Cause-related marketing (CRM) is an increasingly popular corporate tactic, used to achieve sales promotion objective while supporting social causes. Originally, it was practised offline, and academic research on CRM has focused on that context (Ha 2008; Segev et al. 2014). However, the online medium presents unique characteristics, such as interactivity and global access, which influence marketing. Advances in digital technology and e-commerce innovations enable online marketers to target charity site visitors with their products through affiliated cause marketing (ACM) and cause- sponsorship (CS) advertisement tactics which are forms of online CRM. Typically, firms communicate an offer through an explicit donation to the charity in question, contingent on purchases made via a banner advertisement linked from the brand’s site (ACM ad format), or make a declaration of the brand's association with the charity (CS ad format). In light of this, this study investigates the impact of the main design features of the two typical forms of advertisers’ banner advert on charity websites by asking: I. Whether and how the donation amount in an ACM ad format influences consumers’ response regarding purchase intention. II. Whether and how the ad context congruence in a CS ad format influences consumers’ response regarding purchase intention. III. Do consumers respond more positively towards an ACM ad than a CS ad regarding attitudes and purchase intentions? The study uses a web-based experimental-survey design, with 538 UK national representative panel participants to generate field data. It examines this data using ANOVA and structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques. The main findings: i) support the hypothesised positive direct effects of donation amount (with respect to ACM ad format) and ad-context congruence (with respect to CS adformat) on consumers’ purchase intention; ii) the media effect in CRM demonstrates the serial mediating roles of ‘attitudes towards the ad’ and ‘perceived CSR motive of firm’ of the donation amount-purchase intention link, while ‘attitudes towards the ad’ mediates the ad-context congruence and purchase intention link; iii) charity cause involvement moderates the positive link of ad-context congruence to purchase intention; iv) attitude towards CS is found to be stronger than ACM with small donation; and iv) purchase intention towards the ACM ad formats is stronger than towards the CS ad format. The study makes theoretical and practical contributions by identifying composite models of consumers’ response towards ACM and CS tactics, with more favourable purchase intention towards ACM than CS.

This thesis aims to explore how food access impacts on consumer perceptions in relation to food choices and enhance our current understanding of how consumers use their food retail environment (Broadbridge and Calderwood, 2003; Ruston, 2002). It aims to understand what contribution food access makes to consumer food choices and their perceived access to healthy foods. Previous research has suggested consumers utilise coping mechanisms in order to manage food access issues (Furey et al, 2001; McKie, 1998; Whelan et al, 2002; Wrigley, 2004) and this thesis will describe the mechanisms used within this area and identify other factors which are relevant to consumer food choice. Fifty six semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather in depth information of the consumers' experience of food shopping in this area. Qualitative interviewing was used to explore individuals' perceptions of and the meanings they attribute to their shopping experiences and of local retail provision, as they are said to be a way of exploring relationships and is a way of uncovering and exploring the meanings that underpin people's lives, routines, behaviours, feelings etc (Rubin and Rubin, 1995). Participants were also asked to complete a 7-day shopping diary (n=40), a cupboard survey (n=56) and Food Frequency Questionnaires (n=45). They provided a behavioural context within which to explore the experiences and motivations for shopping. Remote consumers appear to have lower expectations of retail choices due to the geographical areas in which they live and the difficulties retailers face with a limited customer base. Differences in perceptions of retail food provision reflect the nature of the retail structure of an area with the presence of a large store resulting in a more favourable perception of provision. Local shops and producers play a crucial role in the community providing flexibility in ordering, delivery and supply of produce to islanders increasing options in terms of variety, quality and convenience. Consumers' perceptions of food retail provision in this research support previous suggestions of disparities in provision within rural communities (McKie et al, 1996; Furey et al, 2001). Flowever, a number of islanders have devised ways to overcome these disparities that utilise alternative food networks and draw on household and community networks to increase their choice. Alternative food networks such as local produce sales, farmers markets and home produced food were used in conjunction with the conventional food retail supply chain in order to meet the needs of participants. Many consumers use a variety of mechanisms and strategies to adapt to the unreliable food supply that they associate with the retail food system, for example growing their own vegetables and using food for barter. In this way food becomes embedded in household and community life. There is as yet no agreed definition of what constitutes adequate access. For participants in these remote communities adequate access means being able travel to a store, even if this means travelling a relatively long distance, which has a consistent range of produce providing choice, variety and quality at all times.

