Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-132). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-132). Also available on the Internet.

M. Tech. Business Administration / Small and medium enterprises are the cornerstones of the economy as research indicates that they create jobs and also contribute to the gross domestic product of a country. Several studies on e-commerce adoption by small and medium enterprises in developing countries have found that small and medium enterprises are said to be generally lagging behind to large organisations as far as the adoption of e-commerce is concerned. There were studies done on e-commerce adoption. However, no study has been done on e-commerce adoption in Pretoria East. The objectives of the study were to determine the current level of e-commerce adoption by small and medium enterprises in Pretoria East. The study assessed whether the influence of factors such as relative advantage, competitive pressure, IT knowledge, security and government support motivates the adoption of e-commerce by small and medium enterprises in Pretoria East and the relative importance thereof.

This research makes a case for treating an electronic commerce web site as a social actor and argues that LT-enabled support for personalization systems and virtual communities has a significant impact on the perceived communication characteristics of a web site. This research studied the impact of two communication characteristics - adaptiveness and connectivity of a web site. Adaptiveness indicates the extent to which a web site adapts itself to support the needs of its customers whereas connectivity refers to the ability of a web site to link potential customers with other visitors. Further, synthesizing research from communication, media choice and technology adoption literatures, this thesis proposes social presence as the experiential construct and perceived usefulness as the utilitarian construct that will mediate the relationship between communication characteristics of a medium and customer loyalty. A survey and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the linkages proposed above. The survey showed that while adaptiveness impacted on both social presence and perceived usefulness, connectivity had an impact only on social presence and an insignificant impact on perceived usefulness. Social presence did not influence perceived usefulness while both social presence and perceived usefulness had a significant impact on customer loyalty. By filtering Amazon.com real-time, the lab experiment was conducted to specifically study the causal impact of a web site's support for personalization and virtual communities. Support for personalization had a strong impact on adaptiveness, whereas support for consumer reviews had strong effect on connectivity. Interestingly, support for personalization had a weaker, but significant effect on connectivity and support for consumer reviews had a similar effect on adaptiveness. Data from the experiment was also analyzed using mediation analyses as well as partial least square analysis to show that the general pattern of results observed were consistent across methods thus improving the confidence in the research model proposed. This research by proposing social presence as a crucial experiential predictor of customer loyalty has addressed an important gap that exists in our current understanding of web users' behavior. It also makes a key contribution by empirically showing that a web site's support for IT-enabled personalization and virtual communities do have a significant impact not only on the perceived communication characteristics, but also on customer loyalty through social presence and perceived usefulness.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.

To deliver the type of marketing graduate that meets industry demand necessitates that marketing curricula content be continuously updated to keep pace with the dynamic marketing environment. One of the major trends influencing the twenty-first century marketing environment is the advent of the Internet and substantial growth in Internet usage and Internet-based commerce. Not only is the Internet driving major marketing environmental change, it is also emerging as a new marketing tool of significant potential. The widespread implications of the Internet to marketing is making it increasingly necessary for general marketing practitioners, even those not actively engaged in Internet-based commerce, to be equipped with an understanding of Internet marketing principles. For marketing education to remain relevant in the twenty-first century, it is essential that Internet marketing content elements be included in undergraduate generic marketing curricula. The first step in this process, and the one addressed by this study, is to identify and reach consensus on which Internet marketing content elements are relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students. The primary purpose of -this study w a s t a develop an empirically derived inventory o f Internet marketing content elements relevant for inclusion in generic undergraduate marketing programs, based upon both marketing academic and marketing practitioner perspectives. Five focal questions were asked and answered by the study. Which Internet-driven marketing environmental changes do marketing academics consider relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students? Which principles guiding the use of Internet as a marketing tool do marketing academics consider relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students? What do marketing academics consider to be the most suitable approach to implementing Internet marketing principles within higher education undergraduate business programs? What do marketing academics consider to be the relevant Internet marketing learning outcomes for generic marketing students at undergraduate level? Do marketing practitioners hold the same opinion as marketing academics regarding research questions one, two, three and four? For the purpose of this study, research was undertaken amongst two groups of respondents. Firstly, a census of the marketing faculties/departments of each of South Africa's public higher education institutions was taken at the end of 2004. Secondly, a non-probability, judgment sample of marketing practitioners, employed in those companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), that engage in marketing activities and which are operational in the South African market was taken at the start of 2005. The questionnaire requested respondents in both samples to indicate the relevance of five identified Internet-driven marketing environmental changes and twenty-four identified principles guiding the use of the Internet as a marketing tool to generic undergraduate marketing students. Further, both samples were requested to select the approach they judged to be the most suitable in implementing Internet marketing principles within undergraduate business programmes. Respondents in both samples were also requested to indicate which Internet marketing learning outcomes they believed. To be relevant generic undergraduate marketing student addition to both samples were asked to provide certain demographical data. The findings indicate that both the Internet-driven marketing environmental change's construct and the principles guiding the use of the Internet as a marketing tool construct to be relevant to generic undergraduate marketing students. The findings further suggest that Internet marketing content elements should be integrated into existing marketing subject offerings. Regarding the learning outcomes, the findings indicate descriptive Internet marketing principles to be the overriding learning outcome. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Business Management))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2005.

