75 research outputs found

    FROM GRAPES TO WINE TO BRANDS TO CULTURE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF KENTUCKY WINERIES AND KENTUCKY WINE PRODUCERS

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    The Kentucky wine industry has grown from six wineries in 1999 to more than sixty wineries as of 2013. However, the industry has reached a crucial point in its development as funds allotted from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement ended in 2014. As a result, Kentucky wine producers must navigate the demands of local, regional, national, and international wine markets without the same amount of economic support provided in the early stages of the industry’s development. The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) how Kentucky wine producers use cultural associations to manage their brands, (2) communicate with multiple stakeholder groups in varying contexts, (3) determine the structure of the industry, (3) analyze how the industry’s organization affects stakeholder communication, and (4) identify the most pressing challenges affecting the industry. A conceptual framework was constructed in order to answer the following research questions: (a) what are the cultural meanings produced through the communicative interactions of Kentucky wine industry producers and stakeholders, especially consumers? And (b) how do Kentucky wine industry businesses use brand management to position themselves in wine markets? A qualitative study involving participant observation, website analysis, and interviews was conducted. Analysis revealed similarities between the Kentucky wine industry and Bourdieu’s description of a field of cultural production. Cultural associations were determined by local geography, local culture, and individual winemaker life experiences. Cultural associations were integrated into brand management strategies with interpersonal communication, particularly wine tastings and winery events, as the primary channels of stakeholder interaction. Websites were used as a channel for information dissemination. Future brand management concerns involve the establishment of a Kentucky terroir, availability and quality of local grapes, and the cultivation of partnerships with other state alcohol industries and state universities. Implications suggest that the cultural production of wine functions in the same manner as the aesthetic fields of art and literature. Also, wine is a postmodern product in an industry demonstrating postmodern communication. The study expands the use of Rothenbuhler’s ritual communication and demonstrates the value of secondary texts for identifying the cultural position of a phenomenon as Oriard predicted

    The Future of Information Sciences : INFuture2015 : e-Institutions – Openness, Accessibility, and Preservation

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    Private banking consumer perception and the influence of acquisition

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    The primary aim of this dissertation is to research the private banking consumer perception and to analyse the impact acquisition in private banking has or might have on private banking consumer perception. A literature review discovered that existing research in the field of private banking consumer perception is relatively rare and no studies were discovered that dealt with private banking consumer perception and, in particular, the influence of an acquisition. In addition to that, private banking consumer perception is not defined by any literature. Hence, there is a gap in existing literature and the literature review resulted in research questions which were analysed and discussed by gathering primary data. A holistic case study based on the Swiss and German private banking market was used to gather primary data. This type of case study offers the researcher a holistic view(Patton, 1990) on the present subject as it considers all parties which have an influence on the topic under investigation. The first phase of the case study consisted of nonparticipant observation at a finance fair. Private banking consumers, relationship managers and consultants were observed. In the next phase semi-structured interviews were undertaken with relationship managers, banking managers, private banking clients and lawyers. Both phases were qualitative in its nature. Based on the findings it was established that private banking consumers have expectations on private banking. If the private banking service provider is able to fulfil or exceed these expectations the client perceives this as "satisfaction". Determinants of private banking consumer perception were elicited. These determinants are defined as categories and sub-categories of different criteria used by the consumer to evaluate a perceived service. Apart from that, the research findings revealed that acquisition can influence all private banking consumer perception determinants depending on the context of the acquisition. The independent advice of private banks as well as retaining the relationship manager was found to be of primary concern to the clients during an acquisition process. A model of private banking consumer perception was developed from the primary data results. With the knowledge gained from this research private banks are better able to understand bank consumers’ expectations and perceptions. This contributes to higher levels of competitiveness for banks as customers’ needs can be better met, and client movements during an acquisition process reduced

    Exploring determinants of attraction and helpfulness of online product review:a consumer behaviour perspective

