Showing papers in "Journal of Online Marketing in 2013"
TL;DR: It is proposed that ICT components on an optimized approach can be beneficial for a new as well as an experienced microfinance player for the efficient and cost effective delivery of its services to the masses without any major hindrance.
Abstract: Information and communication technology ICT can be termed as a reagent for the microfinance sector. It has contributed significantly for the growth of this sector, which is clearly depicted from the reviewed literature as well as the market evaluation. The paper analyzes the impact of technological advancements within the microfinance industry from academic as well as practitioner's point of view. The true advantage of that advancement in the technology is yet to be realized by this sector. The paper proposed that ICT components on an optimized approach can be beneficial for a new as well as an experienced microfinance player for the efficient and cost effective delivery of its services to the masses without any major hindrance.
26 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the various ways in which the internet is used for criminal purposes within the Nigerian polity and further examine the various crime related laws, their adequacies, and implications.
Abstract: The internet has impacted the lives of individuals, organisations, and governments all over the world. However, it is now viewed and adopted with caution due mainly to the criminal tendencies of some misguided elements within the society. The internet technology has evolved to become a weapon of "mass robbery" in the hands of criminals. Fraudulent mails emanating from Africa, in general and Nigeria in particular have received world wide attentions. These and more have dented the image of the country home and abroad. This study presents the various ways in which the internet is used for criminal purposes within the Nigerian polity. It further examined the various crime related laws, their adequacies, and implications. Findings revealed the interplay of different methods through which vulnerable individuals and organisations are defrauded. The strategies proposed for addressing these crimes with a view to giving the country a clean bill of health in the international community are as well applicable to other developing countries. The findings also lay solid foundations for further research within different strands of crimes. It also concludes with recommendations for policy makers, businesses, and internet services providers with emphasis on the need for greater awareness creation.
25 citations
TL;DR: The obtained results indicated that attitude towards the product is a full mediating variable between purchase intention and EWOM evaluation.
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of exposure to Electronic Word of Mouth EWOM on consumer purchase intention. More specifically, the study focuses on the mediating role of attitude towards the product in the relationship between purchase intention and EWOM exposure. To this effect, the study was conducted over a number of 204 internet users who were exposed to online hotel comments. Three distinct linear correlations were used. First, the correlation between the intention to visit the hotel and EWOM evaluation, then a second correlation between attitude towards the hotel and EWOM evaluation and finally, a third multiple regression of purchase intention on both attitude towards the hotel and EWOM evaluation. The obtained results indicated that attitude towards the product is a full mediating variable between purchase intention and EWOM evaluation. The study concludes with managerial implications recommending the use of EWOM as an efficient communication tool.
18 citations
TL;DR: The paper tries to build on the existing body of literature in the field of viral marketing, its related electronic word of mouth eWOM context and to present a taxonomic classification for future research.
Abstract: This paper aims to locate the key schools of thought in viral marketing VM literature, recognise the various sub-sets within viral marketing overall area of research and to identify the different gaps in viral marketing research literature offering a summation of the existing work done so far. The paper tries to build on the existing body of literature in the field of viral marketing, its related electronic word of mouth eWOM context and to present a taxonomic classification for future research. The review uses the paradigm funnel to examine the development of VM, key research contributions and categorises the published literature according to their objectives, analytical approaches and their contributions to theory. The literature addresses many subjects of study e.g. E-Marketing, E-Word of Mouth, Social Media, Peer-to-Peer Communications, Viral Marketing, Buzz Marketing, Stealth Marketing, Viral Advertising, Viral Videos and other aligned research areas. The findings illustrated that there are various gaps in the literature that require further investigation. Based on the findings, it is evident that the existing frameworks arising from the literature should be enhanced by the adoption of qualitative approaches that explore how general observations respond to contingent factors.
