Margetinggeschichte:Die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik, Hartmut Berghoff

Book revew: Marketinggeschichte: die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik [Marketing history: The genesis of a modern social technique], edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Frankfurt/Main, Campus Verlag, 2007, 409 pp., illus., [euro]30.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-3-593-38323-1. This edited volume is the result of a workshop at Göttingen University in 2006 and combines a number of different approaches to the research into the history of marketing in Germany's economy and society. The majority of contributions loosely focus around the occurrence of a ‘marketing revolution’ in the 1970s, which ties in with interpretations of the Americanisation of German business. This revolution replaced the indigenous German idea of Absatzwirtschaft (the economics of sales) with the American-influenced idea of Marketing, which was less functionally oriented and more strategic, and which aimed to connect processes within the firm in order to allow a greater focus on the consumer. The entire volume is framed by Hartmut Berghoff's substantial and informative introduction, which introduces a number of actors and trends beyond the content of the volume. Throughout the various contributions, authors provide explanations of the timing and nature of marketing revolutions. Alexander Engel identifies an earlier revolution in the marketing of dyes, which undergoes major change with the emergence of chemical dyes. While the natural dyestuff had been a commodity, with producers removed from consumers via a global network of traders, chemical dyes were products and were branded at an early stage. This was a fundamental change in the nature of production and sales. As Roman Rossfeld shows in his contribution on the Swiss chocolate industry (which focuses almost exclusively on Suchard), even companies that produced non-essential consumer goods which had always required some measure of labelling grappled for years with the need to develop fewer and higher impact brands, as well as an efficient sales operation. A good example for the classical ‘marketing revolution’ of the 1970s is the German automobile industry. Ingo Köhler convincingly argues that the crisis situation of German car manufacturers – the change from a seller's to a buyer's market, appreciation of the German mark which undermines exports, the oil crises coupled with higher inflation and greater frugality of consumers and the emergence of new competitors – lead companies to refocus from production to the demands of the consumer. While he highlights the role of Ford in responding most rapidly to these problems, he does not address whether the multinational was potentially transferring American knowledge to the German market. Similarly, Paul Erker illustrates that a marketing revolution in transport and logistics happened much later, because the market remained highly regulated until the 1980s. Both Paul Erker and Uwe Spiekermann in their contribution, present comparisons of two different sectors or companies (the tire manufacturer Continental and the logistics company Dachser, and agriculture and trade, respectively). In both cases, however, it remains unclear why these examples were chosen for comparison, as both seem to have little in common and are not always effectively used to demonstrate differences. The weakest section of the book is the development of marketing as an academic discipline. The attempt at sketching the phases in the evolution of marketing as an academic discipline by Ursula Hansen and Matthias Bode opens with an undergraduate-level explanation on the methodology of historical periodisation that seems extraneous. Considerably stronger is the section on the wider societal impact of marketing, and Anja Kruke shows how the new techniques of opinion research was accepted by politics and business – surprisingly more readily by politicians than their commercial counterparts. In terms of contemporary personalities, Hans Domizlaff emerges as one fascinating figure of German marketing history, which several contributors refer to and whose career as the German cigarette manufacturer Reemtsma is critically analysed by Tino Jacobs. Domizlaff was Germany's own ‘marketing guru’, whose successful campaigns led to the wide-ranging reception of his ideas about the nature of good branding and marketing. These are variously described as intuitive, elitist, and sachlich, a German concept of a sober, fact-based, and ‘no frills’ approach. Domizlaff did not believe in market research. Rather, he saw the genius of the individual advertiser as key to intuitively ascertaining the people's moods, wishes, and desires. This seems to have made him peculiarly suited to the tastes of the German middle class, according to Thomas Mergel's contribution on the nature of political marketing in the republic. Especially in politics, any form of hard sales tactics were severely frowned upon and considered to demean the citizen as incapable of making an informed choice, a mentality that he dates back to the traditions of nineteenth-century liberalism. Part of this disdain of ‘selling politics like toothpaste’ was also founded on the highly effective use of branding by the National Socialists, who identified their party through the use of an increasingly standardised image of Adolf Hitler and the swastika. Alexander Schug extends on previous research that criticised the simplistic notion of Hitler's charisma as the only explanation of the popular success and distances his approach from those who see it in terms of propaganda and demagogy. He argues that the NSDAP used the tools of advertising and branding precisely because they had to introduce their new ideology into a political marketplace dominated by more established parties. In this they were undoubtedly successful, more so than they intended: as bakers sold swastika cookies and butchers formed Führer heads out of lard, the NSDAP sought to regain control over the now effectively iconic images that constituted their brand, which was in danger of being trivialised and devalued. Key to understanding the history of marketing in Germany is on the one hand the exchange of ideas with the United States, and on the other the impact of national-socialist policies, and the question whether they were a force of modernisation or retardation. The general argument in the volume appears to favour the latter explanation. In the 1930s, some of the leading marketing experts emigrated to the USA, leaving German academia and business isolated. The aftermath of the Second World War left a country that needed to increase production to satisfy consumer demand, and there was little interest in advanced sales techniques. Although the Nazis were progressive in applying new marketing methods to their political campaign, this retarded the adoption of sales techniques in politics for a long time. Germany saw the development of idiosyncratic approaches by people like Domizlaff in the 1930s and 1940s, when it lost some leading thinkers, and only engaged with American marketing conceptions in the 1960s and 1970s, when consumers eventually became more important than producers.

