No description available.

Digital innovation is moving the marketing industry forward. With new technologies, there is a shift from consumer attention to consumer engagement, in which advergames play a huge part. Advergames are games built around a persuasive message, often related to a brand. However, there is a lack of research about the influence of advergame design across cultures. Brazil and the UK are two cultures that have a large participation in the gaming market. Differences and similarities related to advertisement perception, attitudes and interface design could give insights about the influence of advergame design in consumer behaviour. This research proposes a framework, using concepts from theories about cross-cultural HCI, cross-cultural consumer behaviour and advergame effectiveness. The framework was evaluated and validated through a comparison between Brazil and the UK, considering advergame design elements and consumers’ perceptions. The results suggest that advergame design can influence and embed cross-cultural consumer behaviour. Finally, the current research could help to guide advertisers and game designers that expect to enter different cultural markets, and influence people’s perceptions towards a particular brand.

While it has become widespread in an international context, place branding has reached an impasse in theory and policy alike as several weaknesses have been uncovered: i) places are too complicated to be branded; ii) place brands have lacked breadth in terms of their application; iii) place brands have proved homogenous and indistinctive and; iv) the outcomes and impacts of place brands have proved difficult to measure. This project examines the proposition that the conceptualisation of place branding can be repositioned as part of a more comprehensive and rounded notion of place reputation. Adapting ideas of personal and corporate reputation, an alternative is proposed that argues that places can improve their standing by constructing and accumulating reputational capital with various audiences. The specific aims of the study are: i) to engage critically with the place branding literature and develop a new conceptual and theoretical basis for the emergent idea of place reputation; ii) to map and explain the different stakeholders involved and the way in which they shape the reputations of places and; iii) to compare the differing processes developed in the case-study cities used to form, shape and manage the reputations of cities and regions. The empirical work focuses on three in-depth case studies of second-tier cities in England: NewcastleGateshead, Hull and Bristol. This strengthens the tenuous connections made between reputation and place in the corporate and place branding literatures and transfers the idea of reputational capital to geographical entities, the thesis makes three contributions. First, place reputation and place branding are interrelated and there is a degree of complementarity between branding practices and place reputation. Second, place reputation is a relational concept and the reputations of places need to be understood in relation to particular audiences (e.g. internal, external), sector (e.g. public, private, civic) and/or domain (e.g. economy, culture). Third, the effectiveness of leadership in a city or region can be fundamental to the quality of the reputation of that specific place.

The aim of this research was to develop a validated set of actions that would lead to sustainable improvements in business performance and consumer attitudes for a production e-commerce website in the United States. In order to achieve the research objective a participatory action research methodology was utilized to generate quantitative and qualitative data and analysis through a mixed-methods approach. At completion, this effort was responsible for the development of new organizational knowledge and a series of managerial and business practice changes. The resulting business practice changes were credited with both short and longer-term business performance improvements. From an academic perspective, this research is one of the first to test a number of literature supported theories at real-world scale on a production e-commerce website. Of particular note are findings that extend the extant research into website consumer satisfaction measurement and the relationship between consumer feedback recency and issue identification. This thesis also highlights the importance of action research as a catalyst for organizational and individual meta-learning.

