Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for Master‟s Degree of Technology: Marketing, Durban University of Technology, 2007. Thesis (M.Tech.: Marketing)-Dept. of Marketing, Durban University of Technology, 2007. xv, 205 leaves / Cause related marketing (CRM) is becoming a popular marketing strategy used by brand managers, retailers and service companies. It can be described as a marketing strategy that links charities or ‘causes’ with the sales of a product, brand or service. The charity is mentioned in promotional campaigns and a certain percentage is donated to the cause in accordance with unit sales or turnover. A study was conducted in the eThekweni region of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa to gather information on this issue. The study was a quantitative survey and data was collected by means of an interview process. The overall objective of this study was to gain an understanding of consumer behaviour towards companies using CRM in the greater eThekweni region. This objective was made up of three sub-objectives. The first subobjective was to identify whether eThwekeni consumers would switch brands to a company involved with CRM, if price and quality were equal. This was followed by subobjective two, which was to establish whether particular socio-demographic characteristics of consumers would be related to their evaluation of a CRM offer. Finally, sub-objective three was to establish whether those same socio-demographic characteristics would be related to the selection of specific causes. / M

Abstract Purpose - The purpose of this research aims to explore the consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context, for low product involvement. Design/Methodology/Approach - Researchers of this study had chosen a qualitative research which is in accordance with the purpose. Eight interviews were led with respondents from seven different nationalities having lived in multicultural environment. The goal was to analyze which behaviors come up when consumers are guided by six particular external and internal factors in their consumption (namely culture, reference groups, situational factors, personal needs and motives, attitudes and consumer orientation towards multiculturalism). Findings - Firstly, findings showed that consumers are guided in their behavior by the six mentioned factors in multicultural context for low product involvement. Secondly, six consumers’ behaviors, guided by external and internal factors, have been found during this research. Research limitations/Implications - As this research is qualitative, not all the aspects of the topic were explored. Another exploratory research could be led to detect other behaviors or other factors guiding consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context. There is also a need for a quantitative research in order to confirmed findings. Thus thanks to this study, marketers have now a broader view on consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context, especially for low product involvement. Originality/Value - This study is one of the first research conducted about consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context. Researchers deepened the existing literature by exploring and bringing possible consumers’ behavior’ in multicultural context for low product involvement. Existing literature was not as specific as this one concerning factors guiding consumers’ behaviors in multicultural context, as well as concerning low product involvement.

Brand avoidance is a new topic in consumer behavior research. The purpose of the study was to find the main driver(s) of the brand avoidance behavior among the Chinese mobile consumers. The study was based on the core framework of Lee, et al. (2009) and Knittel et al (2016). The study also applied Ma’s research (2012) to segment the Chinese mobile consumers. A survey was conducted based on the literatures. The findings show that Chinese mobile consumers do not share the same driver for the brand avoidance behavior, the main driver for fashion-taste consumers, trendy but cost-efficient consumers and conservative consumers is moral and identity avoidance. Rational and price-sensitive consumers avoid the brand because of the moral and identity avoidance, and the experiential avoidance for product. Business communication consumers avoid the brand because of the moral and identity avoidance and advertising avoidance. Organizations can use these findings to adjust their marketing strategies and content accordingly.

D.Com. (Economics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Robert Parker is an esteemed, somewhat controversial wine-critic. Since 1978, Parker has assigned every wine he tastes a score between 50 and 100. He uses this method to communicate to both consumers and producers his opinion of the quality, taste, and aging potential of the wine. Between the years 2005 and 2015, Robert Parker graded 115 wines from the French region of Provence. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether and to what extent Robert Parker’s grades affect the price of wine. Through descriptive statistics and regression analysis of Robert Parker’s grade and year of production on the average price, I assess the effects of one expert’s opinion on the price of Provençal wine. My results show that, while there is a statistically significant relationship between Robert Parker’s grade and the price of wine, the relationship between the two variables has not varied considerably over the past ten years. In addition, my results show an indifference on the part of Provençal wine-producers in regards to pricing based on the grades their wines receive from the wine-critic. This led me to the conclusion that the relationship between price of wine and grade is not as strong as hypothesized. This is an interesting finding given the prevalence of consumer reports and expert-opinion based journals for consumable goods.

