1,721,021 research outputs found
Toward a better understanding of uncommon loyalty
No full textSome brands seem to garner uncommon levels of loyalty from their customers. These brands can weather economic downturns, long-term competitive disadvantage and continual performance failures to emerge with a core of dedicated, committed, and loyal consumers. Good examples of this phenomenon come from sports. Some sports teams have fans who proudly proclaim their loyalty as well as financially support their team through attendance, yet live their entire life without witnessing their team win a championship. Why would they do this, when switching brands is possible?\ud
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This study used the sports industry to explore the minds and analyse the behaviours of sports fans in order to learn more about their uncommon loyalty towards their favourite team. A comprehensive review of loyalty and sports literature revealed researchers were better defining and measuring the dimensions of loyalty, while sports marketers were able to explain more of the variability in attendance. There was still a gap, however, that needed filling to explain this uncommon loyalty.\ud
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One of the features of the sporting industry is the ritualised way in which it is consumed across the world. Fans of every sport have rituals and superstitions to help them enjoy the spectacle, socialise with other like-minded fans, and reduce some of the anxiety of watching their team play. Although some sports researchers have touched on the topic of ritual, none has defined, measured or applied it to desirable outcomes such as commitment and attendance.\ud
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This study uses a sample of 651 attendees at an Australian Football League game to explore ritual behaviour, define the game-day rituals observed, and design a scale to measure sports fan ritual in order to investigate the link between ritual, and attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. Fan ritual was found to be two-dimensional with personal and social rituals. The associations between social ritual and commitment, and social ritual and attendance are positive and significant, while personal ritual does not significantly influence commitment or attendance. The findings support previous research that found a significant and positive relationship between identification and attendance, and extend previous research by finding a significant and positive relationship between social rituals and attendance.\ud
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For academic researchers, the findings are important to establish the role of ritual in consumption and loyalty, while opening future research opportunities in other product categories. For sports marketers, the results indicate the importance of developing and facilitating consumption rituals tied to game day attendance, with a view to generating uncommon loyalty
Using technology to facilitate grading consistency in large classes
No full textUniversity classes in marketing are often large, and therefore require teams of teachers to cover all of the necessary activities. A major problem with teaching teams is the inconsistency that results from myriad individuals offering subjective opinions. This innovation uses the latest moderation techniques along with Audience Response Technology (ART) to enhance the learning experience by providing more consistent and reliable grading in large classes. Assessment items are moderated before they are graded in meetings that employ ART. Results show the process is effective when the teaching team is very large, or there is a diverse range of experienced and inexperienced teachers. This “behind the scenes” innovation is not immediately apparent to students, but results in more consistent grades, more useful feedback for students, and more confident graders
Perceived Justice and Email Service Recovery
No full textThis study adds to the limited research of email service recovery. It is perhaps the first non-US study of email service recovery as well as the first study to apply a theoretical perspective ¬– perceived justice – to email service recovery. The results of three annual studies using Australian data resemble US results and support extending perceived justice to service recovery via email. The distributive elements of replying and offering compensation, the procedural element of answering completely and the interactional element of thanking the customer showed significant positive relationships with customer satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth and repurchase intent. Perhaps most importantly for practitioners, the results of a stepwise regression showed that incorporating the simple phrase "thank-you" in the email reply was a strong predictor of successful email service recovery. Finally, this study found that response time might be less critical than previously thought
Social identity theory and ethical predisposition
No full textWhile previous ethics students have produced consistent results in concluding that females are generally more critical of questionable business practices than are males, no such consensus exists for the results comparing academic majors. This student uses Social Theory to explain these mixed results, and a two-part questionaire to test the relationship. Results reveal that business students at university form a psychological group and identify as businesspeople, while non-business students self-categorized and identify as consumers
Using the negative binomial distribution to investigate sports attendance
No full textMost of the research into sports attendance uses cognitive and hedonic models as the theoretical foundation. While these models are useful at explaining attendance variance, they are not good predictors of attendance. For frequently purchased consumer goods in stable markets, the study of past behaviour (habit) and the use of the negative binomial distribution (NBD) have been particulary effective in predicting penetration rates and frequence of buyers of a brand or category. This study compares sports attendace at football games with the attendance predicted by the NBD, and finds that attendance at professional football games follows the NBD when season ticket holders are removed from the sample
