Perceptions of PDO Beef: The Portuguese Consumer

The objectives of this paper are to examine consumers' perceptions of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) beef on the basis of a survey of consumers and buyers of beef. The paper identifies a profile of PDO beef consumers, examines their behaviour and perceptions on PDO beef, derives the dimensions of perceptions of PDO beef, and establishes segments based upon those dimensions. The results reveal that PDO consumers are representative of all geographical regions, age and profession groups, are lighter consumers of beef and shop for food mainly in the butchers. Consumers' perceptions on PDO beef emphasises quality, safety, and control. However, underlying those perceptions are six main dimensions and it is possible to identify three segments of PDO beef consumers: a faithful consumer group, an unaware consumer group, and a sensory, price conscious group.Protected designations of origin, beef, perceptions, factor analysis, cluster analysis, Consumer/Household Economics,

Explaining organic food choice on the basis of socio-demographics.A study in Portugal and Germany

Socio-demographic characteristics of consumers may be of interest for marketers for two basic reasons: their appropriateness to segment markets and their influence on consumer behaviour. Success or failure of organic food is mainly determined by the consumer. Consumers from different countries, with different ages or genders may require different product features and show varying preferences and behaviours. Therefore, it can be asked, if, in the present context of food markets, consumers’ socio-demographic characteristics have an impact on consumer behaviour and, consequently, can be used as an effective criteria to segment markets? This is the question addressed on the present paper, through empirical research on organic food products in two different markets – Germany and Portugal. From the study it could be concluded that there are good reasons for preserving socio-demographic or economic variables in food consumer research. In the research reported in this paper, some of these variables proved to be strongly associated with consumer behaviour relating to organic food products, and to be robust segmentation criteria, with the advantage of being easily identifiable, stable and accessible.Organic food products; consumer behaviour; segmentation; socio-demographics.

The influence of advertising at the point-of-purchase on shoppers and brands: an empirical study in convenience stores

The main purpose of this research is to understand the influence of shopper marketing and visual brand advertising at the point-of-purchase (PoP) on shopper behaviour and on the retailers-manufacturers relationship, particularly at small retail stores. Two related studies were conducted, with an integrated mixed methods approach. The first, qualitative in nature, used several samples with different purposes. Firstly, a sample of shopper marketing experts, aiming to characterise the shopper marketing approach and the strategic role of PoP advertising. This phase served as the main input for the subsequent phases of the study. The next sample was composed of retailers and manufacturers, with the purpose of understanding their perspectives on the role of brands’ visual advertising at convenience stores. The following study had a similar purpose but utilised a quantitative methodology, with 300 face-to-face interviews with shoppers at convenience stores. Globally, it was found that brands’ visual advertising at the PoP is a way for manufacturers to add value to their relationship with retailers, as well as a tool to increase sales for both parties. It was also found that only the brands’ primary visual advertisements at the PoP influence (some) elements of shopping experience, increase brand awareness and unplanned purchases. This research analyses different actors and samples on the shopper marketing field, thereby extending previous research. Another novelty of the research is that it was focused on convenience stores and was not directed to a single product or category, providing findings from a real shopping environment and on a type of store other than large supermarkets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS AND THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE OF DIETARY INTAKE IN HUNGARY: A PANNEL STUDY

Typically, big changes in the economic system lead to alterations on the disposable income of families and thus on their spending for different type of products, including food. These may imply, in the long run, a structural modification of the quality of diet of the population. After the fall of the socialist system, in the past two decades Central and Eastern European countries, including Hungary, went through a profound, and sometimes difficult transition of their political and economic systems, shifting from a centralized planned economy to an open market economy, and more importantly, the European Union integration. Economic change in lower-income and transitional economies of the world appears to coincide with increasing rapid social change. With respect to nutrition there is evidence that those countries are changing their diets and that these changes seem to be happening at a faster pace than ever before. In this paper we analyze the evolution of Hungarian dietary patterns based on socio-economic status (SES) data between 1993 and 2007. Data allows to define and profile several clusters based on aggregated consumption data, than to inspect the influence of SES variables using OLS and multinominal logit estimations.Transition economy, food consumption patterns, cluster analysis, logit analysis, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy,

Shopper marketing implications on communication strategies and actions

Comunicação apresentada em 15th IAMB Conference, LisboaShopper marketing is an international recent concept and approach to marketing. Since shopper marketing is in the early stages of development, it is also an emerging research field, and consequently questions and challenges acrossall the marketing-mix variables are emerging. This paper addressesshopper marketing implications on one of those variables – communication.Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to study the implications of the shopper marketing approach on marketing/brand communication, focusing on point-of-purchase (POP) communication strategies and actions. In order to address that purpose, an expert opinions qualitative study was conducted, gathering primary data from fourteen shopper marketing experts, following a snowball sampling technique.The results confirm the literature review and complement it, providing explanations and adding elements that might help towards a more effective marketing communications management, particularly at the POP

