Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume 18, Issue 3
As an editor, I often find myself writing editorials in often unusual circumstances or times, such as writing a draft editorial in an airport lounge or plane 38,000 feet above the Atlantic on the way to a conference. In this instance, I am writing this editorial as millions of British voters cast their votes in what promises to be one of the closest British elections in decades. Perhaps the most prominent feature of the British 2015 election has been the extensive use of political marketing to sway vote to vote for particular parties. And it is this observation that introduces us into this issue of Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal.
Our first paper naturally lends itself to political marketing and elections. In a paper entitled “Evaluating Young Voter Decision-Making Involvement within a Compulsory Political System” Tiffany Winchester, John Hall and Wayne Binney explore political voting from an Australian context. The authors by applying consumer behaviour principals begin to explain how young voters make decisions on whom to vote for. In particular, they note that their low levels of political involvement are reflected in their passivity towards seeking out and accessing political messages, a perspective that political parties around the world appear to be increasing responding too.
Political commentators often state that politics is like a game of snakes and ladders. Sometimes your political fortunes go up, and sometimes they go down. Whilst not looking at politics, our next paper takes this perspective and applies it to the sports market. In their paper entitled “Sport for development and peace and snakes and ladders”, Andrew Webb and Andrew Richelieu explore how sport can be effectively used to encourage peaceful co-existence. The authors illustrate this by undertaking an extensive literature review to illustrate a need to understand further how funding agencies support sports development projects (SDP). By taking this perspective, the authors offer a conceptual model to illustrate the factors that improve (ladders) or hinder (snakes) SDP impact.
Moving away from politics our next two papers discuss branding issues. Our third paper entitled “Luxury Fashion Brands: Factors Influencing Young Female Luxury Fashion Purchasing in Taiwan”, the authors Bamg Nguyen, Meng-Shan Wu, Isabella Chaney, Cheng-Hao Chen and T.C. Melewar explore the complex clothing brand market in Taiwan. The authors argue that the influence of celebrities and fashion discussions amongst friends were a key motivating factor to encourage Taiwanese women to purchase luxury clothing brands. Purchases that at times often exceeded their financial abilities.
The need to communicate and share information about brands is continued in our next paper. In this fourth paper, Kelli Bodley, Sarah Sloan and Richard Jones apply the social exchange theory to online brand communities. In “Knowledge Sharing in Online Brand Communities”, the authors explore how the notion of knowledge sharing within the context of the social exchange theory is fundamentally influenced by online community groups. The authors make a number of interesting recommendations regarding how organisations can apply their research.
Moving away from branding our fifth paper looks at the application of visual marketing. In “Visualisation and Purchase: An Analysis of the Italian Olive Oil Grocery Shelves Through a Visual Marketing Approach”, Andrea Marchini, Francesco Diotallevi, Chiara Paffarini, Antonio Stasi and Antonio Barelice apply “‘Visual Marketing REL,’”, to measure eye-tracking measures in the context of a supermarket. Whilst this may not sound too unusual, the authors rightly point out that previous studies that apply eye-tracking measures tend to do so in artificially created environments, far from the reality of the supermarket. Their findings highlight how specific positioning can influence consumer choices, a finding that presents a number of implications for distribution management.
Our final paper – “The use of the repertory grid technique in online research” by Antonina Bauman applies the under-utilised repertory grid technique to solicit data from online customers. An approach that offers new insights into how consumers respond to online trust cues in establishing trustworthiness amongst commercial websites. The authors identify how the repertory grid technique in online research offers an insightful methodological tool to identify research constructs from.
Andrew Lindridge
