Bricks-and-mortar retailing requires footfall – otherwise known as ‘front traffic’ – to be viable. Footfall is the number of people who pass a store in a given time frame. A retailer’s ability to ‘stop’ this footfall and attract people into their store, converting passers-by into shoppers, is a measure of retailing effectiveness, known as the store entry ratio. Both shoppers and buyers are imperative for a retailer to be economically viable; passing footfall is essentially worthless if potential customers are not entering and purchasing. This research is a replication and extension of Graham, Kahn, and Illya's (2017) study that directly investigated footfall’s effect on retailers within certain categories, creating a generalisable relationship between footfall, shoppers, and buyers. The broad objective of this thesis is to replicate and investigate if the patterns found in Graham et al.’s (2017) work are generalisable across other categories, locations, brands, and stores.
How Bands Grow: An examination of patterns of competition in listening behaviour
For musicians to be successful, they need to understand who is listening, and how people are listening to their music. Practitioners claim that a band needs only 1000 true fans to be successful (Kelly 2008). In the context of the growing popularity of music streaming and the subsequent availability of millions of songs, understanding patterns of music consumption behaviour is more important than ever for musicians (Wlömert & Papies 2016).
Music literature has examined the links between music preferences and demographic and psychographic variables, and has generally found that differences exist e.g. white, middle-class males prefer Rock music (Greenberg et al. 2016; North & Hargreaves 2007c; Savage 2006). These findings suggest that some music competes separately to others, and that there are specific groups of listeners to whom an artist needs to appeal, as their preferences are isolated from the larger market. However, there is a potential overstatement of the differences in listener profiles given these studies have inconsistent findings and, in some instances, low correlations, or use unrepresentative student samples.
The following questions are investigated in this thesis:
- Does music listening follow the law of Duplication of Purchase for (a) genre, (b) album, (c) artist, and (d) songs?
- Is there evidence of any partitioning between genres?
- Do music genre listener-profiles differ by demographic or usage variables?
- Do music genre listener-profiles differ by psychographic variables?
- Do preferences for popular music peak during the period of late adolescence or early adulthood?
Is Anyone Listening? Audience and Media Factors Influencing Radio Ad Avoidance
Marketing managers aiming to grow their brands by increasing brand penetration are advised to reach as many category buyers as possible with their brands’ advertising. Radio continues to be a high-reach advertising medium, but as with TV ratings, radio audience ratings may overstate reach and exposure quality. Ad avoidance benchmarks allow advertisers to convert radio ratings from an opportunity-to-hear to a lower number of customers effectively reached with sufficient exposure. The current ad avoidance benchmark for radio advertising is that up to a third of the program audience, between 22% and 32% (Generali, Kurtzman & Rose 2011), is lost due to switching stations when the ads come on.
This thesis updated this radio ad avoidance benchmark, using the latest, most accurate means of measuring the radio audience, the portable people meter (PPM).
What’s in your basket? Documenting fundamental buying patterns across shopping baskets
This thesis examines shopper behaviour patterns using shopping baskets as the unit of analysis. A shopping basket is a set of items purchased together on a single occasion, regardless of the number of items purchased, or method of collecting them in-store (e.g. shopping trolley, basket or hand-carry). It investigates three shopping basket patterns: 1) basket size patterns and how they relate to retailer performance measures; 2) the different categories that are purchased in small and large baskets; and 3) the usefulness of an untested basket-level metric (basket penetration) to monitor retailer category performance.
Basket analysis is an important research focus, as it provides a unique view of shopper behaviour that can better inform marketers about how to manage and grow their brands.
An investigation of the validity of virtual reality for shopper research
A computer-generated ‘virtual’ simulation of a real store is an innovative research method that requires further validation to support its use in marketing. This research investigates how accurately consumers’ usual brand and product choices are captured in virtual reality (VR) simulations of familiar retail environments. It also investigates how the fielding mode and protocols of VR studies affect the validity of results.
Let’s get physical! Expanding marketing science to physical activity behaviour
Public health researchers and practitioners try to understand how people allocate finite time across various activities (including physical activity). Similarly, marketers seek to understand how people spend their limited money across different products. Marketing science has identified generalizable patterns of buying behaviours (empirical generalisations/laws) that inform brand growth strategies. As physical activity is a repeat- behaviour, like buying goods and services, this thesis aims to suggest ways to promote physical activity through the application of marketing science knowledge to physical activity data.
Investigating the cross-category purchasing between brand extensions
Brand extensions occur when a brand launches a product in a different product category and is a way of capitalising upon successful brand names. Several studies have shown that users of a brand express intentions to purchase extensions at a higher rate than non-users. The problem with these results, however, is they have been developed using attitudinal measures, rather than behavioural ones. This thesis intends to bridge this literature gap by using behavioural data to analyse whether the buyers of a brand in one category purchase extensions at a higher rate than non-brand buyers.
A previous study by Mundt (2011) had a similar purpose, however the study held limitations, such as categorising brands by their corporate brand and category pairings analysed being the same category. This thesis aims to replicate and extend this study to increase the understanding and generalisability of these findings.
As brand extensions are said to positively impact choice of the brand, this thesis aims to understand whether this occurs in market.
A two-dimensional typology of packaging elements to explore the packaging localisation of western brands in non-western markets
As cultural and language differences exist between Western and non-Western countries, in this respect, when Western brands are sold in the non-Western markets, marketers tend to modify the product packaging to achieve the desired communication outcomes.
Yet, while extensive studies have shown that localising elements (e.g., colour or pictorial cues) on packaging has a strong impact on consumer response in the non- Western markets, they have provided only fragmented views of this phenomenon. On the basis of literature review, two major knowledge gaps were identified. First, existing studies primarily looked at individual packaging elements. Second, these studies primarily focused on measuring the effects of packaging elements on consumer behaviour and well-established individual differences as moderating factors were overlooked.
Two studies in this thesis were conducted to provide systematic insights into the influence of packaging localisation of Western brands in non-Western markets.
The value of a brand: A wine retailer’s perspective
The wine retail landscape in Australia has changed dramatically over the last five years. Two major players have formed a duopoly, collectively acquiring 63% of the liquor retail market (IBIS World 2017a).
This thesis seeks to uncover insights for industry practitioners and academia in the Australian wine retail sector by identifying:
1. The relative importance of branding in wine retailer decision-making (compared to the region and other factors);
2. The processes (i.e. stocking, delisting and replacement) wine retailers follow when making decisions;
3. The breadth of factors considered in each process; and
4. Whether the factors and processes followed by wine retailers differ depending on
the store type
From paddock to plate: an investigation of the local food supply chain in Australia
The majority of food purchased in Australia comes from supermarkets, however these stores stock limited quantities of locally-produced foods. In fact, Australian produced foods comprise less than 26% of total product in mainstream retail. Even fewer are from state or local regional areas. This is due to the many challenges associated with the local food supply chain, including supermarket expectations for consistent supply and high costs of production. This thesis investigates 3 levels of local food: regional, state and national.
Opportunities exist for producers to expand their markets through value-adding to existing products, and seeking to distribute through networks other than supermarkets. This could further be facilitated by changes in government regulation and increased funding and support for local food from all members of the supply chain, as well as consumers.
