The study examines the role of blogs as a source of information about products and services to consumers. A pre-designed questionnaire was used to collect the primary data (experiences) from the respondents. Data was collected from 190 respondents residing in and around the Emirates of Sharjah and Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. The collected data was analyzed with the help of statistical tools such as averages, percentages, factor analysis, Student’s t-test and Structural Equation model. The objectives of this study were to know; · The reasons why consumers of products and services are motivated to use blogs as a source of information, · whether the consumers of products and services share their views and experiences with other bloggers and · The respondents’ future intentions towards blogging. The study revealed the following: § A majority of respondents have the motivation to blog because they are willing to receive comments on what they post about services. § The blogs were convenient to search for information about services and products. § Respondents share information through blogging. For example, they may discuss the symptoms of a disease/-disorder experienced by someone, share information about ready to cook mix products and show keen interest in spending more time blogging in the future.

Research on medical tourism (MT) has focused more attention on the growing supply side of the market than the demand side (Gan & Frederick, 2013). There is a need therefore for more research to better understand the demand aspects of this growing industry. Most of the research on MT consumers focuses on two main factors for deciding to travel abroad for medical care: cost and quality of the service (Gan & Frederick, 2013; Lunt et al., 2011). Since both outcome and process healthcare service quality (SQ) remain a concern for medical tourists (Gan & Frederick, 2013; Lunt et al., 2011), it is important to understand medical tourists’ perceptions of their international patient experience. This study aims to investigate this topic, and address the demand side research gap, by content analyzing the online testimonials of medical tourists, who traveled to Thailand for medical care, through a SQ lens. By doing so, this research strives to provide a first-person perspective of Thailand’s MT SQ. No other studies in the MT literature have been identified that used this approach to investigate MT SQ.

This study aims to explore the effect of three factors of Servicescape on customers’ emotion, perceived quality and image. The proposed model was tested in medical tourism context in Portugal, using a sample of 332 fully completed questionnaires. Findings reveal that ambient and design are the most important factors in formation Servicescape itself. Servicescape is an effective antecedent of customer image, perceived quality and pleasure-feeling. Finally, the article also provides managerial implications and suggests avenues for further research.

As the number of medical tourist continues to increase over the last decade, there is an emergent need to manage the medical tourism market. However, there is a lack of hard evidence to support growth in future. Thus, this research is to investigate the effect of perceived risk on the actual service experiences of medical tourists. The data was collected from 153 foreign patients who were admitted to the hospital between August and November, 2013 at four tertiary general hospitals and one general hospital, in either Seoul or Incheon. For the statistical analysis of data, hierarchical multiple regression analysis were implemented. The major results of this study are as follows: First, foreign patients chose word-of-mouth as the major information source for the purchase decision and also as the main method to reduce risk. Second, a positive attitude toward medical tourism significantly influenced on the perceived service quality. Third, perceived risk on through all purchase stages negatively influenced on perceived risk. In "pre-visit" stage, patients perceived more risks for financing and making an uncertain decision. Meanwhile, in "during-stay" stage, culture related(food, cultural differences and communication) and finance related(additional cost) were indicated as the major factors. For "post-discharge" stage, the medical side(recovery pain, side effect & complication) and the financial side(whole time and money invested, cost for follow-up care) were ranked in the top groups. Fourth, the risk reduction in the "pre-visit" stage significantly influenced on perceived service quality compared to other stages. This indicates that foreign patients perceive a high quality of service if they do more risk reduction activities before visiting the destination. The major risk reduction methods included gathering advice of friends and family, consulting with expert, direct trial and collecting information through formal source. The implications as follows were drawn from the results of this study. First, hospitals participating in medical tourism services should use experienced patients as marketers and the stories of their experiences as marketing tools. Second, the hospitals or governments should advertise both the excellence of the medical service and the subsidiary benefits of medical tourism. Third, reducing perceived risk of medical tourists should be managed in advance. Fourth, risk reduction activities should be induced before the patients visit.