A Framework for Turn-Based Local Multiplayer Games

Mobile devices are present in people’s everyday lives and have gone from being a tool used purely to communicate. Currently they are also used as a means to entertain, by listening to music, watching videos or playing games. When it comes to games, these can be played alone (single player games) or with other people (multiplayer games), from strangers to family and friends. Local multiplayer games are a popular choice because they connect groups of physically close people to play and allow them to interact. However, there are some concerns to address. Local multiplayer games connect de vices but that alone isn’t enough to ensure correct game play. These games need to distribute the game state between the devices and solve the issues that ensue from that. These involve matching players, managing game state (making sure players get the cur rent state in a reasonable time frame, in order for the next moves to be performed), dealing with player inflow and outflow, among other problems. To reliably handle the aforementioned issues, in this thesis we propose Peppermint, a framework and runtime system to program local multiplayer games on the mobile edge. It was developed on top of Basil GardenBed, a data storage and dissemination system for the mobile edge developed at NOVA LINCS, that provides communication between devices. On the other hand, the challenges stemming from the games’ execution will be addressed by our framework, which are validated by the development and evaluation of one game according to a set of functional metrics. The results obtained during testing of our framework, mostly in a simulated setting, show that the framework is able to create and store matches, letting players join, leave and play in them. It will also discard the generated data when the match ends, so that the network doesn’t end up being cluttered with data that isn’t being accessed anymore. These characteristics constitute a framework has a set of core features that can be expanded in future work.Os dispositivos móveis estão presentes no dia-a-dia das pessoas e deixaram de ser apenas utilizados para comunicar. Presentemente são também usados como meio de entreteni mento, ao permitirem ouvir música, ver vídeos ou jogar jogos. Em relação a jogos, estes podem ser apenas para um jogador, ou podem ser jogados por várias pessoas (jogos mul tijogador), desde desconhecidos a família e amigos. Os jogos multijogador locais são uma escolha popular porque permitem que grupos de pessoas próximas fisicamente se juntem e interajam. No entanto, existem problemas a resolver. Os jogos multijogador locais conectam dis positivos mas apenas isso não é suficiente para garantir a sua correcção. Os jogos necessi tam de distribuir o seu estado entre os dispositivos e resolver as questões que decorrem disso. Estas envolvem agrupar jogadores, gerir o estado do jogo (ao garantir que os joga dores recebem o estado mais recente atempadamente, para que os próximos movimentos possam ser efectuados), lidar com o fluxo de jogadores, entre outros problemas. Para resolver os problemas mencionados, nesta tese apresentamos Peppermint, uma infraestrutura e sistema de execução para implementar jogos multijogador locais em dispositivos ligados a uma rede na mobile edge. Foi desenvolvido sobre o sistemaBasil GardenBed, um sistema de armazenamento e disseminação de dados na mobile edge de senvolvido no NOVA LINCS, que fornece comunicação entre dispositivos. Por outro lado, os desafios resultantes da execução dos jogos são endereçados pela nossa infraestrutura, validados pelo desenvolvimento e avaliação de um jogo de acordo com um conjunto de métricas relativas ao seu funcionamento. Os resultados, predominantemente obtidos em ambiente simulado, mostram que a infraestrutura permite criar e armazenar partidas, deixando outros jogadores entrar, sair e jogar. Também elimina os dados criados quando estas terminam, para que a rede não fique preenchida com dados que já não serão acedidos. Tudo isto forma uma infraestrutura com um conjunto de características básicas que podem ser expandidas em trabalho futuro

Shopper Centric Category Management in Convenience Stores: a Qualitative Study

The literature shows that category management is an important concept and tool for retailers and suppliers, but that there is a trend to move to a more shopper-centric category management approach, linked to the shoppermarketing approach. However, the knowledge on this issue is scarce on some retailing sectors, like convenience stores. The present study is focused on convenience stores, with the main purpose of finding out to what extent non-major food retailers successfully adopt a shopper-centric category management. The study is relevant in order to evaluate if a more shopper-centric approach is adequate to smaller companies/stores. To accomplish that goal, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted among convenience store retailers and suppliers. Six semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted with Commercial Directors and Trade Marketing Managers. This data was complemented with thirteen interviews with shopper marketing experts. The data was analyzed using thematic content analysis technique, identifying themes, categories, subcategories, units of meaning and relations. The results revealed that convenience store retailers use some of the principles and techniques of the shopper-marketing and shopper-centric category management approaches, which they do in a non-standardized and non-formal approach or process. Their suppliers (the manufacturers) do it in a more formal and structured manner, probably as a result of previous interaction with major supermarkets chains. Both direct and indirect evidences of a shopper-centric approach were found, which, however, were slight, discrete and not formal

Exploring shopper marketing approach implications on brand communication at the point-of-purchase: an expert’s opinion qualitative study

Shopper marketing is a recent approach to marketing. Since shopper marketing is in the early stages of development, it is also an emerging research field and, consequently, questions and challenges to this approach are emerging across all the marketing-mix variables. This paper addresses the implications of adopting a shopper marketing view on the communication variable. Specifically, the purpose of the research is to study the implications of the shopper marketing approach on brand management, focusing on communication strategies and actions at the pointof- purchase. In order to address that goal, an expert’s opinion qualitative study was conducted, gathering primary data from thirteen shopper marketing experts, using a two-stage sampling – judgmental and snowball techniques. The results are consistent with the literature review and complement it, providing explanations and adding elements that might help towards a more effective marketing communications management, particularly at the point-of-purchase

Linking retailer and private label brand equity: conceptual framework & proposed scales

Trabalho apresentado na 8th Global Brand Conference, 3-5 abril de 2013, Porto, PortugalN/

Private label brand equity: a conceptual framework

Trabalho apresentado na AMA/ACRA First Triennial Conference, 18-21 de abril de 2012, Seattle, USAThis paper presents a conceptual framework to analyze private label brand equity in a retail context. Several authors proposed brand equity models as Aaker (1996), Keller (1993) and Yoo and Donthu (2001), and specific research has been done in retail industry (Jara & Cliquet, 2009), (Pappu & Quester, 2006). To study private label brand equity, we suggest a framework based on the Yoo and Donthu (2001) model – for private labels – and Jara & Cliquet (2009) for retailers. Our model inludes awereness, associatons, percieved quality, retailers brand equity as dimensions of private label brand equity.N/