15 citations
TL;DR: The findings indicate that corporations tend to disclose their basic information mostly on their Twitter pages and mainly post organic tweets 65.9% and corporate news 48.7%, while tweeting tactics, corporations apply the "link" function to connect to their websites, blogs, or Facebook pages.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine how corporations communicate with consumers in social media. For this, Twitter activities of Fortune 500 companies were content-analyzed, focusing on four factors: shared information, the method of communication, tweet contents, and tactics. The findings indicate that corporations tend to disclose their basic information mostly on their Twitter pages and mainly post organic tweets 65.9% and corporate news 48.7%. In terms of tweeting tactics, corporations apply the "link" function to connect to their websites, blogs, or Facebook pages. Additionally, among three indexes Fortune 500 rankings, the corporate activity score, and product group categorization for evaluating the corporate use patterns in Twitter, the product groups categorized by the Foote, Cone, and Belding FCB grid model high/low involvement and thinking/feeling proved that the model can be applied to examine the different Twitter activities of organizations. The results of this study can help with the development of a tailored measurement tool for managing consumers, depending on the different categories of organizations and designing future plans within a social networking site SNS.
15 citations
TL;DR: A framework for measuring the Brand Contribution Index (BCI) for a website is proposed and segment the websites according to their BCI and create segment profiles by using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis to help organizations in studying the performance of their websites in the context of the BCI.
Abstract: Websites play a pivotal role in contributing to the brand identity of an organization and an even greater role in stimulating the brand-consumer relationship. This manuscript proposes a framework for measuring the Brand Contribution Index (BCI) for a website. The authors commence the study by identifying eight significant website dimensions viz. Relative Importance(RIi), Popularity(Pi), Search Engine Optimization(SEOi), Domain Age(DAi), Site Compatibility with Social Networks(SCSNi), Keyword Research(KRi), Site Quality (SQi) and Site Accessibility (SAi). The Brand Contribution Index is a weighted measure of these eight dimensions. The authors further proceed to segment the websites according to their BCI and create segment profiles by using Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. This will help the organizations in studying the performance of their websites in the context of the BCI and create strategies to subsequently improve this performance across the website dimensions where the website is demonstrating a poor score.
14 citations
TL;DR: The hedonic shopping was found to be the major factor influencing impulse buying in online bookstores and the understanding of the behavior of the online shoppers in terms of their impulsive behavior would be helpful for the marketers and academicians.
Abstract: Online shopping is gradually becoming popular in the developing countries like India. The online bookstores have emerged as a new destination which attracts millions of shoppers every day. The impulse buying in the offline stores has been a major area of interest for the researchers. But with the boom in online shopping, there is a scope to study the different aspects of impulse buying in online stores. This paper presents the study of various aspects of online impulse buying viz. hedonic shopping, website quality, trust, situational factors and variety seeking in Indian context. With the data collected from the online survey method the different antecedents of impulse buying have been analysed and reported on the basis of their significance. The hedonic shopping was found to be the major factor influencing impulse buying in online bookstores. This study also discusses about the managerial issues, suggestions and implications for the future researchers. The understanding of the behavior of the online shoppers in terms of their impulsive behavior would be helpful for the marketers and academicians.
12 citations
TL;DR: Investigation of the influence of e-service quality dimensions efficiency, requirement fulfilment, accessibility, privacy and responsiveness on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty found that efficiency, accessibility and responsiveness were found to have a positive and significant relationship with customer loyalty.
Abstract: The study of e-consumer behavior is getting more attention in e-commerce related literature. Acknowledging the importance of e-commerce, this study aims to investigate the influence of e-service quality dimensions efficiency, requirement fulfilment, accessibility, privacy and responsiveness on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty as well as to understand the mediating effect of customer satisfaction on e-service quality and customer loyalty. The study employed survey strategy using a self-administered questionnaire with professionals working in different industries and business settings located in Sabah, Malaysia. Study results indicated that out of five e-service quality dimensions, efficiency, accessibility, privacy and responsiveness are positively affecting customer satisfaction but in contrast accessibility had insignificant impact on customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, efficiency, accessibility and responsiveness were found to have a positive and significant relationship with customer loyalty. The findings of hierarchical regression indicated that customer satisfaction partially mediated the effects of efficiency, privacy and responsiveness on customer loyalty. Based on these findings, the study implications and suggestions regarding future research are discussed.