This research compares the nature and effectiveness of different approaches to alcohol marketing regulation in Europe using the cases of UK and France. Both countries have well-established yet contrasting regulatory frameworks. This paper provides an analysis of the French (Loi Evin) & UK (ASA/CAP & PORTMAN GROUP) codes of alcohol marketing control. We critique the structure in the regulatory processes of each country in specific relation to the control alcohol marketing. Our research provides much needed insights into the relative merits and demerits of different regulatory systems in terms of codes of practice self-regulation, and alcohol marketing legislation. The findings are important in terms of policy and practical implications for alcohol marketers, regulators, health organizations and consumers.

The wine industry is an emerging market in Malaysia. This study focuses on identifying the factors influencing wine consumption among working professionals. 309 out of 350 questionnaires distributed in the Klang Valley, Malaysia were useful. The findings show that three factors (self-expression, health and emotion) are statistically significant in determining wine consumption behaviour among working professionals. Although marketers like to believe that their efforts drive the demand of particular wines, it was concluded that labelling and branding of wine was not correlated with wine consumption behaviour. Practical implications for wine producers and marketers are discussed.

Despite the sales increase of wine in Korea, still fewer Koreans consume wine with Korean food and many Koreans believe that Western food pairs well with wine (Goodman, 2009; Lee, Zhao, & Ko, 2005; Stephens, 2003). This could reduce the opportunities of wine consumption in Korea and critically influence the future growth of Korean wine market. Therefore, this study aimed to develop Korean food and wine pairing criteria. According to the literature review, there is no cultural difference in people’s taste perception, but from the daily diet, people develop different taste preference (Bertino, Beauchamp, & Jen, 1983; Druz & Baldwin, 1982; Laing et al., 1994; Prescott et al., 1993; Prescott et al., 1997, 1998; Yamaguchi, Kimura, & Ishii, 1988). The preference gap is more obvious for beverages than foods (Chung et al., 2012). Food and wine pairing have evolved throughout the Western culinary history. Therefore, the pairing criteria are deeply connected with Western cuisine. As Korean food has its own flavour profile and Koreans have had different dining culture, it is unclear if the criteria are applicable to Korean palates. However, there is scant previous research on Korean food and wine pairing. This is an exploratory study using sequential mixed methods. The qualitative study was done first by performing twelve one-on-one interviewees and one focus group interview. The features influencing Korean food and wine pairing were discovered from the qualitative study. Then, the quantitative study followed by a questionnaire survey of Korean wine consumers. 151 questionnaires were distributed and 138 valid responses were achieved. The qualitative results were tested and generalised from the quantitative study. Hot spiciness, strong flavours and hot food temperature were identified as three unique characteristics. They were all hindrances to wine pairing according to the Western criteria. Wine-friendly Korean dishes commonly did not include those features. However, Korean daily diet has developed Koreans’ different wine preference. There was a segment of Korean wine consumers who enjoy the burning sensation in the mouth and prefer to match tannic red wine to hot spicy dishes. As a result, nine criteria of Korean food and wine pairing were developed. Seven criteria were from the Western criteria that could be applicable to Korean food. Two criteria were newly identified from this research. This study demonstrates Korean food and wine pairing criteria focusing on Koreans’ five primary tastes (e.g. sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness and hot spiciness). However, there are other elements such as textures and flavours generated from a variety of cooking methods, fermented seafood sauces and spices. Thus, further researches are required to complete the criteria. In addition, an experimental study could further confirm the result of this study.

The present research analyzes the influence of positive and negative emotions towards consumer satisfaction and buying intentions of PDO Rioja wine. Results suggest that only positive emotions have a significant effect, in consumer satisfaction but also in future buying intentions because consumers search (positive) pleasure when taste foods and drinks.

This paper examines relationships between experience and behavioral loyalty in the wine sector drawing on 618 Greek and French respondents. Being a member of a group provides a sense of belonging that increases behavioral loyalty. Implementing communities and advertising them via a social media communication program may build behavioral loyalty.