The advancement in technology in the twenty first century has introduced new and exciting ways for artists to self-promote their artwork while traditional methods remain viable. To be competitive in the art market an artist must understand and implement a variety of marketing strategies. Effective marketing is particularly critical for an art teacher who is also a practicing artist in order to sell their artwork. Through a comparative analysis of readily available marketing tools for artwork, I explore in this study a variety of ways that an artist can establish a successful career in art through the use of technology, and create a roadmap that can be used to shorten their route.

Recently Alan Andreasen (2003) argued that social marketing is in the 'growth phase' of development following four decades of research and practice. During this same time period, marketing has also witnessed new theoretical ideas and practices that have evolved from the influence of new interactive technologies such as the internet. Only limited scholarly work however has been undertaken to draw these marketing sub-disciplinary areas together. The research undertaken in this thesis bridges this gap and explores the role of the internet as means to further extend social marketing theory and practice. Three research questions informed the study. The first of these questions focused on how internet users describe their experiences of the internet as an everyday technology. The second question investigated the different profiles of internet users' opinions, attitudes and actions, and the third question examined how social marketing can be more responsive to internet user behaviour. To address these research questions the research design used both qualitative methods of focus groups and in-depth interviews together with Q methodology to quantitatively represent the structure and form of individual users' subjective disposition towards the internet. Although Q methodology is relatively absent from marketing literature, it was a useful method for identifying types of people with similar experiences and views of the advantages and disadvantages of internet interactions and relationships. The research process in the study was operationalised using a three-study design. The first study drew on sixteen interviews and two focus groups with internet users, the second study involved Q sorting with thirty-two internet users, and the third study engaged interviews with twenty social change agents. This study of internet users is embedded in a particular theoretical and epistemological position. Three issues are relevant. First, a social constructionist epistemology is engaged. This emphasises that technology is a social process, patterned by the condition of its creation and use, and informed by human choices and actions. Second, the research is situated across disciplinary boundaries. Marketing practitioners initially adopted a commercial, albeit simplistic, lens when considering the value of social aspects, such as virtual communities and the social networks of connection that link internet users into longer term relationships and exchanges of knowledge, emotion and shared confidences online. However, the intangible non-material resources shared between customers, organisations and other users online are of import to understanding the value of the internet for social marketing strategy. This required looking beyond the social marketing theory and research, to the literature on the sociology of technology. The third way in which this research is different epistemologically and theoretically is in its interpretive focus. Accordingly, the thesis contributes to the shift in academic focus towards critical marketing, which Hastings and Saren (2003) argue provides a more detailed critique and understanding of social marketing processes and outcomes. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of a strategy map for online social marketing. The map is derived from findings from the three studies. Study 1 explained that the internet is a social and personal technology which has been incorporated into users' everyday lives and activities. Study 2 identified different profiles of internet user opinions, attitudes and actions and interpreted these as internet user segments described as: the Internet Communitarian, the Information Networker and the Individualised Networker. Study 3 delineated the findings from the downstream users' perspective and presented a strategy map derived from the experiences of upstream internet users. Three principles inform this strategy map. First, social marketers need to adopt customer-centric marketing. Secondly, they should apply an exchange continuum that embraces a relational perspective. Thirdly, social marketers using the internet should plan online strategies that focus on the internet as a recombinant technology that can be "remade" by individual users' needs and desires. Several identified limitations of the study should be considered when reviewing this study. Firstly, the study's interpretive methodological focus precludes quantification and generalisablity to larger populations. Secondly, sample bias in terms of age and gender demographics was evident. Thirdly, a further limitation of the study is the nature of the technology under investigation in this thesis: the recency, and hence the salience of the findings, are mitigated by the fact that the internet is a dynamic technology. Finally, the generalised rather than particularised perspective on social issues and problems adopted in this study as a means of discussing social marketing, may also be seen as a limitation. This research is of significance to both an academic and practitioner audience. In terms of scholarly significance, the study is important theoretically and methodologically. Social marketing theory has a well established view of the customer as an operand resource. This thesis is significant as it demonstrates the need to conceptualise customers as more than simply 'targets' of social marketing campaigns. It illustrates how social change customers become operant resources who produce effects, based on their sharing behaviours, and make online contributions to behaviour-change processes that give target audiences (operand resources) a sense that they can enact the behaviour. As well, the evolving customer roles -- user, social actor, co-creator, resource -- theorised from the study findings inform a shifting exchange continuum involving 'transactions' to 'relationships'. Finally, this research is of theoretical significance in elucidating the conceptualisation of the continuous-process perspective which reveals that exchanges are not just the discrete, 'transactional' variety, but rather are long in duration and reflect an ongoing relationship-development process. Methodologically, the study has also demonstrated the potential value of Q methodology as a means of revealing subjective experiences and perspectives, which are the foundation of social products regularly dealt with by social marketers. For social marketing practitioners the study also demonstrates the need for engaging a more holistic view of the internet and its customers to facilitate social change campaigns. This, however, does not negate the fact that there may be potential challenges and unintended consequences facing social marketers in engaging the internet.

