Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Business Administration, Marketing (0338)'

In the course of doing business in the modern world organizations often find themselves involved in negative situations which can only be categorized as crises. These crises have a wide variety of causes and often result in negative outcomes for the organizations involved. While crises have been studied from an organizational view, this research investigates the consumer's experience when exposed to a crisis. To do this, the current literature on marketing crises is expanded upon to create a definition of marketing crisis, and the theoretical lens of attribution theory is applied to identify why individual consumers may respond quite differently to the same marketing crisis. The three specific research questions investigated are: 1) How do consumers make causal attributions about marketing crises? 2) What factors influence how consumers make those attributions about marketing crises?, and 3) What are the consequences of causal attributions about marketing crises? These questions are tested with an experimental design manipulating exposure to a marketing crisis and measuring antecedents, causal attribution, and consequences associated with an attribution theory model of crisis perception. A major finding of this research is that the cause of the crisis matters to consumers, and that the perception of cause can vary greatly among consumers. Specifically, and counter-intuitively, this research suggests that consumers who are actually customers of organizations affected by the crisis may have a less dramatic response to a negative development than consumers who are less involved and more psychologically distant.

Small business owners who fail to apply effective Internet marketing strategies could negatively affect customers’ purchasing decisions, and business profitability and sustainability. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore effective Internet marketing strategies online fashion jewelry business owners used to maintain or increase profit levels. Competitive advantage theory was the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected via semistructured interviews with 3 online fashion jewelry business owners located in the northeastern region of the United States who were in the same business for more than 5 years and generated at least $100,000 in annual revenue. Additionally, data were collected with a review of company documents pertaining to the profit levels of the businesses. Data were analyzed using word frequency and coding to determine themes. Six key themes emerged from the data: (a) Internet marketing strategies, (b) social media marketing strategies, (c) market research and retargeting strategies, (d) brand building strategies, (e) e-mail marketing strategies, and (f) marketing strategies for customer relationship management. The implications of this study for positive social change include the potential to create jobs and economic growth. The findings of this study could increase the quality of life for stay-at-home parents or assist disadvantaged individuals who host online businesses by offering proven Internet marketing strategies to increase their business longevity, profitability, and potentially lead to stronger and safer communities.

Increased competitive pressure for speed and innovation, global commoditization, and competition for talented workers has provided firms with greater incentives to assess and improve their human resource strategies with respect to attracting, motivating, and retaining employees. Consequently, many firms want to be perceived by employees as a great firm to work for. However, becoming perceived by employees as a great firm to work for requires a significant resource commitment. If firms are going to make this resource commitment, a relationship between being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for and firm performance should be clearly established. Extant academic studies about being a great firm to work for are generally approached from the managerial perspective. Studies that investigate being a great firm to work for from the employee perspective are more scarce. In order to develop a better understanding of the potential performance benefits of being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for, this study compares the performance of great firms to work for (as determined by employees) to their respective industry averages. Further, potential contextual factors that affect the strength of the relationship between being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for and firm performance are examined in order to identify the situations where devoting resources to being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for is more beneficial. Results support the existence of a relationship between being perceived by employees as a great firm to work for and several firm performance outcomes. In addition, some support for the moderating roles of contextual factors is found.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationships between four different theoretical viewpoints – categorization, congruence, perception-of-fit, and product involvement – and their effects on consumer evaluations of brand extensions of nondurable goods and the underlying factors of how attitudes are transferred from the parent brands to its product extensions.

By using the single-step multiple mediator model by Preacher and Hayes (2008), the findings suggested, in general, that (1) a more positive effect of congruence, perception-of-fit, and product involvement between the parent brand and the product extension, the more the positive the attitude-toward-product-extension when there was an effect of the attitude-toward-parent-brand on the four intervening variables, (2) a more positive effect of categorization, congruence, and product involvement between the parent brand and the product extension, the more the positive the attitude-towardproduct- extension as a result of the direct effects of the four intervening variables on attitude-toward-product-extensions, (3) congruence and product involvement were mediators, and the results showed that the direct effect of attitude-toward-parent-brand on attitude-toward-product-extension was statistically significantly different from zero, (4) the result on the direct effect of attitude-toward-parent-brand on attitude-toward-productextension was not statistically significant at the 0.05 level, and (5) the result on the total effect of attitude-toward-parent-brand on attitude-toward-product-extension was statistically significant at the 0.05 level. Managerial implications and recommendations were addressed and suggestions were made for future research.