This doctoral dissertation makes a twofold contribution to the understanding of psychological processes behind food choice. First, it explores whether cognitive shortcuts, known as heuristics, based on seemingly irrational beliefs can lead to rational behaviours when applied in the right context. One such heuristic, the organic = healthful heuristic, is explored. It is the belief that organic products are more healthful than conventional products. There is no conclusive evidence supporting this belief, also known as the halo effect, where positive attitudes towards organic products transfer to beliefs about specific properties such as healthfulness. Here I propose statistical learning as an alternative explanation to the halo effect, and test this in three studies. Study 1 shows that food products from healthful food categories are more likely to be organic. Study 2 shows that consumer perceptions of the healthfulness and the number of organic products across food categories are accurate. Study 3 shows that consumers perceive organic products as more healthful when the statistical structure justifies this inference. These findings show that consumers correctly use organic products as a cue for healthfulness because they are, on average, 30% more healthful than conventional products. Second, this doctoral dissertation develops a new information search measure which complements existing measures to better describe consumer search processes. One area, which is currently not covered by existing measures, is when information search consists of equal amounts of attribute- and alternative-wise search sequences. I propose a new measure, the Systematicity of Search Index (SSI), which explores information search in terms of systematicity or the proportion of non-random search. Study 4 demonstrates the usefulness of the measure and shows that the SSI can shed light on processes not captured by the existing measures for analysing information search.

Entrepreneurial proclivity and competitive advantage have received significant attention from an international performance perspective within the context of the manufacturing sector but not for the service sector. While the manufacturing-focused research has contributed to the development of firm internationalisation through improved strategies, the international business climate has been largely unstable and continuously evolving with appreciable shift of interest to emerging economies for foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunities that will leverage technology to drive innovation; especially in the services sector. This is to foster the survival and expansion of international sales and internationalisation. The irony is that international service firms increasing growth has contributed immensely to the services position in the global trade, and there is need for international marketing theory and practice based on services internationalisation, and not just the current understanding and international marketing strategies solely rooted in the manufacturing sector. In response to this lacuna of knowledge in the existing knowledge and professional practice, this mixed methods action research inquiry attempts to shed light in the field through the development of a comprehensive framework of the precedence of competitive advantage in the context of international service ventures, and to further identify if the study findings can bring actionable knowledge and change in the researcher’s organisation. A major problem being addressed by this research is an in-depth understanding on why some international service ventures are successful in expanding their business internationally? What are the drivers of competitive advantage behind these international service ventures? Based on the dynamic capabilities theory and international marketing strategy literature reviewed, a set of research hypotheses developed and empirically tested affirming that the development and adoption of certain dynamic capabilities enhances the marketing capabilities available to international service ventures. This further fortifies the international service venture ability to achieve a proper fit between the international marketing strategy being pursued and the environmental context of implementation. Data collected from 260 international service ventures in Nigeria. The study findings formed the basis of reflection and discussion within the researcher workplace focus-group in order to identify how they could bring actionable knowledge and change in the researcher’s organization. The study results reveal a positive relationship between international marketing strategy fit and competitive advantage. International entrepreneurial proclivity found to be a significant precursor of sensing and reconfiguring processes where the actual influence fluctuates across different entrepreneurial proclivity aspects. By using mixed methods action research through a cyclic approach as an insider action researcher, the researcher was able to apply the survey findings in practice through focus-group taking action, evaluating the action and monitoring through quantitative and qualitative approaches within the context of the conceptual framework in order to solve this workplace-based problem and also to improve his practice. The findings discussed in light of existing knowledge, and possible limitations of the study considered. As a DBA action research project emphasis is placed on the implications/relevance of the research findings to scholars, business practitioners, managers, policy makers, investors and international service venture development. Future research opportunities identified and discussed. KEYWORDS: International entrepreneurial proclivity, international dynamic capabilities, marketing capabilities, marketing strategy fit, international service advantage, competitive advantage, international service venture, internationalisation of services, mixed methods action research.

