An investigation of the retail marketing mix and its effectiveness in small shops

The recent history of small shop and independent retailing has been one of decline. The most desirable form of assistance is the provision of information which will increase the efficiency model of marketing mix effeciveness which may be applied in small scale retailing. A further aim is to enhance theoretical development in the marketing field. Recent changes in retailing have affected location, product range, pricing and promotion practices. Although a large number of variables representing aspects of the marketing mix may be identified, it is not possible, on the basis of currently available information, to quantify or rank them according to their effect on sales performance. In designing a suitable study a major issue is that of access to a suitable representative sample of small retailers. The publish nature of the retail activities involved facilitates the use of a novel observation approach to data collection. A cross-sectional survey research design was used focussing on a clustered random sample of greengrocers and gent's fashion outfitters in the West Midlands. Linear multiple regression was the main analytical technique. Powerful regression models were evolved for both types of retailing. For greengrocers the major influences on trade are pedestrian traffic and shelf display space. For gent's outfitters they are centrality-to-other shopping, advertising and shelf display space. The models may be utilised by retailers to determine the relative strength of marketing mix variables. The level of precision is not sufficient to permit cost benefit analysis. Comparison of the findings for the two distinct kinds of business studied suggests an overall model of marketing mix effectiveness might be based on frequency of purchase, homogeneity of the shopping environment, elasticity of demand and bulk characteristics of the good sold by a shop.

Beauty in the brain of the beholder

Facial beauty is an honest signal of the genotypic and phenotypic quality of the bearer. Beautiful people are thus regarded as high-value mates who maximize reproductive success by producing viable offspring. Here, the functional neuroanatomy of facial beauty is reviewed and placed into the context of the distributed model for human face perception. A proposed extension of the distributed model is provided, which takes into account the neuroanatomy of beautiful face perception.

Interviewing strategies in the face of beauty:a psychophysiological investigation into the job negotiation process

After the application form is submitted, the interview is the most important method of human resource allocation. Previous research has shown that the attractiveness of interviewees can significantly bias interview outcome. We have previously shown that female interviewers give attractive male interviewees higher status job packages compared their average looking counterparts. However, it is not known whether male interviewers exhibit such biases. In the present study, participants were asked to take part in a mock job negotiation scenario where they had to allocate either a high- or low-status job package to attractive or average looking ``interviewees.'' Before each decision was made, the participant's anticipatory electrodermal response (EDR) was recorded. The results supported our previous finding in that female participants allocated a greater number of high-status job packages to attractive men. Additionally, male participants uniformly allocated a greater number of low-status job packages to both attractive men and attractive women. Overall, the average looking interviewees incurred a penalty and received a significantly greater number of low-status job packages. In general, the EDR profile for both male and female participants was significantly greater when allocating the low-status packages to the average looking interviewees. However, the male anticipatory EDR profile showed the greatest change when allocating attractive women with low-status job packages. We discuss these findings in terms of the potential biases that may occur at the job interview and place them within an evolutionary psychology framework.

Examining the influence of fame in the presence of beauty:an electrodermal 'neuromarketing' study

The use of famous and/or attractive models in brand marketing is ubiquitous yet little work, if any, has been carried out examining differences in their efficiency in driving subsequent consumer behaviour. Such brand platforms have an emotional selling proposition (ESP) that refers to the unique personality and image attributes that a particular endorsement generates. However, celebrity endorsers are also more than likely to be considered attractive and thus differences in the ESP (if any) would be very small. Such differences in an emotional response could be measured by a participant's electrodermal activity (EDA). This is a psychophysiological response, measurement of which is sensitive enough to detect differences engendered by a particular brand platform's ESP. In the present study, EDA measurements were recorded from participants who were shown advertisements containing a target product within four different types of endorsement platforms depicting models who were either famous/non-famous or attractive/average looking. The results showed that average looking celebrity endorsers produced a greater EDA response than any of the other conditions including the attractive looking celebrity endorsers. Furthermore, this effect was only revealed from recordings taken from the left hand side of the participants. Given that the right side of the brain would orchestrate any EDA responses recorded from the subjects' left side, the current results suggest a dedicated neural response for celebrity endorsed brand platforms. Future work examining the relationship between the specific EDA signature and consumer preferences is discussed.