Loyalty programs (LPs) have become a mainstay marketing tool for many industries worldwide, with memberships often numbering in the millions. Program rewards are offered as incentives to build member loyalty, and theoretically these rewards have a perceived benefit value that generate feelings and attitudes such as satisfaction, trust, commitment and gratitude that can be antecedents of loyalty.

The question of whether loyalty programs actually generate loyalty, however, is still being debated by researchers due to conflicting data (Hallberg, 2004; Meyer-Waarden, 2006; Uncles, et al., 2003). Research indicates that focusing on premium customers may be the key to a successful loyalty program (Long & Schiffman, 2000; Yi & Jeon, 2003), but there is a lack of LP research that focuses on this top tier of customers.

This research tested hypotheses derived from existing theories to examine the relationships between program rewards and loyalty for premium customers. This included testing hypotheses about the key antecedents of loyalty—satisfaction, trust, commitment and gratitude—to determine their role in driving the performance outcome.

The gaming industry was used for a sample of 1,097 premium customers in a loyalty program. The online survey had a 43% response rate. There were seven Likert-type scales with alphas ranging from .84-.93.

Rewards were categorized as being prestige, tiered or core. The loyalty construct was operationalized as being attitudinal or behavioral.

Multiple regression was used for hypotheses testing. Key findings were that premium customers value all three of the reward categories highly. The only statistically significant difference was that prestige rewards generate higher attitudinal and behavioral loyalty than core rewards. No significant differences were observed from the control variables of age and gender.

Findings from this study indicate that companies with loyalty programs cannot afford to risk losing customer loyalty by eliminating any type of reward. However, there is also evidence that soft-cost prestige rewards could effectively replace some hard-cost tangible rewards without reducing overall program value.

Microbusinesses are a specific type of small business that employ 9 or fewer people, including the owner. Microbusinesses are a major factor in the national, regional, and local economies. Microbusiness operators face the issues of limited time, money, and marketing expertise when conducting daily operations. The purpose of the qualitative descriptive case study was to describe the amount of time and money that microbusiness owners perceived to spend on marketing. Time and money along with the perception of marketing expertise were then related to the microbusiness sales performance. In this study, the respondents perceived that they did not spend enough time on marketing because of daily challenges of running the business, but the amount of time spent on marketing did not appear to be associated with sales performance. Microbusiness operators perceived that they spent an adequate amount of money on marketing to achieve their sales performance goals. In this study there appeared to be no association between the money spent on marketing and sales performance. The microbusiness operators perceived their marketing expertise to be adequate and higher levels of marketing expertise did appear to have a positive association with sales performance. Improving the marketing budgeting process, improving measurement of return-on-investment on the marketing spend, improving digital marketing skills, and utilizing time-efficient marketing tools were key themes to increase marketing effectiveness. The microbusiness marketing tools of personal selling, digital marketing, relationship marketing, word of mouth, networking, and branding were found to provide opportunities to improve sales performance by leveraging limited time, money, and marketing expertise. The results of this study provide direction for microbusiness operators on profitable time, money, and marketing expertise strategies to improve microbusiness sales performance.

The problem addressed in this study is that the recency of the social media phenomena created a research gap in terms of understanding how companies exploit various social media platforms for marketing purposes and measure the effectiveness of their social media marketing campaigns. Thus, there is a need for increased understanding of the effectiveness of social media marketing techniques. Social media marketing is defined as the blending of sociology and technology as a means to change marketing efforts from a monologue to a dialogue. The purpose of this study was to determine, based on research participants' perceptions, the reasons that select organizations use social media marketing, the different social media marketing strategies that companies utilized, and the perceived effect of social media marketing on revenue generation. In particular, the research questions concerned whether social media marketing had its own specific social metrics, and the study investigated the evolution of social media marketing and the benefits that social media brings to traditional marketing approaches. The overall research design employed semi-structured, in-depth, individual interviews with seven executives in regard to their use of social media marketing and its role as part of an integrated marketing approach. Commonalities in the interview data were color coded and analyzed, and field notes, verbatim transcriptions, and member checks were used to triangulate the data. The results of the study generated three specific categories: engagement with customers, the essence of social media presence, and communication by choice. Knowledge in each of these categories provides companies with a deeper understanding of the social consumer and enhances the value of social media marketing in terms of competitiveness. Specifically, based on such knowledge, companies have a greater ability to target qualified leads as well as to improve the conversion rate of those leads. Finally, they have a means to determine how their social media marketing efforts contributed to the overall revenue generated.