Corporate social responsibility and sport event sponsorship

Demonstrating socially responsible behaviour has become increasingly important for corporations. Using the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) as its theoretical framework, this paper examines the meditational role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the relationship between sport participation motivation, event attachment and purchase intent of a sport event’s sponsors’ products. A questionnaire was distributed to a sample of sport event participants (N=689) to measure sport participation motivation (recreation and charity), attachment to the event, CSR, and purchase intent of sponsors’ products. Results reveal that CSR fully mediates the link between purchase intent and sport participation motivation and partially mediates the influence of attachment on purchase intent. The authors propose that corporations strategically align with sport events in which participants are attached to allow for CSR and the meaning elicited by the event to work jointly.

Destination brand equity for Australia : testing a model of CBBE in short haul and long haul markets

The study of destination brand performance measurement has only emerged in earnest as a field in the tourism literature since 2007. The concept of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) is gaining favour from services marketing researchers as an alternative to the traditional ‘net-present-value of future earnings’ method of measuring brand equity. The perceptions-based CBBE model also appears suitable for examining destination brand performance, where a financial brand equity valuation on a destination marketing organisation’s (DMO) balance sheet is largely irrelevant. This is the first study to test and compare the model in both short and long haul markets. The paper reports the results of tests of a CBBE model for Australia in a traditional short haul market (New Zealand) and an emerging long haul market (Chile). The data from both samples indicated destination brand salience, brand image, and brand value are positively related to purchase intent for Australia in these two disparate markets.

Music purchase behaviour : the effect of emotional loyalty on intention to purchase.

This paper explores the influence of emotional loyalty on music purchase behaviour. Specifically, it examines whether emotional attachment to an artist's music influences loyalty to that artist, and how emotional loyalty influences a consumer's decision to purchase music. Data collection involved fifteen semi-structured interviews with young (18-30) subjects recruited through non-probability convenience sampling. Findings show that consumers who are emotionally loyal to an artistes) are more inclined to purchase the music rather than download free of charge.

The influence of social communication networks on intentions to purchase on the web

Despite the increased offering of online communication channels to support web-based retail systems, there is limited marketing research that investigates how these channels act singly, or in combination with online channels, to influence an individual' s intention to purchase online. If the marketer's strategy is to encourage online transactions, this requires a focus on consumer acceptance of the web-based transaction technology, rather than the purchase of the products per se. The exploratory study reported in this paper examines normative influences from referent groups in an individual's on and offline social communication networks that might affect their intention to use online transaction facilities. The findings suggest that for non-adopters, there is no normative influence from referents in either network. For adopters, one online and one offline referent norm positively influenced this group's intentions to use online transaction facilities. The implications of these findings are discussed together with future research directions.

Determining the informational, navigational and transactional intent of web queries

In this paper, we define and present a comprehensive classification of user intent for Web searching. The classification consists of three hierarchical levels of informational, navigational, and transactional intent. After deriving attributes of each, we then developed a software application that automatically classified queries using a Web search engine log of over a million and a half queries submitted by several hundred thousand users. Our findings show that more than 80% of Web queries are informational in nature, with about 10% each being navigational and transactional. In order to validate the accuracy of our algorithm, we manually coded 400 queries and compared the results from this manual classification to the results determined by the automated method. This comparison showed that the automatic classification has an accuracy of 74%. Of the remaining 25% of the queries, the user intent is vague or multi-faceted, pointing to the need for probabilistic classification. We discuss how search engines can use knowledge of user intent to provide more targeted and relevant results in Web searching.

Searching for a feminist voice : film festivals and negotiating the tension between expectation and intent

International Film Festivals play a vital role in shaping filmmakers’ careers. This paper presents some initial findings from a current major research project, highlighting the significance of particular festival programming of emerging female directors from developing nations. Some filmmakers showcased at festivals actively privilege the voices of women in their films as a means of commenting on pressing cultural and political issues. Ironically, other filmmakers do not subscribe to the label of “feminist” or “woman filmmaker”, even if their respective films represent a strongly coded woman’s point of view. Tensions also arise inevitably when scrutinising women filmmakers from developing nations within a first world film festival context. The expectations of the researcher, the festival, film critics and audiences inevitably must negotiate with the original intentions of the filmmaker. This paper explores the significance of women filmmakers in attendance at the Brisbane International Film Festival (2009) and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2010).