The evolution of the car-making industry

Mass-production, cars, pollution – they all have long become well known and well connected phenomena of the modern life. Nowadays the people can also add to the list such items like awareness, scientific approach, long-term thinking, and environmental responsibility. They are surrounded by a multitude of consumer goods, most of which are produced in a scientific manner, and all of which will more sooner than later end up in the garbage. Cars are the most noticeable – both by size and by numbers – and also the most expensive of all the mass products in people’s view. For many of them they are a clear target for reprimand and regulation, and, as a result, the automotive industry is being increasingly brought under bureaucratic control, together with its whole supplier and distributor network. The author started writing this article in an attempt to place the above process under scrutiny, because it is his firm belief that similar measures, similar tough governmental control will inevitably spill over to other industries, which at the moment are producing more inconspicuous, but still polluting products. The present paper shows the relationship between car-making, supply chain management and the efforts of public administration to protect the environment – a connection with clear practical implications.

Essays on international macroeconomics and conflict analysis

This dissertation addressed two broad problems in international macroeconomics and conflict analysis. The first problem in the first chapter looked at the behavior of exchange rate and its interaction with industry-level tradable goods prices for three countries, USA, UK and Japan. This question has important monetary policy implications. Here, I computed to what extent changes in exchange rate affected prices of consumer, producer, and export goods. I also studied the timing of these changes in these prices. My results, based on thirty-four industrial prices for USA, UK and Japan, supported the view that changes in exchange rates significantly affect prices of industrial and consumer goods. It also provided an insight to the underlying economic process that led to changes in relative prices. ^ In the second chapter, I explored the predictability of future inflation by incorporating shocks to exchange rates and clearly specified the transmission mechanisms that link exchange rates to industry-level consumer and producer prices. Employing a variety of linear and state-of-the-art nonlinear models, I also predicted growth rates of future prices. Comparing levels of inflation obtained from the above approaches showed superiority of the structural model incorporating the exchange rate pass-through effect. ^ The second broad issue addressed in the third chapter of the dissertation investigated the economic motives for conflict, manifested by rebellion and civil war for seventeen Latin American countries. Based on the analytical framework of Garfinkel, Skaperdas and Syropoulos (2004), I employed ordinal regressions and Markov switching for a panel of seventeen countries to identify trade and openness factors responsible for conflict occurrence and intensity. The results suggested that increased trade openness reduced high intensity domestic conflicts but overdependence on agricultural exports, along with a lack of income earning opportunities lead to more conflicts. Thereafter, using the Cox Proportional Hazard model I studied “conflict duration” and found that over-reliance on agricultural exports explained a major part of the length of conflicts in addition to various socio-political factors. ^

