Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2012

This document provides an overview of a marketing project for Cardno Christchurch carried out by Julia Toner, a student of The Master of Engineering Management Course at the University of Canterbury. This project involved initial company research; a review of national releases, research papers, and journal articles to establish current market trends and opportunities; and interviews with clients and industry representatives to ascertain Cardno’s current position. The purpose of this project is to provide Cardno Christchurch with a concise and relevant market needs analysis and marketing plan. These documents will direct Cardno management in marketing activities that will achieve brand recognition and strategic growth.

While traditional word of mouth (WOM) and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) have both been shown to highly impact consumer behavior, there is a deficit in our knowledge of how they compare to one another. My dissertation research addresses the lack of empirical studies that compare WOM promotion in the form of face-to-face interaction to eWOM promotion in the form of computer-mediated communication, especially using Web 2.0 technologies. This research tests the assumption that WOM is superior to eWOM and, if so, how to extend eWOM to improve its performance against WOM. Essay One introduces a proposed conceptual framework to differentiate WOM and eWOM based on Social Communication Theory. The overall conceptual model was derived from a qualitative research study that was used to explore and define the concepts, media types, and application of WOM and eWOM using a diverse panel of consumers. Essay Two describes an experiment that was conducted to empirically test whether WOM impacts important marketing outcomes differently than eWOM using an ecologically valid research procedure. Essay Two further explores mediation using social communication elements as the underlying explanatory mechanism for the relative impact of WOM and eWOM on consumers attitude toward a message, attitude toward a product, and purchase intention. The results revealed that WOM has a significantly higher impact than eWOM on consumer purchase-related attitudes. The posited social communication framework did mediate or explain the relative difference between WOM and eWOM on the outcomes variables. Essay Three investigates the robustness of the findings through a set of replication studies that test the effects across small and large sample sizes and across different methods of analysis. The results indicated that WOM showed a significant and consistently higher impact than eWOM across both replication studies. The third essay also examines factors that were influential in closing the relative gap between WOM and eWOM by introducing a third concept based on the Hyperpersonal Model of Communication Theory. This research is important as it seeks to understand how consumers communicate in this digital age and why there is an evolution of the sharing of product information that leads to key managerial, theoretical, and methodological implications.

This dissertation addresses the dual role of price on purchase likelihood. Developed over three essays, the main objective of this research is to gain a better understanding of how price affects purchase likelihood. Findings of extant research contain variability in both conceptualizations and demonstrated effects. This dissertation conceptualizes the effect that price has on purchase likelihood within a perceived value framework, which can be partitioned into categories of costs and benefits. This perspective allows for the decomposition of the multifaceted effects of price on purchase likelihood. Essay one provides a literature review, presents a conceptual model, and identifies four research questions pertaining to the phenomenon of interest. Essay two empirically tests the conceptual model for mediation and essay three tests for moderated mediation.

<p>Understanding consumer behavior is critical for firms' decision making. How consumers make decisions about what they want and buy directly affect the profits of firms. Therefore, it is important to consider consumer behaviors and incorporate them into the model when studying the optimal strategy of firms and competition between firms. In this dissertation, I study rich and interesting consumer behaviors and their impact on firms' strategy in two essays. The first essay considers consumers' shopping cost which leads to their preference for one-stop shopping. I examine how store visit costs and consumer knowledge about a product affect the strategic store choice of consumers and, in turn, the pricing, customer service and advertising decisions of competing retailers. My analysis offers insights on how specialty stores can compete with big-box retailers. In the second essay, I focus on a well-established psychology phenomenon, cognitive dissonance. I incorporate the idea of cognitive dissonance into a model of spatial competition and examine its implications for selling strategy. I provide new insight on the profitability of advance selling and spot selling as well as the pricing of bundle and its components. Collectively, two essays in this dissertation introduce novel ways to model consumer behaviors and help to understand the impact of consumer behaviors on firm profitability and strategy.</p> / Dissertation

