PURPOSE: The purpose of the paper is to describe and analyze differences in patients' quality perceptions of private and public primary care centers in Sweden.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The article explores the differences in quality perceptions between patients of public and private primary care centers based on data from a large patient survey in Sweden. The survey covers seven dimensions, and in this paper the measure Overall impression was used for the comparison. With more than 80,000 valid responses, the survey covers all primary care centers in Sweden which allowed for a detailed analysis of differences in quality perceptions among patients from the different categories of owners.

FINDINGS: The article contributes with a detailed description of different types of private owners: not-for-profit and for profit, as well as corporate groups and independent care centers. The results show a higher quality perception for independent centers compared to both public and corporate groups.

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: The small number of not-for-profit centers (21 out of 1,117 centers) does not allow for clear conclusions for this group. The results, however, indicate an even higher patient quality perception for not-for-profit centers. The study focus on describing differences in quality perceptions between the owner categories. Future research can contribute with explanations to why independent care centers receive higher patient satisfaction.

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: The results from the study have policy implications both in a Swedish as well as international perspective. The differentiation between different types of private owners made in this paper opens up for interesting discussions on privatization of healthcare and how it affects patient satisfaction.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The main contribution of the paper is the detailed comparison of different categories of private owners and the public owners.

We describe a methodology for identifying competitors from first principles, drawing on the ecological niche theory which stipulates that competition arises from the dependence of interacting entities on the same limiting resources or, in ecological terms, from overlap in their niches. Depending on the context, the entities of interest may be species, products, firms, countries, or supply chains. We discuss the concepts of niche breadth and niche overlap and provide a mathematical expression for computing the competitive effects of interacting entities on one another from niche breadth and overlap measures. We illustrate the competitor identification procedure with simulated data mimicking a situation where supply chains compete over logistics modes on which they rely for moving goods from point to point. Competition identification is invaluable to business sustainability as it allows the entities involved to remain sustainable and persist in a competitive environment by crafting effective strategies that allow them to continuously adapt to changes and mitigate the negative impacts of competition.

Background: Environmental sustainability and climate change are of increasing concern. The agriculture and food sector generate a large negative impact on the environment, and whilst the awareness is increasing, limited change in behaviour is visible. This resulted in the exploration of opportunities in relation to this topic, where meat consumption, meat substitutes and reactions to messaging are the main focus. 

Purpose: From an environmentally sustainable perspective, to understand how European Millennial and Gen Z consumers react to message appeals on the packaging of meat substitutes, by using the PMT. 

Method: A qualitative approach was followed to understand the reactions from European Millennial and Gen Z consumers when showing different message appeals on the packaging of meat substitutes. To explore their feelings, attitudes and perception towards these message appeals, and how this could influence their reaction, semi-structured interviews were conducted. 

Conclusion: The results show that message appeals are effective when applying PMT to explore the reaction to reduce meat consumption. The emotional appeal was found to be the most effective. The informational appeal is moderately effective as the effectiveness depends on presentation and communication, and reduce appeal is found ineffective.

Background: There has been a great effort in the sustainable development community in trying to identify what elements play roles in influencing customers when deciding their purchase of eco-friendly food products. The attempt to rank these criteria’s importance concerning each other also has been put on. Although this field of topic has been studied by various researchers providing diverse perspectives and knowledgeable results in Europe and North America, there are still limited studies with the same concept for emerging countries like Vietnam. 

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the influence between motivations, ability, and opportunity factors on each other and on customers’ decision-making process of buying everyday eco-friendly food products in Vietnam. 

Method: A quantitative method was conducted through an online survey of Vietnamese consumers analyzed through the statistical software program SPSS.

Conclusion:  The result shows that 4 hypotheses were accepted, while 3 were rejected. Overall, the antecedents influencing Vietnamese consumers’ purchasing behavior toward eco-friendly everyday food products are the following, listed from the largest effect to the least effect: environmental self-identity, budget constraint, environmental knowledge, and product involvement.

