Native advertising : attitudes, value and purchase intention

textNative-form advertising in the digital space can most easily be defined as promotional content constructed to mimic the form and structure of the website that it is embedded on. With the rise of user generated content and social media, digital native advertising is fast becoming a popular promotional tactic for brands looking to engage with an online audience. This study examines whether this form of advertising significantly impacts consumer attitudes towards the ad, value of the ad and purchase intention of the promoted product across three product categories. Although not significant, results suggest that native advertising positively impacts entertainment- and lifestyle-based products, while information-based service industries, including cyber security, saw a negative reaction from respondents. That said, product category did influence attitude toward the ad and ad value regardless of the ad type. Moreover, a strong positive correlation between product involvement and purchase intention was found, indicating the need to target specific audiences with online native advertising.Advertisin

Forecasting for Environmental Decision Making

Those making environmental decisions must not only characterize the present, they must also forecast the future. They must do so for at least two reasons. First, if a no-action alternative is pursued, they must consider whether current trends will be favorable or unfavorable in the future. Second, if an intervention is pursued instead, they must evaluate both its probable success given future trends and its impacts on the human and natural environment. Forecasting, by which I mean explicit processes for determining what is likely to happen in the future, can help address each of these areas.forecasting, environment, decision making, environmental decision making

Forecasting for Environmental Decision Making

Those making environmental decisions must not only characterize the present, they must also forecast the future. They must do so for at least two reasons. First, if a no-action alternative is pursued, they must consider whether current trends will be favorable or unfavorable in the future. Second, if an intervention is pursued instead, they must evaluate both its probable success given future trends and its impacts on the human and natural environment. Forecasting, by which I mean explicit processes for determining what is likely to happen in the future, can help address each of these areas.forecasting, environment

Favoritism Toward Foreign and Domestic Brands: A Comparison of Different Theoretical Explanations

Five theoretical approaches can predict favoritism toward domestic and foreign brands. This article applies a contrastive perspective to examine social identity, personal identity, cultural identity, system justification, and categorical cognition theories and their attendant constructs. The authors propose a set of main-effects hypotheses as well as hypotheses related to both product and country moderation effects on attitudes toward and loyalty to domestic and foreign brands. They test the hypotheses on a sample of Chinese consumers with respect to salient brands from 12 product categories. The results indicate that three of the theoretical approaches examined can explain only one side of favoritism—most commonly favoritism toward domestic brands—but not favoritism toward both domestic and foreign brands. Consumer xenocentrism, a concept rooted in system justification theory, seems to provide more consistent predictions for both domestic- and foreign-brand bias

The impact of promotion on inventory forecasting for an Asian wholesale corporation

Inventory control has been a challenge to wholesale firms since inventory can be easily affected by numerous operational, social, cultural, and environmental factors. Besides, marketing related factors create uncertainty as to the levels of the product demands, and that uncertainty makes inventory forecasting much more difficult and forces wholesalers to estimate the impacts of the potentially influential factors. Hence, an understanding of the factors affecting inventory levels is the primary goal of this study; Utilizing historical inventory data and other marketing related information provided by an Asian wholesale corporation, the researcher estimated the effect of promotion on product sales and replenishments with considerations of the wholesale environment and cultural influences. Several theories were applied in this study in order to explain demand fluctuation, and these theories acted as guidelines for the study. Nine research hypotheses were tested in this study to investigate the effects of the marketing related factors. Multivariate analyses, post-hoc univariate F tests, and multiple linear regressions were then performed to elicit reliable results; Results of the study indicated that product attributes, such as brands, items, price, and package sizes, are the main factors affecting buyers\u27 purchase decision. However, types of promotion were found to have no significant impact on either sales or orders in the same month when products were promoted. Lagged effects of promotion were observed two and three months after promotional events ended. In lag two, a significant difference was found in orders only, which indicated that a wholesale firm expected to have increased sales after implementing those promotion strategies. Sales of the new products introduced in the events did significantly increase in lag three. In the Asian culture, buyers are trying to avoid uncertainty. Hence, the response time to a new product by increasing purchasing volumes might be longer; Promotion is the strategy used to stimulate sales. However, in this study, the effect of promotion was not significant enough to be used as an indicating factor of inventory prediction. Hence, future research might want to find out how a wholesaler can apply promotion strategies effectively to stimulate buyers\u27 purchase intentions and increase sales, as well as profits

