School of Management (SoM)

Permanent URI for this community

https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/25

Browse

Browsing School of Management (SoM) by Supervisor "Baines, Paul R."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Market segmentation capability and business performance : a reconceptualisation and empirical validation
    (Cranfield University, 2011-09-30) Poenaru, Adina; Baines, Paul R.
    Recent developments in marketing and technological fields have raised concerns about the usefulness of market segmentation as an effective marketing practice. Furthermore, the segmentation literature has highlighted significant implementation problems, due to a gap between academics’ focus on the research methodology involved in identifying segments and practitioners’ concerns for impactful and implementable segmentation strategies. Consequently, research providing quantifiable evidence of the impact of segmentation has been identified as a priority. This research addresses this issue by reconceptualising market segmentation as a dynamic capability, identifying the components of a firm’s segmentation capability and determining its influence on business performance. The research is conducted within the critical realism paradigm and adopts a sequential qualitative-quantitative methodology. Through 24 in-depth interviews with marketing managers and segmentation experts, the processes, mechanisms and structures affecting segmentation implementation and its outcomes are identified. Based on the qualitative findings and extant literature, market segmentation capability is delineated and a model of the relationships between market segmentation capability and business performance is developed and tested empirically with survey data from a sample of 205 marketing directors from eight industries. The quantitative findings support a process of analysis-integration-execution of segmentation schemes and also suggest three additional pathways of influence from segmentation analysis to business performance. These pathways are found to depend on the market growth rate and firm’s marketing resources. This research bridges the gap between market segmentation theory and practice by broadening the segmentation field to include the study of managerial practices and performance implications of segmentation. The main theoretical contribution relates to the delineation of market segmentation as a dynamic capability, providing new insights into market segmentation as a managerial practice. Significant contributions are also generated by the confirmation of a significant relationship between segmentation capabilities and business performance and the identification of pathways of influence between them, explained by the development of segmentation execution capability and generic marketing capabilities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Segmenting customers based on their unconscious needs.
    (2018-09) Simmons, Sid; Baines, Paul R.; Dimitriu, Radu
    This paper contributes to the literature by proposing a new methodological approach for understanding customers’ unconscious needs. This approach combines Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) with Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC), for the first time, to identify needs that segment members are either unaware of, or unable/unwilling to articulate. This methodological approach identified an additional market segment, distinct from those identified by a traditional customer segmentation approach based on customer need articulation. Ergo, understanding unconscious needs may provide additional customer insight and aid marketeers in developing new propositions and gaining market share. This study, therefore, makes a methodological contribution to the literature. The study involves the segmentation of buyers of snack bars (i.e. cereal bars), based on subjective nutritional information importance (as revealed on packaging). Separate samples of buyers were recruited: one group as a control sample completing a traditional CBC exercise; a second group completing the same CBC exercise but asked to complete a UTT working memory distraction-task between each choice-task and responding to it. This allowed a comparison of the segmentations of two groups (one which incorporated unconscious thought theory and the other which did not). Latent Class Segmentation (LCS) analysis indicated that whilst both approaches generate four similar segments, the CBC/UTT approach revealed a fifth (hidden) segment, unidentified in the other sample. In addition, the nutritional preferences of four of the five segments produced via the CBC/UTT approach matched those demonstrated by the participants’ store card behavioural data in a manner unobserved for the traditional CBC approach. This research provides a framework for further exploration and identifies a number of issues, such as which types of working memory distraction-tasks are most effective, that could potentially improve the approach if replicated.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Towards the formation and measurement of ethnic price perception
    (Cranfield University, 2016-06) Mendoza, Jose; Baines, Paul R.
    This research is the outcome of a preeminent interest in the topic of price perception. Pointedly, the perception of prices is part of the purchasing process, the same willingness to pay and the actual purchase behaviour, and is indubitably a perceptual construct. As such, perception is problematic to measure as it does not relate to an observable behaviour. On the other hand, pricing is regarded as an important variable in the marketing mix. This research contributes to theory by augmenting the current knowledge on the perception of prices including the methods used in the measurement of such perception. Moreover, this research addresses a gap in the understanding of how diverse ethnic groups perceive prices. The relationship set in this study between ethnicity and price perception is thought-provoking as it contributes to the current discussion around diversity in the marketplace. For example, the literature shows advances in areas such as multicultural and ethnic marketing and this research makes a significant contribution to these areas from price perception. Accordingly, this study involved a systematic review of the literature and presented a framework that suggested that the formation of price perception is affected by external factors such as culture and ethnicity. Furthermore, a qualitative study examined the formation of price perception around ethnic groups. Next, this research used a quantitative study that sought differences in price perception among ethnic groups. Thus, the quantitative study used a price perception scale (Lichtenstein et al., 1993) and a choice-based conjoint analysis. Also, the study adopted structural equation modelling (SEM) to measure differences among scales and the multinomial logit model to analyse the choice-based conjoint analysis. The findings of both the quantitative and the qualitative studies link to the systematic review and support the framework for the formation and measurement of price perception originally proposed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    What factors influence whether politicians’ tweets are retweeted? Using CHAID to build an explanatory model of the retweeting of politicians’ tweets during the 2015 UK General Election campaign
    (Cranfield University, 2016-09) Walker, Lorna; Baines, Paul R.
    Twitter is ever-present in British political life and many politicians use it as part of their campaign strategies. However, little is known about whether their tweets engage people, for example by being retweeted. This research addresses that gap, examining tweets sent by MPs during the 2015 UK General Election campaign to identify which were retweeted and why. A conceptual model proposes three factors which are most likely to influence retweets: the characteristics of (1) the tweet’s sender, (2) the tweet and (3) its recipients. This research focuses on the first two of these. Content and sentiment analysis are used to develop a typology of the politicians’ tweets, followed by CHAID analysis to identify the factors that best predict which tweets are retweeted. The research shows that the characteristics of tweet and its sender do influence whether the tweet is retweeted. Of the sender’s characteristics, number of followers is the most important – more followers leads to more retweets. Of the tweet characteristics, the tweet’s sentiment is the most influential. Negative tweets are retweeted more than positive or neutral tweets. Tweets attacking opponents or using fear appeals are also highly likely to be retweeted. The research makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how CHAID models can be used to accurately predict retweets. This method has not been used to predict retweets before and has broad application to other contexts. The research also contributes to our understanding of how politicians and the public interact on Twitter, an area little studied to date, and proposes some practical recommendations regarding how MPs can improve the effectiveness of their Twitter campaigning. The finding that negative tweets are more likely to be retweeted also contributes to the ongoing debate regarding whether people are more likely to pass on positive or negative information online.