10 citations
TL;DR: A significantly impact of Consumer online buying behavior is discovered and Important managerial implications and recommendations are also presented.
Abstract: Online shopping is becoming a well-accepted way to purchase a variety of products and services. For online shoppers, an online interactive hypertext environment enables them to search and control information; alteration in the traditional mass media environment in which the sender of messages largely controls what will be seen and heard as well as shift of control in favor of the receiver for customization of information, and quick comparative analysis among competing products/services. The attempt has been made by the researcher to include conceptual framework of online consumer buying behavior by including various aspects of literature review viz, Attitude, orientation and motivation towards online shopping. An attempt would be made in this paper to put forward results and findings based on critical review of available literature in form of earlier research studies relating to trends, growth, developments and future potentials of e-commerce and evolving behavioral patterns of online shopping activities considering its diffusion and issues especially concerning to gender, security etc. with its implications on e-marketplaces, society and businesses in near future. Finally, this study discovered a significantly impact of Consumer online buying behavior and Important managerial implications and recommendations are also presented.
10 citations
TL;DR: It was found that topics; purchase intention and social media hold high centrality degree among the examined topics that evolved in the last seven years.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to quantitatively review pertinent research activities that have been performed between 2005 and 2012 July in the area of internet marketing. In addition the paper identifies the central topic in the internet marketing literature and provides expected topical areas of interest. 2158 research article abstract citations were analysed from 460 refereed academic journals collected from six databases. The articles were further categorised under specific topics and network analysis was performed using GEPHI 0.8.1 to know the central topic in the last seven years. Consumer behaviour was found to be the most frequently studied topic in the area of internet marketing research with 472 articles 21.87% of total followed by 'services' with 280 articles 12.97% of total and 'business strategy' with 267 articles 12.37% of total. It was also found that topics; purchase intention and social media hold high centrality degree among the examined topics that evolved in the last seven years. This study provides both academics and practitioners with an extensive quantitative review of the internet marketing literature along with an insight of how internet marketing research is emerging.
10 citations
TL;DR: The most interesting contribution of this work lies not in identifying firms that achieve higher scores on the FAI, but in comparing the pages with each other and making suggestions of ideas and practices that may improve a firm's Facebook presence as a marketing tool.
Abstract: Social networks are one of the more notable sociological phenomena of the last years. Moreover, its apparition and acceptance by majority of the citizens also suppose an important challenge for the firms. Social networks are a new and relevant channel of communication and interaction with their consumers. For this, firms have to create his own place in the social network and manage of active form the content that shares and the dialogue that is supported by their followers. In the first part of this paper we explain the creation of an index to evaluate the presence of the companies in the social network more used to international level, Facebook. The Facebook Assessment Index FAI is formed by several indicators grouped in three dimensions: popularity, interactivity and content. The weights for each category were obtained as recommended by a Delphi study conducted with 10 independent experts community managers and internet marketing experts. In the second part, we applied this index to the 150 largest firms according to Fortune 2011 ranking. At present, only 44% of these firms tested had an international official Facebook page. The results showed that the larger firms are those that in general terms best manage their presence on Facebook, have the greatest number of followers and a higher degree of interactivity with them. However, the most interesting contribution of this work lies not in identifying firms that achieve higher scores on the FAI, but in comparing the pages with each other and making suggestions of ideas and practices that may improve a firm's Facebook presence as a marketing tool.
TL;DR: The findings suggest that the emotional states exert significant effects on attainment of higher-order needs (i.e. belongingness, esteem and self-actualization); the flow emotional state exerts a greater effect on attaining higher- order needs than the remaining emotional states of anxiety, confusion and apathy.
