The end of stigma? Understanding the dynamics of legitimisation in the context of TV series consumption

This research contributes to prior work on stigmatisation by looking at stigmatisation and legitimisation as social processes in the context of TV series consumption. Using in-depth interviews, we show that the dynamics of legitimisation are complex and accompanied by the reproduction of existing stigmas and creation of new stigmas

Contemporary Research on Management and Business

This book contains 74 selected papers presented at the 5th International Seminar of Contemporary Research on Business and Management (ISCRBM 2021), which was organized by the Alliance of Indonesian Master of Management Program (APMMI) and held in Jakarta, Indonesia on 18 December 2021. This online conference was hosted by the Master of Management Program of Indonesia University. This year, ISCRBM focused on research related to driving sustainable business through innovation. Business has had to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, so a new approach towards managing business to survive competition is indispensable. Innovation is the key for all organizations in surviving in the new normal and beyond. The Seminar aimed to provide a forum for leading scholars, academics, researchers, and practitioners in the business and management area to reflect on the issues, challenges and opportunities, and to share the latest innovative research and best practices. This seminar brought together participants to exchange ideas on the future development of management disciplines: human resource, marketing, operation, finance, strategic management and entrepreneurship

Assessing the effect of mobile word-of-mouth on consumers : the physical, psychological and social influences

Mobile technologies enable users to discover and research products anytime, anywhere. Mobile devices allow consumers to create and share content based on physical location, facilitate seamless interactions, and provide context-relevant information that can better satisfy users’ needs and enhance their shopping experience. As consumers increasingly rely on mobile devices to search information and purchase products, they need immediate, updated, informative and credible opinions in concise forms. Meanwhile, marketers face unprecedented opportunities for mobile marketing, making ever important for them to understand the mobile word-of-mouth and its effect on the purchase behaviors of consumers on the mobile platform vs. those on other devices. Drawing from the media richness theory and the principle of compensatory adaptation, study one performs sentiment analysis of online product reviews from both mobile and desktop devices by analyzing over one million customer reviews from Dianping.com. We find that mobile reviews are naturally shorter, contain more adverbs and adjectives, and have smaller readership and less votes of helpfulness. The product ratings from mobile reviews are more polarized yet the average valence of mobile reviews is higher. By comparison, desktop reviews contain more pictures and are rated more helpful. Lastly, pricy products receive more desktop reviews than mobile ones. Study two draws from the construal level theory and posit that WOM from mobile devices reflects closer psychological distances (temporal and social), thus constitutes a lower construal level than that from desktop computers. Using a dataset of over one million product reviews from Dianping.com, we assess the value of online product reviews from mobile devices in comparison with those from the desktop computers. Our findings show that WOM is more helpful when it is socially and temporally closer to the users and this effect is amplified when using mobile devices, which bring the mental construal to a low level and make others’ opinions more relevant. Further, we show that product type moderates the effect of online reviews in that m-WOM is more influential for hedonic products and its value for the utilitarian consumption is the lowest. Study three deploys the observational learning theory to examine the effect of WOM across the mobile and desktop devices on the purchase behavior of online promotional offers. The findings suggest that the effect of WOM on the purchase of promotion offers varies significantly across the platforms, product categories, and discount rates. These findings help better understand the strengths, limitations and the effect of m-WOM as marketers attempt to offer consumers context-sensitive and time-critical promotions through mobile devices and make a significant contribution to the literature on interactive marketing. These studies render meaningful implications for theory development about the role of mobile technologies in marketing and can assist practitioners formulating effective promotional strategies through the electronic channels via mobile and desktop devices

Perceptions of crime among international leisure tourists to Cape Town and the marketing implications for tourist destinations

