Editorial

Citation

Phau, I. (2010), "Editorial", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 22 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/apjml.2010.00822caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Volume 22, Issue 3.

Welcome to the third issue of APJML for 2010. I am very happy to announce that it is confirmed that we will have a fifth issue from 2011. This will give us some breathing space in terms of publishing the accepted papers in a timely manner. I like to add that it will in no way compromise the quality of the papers as we are still maintaining a 17-20 per cent acceptance rate. For now, it is with pleasure that we publish another compilation of papers that will give you a glimpse into the research activities that are booming from various parts of the Asia-Pacific region.

The first three papers focus on retail, consumer behaviour and advertising. Byun and Sternquist lead us into their investigation into price mavenism, defined as an outcome of both positive and negative perceptions of price. The conceptual model, tested using SEM, addressed how price mavenism can affect shopping hedonism. Some very interesting findings have emerged to aid practitioners in fine-tuning their strategies, especially when entering the mainland Chinese market. The second paper by Josiassen and Assaf clarified the three-way interaction between product-country image, product origin congruency and product involvement on consumer's evaluations and purchase intentions. By examining 388 Australian consumers across four different product classes, it was found that the importance of the consumer attribute to COO image is anchored upon product context. Furthermore, the intensity of involvement is found to play different roles for consumers. This study lends as a useful extension from past studies that have only examined country of origin contingencies as separate entities. Chou and Lien delved into the investigation on the use of pop music in advertising and the song's release period and lyrics' effects on consumer responses to advertisements. The findings from an experimental design approach present very interesting implications for managers who are interested in eliciting nostalgia in younger consumers through specific songs to lead to favourable brand attitudes.

Two other papers investigate marketing in the e-commerce setting. Barnabas and Mekoth question whether superior autonomy at boundary spanning levels in service organizations could result in better market orientation and performance. Data collected from 122 retail banking branch managers were analysed through a number of regressions. Kassim and Abdullah empirically investigated the relationship between perceived service quality, satisfaction, trust and loyalty in e-commerce settings between Malaysia and Qatar. The findings suggested that customer satisfaction and trust have signification effects towards WOM, and WOM serves as an antecedent of repeat visits and repurchase intentions. Whereas trust does not seem to have an effect towards repurchase intentions. While the authors found several significant relationships, the model was not congruent when compared between two cultural groups even though they share similar cultural backgrounds.

The next two papers examined the use of message appeals and CSR in Thailand. Pornpitakpan and Green investigated the types of message appeals which are more effective in reducing unrealistic optimism and inducing purchase intentions of a life threatening prevention product across individualist and collectivist cultures. Based on data collected from American, Singaporean and Thai undergraduates, it was found that collectivism/individualism plays a role in affecting purchase intentions. On the other hand, Chomvilailuk and Butcher examined the efficacies of three CSR initiatives and their impact on brand preferences in the Thai banking sector. It was found that CSR does influence brand preference significantly and practitioners are advised to invest in CSR initiatives especially targeting specific stakeholders in the process.

As a closing paper of the issue, Ferrer, Santa, Hyland and Bretherton presented several insights into the types of relationships within the supply chain and the capabilities needed to manage these relationships. Through an interview of 132 respondents from the Australian road freight industry, three variables namely “sharing”, “power” and “interdependency” were found to be significant influencers. These findings are valuable to practitioners especially for those aimed at gaining cooperation with supply chain members to enhance their relationships.

We thank the EAB and the ad hoc reviewers for their timely review, and the authors for choosing APJML as an outlet to publish their research. We are still working through manuscript central and hopefully we will be able to iron out all “hiccups” that we have been experiencing in the interim. We thank all for their patience in this issue. I hope you all enjoy these papers and gain some useful insights from them.

Ian PhauCurtin University of Technology, Australia