The compromise of defending, advancing and embracing new opportunities in marketing communications creativity and new knowledge from neuromarketing, whilst maintaining integrity in law and protecting consumers is a challenging equilibrium. The fine line between leading and misleading consumers is increasingly blurred. Consumer expectations and repetitive behavioural familiarity warms the buying brain to being conveniently led to hone in on products in order to expedite shopping. Such behaviour can lead to confusing and misleading marketing communications to bypass consumer rationality. Similarly, the emotional excitement and expectation of fun driven luxury shopping can entice consumers to bypass misleading marketing clues. Information overload can lead to impulsive buying decisions, followed by post rationalisation with degrees of impaired freedom of choice. A dichotomy exists between consumer behaviour models used by legislators and real human consumer behaviour. This filters into the regulatory adjudicative process. Opening up insightful discoveries of consumer buying behaviour in relation to the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (2008) exposing a fallible process. Using deep rich ethnographic tools of organic inductive data driven expert narrative, this research uncovers answers to question whether or not subconscious marketing techniques can go under the radar of consumer regulations. Multidisciplinary deep narrative findings reveal evidence that expert definitions and consumer perceptions can differ vastly. Average consumers and rational consumers are a myth built on false premises. Expert findings concluded that it was not possible to fully legislate against subconscious marketing techniques. In light of these findings, the research recommends new models, which are presented to re-evaluate methods through better frameworks, which can be devised along with a new subconscious neuro-marketing mix paradigm based on the new study area of subconsciology.

The Northern Ireland (NI) agri-food industry has faced challenges in re-building consumer confidence regarding the quality and authenticity of food/drink products. However, increasing demand for authentic, high quality produce, paired with a renewed sense of food patriotism, presents new growth opportunities for local/artisan food/drink products to be promoted for their unique quality credentials. The literature revealed that extrinsic quality cues are an invaluable marketing tool used by consumers as ‘value signals’, ‘risk relievers’ and 'informational stimuli' when shopping, to make a more informed quality decision. Yet evidence pertaining to the relative importance of extrinsic quality cues is inconsistent, owing to limited understanding of and ability to analyse the consumer quality perception process. This research aimed to determine consumer perceptions of extrinsic quality cues used to promote local produce and develop a conceptual model of the most effective extrinsic cues for the promotion of quality in local NI products. This exploratory research employed a three-stage mixed-methods approach consisting of a scoping exercise, consumer focus groups and an experimental study using eye-tracking technology measuring participants’ visual attention to a select number of extrinsic cues, informed by stages 1 and 2. Findings suggest that packaging cues have the most significant effect on consumer quality perceptions and purchase decisions while shopping. Specifically, extrinsic cues pertaining to transparency, colour and design, taste, provenance, storytelling, brand name, nutritional information/claims were most effective, particularly when displayed on FOP. This research makes an important theoretical and methodological contribution to the perceived quality and marketing literature, thereby informing the development of more effective and targeted marketing strategies to engage the consumer. Furthermore, through gaining a more holistic understanding of the quality perception process, this research proposes a number of Industry and policy recommendations to assist the NI agri-food industry in its promotion of quality local produce.

Organisational success in the 21st century is determined by an organisation’s ability to remain in a state of continuous innovation. Innovation is considered as a competitive tool for an organisation’s long term performance and an important means for adapting to the evolving customer needs. Therefore, it is vital for organisations to develop work environments that promote innovation. By fostering a climate for innovation, employees are inspired to be innovative, leading to the production of innovative outcomes. Customer experience also is increasingly becoming a differentiating factor for companies. Interest in the customer experience concept has increased tremendously over the past decades among researchers and practitioners. Organisations need to introduce innovative products and services to leverage the customer experience. There have been no studies examining the relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a single study. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate and provide an in-depth understanding of the relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a service setting. This study adopts a qualitative single case study research design to provide an in-depth investigation and understanding of the phenomena under study in a major telecommunications organisation in Egypt. Findings from this study show that there is a relationship between employees’ perceptions of climate for innovation, organisation innovativeness, and customer experience in a service setting. The study identifies five main themes of climate for innovation that enhance organisation innovativeness. Finally, a key finding of this research is identifying that there are certain dimensions of climate for innovation that are highly related to customer experience than other dimensions: customer centricity, idea support, senior management support, risk-taking, open innovation, idea time, teamwork and cohesion, employee empowerment, structure of functional units, rewards and recognition, challenging jobs, and employee involvement.

