Peter James Fraser, Iain Simon Fraser and Stephen Fraser
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the creation of a performing arts archive website, exploring impact in relation to the marketing and promotion of opera and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the creation of a performing arts archive website, exploring impact in relation to the marketing and promotion of opera and understanding of opera history.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper sets out a case study reflection in relation to a social enterprise in the arts.
Findings
The paper confirms that development of a specialist or niche website is a slow process requiring significant effort and resource. Promotion draws on a variety of activities including networking, face-to-face selling, word of mouth and use of new media.
Research limitations/implications
The paper summarises participant experience of launching a hobby website in the cultural sector. Constraints such as patchiness of coverage are noted together with the need for collaboration. Finally, qualitative examples of impact are identified and discussed to indicate directions for further development and research.
Practical implications
A case study offering insights and potential learning points for those considering such projects or in similar positions.
Originality/value
The project described is unique yet addresses a research problem noted by many. The paper highlights some areas for future collaboration and research both nationally and internationally.
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Diogo Souza-Monteiro, Ben Lowe and Iain Fraser
Numeracy skills hinder a consumer’s ability to meet nutrition and calorie consumption guidelines. This study extends the literature on nutritional labelling by investigating how a…
Abstract
Purpose
Numeracy skills hinder a consumer’s ability to meet nutrition and calorie consumption guidelines. This study extends the literature on nutritional labelling by investigating how a calorie counter, which displays the total amount of calories consumers add to a shopping basket, aids them in making food choices. This study aims to ascertain whether the calorie counter affects food choices and also how individual and situational factors moderate this effect.
Design/methodology/approach
To test the developed hypotheses, the authors designed an online shopping experiment and administered it to a national panel of British consumers. This included a sub-sample from the general population who did not report any food-related health conditions (n = 480) and a separate sub-sample from the same population who had reported a food-related health condition or lived with someone who had one (n = 250).
Findings
The results of this study show that the calorie counter leads to a large and statistically significant reduction in calories purchased when compared to the no nutritional information condition and a small (but statistically insignificant) reduction in the number of calories chosen by consumers when compared to the nutritional information only condition. The main effect is moderated by individual factors such as whether or not the person has a health condition and shopping situations which involve time pressure.
Research limitations/implications
Although the main effect of the calorie counter was not statistically significant when compared to the nutrition information only condition, the effect was in the correct direction and was statistically significant for consumers who had a food-related health condition. The conceptualisation and findings of this study are not only largely consistent with Moorman’s (1990) nutrition information utilisation process but also suggest that situational factors should be considered when understanding nutrition information processing.
Practical implications
The findings from this study provide the first evidence to suggest that aggregating calorie information through a calorie counter can be a useful way to overcome consumer numeracy biases, particularly for those with existing health conditions and who are most motivated to use nutritional information. Based on the descriptive statistics, the main effect was comparable to the UK’s sugar tax in its impact and the authors estimate this would lead to a reduction in calories consumed of about 5,000 per year, even for consumers who did not report a health condition. Further testing is required with different formats, but these results are encouraging and are worthy of further research.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how consumers react to aggregated nutritional information for a basket of products, mimicking a real shopping situation. Such information has the potential to become more relevant and useful to consumers in the context of their overall diets. As technology advances rapidly, there is a need to explore alternative ways of presenting nutritional information, so it connects more easily with consumers. These results point very much to a more targeted and personally relevant approach to information provision, in contrast to existing mass communications approaches.
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Kelvin Balcombe, Iain Fraser and Abhijit Sharma
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the long-run relationship between radiative forcing (including emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides, methane and solar radiation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the long-run relationship between radiative forcing (including emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides, methane and solar radiation) and temperatures from a structural time series modelling perspective. The authors assess whether forcing measures are cointegrated with global temperatures using the structural time series approach.
Design/methodology/approach
A Bayesian approach is used to obtain estimates that represent the uncertainty regarding this relationship. The estimated structural time series model enables alternative model specifications to be consistently compared by evaluating model performance.
Findings
The results confirm that cointegration between radiative forcing and temperatures is consistent with the data. However, the results find less support for cointegration between forcing and temperature data than found previously.
Research limitations/implications
Given considerable debate within the literature relating to the “best” way to statistically model this relationship and explain results arising as well as model performance, there is uncertainty regarding our understanding of this relationship and resulting policy design and implementation. There is a need for further modelling and use of more data.
Practical implications
There is divergence of views as to how best to statistically capture, explain and model this relationship. Researchers should avoid being too strident in their claims about model performance and better appreciate the role of uncertainty.
Originality/value
The results of this study make a contribution to the literature by employing a theoretically motivated framework in which a number of plausible alternatives are considered in detail, as opposed to simply employing a standard cointegration framework.
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Nicole Elizabeth Hellyer, Iain Fraser and Janet Haddock-Fraser
The purpose of this paper is to establish implicit consumer attitudes towards whole grain foods, following criticisms of explicit enquiries revealing an attitude-behaviour gap…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish implicit consumer attitudes towards whole grain foods, following criticisms of explicit enquiries revealing an attitude-behaviour gap. For products considered to have social desirability (e.g. ethical and “health” products) bias may be observed, as respondents may provide responses that present them in a positive light, rather than those reflecting their actual attitudes, intentions or behaviours.