Even in the business-to-business(B2B) markets, service quality is becoming very important factor which determines success or failure of the long-term business relationship. Considering that most previous researches about service quality were conducted in the business-to-consumer (B2C) area, this study conceptualizes the various quality aspects of service that are considered in B2B market and proposes B-SERVQUAL which is the detailed quality measurement scale of B2B service. Our study aims to reveal how such recognized service quality influences on realizing the relationship between the customer and the supplier. We began this research with two main objectives: (1) develop the service quality scale to facilitate assessments of B2B service quality and (2) investigate the structural model which deals with the relation between the service quality and business relationship performance. Service quality has a positive effect on relationship bonding, indicating that the superior service quality of service providers leads relationship bonding with buyers. Five dimensions considered in this study bring not only structural bond but also the social bond that refers to the emotional bonding. Especially, we assumed that the empathy quality, a human factor in service quality, plays an important role in binding sellers and buyers personally and emotionally. Technical quality and the process quality related to service delivery are closely associated with the technical level of the service provided, so the service quality structurally binds the relationship between companies. In addition, service quality has a greater effect on structural bond than social bond, which implies that service quality is emphasized as core elements that bring economic, strategic, technical, and organizational benefits in B2B trading rather than be seen as a catalyst to accelerate trading or supplementary elements to the products. Structural bond in relationship bonding is an antecedent of social bond. Relationship bonding has been studied in 2 categories traditionally. This study could identify a casual relation between them. The findings from the study demonstrate that the structural bond is developed when clear economic and managerial advantages exist for buyers, and then the social bond is formed based upon this. In other words, structural bond is a positive predictor of social bond or emotional bond. As suggested earlier, service quality has a greater effect on structural bond than social bond, which supports a structural casual relation in which the structural bond is accomplished first through service and then, based upon this, social bond is accomplished. Commitment appeared to be an important factor that has a positive effect on relationship performance, which demonstrates the experience and the reduction of management cost through commitment is the antecedent that brings the relationship performance which is defined as the degree of the effectiveness and efficiency from mutual organization exchange activities. Managerial implications and limitations of the study were also discussed in detail.

The manuscript examines Guanxi’s direct influence on reducing opportunism and conflicts, and its indirect influence on increasing buyers’ satisfaction, relationship performance and long-term orientation. The findings based on data collected from 273 Chinese firms reveal that Chinese buyers’ guanxi with US suppliers could significantly reduce buyers’ perception in suppliers’ opportunistic behaviour and the perceived levels of conflicts in Sino-US relationships, hence increasing their satisfaction, relationship performance and long-term orientation. The results broaden existing understanding of guanxi literature by empirically examining Guanxi’s influence on supplier opportunism and conflicts. The research implications suggest guanxi could be employed as a management mechanism in reducing supplier opportunism and conflicts, hence positively increasing satisfaction, performance and long-term orientation.

This paper adopts an industrial network perspective on strategy. Business strategy in an interactive context has been a recurrent theme in the Industrial Marketing & Purchasing (IMP) literature for over three decades (Baraldi et al., 2007; Gadde, Huemer & Håkansson, 2003; Turnbull & Valla, 1986). The interactive context refers to how change by a company expectedly leads to changes in needs, or structures of interconnected parties (Gadde, Huemer & Håkansson, 2003). Strategy also becomes a response to changes among business partners, and any introduced change may have consequences that either reinforce or disable the intentions of the company. Based on how other parties act in parallel, try to adapt to present structures or intend to change them, outcomes are unforeseeable (Baraldi et al., 2007; Brennan, Gressetvold & Zolkiewski, 2008). Baraldi et al. (2007) even state that strategizing in an interactive context is an impossible task. Still, companies do formulate and implement strategies (Möller & Halinen, 1999). While some studies discuss actions and effects (e.g. Wilkinson & Young, 2002), a search in the EBSCO database, on business strategy and consequences/outcomes in a network context resulted in zero hits. Researchers have suggested the complexity of strategizing in an interactive context and referred such strategizing as conforming to or confronting present structures (Ford et al., 2003). Surprisingly, however, less is known about network consequences and the link to different kinds of strategies. This paper focuses on the issue. Network consequences refer to what happens in the network in terms of changed contents of relationships, and/or changed network structures. We describe the consequences as either intended or unexpected (cf. Andersson, Havila & Salmi, 2001) from the focal company’s perspective and link them to different strategies. The aim of this paper is to develop the understanding, from an industrial network perspective, of network consequences from a focal company’s perspective and how different strategies influence these. To that end the present paper bases on a case study from the optical recording media industry, and follows the Taiwanese company Ritek. The paper contributes to the growing interest for strategy in a network context and the link between different strategies and network consequences in the following ways: • Through the case study we categorize business strategies into copying, shared, reflexive, and company-rooted. These categories add to research on strategy in interactive contexts, through pointing to a more fine-tuned categorization than conforming/confronting and pointing to conforming and confronting as scale-measures rather than absolute categories. The division between company-rooted and network-challenging strategies is important as it indicates different viewpoints by the firm, and shared strategies acknowledge the net as an analytical level in networks. • The paper indicates how strategies may include other parties in terms of considerations (reflexive or copying strategies) or as joint parties (shared strategies), and how intended consequences foremost appear on that level, while unexpected consequences occur in the wider network. The paper divides unexpected network consequences into reinforcing, spin-off effects, partly disabling, and fully disabling, and thereby adds to understandings and categorizations of network consequences. • The link between strategies and network consequences points to how the more confronting the strategy, the more unexpected consequences, and also the more negative their impact on the strategy realization, which also attracts attention to the importance of including the network in strategy formulation. This adds to present understanding on strategizing in interactive contexts, and highlights the network’s impact to the strategy literature.