This thesis explores and explains customer-service work in contact-centre environments of different national origin} size, and sector in Greece, It has a pragmatist philosophical orientation and stands on a methodologically pluralist position that is framed with a case-study design, Evidence is drawn from six contact-centres in the Greek telecommunications and insurance sectors, Analysis takes places at three levels (country) sector, company) with the aid of a hybrid institutional framework that merges macro and micro theories and concepts of labour management, This is supplemented by within-case analyses and cross-case comparisons, which provide examinations of the ways in which contact-centre work is managed and organised in the case-studies in line with justifications for the observed findings, The research findings extend and challenge some of the existing accounts in the contact-centre literature, The study illuminates the functioning of industrial-employment and work-social relations, It suggests that voice-to-voice work can be visualised in a high-low commitment' management and high discretion rubric under certain circumstances. To this end} the exploratory aim of the thesis induced the descriptive and prescriptive 'neo-professional model' of management and organisation of customer-service work. The explanatory part of the research pointed to three sets of effects (macro; national/pan-national, meso: sector, micro: company) on the management and organisation of contact-centre work. These effects are captured in the 'contact-centre diffusion framework', which derived from a deductive~ inductive analytical reasoning. Macro and meso effects were also found to pose barriers to the forward diffusion of certain policies and practices in the foreign-owned case-studies. In specific, the results stress the significance of the host-country's background and proximate institutions in the transfer of employment, industrial, and work relations in multinational subsidiaries. At theoretical level, the thesis contributes to a number of disciplines, most notably the emerging field of international contact-centre work. At practical level, the study offers an understanding to organisational stakeholders on the management and organisation of customer-service work in one European Mediterranean country, where both cross-border diffusion and contact-centre research is underdeveloped.