Background:  The 2019 Gillette advertisement ‘We believe: the best men can be’ was released when the #MeToo movement was gaining momentum. The commercial addressed conventional ideas of masculinity and received a lot of public criticism for its message. To examine how advertising affects society’s perception of gender it is essential to develop an understanding of customer responses to this controversial advertisement.    

Purpose:   The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how customers respond to the controversial Gillette advertisement and the reason for this reaction. The study looks to identify the variety of emotions, actions, and cognitive processes displayed by customers by examining comments made by users on the YouTube advertisement video.   

Method:  Using netnography, both a qualitative and quantitative research method, the study examined 2,400 comments from the Gillette advertisement published on YouTube. To find trends and patterns relating to customer responses, these comments are grouped and analyzed thematically. Waller’s proposed response model for controversial advertising serves as the foundation for analysis, with the inclusion of modifications to consider the special features of the YouTube comments.   

Conclusion:  Analyzing the comments on the advertisement indicates a wide range of responses to the Gillette campaign. Commenters expressed disapproval, sarcasm, dislike, and offense. Negative behaviors included plans to boycott Gillette or spread negative word of mouth. There were a few positive comments that expressed positive emotions like approval, liking, and appreciation, but little to no positive actions. A majority of the negative reactions were influenced by perceptions of masculinity, gender constructs within society, political affiliation, as well as perceptions of Gillette’s brand actions. These results offer insightful understandings of the challenges of addressing masculinity and managing the social environments in the context of advertising.  

Background: There is a ubiquitous societal trend to define one’s self-worth based on externalities such as looks. The visibility of idealised and homogenous, mainly white, ‘perfect’ bodies in mass media contributes to the surge in body dissatisfaction of individuals, especially young women. This is accompanied by ethical problems such as mental diseases and eating disorders. Moreover, it renders young women with a high body dissatisfaction a profitable target group for several industries.

Purpose: This paper develops and tests a model on how different levels of Body Image Satisfaction impact young female’s emotional responses and their attitude towards the advertisements and the brand that uses them. It directly compares these effects for Body Positivity (BoPo) advertising (visuals of diversities of physical appearances) and traditional, idealised imagery in an experimental setup. With this, this study aims to prove that a high level of Body Image Satisfaction and thus BoPo content makes economic sense.

Method: This study measures the psychological constructs Body Image Satisfaction, experiential emotional response and attitude. It draws on research on how different body types are used to profit from the effects of self-esteem advertising while linking them to research on the Body Image Satisfaction of young females. BoPo commercials are compared to traditional, idealised imagery in commercials and measured consumer reactions to both using a quantitative survey in a representative panel in Germany.

Conclusion: High Body Image Satisfaction leads to a more positive experiential emotional response, a more positive attitude towards commercials, and a more positive attitude towards brands for any type of commercials. Commercials with BoPo content are highly accepted. As the exposure to BoPo content leads to a higher Body Image Satisfaction, BoPo content in mass media is ethically desirable and also economically beneficial.

Background: Following the development brought by the digital age, social networks and consumer behaviour has significantly changed. The network connectivity of WEB 2.0 enables information to spread at an accelerated rate to a wide scope, creating viral demand. This phenomenon presents an opportunity for brands to increase their customer base. Building brand resonance through brand equity management will result in a stronger brand-to-consumer relationship from viral demand, leading to improved customer retention and overall brand growth.

Purpose: This paper focuses on theory development of Kevin Keller’s (1993) CBBE model. The remodelling aims to strategize brand equity management to optimize long-term customer retention from viral demand based on Generation Z consumer behaviour. The framework provides value for brands as it allows to recognize key drivers influencing Gen-Z's customer retention within the context of virality.

Method: The study follows a qualitative design, which is inspired by grounded theory methodology, enabling us to develop a framework based on the CBBE-model (Keller, 1993). An open-ended survey was conducted to understand Generation Z consumer behaviour during viral trends. The survey was systematically analysed, and empirical conclusions were made, respectively.