Sales Promotion in Hotels:A British Perspective

In their article - Sales Promotion In Hotels: A British Perspective - by Francis Buttle, Lecturer, Department of Hotel, Restaurant, and Travel Administration, University of Massachusetts and Ini Akpabio, Property Manager, Trusthouse Forte, Britain, Buttle and Akpabio initially state: “Sales promotion in hotels is in its infancy. Other industries, particularly consumer goods manufacturing, have long recognized the contribution that sales promotion can make to the cost-effective achievement of marketing objectives. Sales promotion activities in hotels have remained largely uncharted. The authors define, identify and classify these hotel sales promotion activities to understand their function and form, and to highlight any scope for improvement.” The authors begin their discussion by attempting to define what the phrase sales promotion [SP] actually means. “The Institute of Sales Promotion regards sales promotions as “adding value, usually of a temporary nature, to a product or service in order to persuade the end user to purchase that particular brand as opposed to a competitive brand,” the authors offer. Williams, however, describes sales promotions more broadly as “short term tactical marketing tools which are used to achieve specific marketing objectives during a defined time period,” Buttle and Akpabio present with attribution. “The most significant difference between these two viewpoints is that Williams does not limit his definition to activities which are targeted at the consumer,” is their educated view. A lot of the discussion is centered on the differences in the collective marketing-promotional mix. “…it is not always easy to definitively categorize promotional activity,” Buttle and Akpabio say. “For example, in personal selling, a sales promotion such as a special bonus offer may be used to close the sale; an advertisement may be sales promotional in character in that it offers discounts.” Are promotion and marketing distinguishable as two separate entities? “…not only may there be conceptual confusion between components of the promotional mix, but there is sometimes a blurring of the boundaries between the elements of the marketing mix,” the authors suggest. “There are several reasons why SP is particularly suitable for use in hotels: seasonality, increasing competitiveness, asset characteristics, cost characteristics, increased use of channel intermediaries, new product launches, and deal proneness.” Buttle and Akpabio offer their insight on each of these segments. The authors also want you to know that SP customer applications are not the only game in town, SP trade applications are just as essential. Bonuses, enhanced commission rates, and vouchers are but a few examples of trade SP. The research for the article was compiled from several sources including, mail surveys, telephone surveys, personal interviews, trade magazines and newspapers; essentially in the U.K.

Segmenting The Hotel Market

Marketing involves satisfying consumers' needs and wants with products of two types, goods and services. Hotels provide an intangible product, referred to as a service. On the other hand, toothpaste is an example of a product that is a tangible good. The lifeblood of both is marketing. Different as they are, each utilizes market segmentation and positioning. The segmentation movement in the hotel industry is analyzed in the light of marketing principles developed from the consumer goods sector. The analysis suggests that the hotel industry is engaged in a multiple segmentation strategy

Den växande dagligvaruhandeln på internet : En fallstudie om MatHem i Sverige AB

Bakgrund Dagligvaruhandel på internet växer och efterfrågas från fler kunder än någonsin tidigare. De större aktörerna märker att efterfrågan finns och inser att de behöver utöka sina försäljningskanaler, samtidigt som de mindre företagen som varit med och bidragit till denna efterfrågan behöver arbeta för att hålla sina kunder lojala och inte förlora marknadsandelar när marknadssituationen förändras av de stora aktörerna. Den förändrade konkurrenssituationen innebär att företag behöver lägga större fokus på kunden genom strategi och framförallt uppbyggnaden av lojalitet. Syfte Syftet är att få en ökad kunskap om hur ett företag som var tidigt ute på en marknad håller sina kunder lojala i samband med att konkurrenssituationen förändras. Metod För att besvara syftet har en kvalitativ fallstudie om företaget MatHem gjorts, för att slutligen kunna dra en generaliserad slutsats. Där insamling av primärdata och sekundärdata har analyserats för att slutligen nå en slutsats. Slutsats Det undersökta företaget håller sina kunder lojala genom att ha en hög generell kvalitet. Vilket betyder att de har hög kvalitet på produkterna, väl fungerande kundservice, överträffar kundens förväntningar och ett brett sortiment. När konkurrenssituationen förändras har företaget inga speciella strategier för att hålla sina kunder lojala, eftersom att företaget inte ser de andra aktörerna som konkurrenter. Företaget är den dyraste aktören på marknaden, men differentierar sig med ekologiska produkter för att erhålla lojala kunder.

O processo de cocriação de valor entre empresas e consumidores: uma análise comparativa de dois casos da indústria de bens de consumo