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    To assist filtering and sorting massive review messages, this paper attempts to examine the determinants of review attraction and helpfulness. Our analysis divides consumers’ reading process into “notice stage” and “comprehend stage” and considers the impact of “explicit information” and “implicit information” of review attraction and review helpfulness. 633 online product reviews were collected from Amazon China. A mixed-method approach is employed to test the conceptual model proposed for examining the influencing factors of review attraction and helpfulness. The empirical results show that reviews with negative extremity, more words, and higher reviewer rank easily gain more attraction and reviews with negative extremity, higher reviewer rank, mixed subjective property, and mixed sentiment seem to be more helpful. The research findings provide some important insights, which will help online businesses to encourage consumers to write good quality reviews and take more active actions to maximise the value of online reviews

    The role of ethnicity in consumer evaluation of services : a study of retail banking in the UK

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    Research looking at ethnicity and aspects of consumer financial behaviour in the UK suggests that ethnicity is overlooked among bank marketers, hence ignoring the potential marketing opportunities posed by the continuing existence of ethnic groups in the market place. This study aimed to understand the role played by ethnicity in shaping consumers' perceptions of service in the context of retail banking. This study employed a qualitative exploratory approach, and adopted an interpretative and subjective stance with emphasis on meaning and experience. Data were collected from 30 individuals via in-depth ethnographic and phenomenological interviews over a two-stage process looking at ethnicity and services evaluation respectively. The interest here was to develop a description of the context in which ethnicity takes place, and to see how these meanings may come together to influence a consumption experience (services evaluation). The data were analysed by seeking and identifying common themes, to develop a description of how the phenomena (ethnicity and service evaluation) are experienced by informants and to determine the interrelationships between the concept of ethnicity and services evaluation. The empirical evidence showed that the meanings associated with the concept of ethnicity for the informants of this study centred on three major elements of identity, culture and perceived discrimination and prejudice. These elements were further operationalised as an ethnic experience script that customers brought to the service encounter. The ethnic experience script formed one of the bases for the perception of service, especially when there was a service failure. The perception of service was tied to the script, in that, the script largely determined which of a respondent's previous experiences gained from being a member of an ethnic group and not of the service per se was relevant in judging the service encounter. This thesis argues against the assumption made in the service evaluation literature that standards used as references by consumers are mostly bound to the knowledge relating the specific service category with which the customer is involved. This study's contribution is that there are other contextual knowledge representations (information not necessarily gained/tied to the existing service). One example is the ethnic experience script, which influences perceptions of service in addition to the traditionally modelled antecedents (for example in comparison with norms). A key research implication that arises for this study is that understanding the role of ethnicity in service evaluation requires knowledge, not only of the attributes of a service. But also, the psychological and experientially determined ways by which ethnicity may shape the perception and interpretation of a service experience

    An Investigation of the Antecedents and Consequences of Individual-Level Customer Orientation: A Comprehensive Approach

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    Customer orientation has been acknowledged by both practitioners and scholars as a critical element for the success of almost every business. The primary objective of this research study is to respond to the previous research calls (e.g., Brown et al. 2002; Deshpande, Farley, and Webster 1993; O\u27Hare, Boles, and Johnston 1991) by investigating the antecedents and consequences of customer orientation at the individual level through a comprehensive structural model. The suggested model captures a comprehensive set of potential antecedents of customer orientation. The antecedents and consequences of customer orientation include organizational factors (i.e., organizational culture and market orientation), j ob-related factors (i.e., job involvement, role ambiguity/conflict, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment), individual factors (i.e., gender, age, experience, and education), personality factors (i.e., compliant, aggressive, and detached) and performance factors (i.e., improved buyer-seller relations and performance). Especially, the effect of organizational culture type (i.e., clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market) on customer orientation of the individual is an important issue that has not been investigated much. The study results suggest that high levels of market orientation lead to high levels of individual-level customer orientation. Role ambiguity has a significant negative effect on customer orientation. Organizational commitment was found to be positively linked to customer orientation. The study results do not support the hypothesis that women marketers are more customer-oriented than their male counterparts. The study also tested the effects of age, experience and education on customer orientation. According to the study results, younger marketers (less than 45 years old) place more value on customers than older marketers (45 years and older); inexperienced marketers (less than 10 years of experience on the job) care more about their customers than experienced ones (at least 10 years of experience on the job); and finally, more educated marketers (having attended graduate school or higher) have more customer orientation than less educated marketers. The study results also reveal that higher levels of customer orientation result in higher levels of relationship development and individual performance. Managerial implications of the study results were also presented and discussed. At the end, future research suggestions were provided

