The aim of this study is to explore how interpretive communities based on gender and social class interpret advertisements. By distinguishing between open and closed text advertisements on one hand and by considering audience as active viewers of marketing communication on the other, this research explores, the symbolic meanings that are drawn by people when consuming an advertisement. A reader-response/reception theory approach was adopted, because it offers insights into the relationship between language, meaning and consumption, while it also emphasizes the meanings that consumers draw from advertisements. Moreover in depth interviews’ method has been selected for the data collection, since it gives us the opportunity to capture the rich and complex interplay between elements of the advertisement and consumer responses, by exploring how print advertisements are being individually decoded. Findings of the in-depth interviews indicate that people of different genders and from different social classes do interpret print advertisements in different ways. The main themes that emerged during the data analysis are the following: i. Male participants approach the advertisement in a descriptive way. ii. Male participants concentrate on the parts of the advertisement and attempt to solve the puzzle. iii. Female participants approach the advertisement in an interpretive way. iv. Female participants look into the whole of the advertisement and use it as a stimulus to think, imagine and create fantasies. v. Working class participants approach advertisements in an implicit way. vi. Middle social class participants approach advertisements in an explicit way. The research implication of this study lies in capturing how interpretive communities interpret advertisements and analysing the symbolic meanings that are drawn by them. The managerial contribution includes suggestions for the search and formation of more successfully targeted messages, in order to be successfully communicated to multiple target groups.

Revenue management is one of the successful applications of operations research. The area of revenue management we are concerned with, in this thesis is dynamic pricing. More specifically, we are concerned with establishing a pricing policy that maximises the revenue for a fixed number of products or services in a finite selling horizon. The characteristics of the industries considered are, the full inventory of items is available for sale at the beginning of the selling period, no re-ordering is allowed, and the items unsold by the deadline have a constant salvage value of zero.

No description available.

An increasing number of firms are attempting to host online communities for commercial purposes, such as building relationships with their customers, getting their feedback, and strengthening the brand. Because of such wide-ranging impacts, scholars have dedicated considerable efforts to understanding the processes of online community development and cultivation. This thesis, drawing on both marketing and information management literature, proposes an online community participation behaviour model that includes community-focused and member-focused factors as well as the psychological and social mediating mechanisms underlying the relationships between participation determinants and actual participation behaviour. Specifically, the thesis develops and tests two distinct but related research frameworks for empirical investigation in two joining phases. Framework 1, in the joining stage, delineates the temporary encounter when newcomers first visit a new or unfamiliar online community, focusing on the period of transition from attraction to member acquisition. Theoretically, the model draws on initial trust and signalling theory to examine the impact of initial trust on member recruitment in online communities. It was tested with 434 responses relating to nine Taiwanese online community platforms using structural equation modelling. The results indicate that, in online community contexts, initial trust is a significant mechanism for first-time visitors to make a joining decision. Moreover, the results reveal that personal innovativeness and susceptibility to normative influence respectively weakens and strengthens the linkages. Framework 2, in the post-joining stage, attempts to enhance understanding of members‘ proactive behaviour in online community settings. The conceptual model highlights the mediating roles of reciprocity norms and social identification in the impacts of participation factors on decisions about proactive participation. According to self-reported data from two time periods and objective behavioural data (526 participants), enjoyment plays a relatively important role than the other factors in triggering member participation behaviour. In addition, leader support, member receptivity, and community informativeness combine to determine members‘ participation behaviour through the norm of reciprocity and social identification with the online community. Overall, this thesis not only clarifies the theoretical relationship between participation determinants and participation behaviour but also improves the understanding of how different factors jointly explain both potential and exsiting members‘ participation decisions. The thesis concludes with the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings, as well as several important research issues and future research avenues.