Design/methodology/approach
The research employed an indirect measure, the shopping list method, analysed quantitatively in this case using factor analysis and regression, to examine the impression respondents form of whole grain consumers, using three discrete shopping lists and two discrete cover letters. Following a pilot survey to 79 people using Snowball sampling, the survey instrument was distributed to 3,000 UK households using a purchased mailing list.
Findings
The findings demonstrated that respondents considered whole grain consumers to exhibit positive attributes of respectability and self-efficacy compared to their counterparts. These findings countered the negative, product attribute-based views of respondents when queried explicitly about their attitudes to whole grain foods.
Originality/value
The research provides an original perspective on whole grain consumer attitudes, using a methodology which – whilst well-established – has been used less frequently in a quantitative manner. It provides particular value to food retailers and manufacturers looking to promote whole grain products, but also to policy makers seeking to change consumption habits towards whole grains – which have established health benefits compared to refined alternatives.
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Iain Davies, Caroline J. Oates, Caroline Tynan, Marylyn Carrigan, Katherine Casey, Teresa Heath, Claudia E. Henninger, Maria Lichrou, Pierre McDonagh, Seonaidh McDonald, Sally McKechnie, Fraser McLeay, Lisa O'Malley and Victoria Wells
Seeking ways towards a sustainable future is the most dominant socio-political challenge of our time. Marketing should have a crucial role to play in leading research and impact…
Abstract
Purpose
Seeking ways towards a sustainable future is the most dominant socio-political challenge of our time. Marketing should have a crucial role to play in leading research and impact in sustainability, yet it is limited by relying on cognitive behavioural theories rooted in the 1970s, which have proved to have little bearing on actual behaviour. This paper aims to interrogate why marketing is failing to address the challenge of sustainability and identify alternative approaches.
Design/methodology/approach
The constraint in theoretical development contextualises the problem, followed by a focus on four key themes to promote theory development: developing sustainable people; models of alternative consumption; building towards sustainable marketplaces; and theoretical domains for the future. These themes were developed and refined during the 2018 Academy of Marketing workshop on seeking sustainable futures. MacInnis’s (2011) framework for conceptual contributions in marketing provides the narrative thread and structure.
Findings
The current state of play is explicated, combining the four themes and MacInnis’s framework to identify the failures and gaps in extant approaches to the field.
Research limitations/implications
This paper sets a new research agenda for the marketing discipline in quest for sustainable futures in marketing and consumer research.
Practical implications
Approaches are proposed which will allow the transformation of the dominant socio-economic systems towards a model capable of promoting a sustainable future.
Originality/value
The paper provides thought leadership in marketing and sustainability as befits the special issue, by moving beyond the description of the problem to making a conceptual contribution and setting a research agenda for the future.
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My discussion of intersexuality's changing exemplificatory position within feminist studies of science explains how its medical management has emerged as an exemplary injustice of…
Abstract
My discussion of intersexuality's changing exemplificatory position within feminist studies of science explains how its medical management has emerged as an exemplary injustice of recognition. Specifically, the surgical protocol that aims to make unusual genitalia invisible, and the medical obfuscation of intersexuality's ramifications for the cultural construction of gender, have been written as a wrong by Anne Fausto-Sterling and Suzanne Kessler. By mapping intersex treatment as a discursively produced injustice, I argue that it is accordingly within discourse that the wrongs of intersex treatment may be redressed – not by undoing past surgeries, or by punishing clinicians as personally “guilty.”
IAIN NOBLE and PETER HARGREAVES
Unless you have been on the library equivalent of a desert island, you will know that the BBC AIV system and the Domesday Project Video Discs were released at the end of last…
Abstract
Unless you have been on the library equivalent of a desert island, you will know that the BBC AIV system and the Domesday Project Video Discs were released at the end of last year. We bought the system in March but only now do we feel ready to release it for general use. The bibliography (not exhaustive) at the end of this review lists several articles which describe the technical aspects of the system in detail. Similarly other references (and BBC television programmes) have highlighted the immense co‐operative effort which went into collecting the data on the discs. We do not intend to repeat all this information, although a brief description follows. What we would like to do is to give the subjective impressions of a group of librarians, working in a particular library, setting up and exploring the system. We would hope that rather than being seen as any form of definitive assessment of the system, this brief expression of points of view will encourage others to agree (or disagree) with our opinions, give us the benefit of their own experiences and pass on any handy tips they have picked up.
The new public sector health managers are now being asked to makedifficult choices regarding the rationing of health care. This is a newexperience for many and exposes the ethical…
Abstract
The new public sector health managers are now being asked to make difficult choices regarding the rationing of health care. This is a new experience for many and exposes the ethical base from which many operate. Initiates the debate concerning which morality is currently being employed and whether sharing of these fundamental views can be achieved.