ABSTRACT   Title: Private label in the supermarket industry: a case study of ICA.   Level: Final thesis for a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration   Author: Zhing Mo, Yulan Qu   Supervisor: Dr. Aihie Osarenkhoe   Date: 2010 – May   Aim: This dissertation aims to find out the motives behind the introduction of private label in ICA. The purpose is to further integrate the private label as a branding concept.    Method: Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used in this research. The primary data has been collected through face-to-face interviews with ICA managers and an administer questionnaire. Secondary data has been collected from books, articles and the Internet.   Limitations: This research was limited by the size of the customer population and the number of stores. In addition the research was performed during the early stages of market penetration by ICA’s private label, and the results of future research might be different.   Conclusions: ICA released private label to counter manufacturer power and to be more price competitive. Moreover, it had a positive effect on customers’ loyalty. The introduction of the ICA private label had a great impact on brand image and brand awareness. With regards to loyalty, the ICA private label strategy is on the correct track but still has a gap between the intended objective and actuality.    Contribution of the thesis: This research contributes to finding out the advantages for retailers of introducing private label. Another contribution is to help the readers gain an in-depth understanding of private label in a brand concept. Moreover the research also presents some interesting prospects for further research.   Key words: private label, brand image, brand awareness, brand loyalty

Consumer confusion, caused by product similarity, choice and/or information overload, and the presence of ambiguous information, can negatively affect consumersʼ decision making, and thereby also companiesʼ profitability. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate how the three variables (i.e. similarity, overload, ambiguity) of Walsh et al.ʼs (2007) consumer confusion proneness model affect consumersʼ decision postponement and brand loyalty, concerning low involvement products. A conceptual framework based on consumer behavior- and consumer confusion literature, was utilized to form six hypotheses predicting the causality between the different variables. After validating and adapting the scale to data gathered through a survey, regarding Swedish studentsʼ purchasing habits of laundry detergent, two standard multiple regressions revealed that one hypothesis was supported; overload confusion proneness decreases brand loyalty in a low involvement product category. All implications were then discussed from practitionersʼ and researchersʼ points of view, concluding with possible limitations and further research.

When the generation of experience economy coming, customers are becoming care if the products or services which are company provide is what they need. Customers want what let them feel dizzy, what is able to touch their mind, stimulate their think, what is related to them, and also the product or marketing activities is connected to their life style(Pine II & Gilmore, 1999¡FSchmitt, 1999), it means that experience economy is becoming a trend of product consuming. Therefore, this study attempt to quote the Comprehensive model raised by Cronin, Brady and Hult (2000) and the Cognitive Model raised by Oliver(1980) as basic research frames, to prove the following goals of this study. After consumers which have been shopping in IKEA cognize the experiential value, whether their cognition will affect consumers¡¦ satisfaction or not. In addition, consumers will have the brand loyalty to IKEA. According to the result, it provides some suggestions to their experiential marketing. According to the results, consumers¡¦ experiential value will affect consumer satisfaction positively. When consumers¡¦ satisfaction becomes higher, and their brand loyalty becomes higher. In addition, when consumers¡¦ experiential value of playfulness becomes higher, and their brand loyalty becomes higher. However, some kinds of experiential value including aesthetics, service excellence and customer ROI have to let consumer have consumer satisfaction, then it can make consumers have loyalty to the brand.

Social media is a newer emerging media outlet that could serve as a good communication tool for companies, marketers, and advertisers alike; yet, studies into the effects that social media may have on people’s perceptions is more limited. The goal of this research study is to investigate whether or not social media has the ability to influence people’s perceptions of brands. It applies cultivation theory to social media and specifically looks at whether or not social media can cultivate brand affect, trust, and loyalty. As a result, this study will allow for potential understanding of how to use social media effectively to communicate messages and where additional research can be done to better understand this newer media outlet. / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Business / Master / Master of Philosophy