The movement or flow of employees into, around and out of organisations (‘employee flow’) has long been a central issue in human resource management and industrial psychology. This is especially so for the specific element of employee turnover, but also applies to staffing and internal talent development. Employee flow is especially salient in a South African context characterised by scarce skills. The voluminous literature on employee flow has tended to view each element such as recruitment or turnover separately, and has generally focused on internal outcomes (e.g. commitment or satisfaction). This thesis attempts to add two crucial features, namely EF as a whole system (i.e. inflows, intraorganisation flows and outflows of staff in conjunction), and customer-based outcomes. Something of a synthesis is thus sought between EF and ideas of marketing productivity. Marketing productivity has been proposed as one of the most important foci of the marketing discipline (Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004; Sheth & Sisodia, 2002). It refers to links between marketing and organisational performance or value. Models such as the ‘service profit chain’ (Heskett, Sasser & Schlesinger, 1997) identify the antecedents of marketing productivity to be internal organisation characteristics such as staff satisfaction or loyalty. This thesis seeks to expand such models in the context of a system of EFs. Advanced decision theoretic utility theories of EF (e.g. Boudreau & Berger, 1985) allow for the complete, integrated value of employee movements over time to be modelled. Such a model is constructed and links to marketing metrics, notably service perceptions, investigated. Organisational value arising via the outcomes for customers are further iii investigated. Thus increased value of employee movements is proposed to generate organisational value, mediated by improved customer equity (e.g. Gelade & Young, 2005). An empirical, survey-based study was conducted to assess the model. EF was assessed in business-to-business relationships from the perspective of the customer using conceptions of decision theoretic utility analysis, and both intermediate and outcome-based customer perceptions of service quality used as dependent variables. Moderation effects from frequency of interaction and integration of the customer into the supply chain were also tested, as well as controls for characteristics of the transaction, organisation and industry. Results suggest that EF does significantly affect various stages of service quality provision, notably ‘potential quality’, which it appears mediates links to other aspects of service provision, especially final service outcomes. In addition, EF was also found to affect outcomes through the intermediate relational element of 'soft process quality', possibly highlighting the importance of relationship management and soft skills in B2B relationships. Employee outflows in particular showed evidence of relatively strong effects, possibly highlighting the ongoing salience of turnover, in particular effective identification and management of functional versus dysfunctional turnover instead of a sole focus on retention. Results were significantly stronger for service industries than others (presumably as service is the outcome), and when there were relatively few supplier contact staff (perhaps due to social networking, bonding, exchange or emotional contagion). This thesis adds substantially to the methodologies underlying service profit chain models. It explicitly included new constructs (EF utility). Contextually, it was the first proper test of this model in South Africa. Theoretical iv contributions arose from new inter-disciplinary syntheses of utility models, finally linking employee and customer utilities to the organisation. Ultimately, practical significance may arise for managerial models, estimating and justifying human resource interventions. Key words: Service-profit chain, marketing metrics, decision theoretic utility analysis, employee movement, employee flow, employee turnover, employee acquisition, employee separation, customer equity, customer satisfaction, customer retention, organisational performance, organisational value.

Academic research in the phenomenon known as mobile commerce is just now coming to the forefront. However, most of this literature is coming from areas other than marketing, including information systems and management. Empirical investigations are looking at the technology behind mobility, as well as some scant consumer behavior studies. Even less is information at the firm level as to why firms should consider mobile commerce as a strategy for marketing purposes. Using the institutional theory and the relational view of the firm to establish a theoretical foundation, this study attempts to fill the gap in marketing literature with respect to the management perspective of mobile commerce. An understanding in this area will allow firms to understand what is underlying the intentions to adopt a mobile commerce marketing strategy in terms of their relationships with stakeholders, and how to use that information for mobile commerce as a strategic competitive advantage. Data were collected from various industries around the United States through an online survey, a regular mail survey and surveys from student collection for an empirical examination of mobile commerce adoption. A sample base of 316 industry respondents was used for this study. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to provide evidence of adequate model fit, and the structural model and hypothesized relationships were tested using Structural Equation Modeling. The significance of these findings to theory and management implications is discussed. Limitations of this study and a future research agenda are presented. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2007. / Date of Defense: June 21, 2007. / Management, Electronic commerce, Mobile commerce, Technology, Internet, Marketing / Includes bibliographical references. / Charles Hofacker, Professor Directing Dissertation; Bruce Lamont, Outside Committee Member; Michael Hartline, Committee Member; Daekwan Kim, Committee Member.

