Cultural perspectives on advertising perceptions and brand trustworthiness

The creation of a trustworthy brand identity through advertising has received relatively little attention in European marketing research. Thus, in this chapter, we explore this relationship by undertaking focus group research in the UK and Italy to identify the characteristics of print advertisements perceived as portraying a trustworthy image. The results show that advertisements that are simple, straightforward and clear are perceived as being more trustworthy. However, findings in this chapter also show some differences between our national samples in relation to factors such as colour perception and consumer ethnocentrism. Young consumers are also quite critical of current advertising efforts in building a trustworthy brand image. A discussion of potential solutions and future research directions is provided

Involve users or fail: An IT project case study from east Africa

Repeated surveys, and most notably those by the Standish Group, suggest that a substantial proportion of Information Technology (IT) projects fail. The literature suggests that this is in part due to a lack of user involvement in the project. The authors’ research describes the case study of a major IT system implementation project in East Africa. The paper reports on the results of both an online questionnaire and interviews with key participants. The authors’ findings suggest that the subsequent failure of this project was in large part attributable to a lack of user involvement in the definition of requirements and implementation of the system. There did not appear to be an organisational culture that recognised the significance of such participation in the project. Although there are issues of definition raised, such as the definition of success and failure, this work supports previous findings that user involvement is a key factor in IT project success and failur