The thinking that organizations achieve greater success as a result of superior fit to their environments has become a foundation of marketing and strategy research, however; there has been scant research regarding the underlying processes used by organizations to achieve a superior and advantage-yielding fit between resources and the environments. This study examines how the firm's strategic dominant logic affects the deployment of marketing capabilities under conditions of uncertainty. Drawing on the Resource-based View of the firm and the dynamic capabilities perspective as a theoretical framework, this study hypothesizes that the firm's opportunity dominant logic (the dominant logic employed in uncertain markets) facilitates the development and deployment of a firm marketing capability, which in turn, affects firm performance outcomes. This research employs both exploratory and confirmatory approaches. First, a series of interviews with 12 managers responsible for marketing programs in market characterized by substantial uncertainty was used to understand the key issues and define the most relevant constructs that engender superior performance in uncertain markets. Then, a testable model explaining the relationships between the identified constructs was developed. Consistent with a robust research design, the constructs and relationships in the model were confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modeling on a 224 responses from a survey of corporate managers responsible for emerging markets marketing operations. The results suggest that the firm's opportunity strategic logic (i.e. opportunity recognition and opportunity creation) acts on the firm's marketing oriented behaviors (market oriented information processing) to configure and deploy a marketing capability that leads to competitive advantages and firm performance. Theoretical contributions point to a leading role for the firm's market oriented information processing in the configuration and deployment of marketing resources under conditions of uncertainty since it mediates the opportunity dominant logic –capabilities – performance relationship. Recommendations for marketing practice include emphasizing the role of opportunity dominant logic when faced with uncertain markets and encouraging the development of marketing learning processes and local networks as drivers of firm performance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2011. / April 27, 2011. / opportunity discovery, uncertainty network building competence, firm cognition, strategic entrepreneurship, resource deployment, resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, dominant strategic logic, emerging markets, marketing strategy, customer value creation, explorator research design, opportunity creation, market orientation, learning orientation, market oriented information processing / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary A. Knight, Professor Directing Dissertation; Bruce Lamont, University Representative; Daekwan Kim, Committee Member; Michael Brusco, Committee Member.

Conferencia organizada por la carrera de Marketing - EPE. de la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC). Realizada el 05 de julio de 2018 en el Auditorio Bancalari, Campus Monterrico de la UPC.

Doménico Casaretto - D'onofrio. El evento Marketing Live es un esfuerzo de la carrera de la carrera de Comunicación y Marketing que reúne, durante una semana, expositores nacionales e internacionales que son referentes importantes del Marketing y la Comunicación. En el 2017 se realizó del 12 al 16 de junio y se cubrieron los 4 campus de la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas.

Miguel Oscáriz J. Walter Thompson El evento Marketing Live es un esfuerzo de la carrera de la carrera de Comunicación y Marketing que reúne, durante una semana, expositores nacionales e internacionales que son referentes importantes del Marketing y la Comunicación. En el 2017 se realizó del 12 al 16 de junio y se cubrieron los 4 campus de la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas.

Franco Pinamonti. Movistar. / El evento Marketing Live es un esfuerzo de la carrera de la carrera de Comunicación y Marketing que reúne, durante una semana, expositores nacionales e internacionales que son referentes importantes del Marketing y la Comunicación. En el 2017 se realizó del 12 al 16 de junio y se cubrieron los 4 campus de la Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas.

Rapid technological progress has transformed the communication process, specifically the consumption and distribution of information. Through technological progress, the world has become a smaller place by bridging the gap between individuals and bringing them together. From a marketing perceptive, this has resulted in the Internet becoming one of the most significant sources of information for both consumers and marketing practitioners. With immeasurable access to information, consumers specifically have been empowered as they can search for the best and lowest products or services. The objective of this study is to analyse Content Marketing, and explore its application in the vehicle insurance industry in South Africa. This study proposes that Content Marketing, as a marketing trend, impacts the vehicle insurance purchase decision-making process. More precisely, in the South African context, vehicle insurers already make use of firm-generated content (FGC), using an emotional trigger to encourage consumers to purchase insurance. Using a questionnaire, data was collected from 192 insurance consumers residing in South Africa. The study tested ten hypotheses using PLS- SEM and the data was analysed using SmartPLS software. The results indicate that eight of the ten hypotheses are supported. The results also demonstrated that FGC, moderated by the emotional trigger ‘fear', has an impact on the vehicle insurance purchase process. Furthermore, consumers are more receptive to marketing communication through storytelling. Due to the shift from traditional marketing, the ability for organisations to communicate something valuable to consumers presents an opportunity to create a strong brand positioning. MiWay's “Your silence is our signal” online video served as the research object and was used as a practical example for the research participants, exposing them to insurance FGC. Therefore, it is imperative for marketing practitioners to adopt a marketing approach that underlines the importance of content generation and communication that is in line with the organisations overall brand positioning. They need to modify their marketing strategies to incorporate online and social media platforms in order to distribute online content that is both beneficial and relevant to consumers. Based on the insights generated from this study, the research aims to amplify existing scientific literature relating to Content Marketing and to contribute knowledge in the clarification of Content Marketing in the body of knowledge.