The focus on the quality of health care, both clinical and experiential, is becoming increasingly important to academics and managers alike as its impact on hospital performance is established. Accordingly, research on the topic is increasing at a rapid pace. The perspective taken in much of this research focuses predominantly on how both experiential quality (EQ) and clinical quality (CQ) impact hospital performance. The vast majority of studies, however, have treated EQ and CQ as orthogonal concepts. Recently, researchers have conceptualized overall quality as a combination of EQ and CQ. However, no studies have conceptualized quality as the balance between EQ and CQ. As a result, one area that is in need of further investigation is how hospitals' EQ and CQ, in terms of their combined magnitude (EQ * CQ) and relative balance (|EQ - CQ|) impact hospital readmission rates and productivity. Although there is broad agreement that both EQ and CQ relate to performance, there is a lack of conceptual clarity about the extent to which hospitals' performance is dependent on matching the magnitude of EQ and CQ (|EQ - CQ|), or on the combined magnitude of the two (EQ * CQ). This research attempts to address this lack of clarity about the impact of EQ and CQ on hospital performance through the investigation of healthcare quality as two distinct but related dimensions. One relates to their combined magnitude, which is referred to in the literature as the "combined dimension of quality" (CD), while the other pertains to the balance between CQ and EQ, which is referred to in this dissertation as the "balance dimension of quality" (BD). By clearly differentiating between these two dimensions, the purpose of this research is to provide a more precise way to conceptualize and operationalize hospital quality, and establish a basis for investigating theoretically and practically important relationships and contingencies. Drawing a conceptual, operational, and empirical distinction between CD and BD, and examining their interaction, enables this research to provide greater insight into hospital quality. Hypotheses were developed to explore the effects of CD and BD on readmission rate and productivity as well as to test which type of quality, experiential or clinical, has the greatest impact on the outcome variables. This dissertation empirically analyzes how hospitals' CQ and EQ, in terms of the combined magnitude (CQ * EQ) and relative balance (|CQ - EQ|), impact hospital performance through the use of secondary data on approximately 1900 U.S. acute care hospitals. Through the empirical unpacking of the quality construct into distinct dimensions, their main effects and interaction helps to explain previously unaccounted-for variance in hospital performance. In addition to EQ's and CQ's impact on performance, which is largely due to factors internal to each hospital, organization theory predicts the fate of organizations is contingent on the outcome of interactions between organizations and their environments. While organizations are at the same time embedded in and influencing their environments, it is likely that some environmental conditions pose greater challenges to the survival of the organization than do others. In this study, the organizational environment comprises three dimensions: complexity, munificence, and dynamism. To delve deeper into the uniqueness of CD and BD, as well as to evaluate the theoretical and practical usefulness of drawing a distinction between them, we posit that the relationships among quality (i.e., EQ and CQ) and performance (Readmission Rate and Productivity) are contingent on these three key environmental factors. This research provides strong empirical evidence that the relative balance of EQ and CQ (|EQ – CQ|) should be considered along with the combined magnitude (CQ * EQ). First, strong empirical support is provided for the benefit of minimizing the gap between experiential quality (EQ) and clinical quality (CQ). Specifically, allocating the appropriate amount of resources to balance the provision of EQ and CQ is essential in reducing a hospital's readmission rate. Second, the results demonstrate that achieving high overall quality is necessary to both reduce readmissions and increase productivity, and illustrates the importance of achieving both high levels of, and a balance of, EQ and CQ, instead of overcommitting resources to one at the expense of the other. To further demonstrate the value of the aforementioned findings to practice, hospitals were split into two groups: those with EQ ranked higher than CQ (i.e., EQ-dominant), and vice versa (i.e., CQ-dominant). Interestingly, the results suggest that while EQ-dominant hospitals enjoy fewer readmissions, it comes at the cost of lower productivity. On the other hand, CQ-dominant hospitals appear to be more productive, at the cost of higher readmissions. The results suggest that hospitals should focus on increasing both EQ and CQ, while maintaining a close balance between the two. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / April 7, 2016. / Clinical, Experiential, Performance, Productivity, Quality, Readmissions / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeffery S. Smith, Professor Directing Dissertation; Gerald R. Ferris, University Representative; Michael K. Brady, Committee Member; Michael J. Brusco, Committee Member; Guangzhi Shang, Committee Member.