Purpose Two patterns of consumer value creation are commonly observed in literature: standardisation and customisation of products. An important value-creating feature of standard products is reduction of consumer costs, both direct (prices of standard products are lower) and indirect (costs of recognising, selecting and learning-to-use). Personalised production, on the contrary, is costly, but the decrease in value due to a complexity of choice and use is compensated by an additional value from the perfect fitting to THE consumer needs. Service industry, especially B2B services, provides a good example of personalisation. This paper focuses on marketing to study drivers and determinants of the successful value creation in an individualised service production. Incentives to provide bespoke services arise when it is impossible to sell a second copy (a replica) of previously provided services: the service should be personally tailored and tuned to the needs of a particular customer. Bespoke services cannot be properly produced without detailed information about THE customers’ needs; a common knowledge about a representative consumer is not sufficient in this case. Customised KIBS have two producers: first, the service provider, who inputs its intellectual human resources; second, the customer, whose input is information, i.e. knowledge about itself. This phenomenon is known as co-production. The value of a customised service is therefore added by consumer as well. Co-production adds value to the supplied item by transforming it from replica into a unique object. The purpose of the current paper is to analyse the mechanism of co-production in marketing services in order to identify the sources of the above mentioned inefficiencies. Methodology The study of marketing services is part of the broader study of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in Russia. Our methodology includes the study of observable patterns in KIBS sector performance with an objective to arrive at a better conceptual understanding of contemporary practices. We employ empirical data from 2007-13 obtained from specialised surveys of Russian executives who were asked to answer questions both on their own company and on market developments. The survey covers 600-800 producers of KIBS annually, and one tenth of them are suppliers of marketing services. Furthermore, in 2007, 2011 and in 2013 the survey involved over 700 business consumers of KIBS, of whom at least one third are users of marketing services. Marketing services involve a visible share of customised production (up to 70 per cent before the recent economic downturn), which makes them a convenient field for a research on individualised services. Original metrics of their knowledge intensity, level of customisation, customer involvement and customers’ absorptive capacity are the most important empirical outcomes of our surveys. Maim findings First, we argue that marketing services in Russia are highly knowledge intensive. The literature on KIBS usually proposes three main characteristic of knowledge intensity: 1) educational attainments of the workforce that are associated with the level of professional skills; 2) share of the value-added, and 3) share of customised services. With our original methodic we obtain quantitative metrics of all the three characteristics and prove high knowledge intensity of marketing services. Second, we present thorough investigation of provider-customer relations within service production. We provide original metrics of the intensity of customer co-production and show that the users of marketing services are deeply involved into co-production. We also demonstrate how the level of co-production fluctuates along the service production cycle to prove our hypothesis about positive relation between the intensity of customers’ involvement and their ability to add value to customised services. Third, we prove that value adding via co-production of marketing services is rarely absolutely efficient. The losses in efficiency results in value losses because proper customisation is impossible without perfect co-production, and insufficient co-production thus generates standard service instead of bespoke one. We reveal the sources of imperfect co-production and provide empirical evidence of their relative importance. Fourth, we demonstrate that value added through co-production can be lost due to incomplete absorption of the service. We provide evidence about imperfect absorptive capacity of Russian users of marketing services and expose its sources. We also discuss the relation between absorptive capacity and the general economic cycle in Russia. Research implications The study of co-production of marketing services may help their providers to optimise their customer strategy, to upgrade their value chains and to avoid value losses in their interaction with customers. More generally, the study improves our understanding of the bespoke production which takes the growing importance with the progress of post-industrial mode of production and life.