Since the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry in 1969 to consider the desirability or otherwise of introducing a television service in South Africa and the subsequent establishment of television in the Republic in 1976, no official policy statement has been announced on possible future television developments. This study's main contribution to knowledge is in attempting to provide a framework for such development, based on an evaluation of relevant television system experience. In addition, this dissertation attempts to measure public attitudes to television's performance, organisation and regulation after eight years of operation. To date, no published research exists on these aspects of television broadcasting in South Africa. In this dissertation, an historic and contemporary analysis of selected television systems, a social and economic justification for moving South Africa from its present monopoly broadcasting structure is presented. A synthesis of television experience with particular reference to Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is evolved, suggesting how this transition to a plural system, permitting independent television broadcasting, might be achieved. The resulting proposal recommends that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) should remain the principal instrument of national broadcasting, but entry should be granted to a regional television service based on the major metropolitan centres. This independent service should have the capacity for national broadcasting of programmes through network arrangements. The alternative service would be formed by a partnership of state and private sector interests with the Afrikaans and English press groups having a significant role in the latter. The system calls for the utilisation of a domestic communications satellite for efficient distribution of both SABC and independent television channels.

Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis presents a method of gauging advertising effectiveness through the measurement of changes in purchasing patterns caused by the controlled exposure to advertisements. The concept is not entirely new, but it is thought that this is the first time that a practical system has been designed and tested. Certainly it is new to the insurance industry in South Africa. In order to provide a framework within which to measure advertising effectiveness, the thesis proposes certain models of the way in which advertising works for the insurance industry. Although these models provide the basis for the empirical studies, they are not essential to the proposed methodology. Advertising effectiveness can, however, only be measured against agreed objectives and implies a defined scale of values. Those objectives and, values must in their turn be absolutely relevant to the true purpose of the advertisement. It is suggested that in certain other measurement systems relevance is forced to yield to expediency. Essentially the method requires that advertising messages are dispatched by direct mail to random samples drawn from a list which effectively represents the total universe of the target market.

The following dissertation examines consumer decision-making in two important contexts. The first is in the domain of health and nutrition decisions. Both governmental entities and corporations alike have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to provide consumers with a means of easily judging nutritional content and thus, prompting healthier consumption choices. As such, Essay 1 introduces and empirically tests a new labeling format designed to aid consumers in making better nutritional choices. The second domain in which consumer decision-making is studied is within the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR). While extant research has identified numerous benefits of CSR initiatives, relatively little work offers insight into how the amount of CSR influences the attribution of blame. Therefore, essay 2 addresses this gap in the literature by examining empirically the idea that CSR initiatives do not uniformly repress the attribution of blame, nor the intentions to punish, among consumers following a firm-specific irresponsible event. Essay 1 makes a number of contributions to the transformative consumer research and marketing literatures by introducing a novel concept called integrative nutrition information as a means of encouraging healthier consumption choices. Integrative nutrition information is defined by Essay 1 as the provision of nutrition information that explicitly and simultaneously presents nutritional information in a format that includes both caloric content and required physical activity time to offset consumption. The results of Essay 1 demonstrate that integrative nutrition information leads to lower rates of consumption when compared to current NLEA-mandated labeling standards. In particular, this effect is a byproduct of loss aversion and negativity bias associated with the required physical activity. Additionally, Essay 1 presents boundary conditions on the strength and effectiveness of integrative nutrition information as well as the underlying mechanism—negative affective forecasting—behind these effects. Essay 1 advances the literature on nutritional information (Grunert, Willis, and Fernandez-Celemin 2010; Kiszko, Martinez, Abrams, and Elbel 2014) by providing information so as to motivate healthier choices (Koenigstorfer, Groeppel-Klein, and Kamm 2014; Liu, Roberto, Liu, and Brownell 2012; Vasiljevic, Pechey, and Marteau 2015). Specifically, Essay 1 answers the call of scholars to consider novel, more innovative ways of motivating healthier consumer choices (Kiszko et al. 2014) by presenting a labeling format that bridges diet and physical activity, the two aspects of a healthy lifestyle, so as to allow for easier and more effective ways to make healthful choices. Essay 2 adds to the literature on CSR while also advancing the organizational literature devoted to perceived psychological contracts. Specifically, Essay 2 extends these literature streams by examining when, and the degree to which, a company's CSR stance, that is, the position a company publicly takes on participating in socially responsible initiatives, influences consumer blame subsequent to a socially irresponsible event. The findings of Essay 2 indicate that the attribution of blame and encouragement of punishment following an irresponsible event is moderated by level of CSR stance. Moreover, Essay 2 identifies the underlying process that accounts for this effect. Specifically, when consumers are made aware of a company-specific irresponsible event, they tend to experience feelings of betrayal, which precipitate support for company sanctions. This effect is particularly strong with relatively higher levels of CSR-stances. The insights from Essay 2 make important empirical contributions by establishing a previously undefined effect - that a relatively higher CSR stance leads consumers to appoint harsher punishments following an irresponsible event. Without doubt, CSR initiatives are valuable assets to firms (Du, Bhattacharya, and Sen 2007; Morsing 2006; Torelli, Monga, and Kaikati 2012), but at the same time Essay 2 finds firm managers must recognize the possible negative consequences of a relatively higher CSR stances. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / March 16, 2016. / Consumer Behavior, corporate social responsibility, csr, Nutrition label, public policy / Includes bibliographical references. / Ronald E. Goldsmith, Professor Directing Dissertation; Elizabeth B. Goldsmith, University Representative; Michael J. Brusco, Committee Member; Martin Mende, Committee Member; Maura L. Scott, Committee Member.

