This article discusses how qualitative vignettes were combined with interviews to explore a complex public health issue; that is, promoting unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents. It outlines how the technique was applied in practice and the combination of vignette-based interviews with a broader approach involving Gadamerian hermeneutics. Twenty-one participants from the public health community and the marketing and food and beverage industries took part in vignette-based interviews between March and September 2012. Overall, the qualitative vignette method afforded an efficient, generally well-received technique that effectively explored the issue of promoting unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents. The vignette provided structure to interviews but allowed certain responses to be investigated in greater depth. Through this research, we argue that qualitative vignettes allow researchers to explore complex public health issues. This article also provides a valuable resource for researchers seeking to explore this technique.

Using a Qualitative Vignette to Explore a Complex Public Health Issue

Measuring and understanding brand image is crucial for both branding research and practice. Empirical studies focusing on brand image reveal a large number of techniques for measuring brand image, highlighting the need to organize them. However, no comprehensive review of brand image measurement techniques can be found in the existing literature. Therefore, this article seeks to contribute to the extant knowledge of brand image by systematically reviewing the related literature, providing a comprehensive discussion and characterization of brand image measurement techniques, offering recommendations for measuring brand image through a roadmap, and suggesting directions for future research. Our systematic literature review identified 224 high-quality scholarly articles published between 1991 and 2016 using 12 main techniques for measuring brand image. This article may aid both researchers and brand managers in selecting and applying appropriate brand image measurement techniques for their specific research context.

Measuring brand image: a systematic review, practical guidance, and future research directions

This article considers the efficacy of matching the racioethnicity of employees and the customer base as a human resource strategy within service organizations. Despite being advocated widely, the literature on its effectiveness is scant and riddled with conflicting findings. We revisit the theoretical rationale underlying this strategy, formulate new theory, and introduce the demographic representativeness construct (i.e., the congruence between employee and customer base profiles) to the organizational literature to test our hypotheses. Using multisource data pertaining to 739 stores of a U.S. retailer, the results indicate a positive effect of racioethnic representativeness on productivity, which is accounted for by improved customer satisfaction. Moreover, additional analyses showed this indirect relationship to be more pronounced in stores with larger minority customer bases.

Is there method to the madness? examining how racioethnic matching influences retail store productivity

As health issues have been increasingly valued by the public, the role of fitness clubs has become more important. The study focused on examining the relationship between experimental marketing, brand image, satisfaction, and loyalty in fitness clubs. This study used data from five branches of a large chain of fitness clubs with a total of 341 valid questionnaires. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for empirical testing. Results show that under the impact of the two mediating variables, namely brand image and satisfaction, experimental marketing and loyalty do not passively affect each other, and one must use brand image and satisfaction as the mediator. The results indicated that during the running of fitness clubs, the subjective perception of the customers on brand image and customer satisfaction is of great importance. In addition, results from the study also indicate that experimental marketing has a positive effect on brand image. As a result, experimental marketing plays an important role in establishing brand image for fitness clubs.

The impact of experimental marketing on customer loyalty for fitness clubs: Using brand image and satisfaction as the mediating variables

Data from 60 qualitative interviews reveal the presence of racial tensions in 21st-century United States Black participants expressed experiencing racial prejudice while operating automobiles White passengers also reported witnessing instances of driving while Black (DWB) while riding with Black drivers Specifically, White participants reported instances of profiling, where they witnessed Black drivers pulled over by police officers, although no traffic violation occurred Two themes emerged for Black participants: (a) fear that they would be pulled over, and (b) motivation to “survive” the law enforcement encounter Participants’ experiences insinuate a continued racial tension between Black citizens and White law enforcement officers While the United States has made valuable strides, we still have prejudices to overcome

Exploring Black and White Accounts of 21st-Century Racial Profiling: Riding and Driving While Black

Retailers invest substantial resources developing and managing their brand; however, the challenge of upholding an established image becomes problematic during times of adverse publicity. Although practitioners and scholars agree that publicity about unethical business practices tarnishes brand image, research examining the extent and duration of the image shift from negative publicity in retail and brand management contexts is scant. Using latent difference scores to analyze longitudinal data (N=152 and N=145, respectively), this research investigates consumer immediate and short-term brand responses when exposed to video vignettes depicting consumer racial profiling (CRP) (that is, when retailers treat consumers differently based on race/ethnicity as a means to curtail shoplifting); in doing so, we examine how personal moral philosophy and marketing communications affect changes in brand image over time. The results indicate that CRP has a temporary negative effect on consumers’ image of the retail brand; however, the rate of image recovery varies with exposure to marketing communication and personal moral philosophy. By exploring the effects of marketing communications and personal moral philosophy on brand image changes over time, this research offers meaningful insight into understanding how brand image perceptions are affected by CRP.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fbm.2010.24.pdf

Jerome D Williams

Papers

Consumer racial profiling in retail environments: A longitudinal analysis of the impact on brand image