Abstract: The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of emotional states on higher-order need attainment in the computer-mediated environment. A survey data were collected from 404 adult visitors within the Second Life of virtual worlds. The findings suggest that the emotional states exert significant effects on attainment of higher-order needs (i.e. belongingness, esteem and self-actualization); the flow emotional state exerts a greater effect on attaining higher-order needs than the remaining emotional states of anxiety, confusion and apathy. Companies with presence in the Second Life of virtual worlds will be able to make more informed decisions when directing their efforts to enhance visitors’ emotional experiences in their virtual islands.
TL;DR: The findings of this paper revealed that the use of avatar-based coaching through second life learning objects has a significance effect on participants’ selling skills and learning satisfaction.
Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the effect of using avatar-based coaching as an instructional approach through virtual world to develop selling skills and learning satisfaction among business secondary school students in Egypt. It also seeks to examine how second life virtual learning objects can increase the probability of mastering selling skills among students. The proposed instructional approach is based on the principles of cognitive, constructive and connective learning theories. A one-group pretest-posttest design is utilized in this paper to test the effect of the new instructional approach on developing selling skills and learning satisfaction among a convenience sample of 23 commercial secondary school students. The findings of this paper revealed that the use of avatar-based coaching through second life learning objects has a significance effect on participants’ selling skills and learning satisfaction. The results of this paper supported the effectiveness of avatar-based coaching in developing selling skills. This can extend to skills and knowledge relevant to other areas of business such as decision making and negotiation skills. The business training sector may also apply this new approach in the training of employers and employees for better value and better results in all kinds of organizations.
TL;DR: A 2 advertising type viral vs normal by 2 product category high involvement vs low involvement factorial design survey indicates that viral ads significantly enhance attitudes, purchase intention and forwarding intention for both low and high involvement products.
Abstract: Despite the increasing popularity of viral advertising, its effectiveness for high involvement products is under question. Moreover, its effect on brand recall and recognition has not been evaluated yet. To fill the gap, a 2 advertising type viral vs normal by 2 product category high involvement vs low involvement factorial design was conducted. Results indicate that viral ads significantly enhance attitudes, purchase intention and forwarding intention for both low and high involvement products. After one week delay, recall and recognition were measured. Results revealed that viral ads significantly lead to better aided brand recall, unaided brand recall and brand recognition than non-viral ads. While the influence of viral ad on brand recall and recognition for high involvement products is stronger than low involvement products, its influence on attitudes and purchase behavior for high involvement products is weaker than low involvement products.
TL;DR: The authors show that information about the group memberships of a user can lead to a more efficient target marketing campaign, and introduce a targeted Marketing strategy that exploits group membership information that is available on social networking sites.
Abstract: For the past century, companies have had the luxury of deciding what they will produce and sell, what their brand message will be and how they will deliver it to their audience. Planning how best to allocate marketing dollars is arguably the most annoying challenge marketers face. The social web and more specifically, Web 2.0 have changed the original marketing strategy and have done so by giving rise to a new way of marketing where people belong to different social groups and markets have become conversations or recommendations. Social networking sites such as Facebook have reported exponential growth rates and have attracted millions of registered users, and they are interesting from a marketing point of view because they store large amounts of sensitive personal user data. In this paper, the authors introduce a targeted Marketing strategy that exploits group membership information that is available on social networking sites. More precisely, the authors show that information about the group memberships of a user can lead to a more efficient target marketing campaign. To determine the group membership of a user, the authors leverage well-known web browser history recording attacks and other available crawling services. The authors' proposed algorithm is designed to use the captured customers' details and generate target marketing campaigns by relating each customer with certain rank of products. The authors demonstrate an Experiment by sending a SPAM Email to more than one thousand Facebook users and relate them with certain product pages. To measure the efficiency of the proposed techniques, the authors analyzed how many people have consequently accessed those pages and clicked on the products links inside those pages to get a promising success factor of 82%.