    Dynamic Workflow-Engine

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    We present and assess the novel thesis that a language commonly accepted for requirement elicitation is worth using for configuration of business process automation systems. We suggest that Cockburn's well accepted requirements elicitation language - the written use case language, with a few extensions, ought to be used as a workflow modelling language. We evaluate our thesis by studying in detail an industrial implementation of a workflow engine whose workflow modelling language is our extended written use case language; by surveying the variety of business processes that can be expressed by our extended written use case language; and by empirically assessing the readability of our extended written use case language. Our contribution is sixfold: (i) an architecture with which a workflow engine whose workflow modelling language is an extended written use case language can be built, configured, used and monitored; (ii) a detailed study of an industrial implementation of use case oriented workflow engine; (iii) assessment of the expressive power of the extended written use case language which is based on a known pattern catalogue; (iv) another assessments of the expressive power of the extended written use case language which is based on an equivalence to a formal model that is known to be expressive; (v) an empirical evaluation in industrial context of the readability of our extended written use case language in comparison to the readability of the incumbent graphical languages; and (vi) reflections upon the state of the art, methodologies, our results, and opportunities for further research. Our conclusions are that a workflow engine whose workflow modelling language is an extended written use case language can be built, configured, used and monitored; that in an environment that calls upon an extended written use case language as a workflow modelling language, the transition between the modelling and verification state, enactment state, and monitoring state is dynamic; that a use case oriented workflow engine was implemented in industrial settings and that the approach was well accepted by management, workflow configuration officers and workflow participants alike; that the extended written use case language is quite expressive, as much as the incumbent graphical languages; and that in industrial context an extended written use case language is an efficient communication device amongst stakeholders

    The UX of things: exploring UX principles to inform security and privacy design in the smart home

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    Smart homes are under attack. Threats can harm both the security of these homes and the privacy of their inhabitants. As a result, in addition to delivering pleasant and aesthetic experiences, smart devices need to protect households from vulnerabilities and attacks. Further, the need for user-centered security and privacy design is particularly important for such an environment, given that inhabitants are demographically-diverse (e.g., age, gender, educational level) and have different skills and (dis)abilities. Prior work has explored different usable security and privacy solutions for smart homes; however, the applicability of user eXperience (UX) principles to security and privacy design is under-explored. This research project aims to address the on-going challenge of security and privacy in the smart home through the lens of UX design. The objective of this thesis is two-fold. First, to investigate how UX factors and principles affect the security and privacy of smart home users. Secondly, to inform product design through the development of an empirically-tested framework for UX design of security and privacy in smart home products. In the first step, we explored the relationship between UX, security, and privacy in smart homes from user and designer perspectives: through (i) conducting a qualitative interview study with smart home users (n=13) and (ii) analyzing an ethnomethodologically informed study of six UK households living in smart homes (n=6); and, we then explored the role of UX in the design of security, privacy and data protection in smart homes through qualitative semi-structured interviews with smart home users, designers and business leaders through two rounds of interviews (n=20, n=20). In the second step, using conceptual framework analysis, we systematically analyzed our previously collected data and the literature to construct a framework of design heuristics for consent and permission in smart homes. We applied these heuristics in four participatory co-design workshops and reported on their use. We further analyzed the use of the heuristics through thematic analysis highlighting how the heuristics were used, their purpose, and their effectiveness. By bringing UX design to the smart home security and privacy table, we believe that this research project will have a significant impact on academia, industry, and government organizations. Our thesis will improve design practices for security and privacy in domestic smart devices while addressing wider challenges, opportunities, and future work
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