O envolvimento do consumidor nos processos de criação de valor tornou-se um tema de des- taque na última década na esfera acadêmica do Marketing (Grönroos, 2006). Apresentada por Vargo e Lusch (2004a), a Lógica do Serviço Dominante (Lógica S-D) enfatiza que os consumido- res estruturam sua avaliação crítica de valor quando bens e serviços estão em uso. Este conceito, denominado valor em uso, é um dos elementos fundamentais relacionados aos processos de cocriação de valor entre empresas e consumidores (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). O presente trabalho baseia-se em dois estudos de casos realizados junto a grandes empresas do segmento de bens de consumo (Whirlpool e Tramontina). O objetivo principal da pesquisa foi analisar o conjunto de fatores considerados fundamentais para a ocorrência da cocriação de valor, incluin- do: cultura empresarial, características do mercado, intensidade competitiva, características dos produtos e habilidades específicas das empresas. A escolha das duas organizações foi baseada na intenção de comparar duas empresas com características distintas no que tange ao processo de cocriação (ocorrência versus não-ocorrência do fenômeno). A interpretação dos dados primá- rios obtidos nas entrevistas de profundidade com gestores das empresas, e de dados secundários oriundos de uma análise documental, proporcionou um conjunto de achados importantes para a compreensão do tema. Observou-se que a influência dos fatores fundamentais para a cocriação foram confirmados nos casos analisados, com preponderância da cultura organizacional e das habilidades da empresa. Além disto, um novo fator emergiu como relevante na implantação da cocriação de valor, denominado relação com a marca e caracterizado como um consistente sen- timento de pertencimento e de identidade do consumidor para com a marca. Como desdobra- mento deste estudo, evidencia-se que a cocriação não pode ser associada apenas a implantação de um conjunto de ferramentas, mas que está diretamente atrelada à presença de um conjunto de elementos capazes de assegurar a viabilidade real de sua implantação. A análise dos casos igualmente demonstra a necessidade das empresas se organizarem internamente, planejando ações e desenvolvendo mecanismos internos que permitam obter melhores resultados. Por fim, são apresentadas as implicações acadêmicas do estudo, bem como suas limitações.

How to optimize the traditional retail market for FMCG sector?

Field lab: Entrepreneurial and innovative ventures

Metodologia para elaboração de glossários bilíngues para a Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária – ANVISA

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Línguas Estrangeiras e Tradução, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução, 2016.

Análisis teórico y fáctico de la internacionalización del grupo Casino-Exito y su impacto socioeconómico en Colombia

La conformación de grandes organizaciones de comercio de bienes de consumo como resultado de una integración de empresas comercializadoras, entre ellas la del Grupo Casino, han adquirido participaciones mayoritarias en empresas nacionales. Este nuevo modelo de negocios corporativo ha generado algunos beneficios al consumidor en aspectos de precio, variedad y calidad a la luz de compradores, investigadores y de los propios dueños. Sin embargo, son más los daños y perjuicios que ha ocasionado estos procesos de internacionalización que los beneficios a primera luz, pues vienen acompañados de prácticas desleales que han atentado con los intereses de empresas productoras y proveedoras eliminando de tajo la libre competencia y desapareciendo reglas y conductas sanas que han caracterizado a la economía de mercado. Se examinará las teorías y conductas que se aplican a estas negociaciones, así como las prácticas que ejecutan en el comercio en la defensa de la competencia y su impacto competitivo en sector comercio de Colombia.

Experts vs. Discounters: Consumer Free Riding and Experts Withholding Advice in Markets for Credence Goods

This paper studies the incentives for credence goods experts to invest effort in diagnosis if effort is both costly and unobservable, and if they face competition by discounters who are not able to perform a diagnosis. The unobservability of diagnosis effort and the credence characteristic of the good induce experts to choose incentive compatible tariff structures. This makes them vulnerable to competition by discounters. We explore the conditions under which honestly diagnosing experts survive competition by discounters; we identify situations in which experts misdiagnose consumers in order to prevent them from free-riding on experts' advice; and we discuss policy options to solve the free-riding consumers–cheating experts problem.

Foreign wine consumption in Australia : the influence of consumer perceptions to foreign cultures on wine choice

Research has shown that while some people favor foreign- sourced products, others prefer to purchase goods made in their own country. From the perspective of the Australian wine market, consumption of wine has been consistently increasing in recent years. While sales of Australian made wine is booming, sales of imported sources is also increasing in terms of dollar value. This paper examines the effect of consumer ethnocentrism and animosity on willingness to buy foreign wine products, in an effort to better understand the factors involved in the consumer decision making process when purchasing wine products.

A cross cultural examination of consumer behaviour and GM food products : results from Australian and South Korean female consumers

The call for the cross cultural examination and validation of commonly accepted relationships within consumer behaviour is strengthening. Consequently, this paper seeks to address this call by examining consumer risk perceptions, reliance on country of origin information and willingness to buy Genetically Modified (GM) food products on Australian and South Korean consumers. Findings indicate a number of cross cultural similarities and differences that have both theoretical and practical implications.

The Australian domain name registration system : a more efficient system for the promotion of liberalisation, consumer protection and growth

This thesis is about the Australian domain name system and, in particular, the principles governing the registration of domain names in the '.au' country code domain space. It examines the different types of registration systems adopted in country code domain spaces and categorises them according to the extent to which they impose restrictions on registration, ranging from restrictive to unrestrictive. A comparative analysis is made of the restrictive registration system in Australia and the United Kingdom‘s unrestrictive system.