Conclusion: An interest in product over brand during viral trends disrupts the customer retention longevity, explaining why the individual Gen-Z customer lifetime is rather short lived. Furthermore, the proposed CVRM model strategizes how to (1) create willingness for the customer to return and (2) how to prolong customer retention and thus generate long term benefits from a short-term phenomenon.     

AbstractBackground: Chanel No. 5 is the best-selling perfume in the world and is characterized by femininity, high quality, and elegance. The brand has a unique advertising strategy, which is mostly focusing on the storytelling communication tool. With this, the goal is to build an emotional connection with its consumers. Storytelling is considered to be one of the most effective tools for branding. This derives from the fact that people often store the received information as stories, connect them with their own experiences and thus maintain it longer in their memory. Generation Z is proven to be the next customer base for luxury brands and therefore companies need to develop an understanding of their values and preferences.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to discover how Chanel’s storytelling strategy influences Generation Z females’ brand perception. Since consumers tend to be conscious of Chanel’s advertising, more precisely of Chanel No. 5 commercials, research on this topic is relevant. Although storytelling has been widely researched in literature, there are still some gaps in terms of the impact it has on brand perception. Generation Z has greatly contributed to the luxury market’s growth and expansion and is consequently an appropriate generational cohort to analyze.Method: To accomplish the purpose of this thesis, an exploratory, qualitative research design was used. In this regards, empirical data were collected through 2 focus groups and 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews with a total of 26 participants. The data collection included conditioning, meaning the participants were exposed to a Chanel No.5 storytelling commercial. The data were then analyzed with a thematic analysis before and after conditioning, creating codes with an inductive approach.Conclusion: The findings of this research show that the storytelling of Chanel No. 5 did not fundamentally influence the brand perception of Generation Z females. The four main categories, Brand Association, Brand Awareness, Brand Loyalty and Perceived Quality, based on the theoretical framework used in this work, showed that two of them were not influenced after conditioning. However, the other two categories changed in a positive way, namely Brand Association and Brand Loyalty, due to the advertisement exposure. Consequently, it can be stated that if storytelling influences the brand perception of Generation Z females, it does that more positively.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the main factors that both positively and negatively influence consumers purchasing behavior in terms of insect-based food. By investigating the factors, the study aimed to shed light on how insect-based food can seamlessly penetrate the Swedish market with the use of marketing strategies. In order to further facilitate the study, a qualitative research with an inductive approach was selected. With the foundation of formulated questions, the semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain deeper insights in relation to the study. The interviewees included Swedish residents in the age range of 20-40 and 13 individual interviews were carried out to ensure the quality of data. The study identified some major contributing factors: sustainability, product quality and availability. These major factors, therefore, created a need for potential marketing strategies, which primarily focuses on extensive information sharing and green labelling.

The paper introduces a conceptualization of experience ecosystems as semantic blended spaces instantiated by the activities carried out by independent actors moving freely and at will between different products, services, devices, people, and locations in pursuit of individual goals.

This conceptualization is anchored to three distinct cultural and socio-technical shifts that characterize the current postdigital condition: the displacement of postmodernism as the cultural dominant; the embodiment of digitality and the emergence of a blended space of action; the occurrence of a postdigital society.

It contributes to ongoing conversations on ecosystem-level and systemic design from the point of view of information architecture and user experience in five distinct ways: by centering the discourse on the actor-driven individual experience made possible by the postdigital condition; by framing the problem space from an embodied, spatial and architectural perspective; by considering the environment systemically as a blend of digital and physical non-contiguous spaces; by recasting the object of design to be the semantic and spatial relationships that exist or could exist between the elements of the actor-centered ecosystem; by introducing a mapping methodology that can be used to capture and spatially describe the relational complexity of said ecosystems for further intervention.