Despite a global ageing population, many businesses in general and advertisers in particular have been criticised for not meeting the needs of older consumers. Older Malaysians are relatively neglected and ignored by marketing and advertising although this market is growing. The majority of research pertaining to ageing consumers has been conducted in Western countries and cannot always be applied to the East because of cultural differences. As Malaysia is experiencing a demographic transition where the number of older people is increasing, it is essential for advertisers and marketers to understand older adults’ specific preferences in the marketplace. The central aim of this research is to advance knowledge by analysing the usage and portrayal of older models in both television and print advertisements in Malaysia and investigating the attitude of older consumers towards such advertisements. This study evaluates the portrayal in terms of function and roles of older adults in both television and print advertisements. On top of that, attitudes of older consumers towards the use of older models in advertising are also investigated. Since not many studies on cognitive age has been done particularly in Malaysia, this study also measures cognitive age among older adults and analyses its impact on attitudes towards older advertising models. Lastly, this study has also compared and contrasted the attitudes of older and younger adults towards older models in advertisements. Based on the review of the international literature pertaining to older adults in advertising in terms of their representation, roles in advertisements, the way older models are portrayed in advertising, age-related social attitudes in terms of young people attitudes towards age and ageing and also discussion on the concept of age, a number of propositions emerged. Several relevant gerontological, psychological and sociological theories and concepts also underpin the review of the literature. Content analyses were used analyse the use and portrayal of older adults. A total of 2,230 TV advertisements and 2,687 print advertisements comprise the sample, making this the largest content analysis of Malaysian advertising ever conducted. Then, a total of 600 questionnaires comprising 400 from adults’ age 50+ years and, for comparative purposes,200 from younger people, were collected in order to assess attitudes towards different portrayals of older models. Cognitive age was also measured. The findings of this thesis have made several contributions to knowledge. First, this is the first Malaysia study to consider the use and portrayal of older models in both print and television advertisements. Results show that older adults in Malaysian advertising are portrayed as active, happy and are shown in a variety of settings. These findings are in contrast to many international studies, and are important because advertising can impact the way older adults are treated in society and influence the self-esteem of older adults themselves. Second, the thesis analyses the different ways in which gender is depicted in advertising, and finds that despite older females being financially successful, advertising still restricts them to mostly support roles and rarely shows them in non-domestic settings. Third, the thesis has also considered how different ethnic groups are portrayed in ads and analysed attitudes of different ethnic groups towards older models which have never been studied before, which have implications for advertising design. Fourth, the study establishes that older Malaysian consumers use advertising to inform product choices in different ways to younger adults. Different media usage and attitudes towards advertisements also emerged among the older group, all of which have implications for segmentation as well as helping marketers to design better advertising strategies and media plans. Fifth, the study explores age differences in attitudes towards older advertising models and finds that younger people actually had more positive attitudes towards advertisements with positive portrayals than did the older adults. However, advertisements that portray older models with positive stereotype are more preferable by older adults compared to younger people. Lastly, this study has also measured self-perceived age among older Malaysian consumers, considers the impact of self-perceived age on attitudes towards older models in advertisements, and finds that self-perceived or cognitive age is a useful concept for consideration when advertising to this increasingly important consumer market. Existing literature indicates limited research has identified segments of older adults in Malaysia. The findings of this study on media usage and self-perceived age make a significant contribution to the body of knowledge on segmentation of older Malaysian adults. The different segmentation variables that emerged from this study show that older consumers are not a homogeneous demographic. In addition to these contributions to knowledge, the study strengthens and contributes to theoretical perspectives on successful ageing. Notably, this research finds that older Malaysians are capable of remaining socially active and continue many behavioural patterns with which they are comfortable. These findings support Activity Theory and Continuity Theory. A key contribution to these theories is the finding of a ‘youth bias’ in that older Malaysians feel on average 14 years younger than their actual age. The research therefore lends a new dimension of support for these key gerontological theories. The thesis makes several practical contributions. The research finds that older adults rely on product and service information contained in advertising to make purchase decisions, hence informational as opposed to solely emotional advertising execution strategies should work well with this older demographic. Second, the findings pertaining to self-perceived age suggest that advertisers should create ads that portray older adults in the same way as they perceive themselves. Results also suggest that both younger and older adults prefer older adults to be portrayed in a positive light in advertisement. Indeed, younger people showed more positive attitudes towards older adults that portray positive stereotypes in advertisements compared with older people themselves. Analysis of the study data revealed that the methods used in this study are appropriate to be employed with this age group and the study has guided other researchers in ways of collecting data from older adults. This study has also suggested that mixed methods can be also applied to get in depth analysis.

Aim: Drawing upon fundamental principles of social marketing, this thesis approached food advertising from the perspective of adolescents. Through development of in-depth consumer understanding, the aim was to establish how to advertise healthy eating in ways that would resonate with them. Methodology: A three-year, longitudinal study was conducted with English and Swedish 12-14-year-olds. Using a social constructionist perspective, meaning was sought through an emphasis upon verbal and visual language. Varied and creative research methods explored their understanding of/relationship to food advertisements (focus groups/online discussion boards), perception of themselves as consumers (collage construction) and their own creative recommendations (advertisement design). Findings: The study found adolescents’ understanding of persuasive intent of food advertising to be still developing at age 12. When aged 14, the participants demonstrated unprompted criticism for a Coca-Cola advertisement. This criticism may have resulted from further consumer socialisation. Alternatively, the presence of a well-known brand for which the adolescents possessed both topic and agent knowledge may have enhanced their persuasion knowledge. However, 14-year-olds may remain vulnerable to persuasive attempts by less well-known brands. Adolescents’ discretionary spending tends not to prioritise healthy options, with fast food brands often central to the acquisition of social experiences within a peer-context. In such situations, persuasion knowledge/health literacy may be less relevant. The healthy eating advertisements designed by the adolescents indicated the importance of strong, issue-relevant message arguments (e.g. detailing benefits of a healthy diet/dangers from an unhealthy diet). Research limitations: Non-probability sampling means the findings remain specific to the particular fieldwork sites. The participant-designed advertisements represent concept ideas, with research investigating general reception of the message formats/advertising appeals needed to confirm their transferability. Practical implications: Numerous recommendations for policy and practice of relevance to food advertising targeting adolescents are provided. For instance, it is recommended that the UK Government extends the Change4Life campaign to offer a brand specifically for adolescents encouraging healthy eating and exercise, informed by relational thinking associated with social marketing. Sweden should consider adopting Ofcom’s ruling that HFSS (high fat/salt/sugar) advertising cannot target those under 16. Originality: Contributions to social cognitive theory (SCT) and research methodology are provided. For instance, Bandura’s (2004) model of SCT is extended to include key concepts of social marketing, providing a better fit with adolescents and healthy eating. A method of analysing consumer collages from a social constructionist perspective is introduced.

