amj Australasian Marketing Journal - ANZMAC

Executive Summaries
Australian and Taiwanese Advertiser’s Perceptions of
Internet Marketing
Tzu-wen Hsu, Jamie Murphy, & Sharon Purchase
This research investigated advertiser s perceptions of Internet
marketing. Drawn from two different countries, Australia and
Taiwan, the advertiser perceptions fell into four different clusters:
optimistic tomorrow, cautious adopters, doubting
laggards and technology realists. While Australian advertisers
were represented in all four categories, Taiwanese advertisers
were mainly cautious adopters or technology realists.
When choosing an advertising agency, managers should be
aware of different agency perceptions towards Internet
marketing and choose an agency whose perceptions align
with theirs. With such diverse perceptions of Internet marketing
among advertising agencies, it is important to consider the
type of strategy that matches company perceptions.
Australian organisations entering the Taiwanese market
should be aware that the Taiwanese advertising agencies did
not display such diverse views of Internet marketing. All
Taiwanese agencies indicated a low belief about the future of
Internet marketing. Whether this perception will be sustained
in the longer term is to be determined, but is important now
given the general population s rapid uptake of the Internet.
Taiwanese managers need to be aware of how agency perceptions
of Internet marketing affect their overall advertising
strategy. These perceptions may change as Taiwanese agencies
becomes more experienced with Internet marketing and
eventually becomes as diverse as those in Australia. The low
belief in the future of Internet marketing may change over
time and business managers need to be aware of these
changes as they occur.
Consumer Self-Monitoring Materialism and Involvement
in Fashion Clothing
Aron O’Cass
So how should marketers use knowledge about self-monitoring,
materialism and fashion clothing involvement in order to
formulate and implement marketing mix strategies for the
fashion market? If a product is intended for more general
market, the message must reach both the low and high selfmonitors.
However, for a narrower or niche market, marketing
mix strategies can be developed to cater to the dominant
characteristics explored here. These being the degree of selfmonitoring,
materialism and involvement in the product.
Thus, the self-monitor appears to be both materialistic and
image conscious, implying that appeals needed to be targeted
at the value of the product to fulfill the requirements of the
materialist and the strong desire for image and image adjustment
for the self-monitor.
The findings here imply that the marketer of products, particularly
fashion is more likely to be successful if they target the
86 Australasian Marketing Journal 9 (1), 2001
value of the possession as seen from the materialist view point
and the happiness, success and centrality of possession in
their lives. This would require a marketing mix strategy
encompassing all elements of the mix to effectively target the
desire for display required by self-monitors with strong materialistic
tendencies with image as a primary concern who in
reality have a strong attachment to their clothing. Such
consumers may be more influenced by higher pricing, store
design, product design and advertising that indicates the value
of the product in fulfilling the unique requirement of the selfmonitor
who values possessions and has a need to display the
right image.
More significantly marketers can use the adaptation to
surroundings typifying the self-monitor to manipulate the way
in which they see products as displaying who they are and the
success such display brings. For products and brands reliant
of the nuances of fashion and shifts in it, the right appeal to
right target market catering for self-monitoring, materialism
and involvement could act to sustain market position through
the normal cycle of such fashion dictated markets.
The findings also indicate that consumers may use the image
and signals products and brands already possess instead of
just react or passively receive them. Thus products and brands
with well established images targeted at specific target
markets may require little or no adjustment. These are two
options available to the marketers of fashion products.
An Examination of the Effects of ‘Country-of-Design’
and ‘Country-of-Assembly’ on Quality Perceptions and
Purchase Intentions
Chandrama Acharya & Greg Elliott
This paper has examined the Country of Origin Effect in the
Australian context and, more specifically, examined the
differential impacts of the Country of Assembly (COA) and
Country of Design (COD) constructs along with other product
cues such as brand and price. Among the sample of
Australian graduate students, the most notable conclusion is
that COA appears to be the most important product attribute
of those studied. This applies across all three product categories
studied, viz. cars, jeans and tinned pineapple.
This finding has important implications for both Government
and Australian industry. For Government, this finding carries
mixed implications. On the one hand, it provides endorsement
of recent advertising campaigns which have encouraged
people to buy Australian Made . Clearly these results indicate
that the issue of COA is salient among Australian
consumers as they rate COA above other more familiar product
cues, notably brand and price. On the other hand,
Australian Made products were only preferred in the case of
tinned pineapple; whereas Australian consumers preferred
Japanese-made cars and US-made jeans.
Recent Australian Government advertising directed at distin-