Background: We currently live in a time when consumers trust more on social media and less on traditional advertising as a source of information for their purchasing decisions. Social media and traditional advertising must be integrated somehow so that marketers can communicate more effectively with their target market. In this investigation, the influence of music influencers on consumer behavior is analyzed, getting to the conclusion that the benefits of influencer and social media marketing increases customer experience and credibility, as it gives a brand the ability to communicate with its customers and develop a long-term relationship. The music resource is combined with the influence of the artist's personality to generate strategies that are effective but not totally rewarded by the consumers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is therefore to explore what influence Latin American artists have on the behaviour of Latin American consumers and how companies can use these motivations to structure their own marketing campaigns.

Method: In order to carry out the following research work, the following stages are proposed: Firstly, a theoretical framework will be elaborated using the methodology of literature review, secondly a qualitative research which will consist of an empirical analysis the instrument chosen for this is an interview with a professional in the sector. And finally quantitative research The survey is the instrument chosen to collect the information that will drive the quantitative research proposed for this study.

Conclusion: The results suggest that artists have an influence on the purchasing behaviour of Ibero-American consumers. By establishing connections between literature review, empirical data and surveys, a significant relationship was found that affirms the theory. The study reveals evidence that consumers in general can be influenced by music as a formative variable of the environment or atmosphere. The benefits of influencer and social media marketing increases customer experience and credibility, as it gives a brand the ability to communicate with its customers and develop a long-term relationship. The music resource is combined with the influence of the artist's personality to generate strategies that are effective but not totally rewarded by the consumers.

From there, marketers should take this research into account when implementing artists in their campaigns in Latin America.

ABSTRACT

Background: The marketing efforts made by firms have been forced to change dramatically during the past year as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online communication and social media platforms have seen a boom in users and firms have been forced to switch both their sales and marketing efforts to the online world. By applying the definition and observable characteristics of Social Media Marketing Strategies (SMMS) in combination with Consumer Engagement Theory, the authors of this paper aim to explore which strategies have been applied by three IKEA Instagram accounts and how social media users are reacting to these applied SMMSs in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Problem: It has previously been suggested to conduct further studies on the combination of social media and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in order to help firms develop stronger and more meaningful consumer relationships. Researchers further suggest that there is a current research gap regarding the factors which might influence user-generated content (such as comments), positive Word of Mouth (WoM) and brand engagement among social media users. Further it was recognized that social media reaches across national borders which leaves room for cross-cultural research to be made on the following consequences. 

Purpose: The exploratory purpose of this study aims in developing a deeper understanding of the applied SMMSs by firms and the resulting consumer engagement as well as social media user’s reactions to those strategies.

Research Questions: “What social media marketing strategies (SMMSs) are IKEA applying during the COVID-19 pandemic?” and, “How do social media users respond to IKEA’s social media marketing strategies (SMMSs) during the COVID-19 Pandemic?”

Method: With a relativist ontology and social constructionist epistemology, the study inductively explores the SMMSs applied by three Instagram accounts from the retailer IKEA in Australia, UK and Sweden. Through a case study-approach and the application of qualitative content analysis, the accounts have been analyzed and coded separately by two independent researchers. Intercoder reliability was measured between the researchers through Cohen’s Kappa. The findings from each case were then compared in a cross-case analysis.

Practical Implications: This research will help marketing managers by providing insights into how consumers respond and perceive different SMMS during the COVID-19 pandemic and to enhance their consumer engagement by adapting an appropriate communication strategy to reach their business objectives.

Result and Conclusions: Within the chosen timeframe of 6 months during COVID-19, the analyzed IKEA accounts applied disparate SMMS, namely, ‘Social Commerce Strategy’, ‘Social Content Analysis’ and ‘Social Monitoring Strategy’. The Instagram users' reactions differed across the three accounts, where the strategy which received the most positive consumer reactions, as well as the highest level of consumer engagement, was the ‘Social Content Strategy’ which was applied by IKEA Australia. Thus, the findings suggest that the three Instagram accounts apply unique SMMSs adapted to each country and thus achieve distinctive results in terms of consumer engagement.