, its limitations, and potential directions for future research.

The quality of customer services is an important differentiator for service oriented com- panies like telecommunication providers. In order to deliver good customer service, the underlying processes within the operations of a company have to run smoothly and must be well controlled. It is of great importance to be able to predict if processes are likely to fail and to be aware of developing problems as early as possible. A failure in a customer service process typically results in a negative experience for a customer and companies are keen to avoid this from happening. Process performance prediction allows companies to pro-actively adapt with process execution in order to prevent process problems from affect- ing their customers. Process analytics is often compounded by a number of factors. Very often processes are only poorly documented because they have evolved over time together with the legacy IT systems that were used to implement them. The workflow data that is collected during process execution is high dimensional and can contain complex attributes and very diverse values. Since workflow data is sequential in nature, there are a number of data mining methods such as sequential pattern mining and probabilistic models that can be useful for predicting process transitions or process outcomes. None of these techniques alone can adequately cope with workflow data. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute a combination of methods that can analyse data from business process in execution in order to predict severe process incidents. In order to best exploit the sequential nature of the data we have used a number of sequential data mining approaches coupled with sequence alignment and a strategy for dealing with similar sequences. The methods have been applied to real process data from a large telecommunication provider and we have conducted a number of experiments demonstrating how to predict process steps and process outcomes. Finally, we show that the performance of the proposed models can be significantly improved if they are applied to individual clusters of workflow data rather than the complete set of process data.

This study aims at investigating the consumer behaviour (of University teachers) in Pakistan with reference to the effects and association of country-of-origin (COO) image on consumer product involvement. In order to have in-depth insights, the construct of COO-image is studied in terms of the country’s economic development and in a certain product category. The study explores the effects and association of the two phenomena. Furthermore, the effects of the COO-image in terms of country’s economic development and COO-image in a product category on low and high consumer product involvement are studied. Finally, the study measures the moderating effects of consumer ethnocentrism and consumer intention to adopt (in terms of innovativeness) on the effects of COO-image in a product category and COO-image in terms of economic development on low and high consumer product involvement. Due to the nature of study, a positivist approach is adopted and followed a quantitative research strategy. The data is collected using survey technique based on questionnaires. The study sample population is university academicians. 1509 university academicians from various cities in Pakistan took part in the study by completing the questionnaire. The data is then analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The study establishes that highly educated and affluent Pakistani consumers are so strongly influenced by the COO-image (especially in terms of country’s economic development) that their ethnocentrism and intentions to adopt lose significance in order to contribute in shaping their attitude and behaviour related to both low and high involvement products (food and drinks, and automobiles respectively). The current study is one of few similar studies conducted in a developing country, especially Pakistan. The current study offers valuable empirical insights into the effects of the COO-image (especially with reference to a developing country perspective). The findings will be significant to the COO research as well as the businesses operating in developing countries such as Pakistan.

Prior research has shown a relationship between market orientation and business performance. Relatively little research, however, has focused on antecedents to market orientation. Additionally, insufficient market orientation research has been conducted at the team level, specifically on new product development and customer teams, the groups closest to new product launches, which are critical to organizational success. There is also insufficient research on how a group’s market orientation might change over time. Lastly, most past studies have used data collected from one or two employees to assess the market orientation of the entire organization. It is not clear how perceptions of market orientation might differ among employees, based on their role within the organization. This research seeks to address these gaps. This research presents the findings from data collected over three years from three teams in the same organization. The teams’ market orientation is viewed through three different lenses: the MKTOR scale developed by Narver and Slater, one-on-one interviews, and network analysis. The research presents a substantive theory that explains the data collected from all three teams and from all three data sources. The data suggests that market orientation is the coordinated effort to gather, disseminate, and respond to information in order to maintain and increase business with the customer, thus supporting an integration of the two primary conceptualizations of market orientation. Throughout the process the team faces ambiguity on many fronts, and the team must deliberately manage this ambiguity in order to be successful. Managing ambiguity, however, is not the same thing as eliminating ambiguity as resource limitations and team size restrict how much ambiguity can be removed. Clarifying communications, including developing a shared understanding of customer targets, serve to remove ambiguity in the team.

As national markets of many countries around the world continue evolving as arenas of ‘lived multiculture’ (Neal et al., 2013), it becomes crucial for marketers to know how to align their activities to the complex sociocultural dynamics in consumer spheres. Individual identities “continually evolve overtime” (Kleine and Kleine, 2000: p279) and can be transformed through one’s life experiences. Resultant from these transformations, varying and composite identities emerge that integrate a range of differing, complex cultural dispositions and drive consumer desires for this diversity to be visualised in cultural meanings of brands. Hence, understanding whether and how cultural identity dispositions form and evolve as a result of one’s being in lived multiculture environment is crucial for the study of culture-informed consumption. While there has been sustained interest in cultural identity complexities of ethnic migrants, considerations of identity transitions of mainstream consumers (i.e. non-migrant, locally born) so far have been predominantly restricted to local-global culture dichotomy. Since international marketing theory generally is concerned with wider consumer audiences than a particular ethnic segment, the mainstream/migrant population divide is increasingly regarded unhelpful (Jamal, 2003; Schroeder, 2009; Luedicke, 2011). This thesis explains theoretically how acquiring a holistic, integrative perspective on the multiple types of cultures at play in complex cultural identity transformations occurring across consumer groups can provide insights into intricacies of culture-bound consumption trends and inform closer alignment of culture-based branding theory and practice with lived multiculture realities. The study conceptualises the multicultural marketplace as a multidimensional environment where consumers are exposed to a diverse range of global, local and foreign cultural meanings simultaneously and deploy these meanings for (re)construal of identity. Next, extending acculturation theory, it develops a theory of Consumer Multiculturation, taking account of eight diverse types of cultural identities that can evolve from being in a multicultural marketplace. The results support the proposition that consumers deploy local, global and/or foreign cultures differentially and in varying combinations to derive a sense of unicultural, bicultural or multicultural self, and that complexities of derived identity elicit equally complex and different responses to cultural meanings of brands.