The thesis investigates information and liquidity provision in financial markets. I explore the implications of the strategic behaviour of market makers competing with high frequency traders and of dealers involved in long term relationships with clients in the foreign exchange markets. Additionally, I analyse the value of information from the liquidity order flow to market makers and dealers. Further, I reflect on regulatory implications of my findings. The first chapter presents a literature review to motivate the following chapters. First, I survey the main findings of the papers on market making most relevant to this thesis. Second, I discuss the regulatory and academic debate on high frequency traders, which are widely viewed as a new type of liquidity providers. Third, I discuss important differences between market makers and FX dealers, including specific features of foreign exchange markets and their informational structure. Lastly, I provide a brief overview of the recent regulatory debate on OTC markets. The second chapter analyses the effect of competition between a designated, traditional market maker and a High Frequency Trader providing liquidity. The market maker is risk neutral and the high frequency trader is risk averse, which creates differences in their inventory exposures. The market power of these two participants creates a bid ask spread, but the high frequency trader narrows the spread and improves liquidity. The chapter further investigates the liquidity provision by a monopolistic high frequency trader. I show that having agents with strong inventory concerns as market makers could hamper liquidity provision. I explain how ceteris paribus small changes in the reservation value of liquidity traders can trigger shifts in the equilibrium spread. The third chapter endogenizes the existence of intermediation in a two-tier market. Specifically, trading takes place sequentially in a client-dealer OTC market and in an interdealer market organised as a limit order book. A privately-informed client chooses between trading through dealers or paying an entry cost to join the interdealer market directly. Dealer rents from intermediation increase in the entry cost. I show that competitive dealers use the bid ask spread strategically to reward the client for the information conveyed by his order flow. Furthermore, I show that the client dealer relationship is affected by a commitment problem: clients who trade una tantum execute trades with multiple dealers. Ongoing client dealer relationships viewed as an infinitely repeated game can overcome this problem and the client may benefit from trading exclusively with one dealer. The fourth chapter analyses information sharing and collusion incentives of strategic liquidity providers and the impact of their cooperation on asset prices. Risk neutral liquidity providers operate in a market with risk-averse informed traders (fundamentalists) and noise traders. I consider four regimes: 1) pure market making; 2) dealership without information sharing; 3) dealership with information sharing but without collusion in trading; and 4) dealership with information sharing and collusion in trading. I show that information sharing substantially increases agents' profits, while colluding in trading has a relatively low additional impact on profits. This suggests that if there are penalties for collusion, dealers may choose to only share information, but not to collude. Furthermore, I investigate the effect of the four regimes on market depth, volatility of prices and information content of prices. I find that dealers sharing information and colluding increase market depth compared to dealership without information sharing. However, the market depth is lower compared to pure market making. Both volatility of prices and the information content of prices increase when liquidity providers act as dealers. The magnitude of these differences depends on the parameters of the model.