Unsustainable meat consumption contributes to climate change. That is why consumers are advised to behave in an environmentally responsible manner and reduce their consumption of meat products. When it comes to willingness to reduce meat consumption, differences between female and male consumers have been identified. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate what motivating factors influence consumers' decision to reduce the consumption of meat products, and what is determined by influence of gender differences. Furthermore, the results of the analysis will help to find if consumers are willing to reduce meat consumption and if there are any similarities or differences between gender and their values towards meat consumption and the reduction of it. In order to get a deeper understanding of gender values towards reduction of meat consumption, a quantitative method and explanative design were applied and data was collected using online focus groups, male and female students from Kristianstad University. The results show that most of the respondents are willing to reduce the consumption of meat. Moreover, there were observed that some of the masculine attributes were more concerned about ethical issue such as animal welfare, meanwhile feminine - health issues and food safety. This thesis has laid a good foundation for possible future research about gender and sustainable meat consumption. Moreover, potentially it might help marketers to adopt their strategies to suit the nutritional needs of the different genders

Service quality defined by the customer is an important element in satisfying customers and may determine retail survival. The SERVQUAL instrument measured desired and minimum expectations and perceptions of service quality in a small apparel specialty store. Factor analysis with varimax rotation resulted in three dimensions of service quality for both desired and minimum levels of expectations and perceptions: (a) Personal Attention, (b) Reliability, and (c) Tangibles. Regression analyses determined the relationship between overall service quality (OSQ) and various predictor variables. Based on gap scores between desired expectations and perceptions, the Personal Attention and Tangibles dimensions were significant in predicting OSQ. SERVQUAL is a managerial tool that small apparel retailers may use to improve service quality.

The first objective of this research was to identify whether Asian-Americans having higher than average levels of income and education represent an appropriate target market for four food product categories. Second, the impact of national origin membership, demographic variables, and level of acculturation on food consumption was determined. In addition, perceptions related to sensory and nutritional factors and the cultural acceptability of the products were identified and interpreted to determine if the variables differed among specific groups of Asian-American consumers.

This dissertation focuses generally on consumer behavior, and particularly on consumer attitudes toward products of foreign origin for the purpose of developing a theory that will assist in explaining and predicting this phenomenon. Existing research in the area of country of origin effects upon consumer attitudes toward foreign-made products demonstrates significant methodological limitations such as single cue approaches., The major objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the development of a theory based upon the expectancy-value attitude concept to better explain and predict consumer attitudes toward products of foreign origin. To achieve this objective, the research attempts to overcome the limitations identified in attitude research and specific methodological deficiencies in research focusing on attitudes toward products of foreign origin by: 1. utilizing the expectancy-value approach; 2. basing operationalization of the attitude concepts on Likert-like scales and subjective conditional probabilities; 3. measuring the operationalized attitudes both directly and indirectly via beliefs and evaluations; 4. simultaneously including multiple extrinsic cues; 5. including pictorial cues in the questionnaire; and 6. performing and reporting validity and reliability tests. The general model developed in this research, representing the theory of attitudes toward products of foreign origin is the Foreign Product Attitude Model (FPAM). This dissertation will concentrate on an extracted part of the total model, namely the relationships between the informational stimuli cues and the attitudinal response. The informational extrinsic informational cues include the country of origin, the brand name, the store image and an involvement covariate. By concentrating on the above relationships it is hoped that this study will contribute to a better understanding of the direct effects of the informational stimuli upon the attitude toward a product of foreign origin. The country of origin effect and the other extrinsic cues (brand name and store image) were found to have significant effects on consumer attitudes toward products, explaining almost 20 percent of the total variance.

This study examined parental perceptions of marketing to young children using a feminist post-structural theoretical framework to specifically examine the following questions, 1) To what extent are parents aware of the marketing tactics being directed toward young children? 2) How do power/knowledge relations and practices produce parent’s multiple subjectivities as they parent their children in regards to commercial culture? 3) How can early childhood educators adapt pedagogy and practice in order to meet the needs of children growing up within the context of a commercialized childhood? In-depth unstructured interviews revealed that parents within this study tend to view themselves as solely responsible for their children and do not support governmental regulation of the advertising industry. In most cases, the parents in the study empathized with marketers trying to sell their products to children. Furthermore, while participants in this study were concerned about how consumer culture influences children’s subjectivities, they were more concerned about “adult content” than corporate access to children. Many of the parental perceptions uncovered mirror neoliberal discourses including an emphasis on individual responsibility, the belief that government regulation is censorship and the privileging of economic rationale by systematically representing children as sources of profit. This study utilized Deleuzean and Foucauldian concepts in order to make visible the practices and discourses that discipline children and parents as consumers within the United States neoliberal assemblage(s). This analysis also revealed the very contradictions and complexities that are dramatically shaping parents and young children within the United States’ consumer cultural landscape(s).