Multiformat Communication Strategies: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Investigation of Video Formats

Essay One was conducted to build a more complete view of bilateral, multiformat customer–firm communication. A review of communication theory builds a foundation for effective multiformat strategies across different exchange contexts (e.g., message complexity) and timing factors (e.g., relationship duration), while accounting for both positive and negative aspects of communication richness. Four perspectives on multiformat communication during exchange events suggest pertinent propositions and produce three parsimonious tenets. First, the authors propose a communication theory foundation for relationship marketing; second, they compile and synthesize extant research. Third, they identify six fundamental communication characteristics associated with different formats. Finally, they integrate insights from the previous perspectives into a single conceptual model to provide a more comprehensive view of multiformat communication. This conceptual framework can serve as a platform that academics and managers can use to develop effective communication strategies and thereby optimize customer experiences while simultaneously reducing firm costs and enhancing customer profitability and relationships. Essays Two and Three apply the characteristic-level insights derived in Essay One to a unilateral communication context, investigating whether, when and how the video format impacts performance, with four experimental studies. Consumers are increasingly watching online product videos without sound (no audio narration). Yet, managers have few insights into developing effective video marketing strategies, in the presence of this trend. In Essay Two, the authors first identify two distinct advantages of a video watched with sound, richness (greater message understanding) and vividness (greater message visualization), both of which have a positive impact on performance (Study 1). Next, the authors uncover that the vividness effect is important for consumers with hedonic shopping goals but not for those with utilitarian shopping goals (Studies 2a and 2b). In Essay Three, the authors find the richness effect is important for consumers with utilitarian shopping goals when they are visually distracted (Study 3). Finally, the authors find that adding text captions to the video, a frequently employed strategy, can backfire (Study 4). Adding text captions to a product video lowers message understanding and purchase intentions, when the video is still watched with sound. These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications

WHEN DO ONLINE USER-GENERATED REVIEWS REALLY MATTER? A SELF-VALIDATION ANALYSIS

With the recent advances in electronic recommendation agents and social networking platforms, online review systems are becoming pervasive to transmit conventional interpersonal word-of-mouth communications to the World Wide Web. More and more online retailers have offered different opportunities for consumers to access various kinds of opinions and recommendations provided by their peers. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying how consumers respond to other people’s recommendations regarding a product or service offering remain equivocal. The present research is proposed to understand how consumers may attend to online peer-generated recommendations under different conditions. Based on prior research on metacognition, the present study is intended to examine how online product reviews may in part affect the subjective judgements of consumers’ own evaluations of a product and under what conditions those peer recommendations may influence consumers’ subsequent preference and choice consistency. An experiment is proposed to show that different online consumer reviews or digital word-of-mouth could have comparable impacts in changing consumers’ expressed preferences, but under some conditions, preference shifts or attitude changes induced by online peer reviews may not necessarily reflect people’s purchase intentions. Findings of the proposed research may help to obtain a better understanding of the nature of online peer recommendations and their different influences in viewers’ decision making processes

Why Managers Tolerate Workarounds – The Role of Information Systems

Workarounds as deviations from defined routines in business processes challenge standardization and thus the performance improvements expected from information systems. Literature associates workarounds predominantly with performance losses. Only few studies report on performance improvements from workarounds. However, what characterizes situations in which managers tolerate workarounds to yield potential performance improvements? This study examines situations in which managers are able to decide whether to tolerate or to prohibit workarounds. We report on a multiple case study in two organizations and use existing research on workarounds to structure our analysis. Building on this, we show that expected efficiency gains, exposure to compliance risk and perceived process weakness have an effect on the willingness of management to tolerate workarounds. We develop a model that illustrates important aspects of situations that influence this willingness and outlines the role of information systems in understanding workarounds