Loyalty and the ritualistic consumption of entertainment
No full textEntertainment is consumer-driven culture, and some consumers of entertainment products display uncommon levels of loyalty towards their favourite sports star, actor or musician. This essay examines fanaticism and loyalty through the prism of consumer rituals. Further, a Ritual-Loyalty model is proposed to help investigate the relationship between the constructs. Finally, the paper offers directions for future research regarding entertainment consumers
The fan ritual scale and sports attendance
No full textRituals are an important part of society, and are a frequent topic of investigation among sociologists and anthropologists. Marketing applications of ritual, however, are rare. This study investigates the relationships between sports fan rituals, team identification and attendance using the Fan Ritual Scale. Data were collected at a professional football game in Australia. The results reveal a significant and positive relationship between social rituals, identification and attendance. There was no relationship however, between identification, attendance and personal rituals
Fans teaching fans how to consume : the role of ritual in the consumption of entertainment
No full textThe status of entertainment as both a dimension of human culture, and a booming global industry is increasing. Given more recent consumer-centric definitions of entertainment, the entertainment consumer has grown in prominence and is now coming under closer scrutiny. However viewing entertainment consumers as always behaving in a similar fashion towards entertainment as to other products may be selling them short. For a start, entertainment consumers can exhibit a strong loyalty towards their favourite entertainment products that is the envy of the marketing world. Academic researchers and marketers who are keen to investigate entertainment consumers would benefit from a theoretical base from which to commence. This essay therefore, takes a consumer-oriented focus in defining entertainment and conceptualises a model of entertainment consumption.\ud
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In approaching the study of entertainment one axiomatic question remains: how should we define it? Richard Dyer notes that, considering that the category of entertainment can include – by its own definition in the song ‘That’s entertainment!’ – everything from Hamlet and Oedipus Rex to ‘the clown with his pants falling down’ and ‘the lights on the lady in tights’, it doesn’t make much sense to try to define entertainment as being marked by particular textual features (as is done, for example, by Avrich, 2002). Dyer’s position is rather that ‘entertainment is not so much a category of things as an attitude towards things’ (Dyer, 1973: 9). He traces the modern conception of entertainment back to the writings of Molière. This writer defended the purpose of his plays against attacks from the church that they were not sufficiently edifying by insisting that, as entertainments he had no interest in edifying audiences – his ‘real purpose …was to provide people pleasure – and the definition of that was to be decided by “the people”’(Dyer, 1973: 9). \ud
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In my own discipline of Marketing this approach has been embraced – Kaser and Oelkers, for example, define entertainment as ‘whatever people are willing to spend their money and spare time viewing’ (2008, 18). That is the approach taken in this paper, where I see entertainment as ‘consumer-driven culture’ (McKee and Collis, 2009) – a definition that is closely aligned with the marketing concept. Within a marketing framework I explore what the consumption of entertainment can tell us about the relationships between consumers and culture more generally. For entertainment offers an intriguing case study, and is often consumed in ways that challenge many of our assumptions about marketing and consumer behaviour
What value do users derive from social network applications?
No full textResearch on social networking sites like Facebook is emerging but sparse. This exploratory study investigates the value users derive from self-described ‘cool’ Facebook applications, and explores the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend applications to their friends. The concepts of value and cool are explored in a social networking context. Our qualitative data reveals consumers derive a combination of functional value along with either social or emotional value from the applications. Female Facebook users indicate self-expression as important motivators, while males tend to use Facebook applications to socially compete. Three broad categories emerged for application features; symmetrical features can both encourage or discourage recommendation, polar features where different levels of the same feature encourage or discourage, and uni-directional features only encourage or discourage but not both. Recommending or not recommending an application tends to be the result of a combination of features and context, rather than one feature in isolation
Social networking : investigating the features of Facebook application
No full textResearch on social networking sites like Facebook is emerging but sparse. The exploratory study investigates the value users derive from self-described ‘cool’ Facebook applications, and explores the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend application to their friends. Thus the concepts of value and cool are explored in a social networking setting. Our qualitative data shows that consumers derive a combination of functional value along with either social or emotional value from the applications. Female Facebook users indicated self-expression as important, while mates then to use Facebook application to socially compete. Three broad categories emerged for application features; symmetrical features can both encourage or discourage recommendation, asymmetrical features one encourage or discourage but not both, and polar features where different levels of the same feature encourage or discourage. Recommending or not recommending an application tends to be the result of a combination of features rather than one feature in isolation
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