Editorial

Citation

Leventhal, R.C. (2013), "Editorial", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM.07730aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Consumer Marketing, Volume 30, Issue 1

A company that engages in various marketing efforts understands that as the marketplace changes, so wills the consumer. This is not an isolated event that occurs in a few marketplaces, but rather is a global occurrence. In the twenty first century, the explosive growth of the digital dissemination of information is a major example of a game-changing strategy that many more corporations are embracing. Particular attention must be given to how consumers’ perceive and react to how corporations communicate with the marketplace. Marketers cannot always assume that their consumers will react in a positive manner towards a given set of marketing strategies.

Thakur, Summey and John examine a relatively recent phenomenon of user-generated media, which includes blogging on the internet. The authors attempt to lay the groundwork for understanding the factors that enhance bloggers attitudes toward participating in blogging activity and how bloggers attitudes influence their propensity to blog. Results indicated that blogger’s knowledge, blogger’s responsiveness to their readers, blogger’s market mavenism, and blogger’s social network optimization had a strong influence on attitude, which in turn influenced propensity to bolg.

Nguyen and Simkin posit that customer relationship management treats various profiles of customers or individual customers differently, purposively favoring certain customers while deliberately disadvantaging others. The authors examine how advantaged (favored) and disadvantaged (non-favored) customers perceive fairness in retailers’ marketing tactics. Failure to appreciate the pitfalls for visibly treating certain customers more favorably and others demonstrably less so will have definite consequences for retail management and consumer marketing.

Wiedmann, Langner and Hennigs provide an initial conceptual model of influencers in social groups. The authors defined dimensions of individual and social capital as key drivers of social influencers in a social context. The authors identify three individual, three social and three leadership factors that characterize four types of social influencers.

The results of this study provide strong evidence that consumers’ individual motivation, social dominance, and leadership ability are important drivers, and these results provide an appropriate basis to distinguish between social influence leaders and followers.

Chan and Ng attempt to see if segmentation of Hong Kong girls according to the perceptions of gender roles and ideal female images can be generalized to girls in mainland China. Four segments of adolescent girls were identified and profiled. Therefore, different marketing communication strategies can be adopted to make global and Chinese national brands more appealing to different clusters.

Buil, Martínez and de Chernatony propose and test a model to better understand brand equity. The authors investigate the effects of this construct on consumers’ responses using data from two European countries. Findings provide useful guidelines for brand equity management. Marketing managers can complement financial metrics with consumer-based brand equity measures to track brand performance over time and to benchmark against other brands. Building brand equity generates more value for corporations since a more favorable consumer response results from positive brand equity.

Lysonski and Durvasula explore how Indian consumer decision- making processes for shopping have changed from 1994 to 2009. The authors also examine how selected psychological variables have an impact on present day consumer decision-making styles. The authors found that decision-making has changed particularly in terms of brand consciousness, novelty seeking, and impulsiveness, Psychological forces were also found to be influential in shaping various decision-making styles. Knowledge about variations in shopping patterns by consumers can help marketers develop more effective marketing strategies as India transitions from an emerging market to more of a mass consumption market.

In this issue you will also find our valuable Book Review section.

Richard C. Leventhal