Thesis (MTech (Marketing))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2019Growth in the tourism industry has been a global trend in the past decades. People are adopting a lifestyle of travel, which led South Africa and Cape Town to welcome many visitors as recorded in the background to the study. Amid the high figures of tourist arrivals to South Africa and the City of Cape Town, there has been a continuous rise in the crime rate in the country, including destination Cape Town over the same period. However, if this is to continuously remain unaddressed or unattended, the tourism figures are likely to be affected. Therefore, the primary research objective was seeking to determine tourist perceptions with regard to crime and its effect on visitors’ decision-making processes and the impact it concurrently has on destination marketing. The study was seeking to establish whether demographic factors have an influence on tourists’ perceptions on general safety and security safety information of the destination. Furthermore, the study was investigating how tourist perceived Cape Town crime prior (pre-visit), during and post-visiting stages including their willingness to revisit the destination given their experiences. Through conducting the study, it revealed the information sources that were used by tourists before travelling as well as those used during their stay within the destination. Lastly, the study aimed to find out if there are any significant differences between demographic factors and crime related factors. A post-positivist deductive research approach was used by conducting Individual Depth Interviews (IDIs) and surveys in Cape Town’s tourist attractions. A structured questionnaire was used for the surveys, while some interview schedules were used for IDIs both on the supply and demand side. A sample size of 140 tourists was issued with questionnaires to determine the participants’ perceptions of crime in Cape Town, while 15 additional in-depth interviews were also conducted. This sample size reflected an 8.1% margin of error at 95% level of confidence. The results of this study also reflected that prior to their visit, the visitors perceived the destination to have a higher crime rate. This resonates with some tourists who witnessed instances of criminal activities in the tourist attraction centres, while others became victims of crime. Importantly, most tourists indicated that they would not be deterred by crime to visit Cape Town as a destination in their future travel plans. Therefore, tourists’ perceptions of crime with regard to their destination appear to have little or no influence on their travelling decisions

Sustainable Consumer Behavior and Food Marketing

In light of the considerable impact of global food supply chains on climate change, more sustainable ways of producing, distributing, and consuming food appear critical for sustainable development. With the aim of contributing to this topic, this Special Issue on sustainable food consumption and food marketing addresses various relevant issues related to food consumption, including innovative and sustainable forms of food production and consumption, animal welfare and meat consumption, price transmission, social media communication, alternative food production, and organic agriculture, among others. As such, this Special Issue sheds light on more sustainable and carbon-friendly food production and consumption systems from various angles. It delivers valuable scientific evidence for the transformation of current carbon-based food supply chains to more eco-friendly, fair, and future-oriented food supply chains

A conceptual model of packaging design for E-commerce.

Packaging is a "salesman" which is used as a marketing tool to assist product sales and deliver product information and attract consumers in conventional marketplaces. It also gives producers a voice in the retail environment. Since the introduction of E-commerce in the 1990's, these functions of packaging have not yet been reproduced in the virtual environment for products sold online. This research explores the meaning by which "online packaging" can be designed and implemented. Many researchers have identified that consumers find it difficult to buy online, due to poor product presentation and insufficient product information. They can easily obtain these functional advantages from physical packaging. Thus, the aim of this research is to explore a design guideline of online packaging for designers to better apply packaging thinking for products sold online. This research starts with practical work which contains five tentative studies and a final "laboratory online shop" providing a continuing process of development and evaluation of the research questions and engaging design principles. Rapid ethnographic methods were employed for the data collection. The data analysis and the practical design of online packaging were informed by the theory of Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). The result of the "laboratory online shop" is mainly consistent with the ELM's prediction and the research has resulted in design guidelines for online packaging, providing a framework for designers of online packaging. The guidelines integrate packaging thinking, the rapid ethnographic approaches and applications of the ELM theory, offering an opportunity for designers to apply the functions of packaging to products sold online. The approach helps designers to collect relevant background information before they design and evaluate developing designs. The guidelines influence designers to have a dual consideration of messages for consumers informed by the ELM's concept of "involvement" during the development of online packaging. Finally, a successful design of online packaging will not only depend on the designers, but retailers and manufacturers will also need to establish the infrastructure of an online shop, so that designers can apply online packaging to eCommerce