Strategic decision making is fundamental since strategic decisions affect the long-term health of the organization. Strategy process research to date has been mainly concerned with characterising and explaining the nature of individual strategic decision making processes. A number of researchers are calling for more research on the potential connectedness between strategic decisions. In response, this thesis contributes to the strategic decision making literature by investigating the connectedness between strategic decision making processes. It focuses on precursive connections and tracks decisions backwards and forwards to identify potential connections. Both researchers and practitioners believe that the success and failure of prior decisions affect subsequent decisions. Hence, this research investigates decision performance as a potential influence on connectedness. The research is qualitative and a multiple embedded case study approach was chosen, examining decision making processes in two organizations in the UK. Data collection consisted mainly of in-depth interviews with executives and senior management but also included archival data. Main findings indicate that decision makers tend to transfer their knowledge and experience from one decision process to the next and thereby create a connection between strategic decisions. The connections can be characterised in terms of exploration and exploitation tendencies. Positive perceptions about a decision’s performance are related to the exploitation of existing practices, while negative perceptions prompt an exploration of new routines. The findings also show that informants’ perceptions about decision performance are highly subjective. The concept of cognitive decision styles provides plausible explanations arguing that individuals hold personal preferences when it comes to judging and perceiving information and their evaluations of strategic decisions cohere with these. Finally, this research suggests that decisions are linked primarily through individual agency. This reinforces the importance of the individual in strategic decision making processes, and consequently, the emphasis in this work is to argue that only by a deep understanding of individual action (and practice) is it possible to understand decision processes.

This thesis reports on how firm and manager experience relate to internationalization commitment in foreign entrance decisions and mode choice, by studying the managerial assessment of the host country. In doing so, it addresses the core issue of international business studies: a lack of knowledge about foreign markets complicates the decision making on commitment to work across country borders. The basic premise of the well known internationalization process theory is that knowledge on internationalization is acquired through firm experience abroad (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977). This study provides empirical support for the assumed experiential learning within the firm. Multilevel comparative case studies are suited to study how managerial assessment reflects the learning of the firm in the internationalization process. A total of 54 plans with 26 decision making managers are studied in 25 Dutch firms. Data is gathered on (a) the managerial assessment of host country conditions in China, (b) the firm and manager’s experience and (c) how the main strategic choices evolve during the entrance process. This multilevel analysis allows for insight in what causes increasing entry commitments. The findings confirm that more international experience often relates to higher commitment in entrance and entry mode, supporting the internationalization process view empirically. Analysis at a lower level reveals how different managers form varying opinions on host country conditions in China, dependent on the firm and manager’s characteristics and experience. The manager’s host country assessment reflects the learning process in internationalization. The manager and the firm as a context in which entry choices are made, should not be ignored in international business research.

No description available.

Purpose – While considerable research has been dedicated to sponsorship, product placement and celebrity endorsement, hybrid forms that employ two or more of these approaches in a single execution have been largely neglected. A documentary that is woven around a single brand and employs elements of endorsement, product placement and television sponsorship to an extent unprecedented on German television is analysed here. Such "Protagonist Placement" had not previously been explored empirically. The purpose of this research was thus to identify, whether Protagonist Placement (PP) has a significant impact on intermediate consumer response. The second objective was to identify a potentially existent mediating role of Persuasion Knowledge (PK) on PP outcomes. The second unit of analysis – Pseudo Protagonist Placement (PPP) – is a broadcasting sponsorship with characteristics that suggest a strong association of the sponsoring brand with the sponsored programme. Again, the focus was laid on the identification of the impact of PPP on intermediate consumer response and the mediating role of PK. Design/methodology/approach – The research covered two studies – one on PP and the other on PPP. Each consists of a qualitative analysis of the programme itself and of theoretical thematic interview analysis using the NVivo qualitative research software. Each study further included an experiment employing a 2x2x2 factorial design. The experimental data was analysed using ANOVA and Chi-square. The scales used in the experiment were subjected to a panel of judges and a scale purification procedure in order to arrive at a common core of items to be used in the subsequent analysis. The approach was guided by the philosophical foundation of critical rationalism. Findings – It was possible to identify a positive impact of the chosen example of PP on intermediate consumer response in the form of a significant increase of unprompted and prompted brand awareness immediately after exposure. While PK did not adversely affect the observed impact of PP, it induced a special kind of 'Sleeper Effect' in the form of increased purchase intention after the delay period, without any noticeable suppression of advertising impact in the immediately-after condition. The researcher suggests the existence of a third route towards the Sleeper Effect, that adds increased association to the two already existent explanations, namely differential decay and disassociation. Similar results were found for PPP, which elicited a significant and favourable impact on brand awareness immediately after exposure and increased purchase intention after the delay period. Again, this increased persuasiveness over time was not caused by suppression of an immediate impact and, therefore, also indicated a third route towards the Sleeper Effect. Practical implications – The findings provide new empirical data concerning merged forms of indirect marketing and in particular such intense forms as PP and PPP. The studies offer new insights for both the academic researcher and the marketing practitioner. In particular, the way in which PK mediates the advertising outcomes and the way in which it triggers delayed persuasiveness are subjects that offer new insights for both marketer and researcher. Originality/value – Both studies offer new empirical evidence that broadens the research in the field of indirect marketing, and augments the concept of PK by offering an indication of its ability to elicit increased persuasiveness over time. Furthermore, this PK-induced Sleeper Effect demonstrates the existence of a third route towards increased persuasiveness after time delay. Both observations suggest the need for an augmentation of both the PK and Sleeper Effect theory.