Intent behind payments determines impact on assessment of damages

In Zheng v Cai (2009) 261 ALR 481 the High Court had to determine whether voluntary payments made to the appellant by a third party were to be taken into account when assessing a claim for damages for personal injury.

Classifying the user intent of web queries using k-means clustering

Purpose: Web search engines are frequently used by people to locate information on the Internet. However, not all queries have an informational goal. Instead of information, some people may be looking for specific web sites or may wish to conduct transactions with web services. This paper aims to focus on automatically classifying the different user intents behind web queries. Design/methodology/approach: For the research reported in this paper, 130,000 web search engine queries are categorized as informational, navigational, or transactional using a k-means clustering approach based on a variety of query traits. Findings: The research findings show that more than 75 percent of web queries (clustered into eight classifications) are informational in nature, with about 12 percent each for navigational and transactional. Results also show that web queries fall into eight clusters, six primarily informational, and one each of primarily transactional and navigational. Research limitations/implications: This study provides an important contribution to web search literature because it provides information about the goals of searchers and a method for automatically classifying the intents of the user queries. Automatic classification of user intent can lead to improved web search engines by tailoring results to specific user needs. Practical implications: The paper discusses how web search engines can use automatically classified user queries to provide more targeted and relevant results in web searching by implementing a real time classification method as presented in this research. Originality/value: This research investigates a new application of a method for automatically classifying the intent of user queries. There has been limited research to date on automatically classifying the user intent of web queries, even though the pay-off for web search engines can be quite beneficial. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

An ontology-based mining approach for user search intent discovery

Discovering proper search intents is a vi- tal process to return desired results. It is constantly a hot research topic regarding information retrieval in recent years. Existing methods are mainly limited by utilizing context-based mining, query expansion, and user profiling techniques, which are still suffering from the issue of ambiguity in search queries. In this pa- per, we introduce a novel ontology-based approach in terms of a world knowledge base in order to construct personalized ontologies for identifying adequate con- cept levels for matching user search intents. An iter- ative mining algorithm is designed for evaluating po- tential intents level by level until meeting the best re- sult. The propose-to-attempt approach is evaluated in a large volume RCV1 data set, and experimental results indicate a distinct improvement on top precision after compared with baseline models.

The perceived importance of mall retail categories and its effect on likelihood of purchase during a recession

Recessions impact the retail sector and as such research into consumer decision making during such times is imperative. In response to this, our study takes an innovative approach to examining how the perceived importance of retail store categories in a shopping mall influences the relationship between consumers' shopping attitudes and likelihood of purchasing in those categories during a recession. The overall findings show the importance of a product category to a consumer, which is often overlooked, has a strong explanatory influence on consumer purchase intentions for that specific retail store categories in a shopping mall under recession conditions. Findings also show that for consumers’ who have altered their shopping behaviour the perceived importance of a retail store category fully mediates the relationship for: Majors, Leisure, Food Catered and Mini Majors categories, and partial mediation for Apparel. Importance has no mediating effect for: Food Retail, General Retail, Mobile Phone Services, Home wares, and Retail Services. Our study makes a key contribution to the retail management literature with the findings suggesting that redefining and articulating the importance of the value offering for specific retail store categories can help reduce the impact of changes in consumers' recessionary shopping intentions across the mall tenant mix. Such actions can then help preserve the image of the shopping mall in the minds of the consumers when the economic recovery begins.

The influence of service quality and trade show effectiveness on post-show purchase intention

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an integrative services framework to investigate the role of perceived trade show effectiveness on overall trade show service outcome, conceptualised as the intention to purchase a related product after, rather than during, a show. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the services marketing and trade show literature, the authors test a model of trade show effectiveness with data collected from 592 attendees at a major automotive trade show in a large metropolitan centre. Findings Results show that improving trade show visitors' perceived service quality positively affects visitor perceptions of trade show effectiveness. Furthermore, both trade show effectiveness and service quality directly influence future purchase intention. Research limitations/implications Employing a services theoretical framework to evaluate trade show visitor experiences provides an alternative to the traditional marketing communications approach. By viewing such visits as service encounters, managers must inevitably consider the effects of service quality and service outcomes in determining the likely success of their shows. The study primarily focuses on one large consumer show and therefore does not constitute a complete, nor necessarily representative, sample of the trade show industry. Originality/value The original contribution of the paper stems from the paucity of research conceptualising trade shows as services and the comparative lack of emphasis placed on visitors rather than exhibitors in the literature. The research not only has utility for trade show organisers but also provides necessary theory-based research in the trade show domain.