The purpose of this research is to explore client and agency perceptions of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and to interpret views on various alternative modes of IMC. Additionally, this research examines IMC implementation from both client and agency perspectives. Several methodological contributions have been achieved through the adoption of a two stage approach incorporating semi structured interviews with client and agency representatives and a tripartite, participant observer, case study during IMC implementation. This study represents the first qualitative emic approach to address the specific phenomenon of IMC implementation. Significant findings highlight the continued lack of a common definition of IMC and its content. Additionally findings illustrate differing views on the strategic role of IMC, coupled with an underestimation of IMC implementation issues. Findings uniquely identify the critical importance of boundary spanning roles and associated individual behaviour at inter and intra firm levels across and within the client and agency divide. Findings underscore a number of key issues that need to be considered such as trust, communication and credibility, in advance of planning and implementing IMC. Findings also identify sales as a potential component of an IMC offering in certain cases and reflect on the benefits this could have in revising some agency remuneration models. Key practitioner findings illustrate requirements for greater IMC implementation planning, consideration of alignment of client and agency structures together with setting and communicating clear objectives to avoid trust and political issues arising later. Findings show that greater consideration needs to be given to management of intra/inter firm boundary spanning personnel suggesting that training and skills development of staff is important. Overall, findings emphasise the company-wide nature of IMC and its implementation.

Advertising and other forms of communications are often used by government bodies, non-government organisations, and other institutions to try to influence the population to either a) reduce some form of harmful behaviour (e.g. smoking, drunk- driving) or b) increase some more healthy behaviour (e.g. eating healthily). It is common for these messages to be predicated on the chances of some negative event occurring if the individual does not either a) stop the harmful behaviour, or b) start / increase the healthy behaviour. This design of communication is referred to by many names in the relevant literature, but for the purposes of this thesis, will be termed a ‘threat appeal’. Despite their widespread use in the public sphere, and concerted academic interest since the 1950s, the effectiveness of threat appeals in delivering their objective remains unclear in many ways. In a detailed, chronological and thematic examination of the literature, two assumptions are uncovered that have either been upheld despite little evidence to support them, or received limited attention at all, in the literature. Specifically, a) that threat appeal characteristics can be conflated with their intended responses, and b) that a threat appeal always and necessarily evokes a fear response in the subject. A detailed examination of these assumptions underpins this thesis. The intention is to take as a point of departure the equivocality of empirical results, and deliver a novel approach with the objective of reducing the confusion that is evident in existing work. More specifically, the present thesis frames cognitive and emotional responses to threat appeals as part of a decision about future behaviour. To further develop theory, a conceptual framework is presented that outlines the role of anticipated and anticipatory emotions, alongside subjective probabilities, elaboration and immediate visceral emotions, resultant from manipulation of the intrinsic message characteristics of a threat appeal (namely, message direction, message frame and graphic image). In doing so, the spectrum of relevant literature is surveyed, and used to develop a theoretical model which serves to integrate key strands of theory into a coherent model. In particular, the emotional and cognitive responses to the threat appeal manipulations are hypothesised to influence behaviour intentions and expectations pertaining to future behaviour. Using data from a randomised experiment with a sample of 681 participants, the conceptual model was tested using analysis of covariance. The results for the conceptual framework were encouraging overall, and also with regard to the individual hypotheses. In particular, empirical results showed clearly that emotional responses to the intrinsic message characteristics are not restricted to fear, and that different responses to threat appeals were clearly attributed to specific intrinsic message characteristics. In addition, the inclusion of anticipated emotions alongside cognitive appraisals in the framework generated interesting results. Specifically, immediate emotions did not influence key response variables related to future behaviour, in support of questioning the assumption of the prominent role of fear in the response process that is so prevalent in existing literature. The findings, theoretical and practical implications, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Prior research on brand extension has provided little evidence on enhancing the evaluation of extremely incongruent extension. Adopting the theoretical framework of schema congruity theory, the author posits that evaluations can be improved if brand personality impressions of both parent brand and extension are complementary. The author coins this as the brand personality complementarity (BPC) principle. Prior to examining BPC effect, cultural-specific brand personality scale was developed to identify universal and indigenous brand personality dimensions. The reason is BPC requires a reliable and valid brand personality scale in order to detect its effect. Following successful identification of the cultural-specific brand personality scale, a total of three experimental studies were done to investigate BPC effect. Specifically, one experimental study identified complementary levels amongst brand personality dimensions, whereas two experimental studies investigated the moderating effect of BPC. Findings from the scale development study reveal that Malaysian brand personality (MBP) scale is a second higher-order factor reflected by first higher-order factors of sophistication, youth, competence, and sincerity. Most importantly, findings from the experimental studies revealed; 1) different BPC levels amongst all possible pairs of MBP dimensions, 2) significant interaction effect of brand extension congruity x BPC, and 3) significant mediation effect of complementarity resolution. Specific findings indicated that when iv text-based stimuli were used to form brand personality impression, even low BPC level improves the evaluations of extremely incongruent extension. However, when visualbased stimuli were used, low BPC level worsen the extension evaluation compared those of the control condition (i.e. without brand personality impression). Implications for both academician and practitioner are discussed.

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