In recent years, smartphone has become the most popular products, the literature for smartphone is relatively less, most of using Technology Acceptance Model ¡]TAM¡^ as the main research framework to explore. Influencing the consumer intension is concept of cognition ¡]perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use¡^, thereby affecting subsequent behavioral intentions, but what kind of product characteristics affect consumer¡¦s perceiving are seldom addressed. This study proposes "Involvement - Brand Loyalty Model" as the theoretical basis, with the "involvement" concept applied to smartphone users in order to explore the brand loyalty. Involvement antecedent focuses on "product utility", and explores what kind of product characteristics affect the product utility from the past literature, and then is combined with the social influence to investigate smartphone usage. Finally, the study will also compare different groups based on with or without owning a smartphone, and then provide the final analysis of the research results. The final results show that user involvement does affect the brand loyalty of the smartphone, and if the users are highly involved, regardless of whatever the user experience may be, product involvement will affect the brand involvement. Comparison with previous studies finds the similarity and the differences between those two groups. The common is the high involvement of smartphone. The differences lie in the user experience that does affect the user for the demand of products characteristics, and the impact of the social influence. The three products characteristics: convergence, innovation and network externality will definitely affect the product utility for someone who has smartphone, but we can understand that the user experience will impact convergence by analyzing the groups without smartphone. It is difficult to measure the value of convergence for someone who doesn¡¦t have smartphone, so in the study show that the convergence does not significantly affect the product utility, while the other two product characteristics ¡]innovation, network externalities¡^ are significant impact the product utility. For people who have usage experience, the social influence can directly affect their brand judgment, nevertheless without the usage experience, the social influence has impact on the brand involvement only through the product involvement.

The study was conducted to measure brand loyalty of customers in a business-to-business environment, in this case the South African paint manufacturing industry. A brand loyalty conceptual framework developed for the Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry by Moolla (2010) was used to test if it also applies in a business-to-business setting. The framework was adapted to suit the above industry and used to measure brand loyalty levels of South African paint manufacturers. From the results it can be concluded that the model can be applied with some adaptations. Factor analysis was utilised to validate the influences. Factor analysis results were viewed with caution as sample adequacy was found to be marginal in some cases, possibly due to a small data set. Although two of the influences could not be validated, they were still found to be important. All the influences are found to be reliable as evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha. The measured brand loyalty values show that customers in the South African paint industry are quite loyal, with some influences scoring very high. Culture in particular was found to be not very important. This is likely due to the fact that individual culture instead of company culture was measured. More work is required to adapt the questionnaire to measure company culture when assessing brand loyalty in a business-to business setting. Clear brand loyalty differences were identified along with age, company size and the position the respondent holds with the company. Owners/directors, procurement personnel, technical personnel and general managers view different brand loyalty influences as important. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess whether the extent to which consumers’ brand attitudes change when the consumers are exposed to negative publicity of the brand, and when exposed to a company’s response to negative publicity, differ depending on the consumers’ degree of brand loyalty and depending on how positive the consumers’ initial brand attitudes are. Design/methodology/approach: The study had a deductive research approach with a single cross-sectional descriptive and exploratory design. Archival analysis was used to collect relevant theories and to conduct the preparatory data collection through data mining, both in which secondary data was gathered. Survey was used when collecting qualitative primary data in the preparatory data collection through focus groups, and when collecting primary data in the main data collection through a questionnaire. The main data was further analyzed through a one-way ANOVA within a non-parametric Levene’s test. Findings: The extent to which consumers’ brand attitudes changed when consumers were exposed to negative publicity of the brand differed depending on if the consumers’ initial brand attitudes were positive or negative. Consumers with negative brand attitudes had a smaller attitude change compared to consumers with positive brand attitudes, opposed to what was assumed in the current study. The extent to which consumers’ brand attitudes changed when consumers were exposed to negative publicity of the brand did not statistically differ depending on the consumers’ degree of brand loyalty. Neither did the extent to which consumers’ brand attitudes changed when the consumers were exposed to a company’s response to negative publicity differ depending on how positive the consumers’ brand attitudes were, nor on the consumers’ degree of loyalty toward the brand. Research limitations/suggestions for future research: The information concerning the negative event and the company’s response strategy was very concentrated in the questionnaire. In real life, consumers would have had different perceptions of both the event and the response since some parts require consumers to actively search for information. Hence, suggestion for future research is to measure the attitude changes where the consumers have gained information in a natural course. Implications: The new perspective brought forth through the study could be useful for brand managers to bear in mind when setting up strategies on how to manage a negative publicity situation such as the Apple/Foxconn case.

Thesis (M.Tech.)-Durban University of Technology, 2007. / Word processed copy. Includes journal article based on thesis (leaves 125-144) Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-120)

Thesis (M.Tech.)--Durban University of Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-120) Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.