Consumers generally like touching products before buying and prior research indicates that touching influences the purchase decision-making process (e.g. McCabe & Nowlis, 2003; Peck & Childers, 2003a; Peck & Johnson, 2011; Peck & Shu, 2009; Webb & Peck, 2015). For example, touching products has a positive effect on consumer attitudes, intentions and behaviours and these effects seem to vary by product category, situational context and need for touch. Touch research however has principally received scant attention and is one of the most under researched senses in behavioural research (Spence & Gallace, 2011). Consumers consider both product and brand name when making purchase decisions (Raju, 1977) yet despite continuous calls from researchers for the investigation of effects of brand on product touch, research in this area has not been forthcoming. This might in part be due to limited theory and conceptualizations in the emergent area of product touch therefore resulting in a lower level of understanding regarding how it and brand name could interact. Responding to these calls for research (Grohmann et al., 2007; Jansson-Boyd, 2011; Peck & Childers, 2003a; Peck, 2010), this research project aims at developing a richer understanding of the influence of product touch by examining the moderating effects of brand familiarity and brand status, on the relationship between product touch and product evaluation, purchase intentions, confidence in judgement and willingness to pay. Essentially, the research extends brand familiarity, brand status, product knowledge and contagion theory literature to the emerging field of sensory marketing, specifically related to product touch. Sheena W. Karangi PhD Thesis 2017 Page ii Adopting an experimental factorial between subjects design, findings from two experiments make five key contributions to knowledge: 1) This research project advances knowledge by conceptualizing previously unexplored relationships between three key areas of literature, namely product touch, brand familiarity and brand status (luxury brands). Conceptual advances are critical to the vitality of the marketing discipline (MacInnis, 2011). 2) It takes an innovative view to extending sensory marketing literature on product touch by examining boundary conditions for touch effects beyond just product categorization (brand familiarity, brand status). 3) Adds to the brand familiarity literature by providing empirical support for a negative brand familiarity effect. 4) It extends the concept of need for touch to brand literature, identifying contexts in which it effects still apply (brand familiarity) and where it surprisingly does not (brand status). 5) In extending contagion theory to brand literature, it is one of the first studies to show a brand contagion effect and furthermore, demonstrate its activation through product touch. Practical implications, limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed in detail in Chapter 7.

Internet and the development of electronic commerce transformed the nature of commercial activities. It also created significant challenges to taxation principles and the relevant authorities. This thesis is taking the approach that electronic commerce should be subject to taxation, because despite the unique characteristics it is nonetheless a commercial activity. New methods of delivery and digitisation of products raise particular problems for principles of consumption tax and for governments failing to utilise their tax policies for collecting revenue to subsequently fund welfare initiatives and the public sector. This thesis will identify and analyse the challenges presented, as well as examine the current regulatory approaches, whether they are primary legislative measures or merely ?soft law?. The two major actors in this area are currently the European Union and the United States; however the approaches between the two have been distinctly different. Originally an official ?moderator? was not established, which drove the OECD to assume the role in an informal capacity. The US did initially take a ?hands off? approach in relation to electronic commerce taxation and did not implement any such legislation at a Federal level. This ended up causing problems to online vendors and consumers. However with initiatives such as the Streamline Sales and Use Tax Agreement as well as the Marketplace Fairness Act, the US is slowly taking more active steps to engage the ongoing developments. On the other side, the EU 6 begun from a different perspective to the US. EU made significant and numerous attempts to regulate consumption taxes on online sales. The initiative shown by the EU and the nature of the European Single Market meant that the Member States started operating on a basis of close cooperation with each other in relation to electronic commerce activities and taxation earlier than US States. The new EU rules coming into operation from January 2015 identify the point of consumption as the point where tax is to be levied and indicates a dynamic European approach, one which could be establishing an efficient precedent and potentially followed by many other non-EU jurisdictions. This thesis will support the idea for a harmonisation of the tax principles relating to consumption taxation. Harmonisation can be seen as a problem in itself due to being a rather complex procedure, which becomes more complicated in regards to consumption taxation, especially taking into consideration that taxation can be indicative as a sovereign aspect of a State. The OECD guidelines on Electronic Commerce Taxation in 1998 have set the groundwork in the area and established general directions for States. Currently there is a seemingly similar direction EU and the US are heading to, which may indicate the possibility of a harmonised consumption taxation system between EU, the US and other participating jurisdictions being perhaps less of a regulatory utopia. A harmonised tax system for electronic commerce could promote further development of a more efficient commercial, as well as a more enriched socio-political reality.

This thesis contributes to the conceptualisation of consumer competence in the context of pursuing a sustainable consumption lifestyle. It overcomes the limitations of decision-making perspectives, which conceive sustainable consumption as a problem solving exercise based on possessing the relevant information. Drawing on the findings from an investigation into the nature of the competence mobilised by consumers who are committed to the sustainability agenda, a more comprehensive formulation of the concept of competence is advanced. More specifically, competence, as a result of the study, is framed in light of its multifaceted and dynamic nature as well as being a tool mobilised by consumers when attempting to lead their desired life projects. It emerges that they combine three complementary dimensions of consumer competence in varying configurations to pursue their sustainability goals according to their lived experience. First, they judge the marketplace by evaluating product offers and the functioning of the market. Second, they use their abilities to shape the marketplace by employing craftsmanship skills so as to become producers of their own consumption. Third, they mobilise their resources towards the accomplishment of their sustainability objectives. However, it is also elicited that competence has a reverse side that can be counterproductive for the performance of consumption practices, including indecision brought on by information overload and consumers living with the unhappy acknowledgement that they do not always live up to their sustainability ideals.