A mixed methods inquiry: How dairy farmers perceive the value(s) of their involvement in an intensive dairy herd health management program

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Research has been scarce when it comes to the motivational and behavioral sides of farmers' expectations related to dairy herd health management programs. The objectives of this study were to explore farmers' expectations related to participation in a health management program by: 1) identifying important ambitions, goals and subjective well-being among farmers, 2) submitting those data to a quantitative analysis thereby characterizing perspective(s) of value added by health management programs among farmers; and 3) to characterize perceptions of farmers' goals among veterinarians.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The subject was initially explored by means of literature, interviews and discussions with farmers, herd health management consultants and researchers to provide an understanding (a concourse) of the research entity. The concourse was then broken down into 46 statements. Sixteen Danish dairy farmers and 18 veterinarians associated with one large nationwide veterinary practice were asked to rank the 46 statements that defined the concourse. Next, a principal component analysis was applied to identify correlated statements and thus families of perspectives between respondents. Q-methodology was utilized to represent each of the statements by one row and each respondent by one column in the matrix. A subset of the farmers participated in a series of semi-structured interviews to face validate the concourse and to discuss subjects like animal welfare, veterinarians' competences as experienced by the farmers and time constraints in the farmers' everyday life.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Farmers' views could be described by four families of perspectives: Teamwork, Animal welfare, Knowledge dissemination, and Production. Veterinarians believed that farmers' primary focus was on production and profit, however, farmers' valued teamwork and animal welfare more.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The veterinarians in this study appear to focus too much on financial performance and increased production when compared to most of the participating farmers' expectations. On the other hand veterinarians did not focus enough on the major products, which farmers really wanted to buy, i.e. teamwork and animal welfare. Consequently, disciplines like sociology, economics and marketing may offer new methodological approaches to veterinarians as these disciplines have understood that accounting for individual differences is central to motivate change, i.e. 'know thy customer'.</p

Creating symbolic cultures of consumption: an analysis of the content of sports wagering advertisements in Australia

Background: Since 2008, Australia has seen the rapid emergence of marketing for online and mobile sports wagering. Previous research from other areas of public health, such as tobacco and alcohol, has identified the range of appeal strategies these industries used to align their products with culturally valued symbols. However, there is very limited research that has investigated the tactics the sports wagering industry uses within marketing to influence the consumption of its products and services. Method: This study consisted of a mixed method interpretive content analysis of 85 sports wagering advertisements from 11 Australian and multinational wagering companies. Advertisements were identified via internet searches and industry websites. A coding framework was applied to investigate the extent and nature of symbolic appeal strategies within advertisements. Results: Ten major appeal strategies emerged from this analysis. These included sports fan rituals and behaviours; mateship; gender stereotypes; winning; social status; adventure, thrill and risk; happiness; sexualised imagery; power and control; and patriotism. Symbols relating to sports fan rituals and behaviours, and mateship, were the most common strategies used within the advertisements. Discussion/Conclusions: This research suggests that the appeal strategies used by the sports wagering industry are similar to those strategies adopted by other unhealthy commodity industries. With respect to gambling, analysis revealed that strategies are clearly targeted to young male sports fans. Researchers and public health practitioners should seek to better understand the impact of marketing on the normalisation of sports wagering for this audience segment, and implement strategies to prevent gambling harm

Materializing digital collecting: an extended view of digital materiality

If digital objects are abundant and ubiquitous, why should consumers pay for, much less collect them? The qualities of digital code present numerous challenges for collecting, yet digital collecting can and does occur. We explore the role of companies in constructing digital consumption objects that encourage and support collecting behaviours, identifying material configuration techniques that materialise these objects as elusive and authentic. Such techniques, we argue, may facilitate those pleasures of collecting otherwise absent in the digital realm. We extend theories of collecting by highlighting the role of objects and the companies that construct them in materialising digital collecting. More broadly, we extend theories of digital materiality by highlighting processes of digital material configuration that occur in the pre-objectification phase of materialisation, acknowledging the role of marketing and design in shaping the qualities exhibited by digital consumption objects and consequently related consumption behaviours and experiences

International Political Marketing and Advocacy

International political marketing and advocacy is about how interest groups use political marketing, nation branding, and public diplomacy to build support within one country for a movement in another. Interest groups engage in three areas of international political marketing activity: communications, relational, and recruitment. In communications they engage in information politics, strategic political communication, communications adaptation, and communications image management. Relational activities include use cause promotion, exerting leverage, coalition building, transnational collaboration, and relational image management. And more internally, recruitment activities include adopting sales orientations, using segmentation and targeting, internal marketing, and fundraising (Lim, n.d.). While most political marketing research focuses on how candidates and parties use tools such as market research, branding, positioning, and advertising to win national elections, international political marketing focuses on achieving international influence

What is the Harm in Fake Luxury Brands? Moving Beyond the Conventional Wisdom

When reading the literature on counterfeit branded luxury goods (henceforth counterfeit BLGs) in both the scientific and popular press, one quickly comes across what we will summarize as the conventional wisdom. We do not mean the phrase \u201cconventional wis-dom\u201d to have disparaging connotations. On the contrary, this view is widely popular be-cause it makes sense and fits with common observation. The conventional wisdom holds that: a. counterfeit BLGs are a prevalent phenomenon; b. the people who buy counterfeit BLGs generally know they are purchasing fakes, and hence are not defrauded when purchasing them; c. the consumer of a fake BLG is highly unlikely to have purchased the genuine article had the fake not been available, and hence luxury goods firms do not lose a signifi-cant amount of sales from direct cannibalization by counterfeits; d. nonetheless the legitimate producers of the faked BLGs are significantly victimized by counterfeiting because the existence of fakes reduces the desirability (i.e. brand equity) of the real product among consumers who might have purchased the genu-ine article. This paper reviews published data and opinion as it applies to all four elements of the conventional view. While academic research is often criticized for confirming the obvious, we find that research on counterfeits has significantly challenged elements B, C and D of the conventional wisdom

Degradation in spatial knowledge acquisition when using automatic navigation systems

Over-reliance on automated navigation systems may cause users to be "mindless" of the environment and not develop the spatial knowledge that maybe required when automation fails. This research focused on the potential degradation in spatial knowledge acquisition due to the reliance on automatic wayfinding systems. In addition, the impact of "keeping the user in the loop" strategies on spatial knowledge was examined. Participants performed wayfindings tasks in a virtual building with continuous or by-request position indication, in addition to responding to occasional orientation quizzes. Findings indicate that having position indication by request and orientation quizzes resulted in better acquired spatial knowledge. The findings are discussed in terms of keeping the user actively investing mental effort in the wayfinding task as a strategy to reduce the possible negative impact of automated navigation systems