The availability of digital distribution channels raises many new challenges for managers in the media industries. This is particularly true for movie studios where content can be stolen and released through illegitimate digital distribution channels before, or shortly after, the legitimate release date. In response to this potential threat, movie studios have spent millions of dollars attempting to protect their content from unauthorized release, to prosecute those who might distribute or consume pirated content, and to lobby governments to strengthen anti-piracy laws. However, there has been very little rigorous research to analyze whether, and how much, movie piracy cannibalizes legitimate box-office sales. In this paper, we analyze this question in the context of post-release movie piracy. We also consider whether going to the movies is substitutable by watching a pirated version at home. Even though there is a lag between the release in cinema-theaters and a DVD-release (that is when a pirated copy of a good quality is made available), we consider making decision at the certain moment, so time lag does not make any difference. Our study contributes to the growing literature on piracy and digital media consumption in the online community by presenting evidence of the impact of digital piracy, by differentiating the effect of post-release movie piracy from the other types of piracy that the extant literature has previously considered.

Traditionally marketing policies are considered to be the matter of choice by market participants. It is normally so, except the operators of essential facilities (such as pipelines or electric grid) or companies where prices are subject of direct price regulation (heating, gas and electricity supply etc.) However, in some exceptional circumstances responsible government agencies impose regulatory constraints on important marketing decisions of the companies outside regulated industries. One important example are remedies imposed by competition agencies, especially in BRICS countries, which sometimes take form of public regulated commercial policies as a set of rules for largest (dominant) sellers in B2B sectors how to select counterparties, how to set contract terms and how to enforce contracts. Wider use of commercial policies in a regular basis is recently under consideration in Russia. The goal of the paper is to discuss the expected impact of remedies application on the marketing policies, managerial incentives and performance of the companies, which are subject of remedies, by the example of several Russian cases. Our main conclusion is that impact of marketing policies and managerial incentives is the key to predict the impact of remedies on competition itself.

Commercial fitness industry is booming in Malaysia and is becoming more difficult to entice new members with the built up competition. This research investigates the needs of these commercial fitness members and the role of engagement in determining overall satisfaction with service. Scale of Service Quality for Recreational Sport (SSQRS) was used for data collection reveals that fitness members are more drawn to interaction, outcome, physical environment quality and the engagement they receive from a gym membership and not much from the programs that are offered. This study’s finding will contribute to the development of marketing strategies for the sustainable growth of the fitness industry.

The aim of this study is to establish the activities which are relevant and meaningful to spectators of the Singapore and Korean F1 Grand Prix by examining their blogs. The results revealed the differences of major categories between Singapore and Korea.

The cultural and philosophical heritage of modernism underpinning general marketing management theory imparts profound implications for organisations operating in professional sport. This theoretical paper uses the context of China’s professional football industry to argue that marketing may benefit from a more postmodern approach to marketing management.

This paper presents the findings of a study on the influence of health consciousness, organic food knowledge, and environmental attitudes on consumer’s attitude towards organic foods. A questionnaire survey was conducted using a sample of 222 respondents and a partial least squares approach was used to validate the research model. Environmental attitude and organic food knowledge are found to have positive influences on consumers’ attitude towards organic foods, which is consistent with research results from prior studies. Our research results also conclude that health consciousness does not show a significant relationship. Several implications of our findings for research and for the continued development of the organic industry in Asia are proposed.

This paper contributes to a better understanding of how Australian universities assess undergraduate consumer behaviour students. The study was based on content analysis of course outlines located within the websites of 39 Australian universities. Findings have implications for educators and practitioners.