Australasian Marketing Journal

In this paper, we propose a method to measure brand equity in a product category at the individual level that allows managers to parcel out brand equity into its respective components and estimate the relative importance of these components. The monetary equivalent value for each of the sub-components of brand equity is calculated. Two new measures for evaluating the long-term health of a brand are also proposed. A nested design based on conjoint methodology, coupled with a hierarchical linear Bayes model, is used to estimate brand equity. The methodology is applied to the Television category and its applicability to managerial decision-making is shown.

The concept of Emotional Intelligence appears to be able to provide the premise to describe customer aptitude in managing emotions elicited in a service exchange, as well as provide the precedential link to understand customer affective responses. However, given that research in the commercial implications of emotional intelligence has focused predominantly in management literature, no widely accepted scale has yet been developed to assess implications of customer's emotional intelligence in a service context. This paper outlines the development of a new measure, the Customer Emotional Intelligence Scale (CEIS), an adaptation of the Workplace Emotional Intelligence Profile version 3 (WEIP-3) which was designed to profile the emotional intelligence of customers in the context of service encounters. Empirical investigation conducted in the context of service industry supported multidimensionality of the CEIS. Discussion in this paper focuses on the application of the scale in services marketing while outlining avenues for future research.

There are few research-based insights into professional service firms’ (PSFs) contemporary marketing practices. This is unfortunate as the professional services sector is a key contributor to growth in the Australian and other economies around the world. As professional services are unique in a number of ways and their operations and marketing activities inextricably intertwined, the present study investigated the extent to which PSFs practice marketing and whether this differs according to size. Depth interviews were held with thirty seven Australian senior managers in four key industries. We examined the extent of relationship marketing, conceptualised at an overall managerial level as well as four sub-practices identified in research by Coviello and colleagues. We found relationship management and interaction marketing were the most common practices, which is consistent with the inseparability concept, and that relationship management and database marketing were more common in larger firms, which is consistent with their relative resource strength.

The Indian banking industry is going through turbulent times. With the lowering of entry barriers and blurring of product lines of banks and non-banks since the financial sector reforms, banks are functioning increasingly under competitive pressures. Hence, it is imperative that banks maintain a loyal customer base. In order to achieve this and improve their market and profit positions, many retail banks are directing their strategies towards increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty through improved service quality. Moreover, with the advent of international banking, the trend towards larger bank holding companies, and innovations in the marketplace, customers have greater and greater difficulty in distinguishing and selecting one institution from another. Therefore the current problem for the banking industry in India is to determine the dimensions of customer-perceived service quality. This is because if service quality dimensions can be identified, service managers should be able to improve the delivery of customer perceived quality during the service process and have greater control over the overall outcome.

The objective of the study was to explore the dimensions of customer perceived service quality in the context of the Indian retail banking industry. A set of service quality parameters, drawn from customers’ perceptions about service quality as well as the bank marketing and service quality literature, were drawn up. These parameters have been used in the context of four of the largest banks in India to identify the underlying dimensions of service quality, using factor analysis.

The study suggests that customers distinguish four dimensions of service quality in the case of the retail banking industry in India, namely, attitude, competence, tangibles and convenience. Identifying the underlying dimensions of the service quality construct in the Indian retail banking industry is the first step in the definition and hence provision of quality service. This article has drawn upon the findings of the service quality dimensions to contend the initiatives that banks’ managers can take to enhance employees’ skills and attitudes and instill a customer-service culture.

This paper explores some of the implications for the idea of business strategy of the networks of interlocking interdependencies which comprise the business landscape. The paper proposes a framework for analysing the strategic situations facing companies in business networks and for developing business strategy within them. The central message of the paper is that in the complex networks in which companies operate, business strategy cannot realistically be regarded as an individual-company activity.

The paper argues that in these circumstances, strategy is more usefully conceived of as a matrix of interdependencies that connects the structure and process of a network and that confronts the existing with the evolving.

This structure and process provide an array of evolving possibilities for the choices of any one actor and others, whether they are suppliers, customers, competitors or development partners.

The paper argues that the strategy of a single company can usefully be interpreted as part of the process of interaction through which the company and others confront aspects of the status quo with new evolving possibilities, whilst conforming to other existing patterns within the network.

Marketing thinkers identify concepts of relationship, interaction, and network as useful. Edgar Crane (1972) saw interaction as essential to buyer-seller decision-making. David Ford, Kristian Möller, and Håkan Håkansson followed with explanations of how marketing operates. Christian Grönroos expanded the horizon with ‘interactive marketing’. Evert Gummesson saw interaction as “active contact” and all marketing as relationships and interaction in networks. The Relationship Marketing field flourished – at least for a time.

Whilst many proponents of “interactive communication” and “social interaction” do not see the interaction concept as problematic, they focus attention on practices. I choose to re-examine both ‘interaction’ and ‘communication’, and to relate these concepts to the concepts of society and the social process we call “marketing”.

The discussion proceeds from the general perspective of humans living among others, to the specific situation of marketing in society. I examine the concept of ‘interaction’, and consider social interaction as exchange –a dialogical view of human communication. The patterning of social interaction in markets as distinct from bureaucracies, solidarity groupings, and co-operative collectives is examined.

An alternative sociological analysis of the social is compared with that of the social psychology tradition. Communication is discussed as a mode of interaction, to reveal monologic (technical) and dialogic (humanitarian) conceptions of communication prevalent in the marketing field.

Within the context of an ‘Interaction Society’, marketing is explained as a complex dynamic adaptive interaction system, revealing a conversational nature. It is proposed that interaction directs and co-ordinates, but also co-creates – ‘interactional work’ has innovative capacity.

The marketing significance of consumer and business relationships was reclaimed in the 1990s when relationship marketing came into its own as a field of marketing inquiry. This article contributes to the current debate about the scope of relationship marketing and especially the meaning of network relationships. This question is discussed in a business to business context, using the network approach of the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group as a lens. We critique three relationship ‘paradoxes’ (Håkansson and Ford, 2002) which appear to place limits on managerial action in networks. These paradoxes are considered from alternative viewpoints in order to attempt a resolution to the logical conundrum they present. We conclude that Håkansson and Ford's paradoxes indeed signal a range of constraints on managerial independence but the situation is far from paradoxical. We offer suggestions for cognitive mapping of relationships within the knowable network at the level of the firm and call for an ontological shift in understanding firm-level strategies in the network context.