TL;DR: Overall, the mobile phone users differ significantly in attitude towards value added services, however, this not true when genders in conjunction to their respective attitude components are taken into consideration.
Abstract: Mobile value added services MVAS are different from the core services such as calling, text messaging and extend the usability of mobile phones. This study has been carried out with the purpose to make a comparative analysis of the genders in context of their awareness and attitude towards MVAS. As a part of theoretical framework, the Tri-component model of consumer behaviour has been used to measure the attitude of consumers based on cognitive, affective and conative components. This study uses both primary and secondary methods of data collection. The responses of the users have been presented and analysed through hypothesis testing. As per the findings of the study, males and females differ in awareness towards MVAS. Overall, the mobile phone users differ significantly in attitude towards value added services. However, this not true when genders in conjunction to their respective attitude components are taken into consideration.
TL;DR: It is highlighted that Indian FMCG businesses are using Social Media for brand re-positioning and developing a brand image while focusing on developing relationships with consumers rather than on merely providing information.
Abstract: The advent of Social Media has changed the way FMCG companies conduct their business. With nearly 45 million users in India and growing rapidly, social media's popularity is making organizations to participate in social media to communicate with their customers and also encourage sales. By some estimates, social networking now accounts for 40 percent of all time spent online in India. Nearly one in 10 Internet visits ends up at a social network; nearly one in four page views is on a social networking site, thus making social networking a lucrative option for brand managers to communicate their brand and to create a brand identity. The Indian FMCG Sector has recently started adopting social media as a tool of marketing communications along with traditional media. This paper, based on desk reviews, highlights that Indian FMCG businesses are using Social Media for brand re-positioning and developing a brand image while focusing on developing relationships with consumers rather than on merely providing information.
TL;DR: The objective is to enable organisations to identify consumers demonstrating future profit or relationship potential and devise strategies to impact price sensitivity by responding to price search intentions, improving product perceptions, improving consumer experiences, informing consumers about new schemes, and improving product perceived value.
Abstract: This paper details the usage of online communities to influence consumer price sensitivity for expensive, medium, and low cost products by formulating a research instrument, which is accomplished through an extensive literature review of price effects prevalent in the online domain. The research study further examines the impact of reference price effect, difficult comparison effect, price quality effect, and switching cost effect on consumer price sensitivity and proceeds to segment consumers into groups which demonstrate similar characteristics. Organisations benefit by identifying the strategically significant consumers in each category and target them appropriately rather than investing in a blanket promotion program. The objective is to enable organisations to identify consumers demonstrating future profit or relationship potential and devise strategies to impact price sensitivity by responding to price search intentions, improving product perceptions, improving consumer experiences, informing consumers about new schemes, and improving product perceived value. Most valuable consumers are those who depict consistent behaviour across all three product typologies. Valuable consumers identified through a customer portfolio analysis can be leveraged by hosting appropriate content in an online business community and subsequently using customers engaged through business online communities as important sources of competitive advantage. Due to these benefits, online business communities may generate more profitable sales than transactional marketing methods.
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In prezent, in România, asigurarea siguranţei alimentare a devenit o prioritate in ceea ce priveste cresterea reala a competitivitaţii producatorilor români, pe piaţa interna and internaţionala, având in vedere faptul ca, acestia din urma, au become parte a hipercompetiţiei globale.
Abstract: Scopul prezentei lucrari este de a pune in evidenţa gradul de importanţa ce trebuie acordat, siguranţei alimentare, pe parcursul intregului sistem al lanţului valoric, in general, si de catre producatori si consumatori, in special. In prezent, in România, asigurarea siguranţei alimentare a devenit o prioritate in ceea ce priveste cresterea reala a competitivitaţii producatorilor români, pe piaţa interna si internaţionala, având in vedere faptul ca, acestia din urma, au devenit parte a hipercompetiţiei globale. Cuvinte cheie: siguranţa alimentara, industria de panificaţie, ghid de bune practici, comportamentul consumatorului, decalaje de percepţie