Editorial

Citation

Phau, I. (2013), "Editorial", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 25 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-03-2013-0031

Editorial

Article Type:

Editorial

From:

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Volume 25, Issue 3

In this third issue of the year, we focus on customer related issues covering three broad themes. We begin with customer segmentation, covering the areas of mobile marketing, and wine purchase behaviour. Following this, customer perceptions of service quality is examined in the context of education, banking as well as the Islamic community. Finally, this issue looks at branding and advertising with discussions on racial cues in advertising, as well as brand personality and consumer ethnocentrism.

Haverila opens this issue with a cross-country study examining for the presence of inter-market segments in cell phone users across Finland, UAE, Canada, China and New Zealand. 2-step cluster analysis and self-organising maps were employed to elucidate five main inter-market segments, using country of residence, gender, and cell phone feature preferences as background variables. Haverila’s exploratory study succinctly identifies possible methods of segmenting inter-market segments, and illustrates the need for further research into cell phone market segmentation. Bruwer and Fong then explore the relationship between perceived risk and risk reduction strategies employed by Australian consumers purchase decisions of wine. Their research culminates in the development of a perceived risk scale for the wine sector to enable the segmentation of consumers and allow companies to develop appropriate strategies to counter customer perceived risks.

The next section focuses on customer service surrounding the education sector and the role of religion in evaluating customer perceptions of service quality. Clemes provides unique insights into the Chinese higher education sector, as well as the development of a service quality scale that could allow academics and practitioners to evaluate student perceptions of service quality. Lay-Hwa Bowden explores the roles of affective commitment and relationship bonds on students’ perceived satisfaction with their relationship with the university. A qualitative approach is employed in this study to provide insights from student and faculty perspectives on the issue. Following this theme of relationship marketing, Fatima and Razzaque’s paper is concerned with the roles of customer involvement on rapport and satisfaction in the context of banking and financial services. It employs structural equation modeling to evaluate the antecedent and mediated influence of customer involvement on the rapport-satisfaction relationship. Findings from this paper provide practitioners with valuable assistance in developing strategies to successfully manage customer relationships. Turning focus to the Muslim market, Chew and Gayatri focus on the development of an “Islamic service quality scale” to better ascertain the role of religion in service quality perceptions. This paper highlights the importance of religious nuances in evaluating consumer service quality perceptions and serves as a point of reference for practitioners and academics alike.

Rounding off this issue are two papers parsing research on perceived risk, consumer decision making and the effects of racial cues in advertising. Tong and Li consider the effects of brand personality and consumer ethnocentrism on perceived quality and purchase intentions of sportswear in China. Their findings showed that brand personality has a strong influence on perceptions of quality and subsequent purchase intentions of both domestic and international brands, while ethnocentrism had little influence on these intentions. Finally, the effect of racial cues on consumer responses to advertisements is examined by Gao, Xu and Kim. They evaluate the effectiveness of western developed global advertising campaigns on Chinese consumers and compare their responses in relation to likeability, attitudes toward the advertisement and brand attitude. This study confirms that racial cues affects advertising effectiveness and highlight the inadequacy of a center-periphery approach to global advertising.

I hope this issue has provided interesting perspectives and unique insights to stimulate future research. I thank the reviewers and EAB for their timely reviews and contribution the APJML; and the authors for submitting manuscripts of exceptional calibre.

Ian Phau