Although previous literature documented the strong link between supply management and firms' performance, the study of supply management performance antecedents has been largely overlooked. Using the resource-based theory of the firm to establish a theoretical foundation, this study serves to fill a gap in the supply management literature with respect to supply management performance antecedents such as strategic supply management skills, supplier integration, and the supply management function's perceived status. Such an understanding will help supply management professionals in rationalizing their investments in various inter- and intra-departmental decisions such as supplier relationships, recruiting the necessary skills in the supply management function, investing in a supply knowledge base, etc. The sample used for this study consists of 152 supply management functions from 19 different industries, represented by supply management professionals with titles such as supply management manager, director of supply management, vice president of supply management, and vice president of materials management. About 80% of the 152 respondents had corporate-wide decision-making responsibilities. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence of adequate model fit and convergent and discriminant validity for the underlying variables and their respective factors in the model. The conceptual model and the hypothesized relationships are tested using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Support was found for the causal relationships between the following variables in the model: 1) Supplier integration had a significant positive impact on supply management performance, which indicated that firms are looking to supply management to establish greater integration with suppliers that is expected to produce valuable supplier relationships that cannot be imitated by competition. 2) Strategic supply management skills had a significant positive impact on supplier integration; these skills allow the supply management function to develop strategies and practices that could be used as a valuable inimitable input to the firm's supplier integration planning process. 3) Supply management perceived status had a significant positive impact on supplier integration. This implies that higher supply management perceived status entails greater access to critical information about firm-supplier relationship history and about supplier markets, which enables the supply management function to establish valuable supplier relationships. 4) Strategic supply management skills had a significant positive impact on supply management perceived status; if the supply management function possesses these skills, top management is more willing to elevate their organizational status. Interestingly, strategic supply management skills had a significant indirect effect on supply management performance through supplier integration and supply management perceived status. The same effect did not hold in the direct relationships between strategic supply management skills and supply management performance. This indicates that strategic supply management skills' impact on supply management performance is positive overall (i.e., positive total effect) but it is so because of the mediated path through supplier integration and supply management function's perceived status (i.e., positive indirect effect), not because of its direct effect on supply management performance. The significance of these results for theory, practice and future research are discussed. A future research agenda is also presented. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: June 30, 2005. / Strategic Skills, Supply Management, Performance / Includes bibliographical references. / Larry C. Giunipero, Professor Directing Dissertation; Gerald R. Ferris, Outside Committee Member; Dennis Cradit, Committee Member; Daekwan Kim, Committee Member.

Consumers can experience rejection in a variety of marketing contexts. Rejection may originate from consumer-to-consumer interactions in brand affiliated groups. Business-to-consumer interactions may also result in consumer rejection. Indeed, there are multiple reasons a firm might decide to reject a consumer and deny them access to particular goods and/or services. The research on social exclusion and consumer rejection, while extensive, has largely focused on how experiencing rejecting from a peer affects consumers’ psychological well-being and attitude towards others. In contrast, much less is known about the effects of acting as a source of exclusion. In addition, only a handful of researchers have considered the influence of rejection on an individual’s consumption behavior. Furthermore, the effects of experiencing rejection at the hands of the firm have not been extensively studied. In this research, I address these weaknesses by examining the underlying motivations that lead consumers to engage in exclusionary behavior. The first context in which this is considered is brand communities and club membership (Essay 1). Consumers are found to have different motivations when participating in brand related affiliated groups, which manifests in opposing behaviors. Individuals high (low) in domain-relevant experience are driven by a desire for status (belonging) in the community. As a result, high (low) experience individuals are more likely to engage in exclusionary (inclusionary) behavior and exhibit increased brand commitment and purchase intentions after excluding (including) another individual. The second context which I examine is that of consumer response to promotion denial (Essay 2). Results indicate that responses to a denial are influenced by the value of the denied promotion. More specifically, a quadratic relationship is found to exist between promotion value and future purchase intentions. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / April 15, 2019. / Includes bibliographical references. / Charles Hofacker, Professor Directing Dissertation; Chad Van Iddekinge, University Representative; Tatiana Fajardo, Committee Member; Pui Wan "Ruby" Lee, Committee Member.