This research combines the Anderson and Oliver (1987) and Jaworski (1988) sales management control (SMC) conceptualisations by integrating behaviourbased, compensation-based and informal SMC into a single research framework. It examines the separate effects of SMC dimensions on performance, in particular salesperson behaviour performance, salesperson outcome performance and sales organisation effectiveness, and on salesperson behaviour, in particular salesperson risk-taking behaviour, salesperson ethical behaviour and salesperson organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). The study implements a sequential mixed methods research design in two phases: case studies followed by a survey. Eight interviews were conducted and 197 UK sales managers responded to the survey. Based on the case study results, the research framework was extended by inclusion of a leader-member exchange (LMX) variable, and two interactive effects between behaviour-based and compensation-based SMC were hypothesised. The quantitative data are tested using structural equation modelling, and the main findings of this study are that: (1) behaviour-based SMC has a negative impact on behaviour performance and ethical behaviour; (2) compensationbased SMC has a moderate positive impact on outcome performance and risktaking behaviour, while having no significant impact on ethical behaviour and OCB; (3) informal SMC has a positive impact on behaviour performance and OCB; (4) salesperson behaviours are strong positive predictors of salesperson performance but SMC is not a strong antecedent of salesperson behaviours; (5) no moderation effect between SMC dimensions is detected; (6) LMX plays an important role in determining salesperson behaviour performance; and (7) sales managers’ perceptions of what determines salesperson performance and behaviour often differs from statistical results. Provocative insights into the consequences of SMC are discussed, managerial implications are identified, and future research directions suggested.

Blogging has captured the attention of the public as a platform for self-presentation and self expression; social interaction (Guadagno, Okdie and Eno, 2007; Schmidt, 2007), and as a source of information (Schmidt, 2007). Blogs provided self-reflexive consumers with a platform to describe their own action in their own words (Caru and Cova, 2006); hence offer new spaces for the study of unleashed consumers’ narratives (Schau and Gilly, 2003; Kozinets et al 2010 and Pace, 2008). This presents opportunities for addressing research gaps in the literature of consumption and tourist experiences. Travel blogs as rich narratives of travel experiences can provide an emic perspective of what constitutes the bloggers’ experience and provides in-depth insights on measuring the outcome of this subjective and personal experience. The discourse analysis of travel blogs is a novel approach to understanding tourist experiences through their reconstruction of their stories to their readers. The analysis of travel blogs reveals elements that constitute core experiences that have, to date, proved to be elusive to marketers. The thesis also contributes to the understanding of this new blogging phenomenon among travellers that has become part of their tourist experiences. Marketing and managerial implications of the key findings of the discourse analysis of travel blogs and the survey on travel bloggers are provided in the thesis. The thesis responds to the urgency of understanding the concept of experience, as intensified by the emergence of the experience economy where “experience” is seen as having a higher economic value compared to goods and services.