This dissertation studies empowered consumer (EC) driven changes to B2C sales interactions. ECs are characterized as having high levels of information, awareness, and power for specific purchase interactions (Labrecque et al. 2013). Despite popular acceptance that salespeople must develop new sales approaches to be effective with ECs, limited conceptual (e.g., Jones, Sundaram, and Chin 2005; Rapp et al. 2014) and empirical (e.g., Leigh et al. 2014; Verbeke, Dietz, Verwaal 2011) research explores this area. Therefore, despite the importance of this topic, the marketing literature does not yet offer much insight for either management practice or theory development. To address this need for research, Essay 1 "starts at the beginning" and empirically tests the effectiveness of traditional sales influence tactics with ECs. Then, Essay 2 empirically tests how knowledge brokers effectively communicate attribute-specific information and scarce knowledge to ECs. Essay 1 introduces the construct of "informedness" to measure a consumer's empowerment as he or she enters a sales interaction. Informedness is defined by the essay as "the consumer's perceived information level for a specific purchase decision prior to the given purchase event." The results of Essay 1 indicate two overarching findings salient to the interaction of ECs and salespeople. First, the EC (high informedness) enters a sales interaction willing to buy (β = .57, p < .001, R2 =.33), yet the relationship with purchase is non-significant (i.e., no purchase). Essay 1 employs the theory of dual routes of persuasion (Petty 198) to classify salesperson influence tactics and hypothesize how ECs will respond based on their elaborative nature. The results provide the second, and arguably most interesting, finding of Essay 1. Elaboration inducing influence tactics, expected to improve a salesperson's likelihood of "closing a sale" with an EC, are not supported (i.e., the salesperson's attempts to increase purchase are not effective), while elaboration inhibiting influence tactics are supported (i.e., salespeople can have a negative effect on purchase). In short, the findings suggest that for ECs, who initially intend to purchase, salesperson use of traditional influence tactics is not effective, or worse is detrimental. However, post-hoc analysis does reveal that the influence tactics perform as expected for non-ECs (low informedness), which indicate that this approach still holds merit for less informed consumers. Essay 2 pursues an answer to the "if traditional sales influence tactics don't work, what does work with ECs?" question suggested by the results of Essay 1. Thus, the concept of the salesperson as knowledge broker is examined. Knowledge brokers are salespeople who take a holistic view of the consumer's situation, assess it, and add scarce (missing) knowledge to recommend an optimal solution (Rapp et al. 2014). Specifically, Essay 2 focuses on new ways, unique to ECs, for salespeople to exchange information and to make recommendations to ECs, which is required of a knowledge broker. The results provide support for all but one of Essay 2's hypotheses and make three important empirical contributions to the empowered consumer and knowledge broker literatures. The first theoretical contribution is to apply regulatory focus theory to ECs. Hypothesis 1 finds that EC perceived informedness levels have a positive and significant relationship with a prevention regulatory focus. The second contribution is that salespeople can be effective as knowledge brokers through use of the underlying mechanisms of regulatory focus theory. Hypothesis 2 adds empirical support for the mechanism of item-specific, or EC attribute-specific, information as an effective means of value creation with ECs. The third contribution is explicating the conceptual idea of scarce knowledge with results that indicate the interaction of attribute-specific information and "challenge" scarce knowledge lead ECs to greater acceptance of salesperson recommendations than other approaches. In addition to scholarly contributions, sales managers should be very interested in the findings of this research. The findings of Essay 1 indicate that for ECS, traditional application of influence tactics is not effective. Essay 2 offers managers a starting point to realize why their salespeople are failing with ECs who are prevention focused. The findings of Essay 2 suggest that, to be effective with ECs, salespeople should change their traditional needs analysis approach to a "determinant attributes" analysis approach with a focus on exchanging attribute-specific information. Finally, Essay 2 offers evidence that challenging ECs to "fix" information and application errors will lead to greater acceptance of salesperson recommendations. Overall, managers should find the results of this research useful as they strive to understand what a knowledge broker is and how their salespeople can act in this new sales role with ECs. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / March 31, 2016. / Elaboration Likelihood Model, Empowered Consumer, Influence Tactics, Knowledge Broker, Regulatory Focus, Sales / Includes bibliographical references. / Ronald E. Goldsmith, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Daekwan Kim, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Bruce Lamont, University Representative; Willy Bolander, Committee Member.