Generation Y (born between 1978 and 1995) has tremendous buying power and represents the future markets for most e-commerce Websites and companies. All online businesses should try to attract them and keep them as returning customers. Although former research findings distinguished Internet shoppers from the non-shoppers within the Internet user population, they did not focus on the characteristics of Internet shoppers and non-shoppers in specific market segments, especially in generations Y. In addition, studies on Taiwanese generation Y's profile and buying behaviours were not many either. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2006.

This dissertation examines revisitation behaviour in the context of non-transactional websites. A holistic framework based on theories from repeat purchase behaviour and satisfaction was developed and tested. This study is among the first to consider revisitation as analogous to repeat purchase behaviour. The premise of the model is that revisitation is determined through an evaluation of prior visits and that the elements influencing revisitation included satisfaction, involvement (site, product category and medium) and social influences. Five non-transactional websites were examined with the selection based on the website typology developed in this thesis - a typology that will benefit website research as it provides a consistent and generic framework. Data were collected using a crosssectional web-based online survey via the homepage of the websites. Since satisfaction is considered to be a central factor in traditional repeat purchase behaviour and in website use, the antecedents of satisfaction were also examined. Overall the findings support the importance of content quality as a factor in satisfaction and even though website users are increasingly more proficient, ease of use is still an influential factor as is the attitude to the brand that the site supports. It was found that the users??? motives for using the site affected the relationship between the quality of the perceived benefits and satisfaction. If the motivation to use the site was for information, then the impact of information quality on satisfaction was weaker than the impact of entertainment quality on satisfaction. Alternatively, if the motivation was for entertainment, then once again the impact of information quality on satisfaction was weaker than that of entertainment quality. Initial model testing showed that the only factor to influence revisitation behaviour was enduring site involvement. Cognizant of the dangers of ???data driven theory???, the relationship of the elements was reassessed. The resultant model shows that product category involvement directly influences enduring site involvement and that enduring site involvement is a central construct operating as a direct and a mediating influence between each of satisfaction, social influence, medium involvement and website revisitation.