This thesis investigates the application of computational statistics and Machine Learning in consumer preference prediction, with specific reference to the challenges imposed by real world operational retail environments. Some retailers base their competitiveness on Machine Learning. For instance, Dunnhumby analyzes more than 400 million online consumer records for retailers, such as Tesco, to optimise business decisions. The experiments in this thesis investigate three main challenges commonly presented in operational scenarios that hinder the application of Machine Learning in retail environments: 1. The measurement of correlation of feature factors for Machine Learning in a noisy setting; 2. The exploration and exploitation balance for predicting purchase preferences on new products; 3. The model adaptability to the changing dynamics over time. A design of a distributed Machine Learning framework for building practical applications of consumer preference prediction is also presented. Experiment 1: Correlation between Contextual Information and Purchase Behaviours under a Non-experimental Retail Environment The first experiment applies statistical methodologies, namely odds ratio and Mantel-Haenszel method, to analyze contextual information in a retail business. More specifically, it investigates the correlation between customers’ recent online browsing behaviours on Boots.com and their in-store purchase behaviours at Boots’ retail stores nationally in a non-experimental noisy setting. Methodologies such as stratified analysis with K-means clustering are proposed to detect and eliminate confounding factors that affect the evaluation of the correlation. The dataset for this experiment, provided by Boots UK, is the first year of a 2-year anonymised real in-store and online purchase records data. It contains profiles of 10,217,972 unique consumers who are Advantage Card holders and 2,939 unique selected products under 10 different brands. Experiment 2: Resources Allocation of Exploration and Exploitation for New Products under Retail Constraints The second experiment provides a two-stage batch solution based on matrix factorization and binary integer programming to optimise the customer response rate to new products of a simulated group buying system. This experiment investigates how the balance between the exploration of new products and the exploitation of existing known model affects overall business gains through purchase prediction and recommendation. In this experiment, the products are new with no prior profile and the number of new products a retailer can recommend to each customer is limited. The effectiveness of one of the traditional experimental design techniques in improving the learning efficiency during the exploration process is evaluated. Experiment 3: Continuous Model Selection for a Changing Retail Environment The third experiment investigates, using root-mean-square error and mean average precision measures, the adaptability of data model for consumer purchase prediction in a non-static retail environment. In particular, it analyzes the prediction accuracy of data models with static parameters over time. A continuous model selection approach by using an automatic hyperparameter tuning technique, namely random search, is proposed and is evaluated. The results challenge the traditional assumption that a one-off initial model selection is sufficient. The dataset for this experiment is a 2-year anonymised real in-store and online purchase records data provided by Boots UK. System Design: A Distributed Machine Learning Framework with Automated Modeling This system design outlines the concept and system architecture. It also demonstrates scenarios of a distributed Machine Learning framework for (i) evaluating, comparing and deploying scalable learning algorithms, (ii) tuning hyperparameters of algorithms manually or automatically and (iii) evaluating model training status. The design has become the foundation of a popular open-source software project - PredictionIO. The project is followed by over 5000 data scientists and practitioners on Github. Contributions to Science The major contribution of this thesis is to offer robust research-based methodologies to handle prediction challenges in real world operational environment for retail businesses. Computational statistics and Machine Learning methodologies are proposed to 1) identify contextual factors that are relevant to consumer preference in noisy non-experimental setting; 2) determine the importance of exploration and exploitation for new products under real-world constraints; 3) adjust data model continuously to adapt to changes in retail environments. This thesis contributes to the existing literature in a number of ways. First, this research proposes a novel statistical method to isolates the influence of confounding factors in correlation analysis for consumer preference prediction. It is a topic that received little attention in empirical literature. Second, this research proves the existence of the correlation between consumer online browsing and in-store purchase behaviours in a real retail dataset. This is a significant finding for the retail industry to improve prediction accuracy in the future. Third, this research examines the influence of the balance between exploration and exploitation of new product profiles on maximising business gains. Forth, this research proves that random selection surprisingly outperforms D-optimal experimental design in some retail cases. Fifth, this research challenges the existing assumption that model selection is needed only once at the initial stage. It proves that prediction accuracy can be improved significantly by continuous model selection. Sixth, this thesis presents the implementation of a continuous model selection approach by using automatic hyperparameter tuning techniques. Finally, this thesis presents a design of a distributed system that can be used for building predictive retail applications.

In traditional commercial transactions, consumers are usually regarded as the vulnerable party.1 This vulnerability is, arguably, more pronounced in e-commerce due to the way this particular kind of business is conducted, and this creates additional complications that do not exist in a traditional trade transaction. E-consumer concerns can be reduced by creating an appropriate legal environment, including the introduction of consumer protection regulations. Most developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, have realised that empowering consumers is important for fostering the e-commerce market.2 However, in developing countries, the lack of consumer protection regulations for e-commerce is one of the main barriers to the progression of e-commerce. Saudi Arabia is one country affected by a lack of efficient protection for e-consumers.3 This lack of efficiency is attributed to the ambiguity of current measures available for protecting e-consumers; current measures are based on basic consumer protection principles gleaned from Sharia and some other standard regulations that are used for protecting e-consumers. In the context of e-commerce, these general rules require further explanation and clarification.4 Therefore, the overriding objective of this research is to address the need for e-consumer protection regulations in Saudi Arabia by proposing a legal framework that might be used to provide efficient protection. This research identifies areas that contribute to the ambiguity of current measures, including a lack of clear unified regulations for e-consumer protection, and a lack of clear provisions in specific areas including: information obligation, the right to cancel, and rights of redress. In order to address these needs, a legal framework is suggested. This was built by using UK regulations as a model, with consideration given to their suitability for the Saudi Legal system, and its culture and traditions.