Australian Marketing Research Articles

Perspectives on the History and Future of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC)

This special issue presents a collection of viewpoints from senior members of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC), including individual Fellows and past and present members of the Executive Committee, which expand on the history, current state and potential future directions of the Academy. In this editorial we summarise four major challenges for the Academy as identified by the intersection of contributions to this special issue, and member discussions arising from special sessions at the 2021 and 2022 ANZMAC conferences. We end with current initiatives and work-in-progress that the Academy has embarked upon to address these challenges.

The Past, Present and Future of Marketing Research in Australia and New Zealand: A Personal Sampler of Some Key Figures

The Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) and its precursor, the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Marketing Educators Conference (ANZMEC), have been in existence for over a quarter of a century, with ANZMEC being founded in 1996. During that time, many scholars have contributed to research in marketing globally, establishing ANZMAC and its members as significant players internationally. With some of the key founding figures retiring, it is a good time to ensure that the organization’s corporate memory is not lost. In this brief piece I pay tribute to the succeeding waves of scholars who made the Academy the organization that it is today.

ANZMAC Executive: A Personal Perspective on How ANZMAC Has Evolved, and What Role It Ought to Play in the Future

The traditional role of an academy, derived from the ancient centres of learning made famous by Plato and Aristotle, was to enable and encourage the development and dissemination of knowledge. While times have changed, the need for knowledge has not, and the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) is proud to play its part in contributing to this tradition. However, the ways in which the Academy can continue to fulfil its role, and the nature of its relationship with its community, are critical questions that need to be addressed. Given the disruptive and unpredictable nature of change in the current environment, and the wider and increasingly urgent calls to live more sustainably, the Academy is in a position to take a leading role in encouraging and informing the changes necessary to meet the needs of its community and the responsibilities of the discipline. These questions, and the challenges presented by changing expectations from within and outside of academia, are considered in the following perspective.

How policy actors assert authority in the governance of food marketing policies

The regulation of unhealthy food marketing is a highly contested space that involves a diverse range of actors and institutions. There is a paucity of research on the strategies used by the different actors to influence these policies. This study examined the use of authority by different regulatory actors to influence food marketing policies. We conducted semi-structured interviews with (N = 24) government, industry, civil society and technical experts involved in the regulation of food and beverage marketing in Australia. We identified five types of authority: institutional, delegated, expert, principled and capacity-based authority. Actors from the advertising, food and media industries claim more authority than technical experts, civil society, and government actors, suggesting that industry actors have multiple pathways to influence policy. The industry's claims of delegated and institutional authority are highly contested by civil society, technical experts, and state/territory government actors and recognised by federal government actors. Claims of circumscribed institutional authority are common among federal government actors such as the National Department of Health, Australian Media and Communications Authority and Food Standards Australia New Zealand. The assertions of authority observed in this study highlight the fragmented manner of the Australian food marketing regulatory system and have implications for which actors should be held accountable for the current challenges in the governance of food marketing policies.

Can the Subaltern(s) Speak? Amplifying the Voices of Global South Scholars in the Australasian Marketing Academy

In response to growing calls for racial diversity and inclusion in academia, this article offers a framework for decolonisation of the Australasian Marketing Academy. The purpose of our framework is to help shape the adoption of diversity and inclusion practices in a way that promotes knowledge democracy and amplification of underrepresented voices within the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. This article is thus both a reflective piece and a roadmap to guide the Academy’s journey to decolonisation and representation of its minority members. First, our article highlights experiences of marginalisation in the Australasian context, and the reported barriers to diversity and inclusion of minority voices. Next, we propose our framework which aims to collapse these barriers in favour of a more equitable, cultural, and intellectual convergence, wherein the invisibility of minority scholarship can become as visible and as legitimate as the majority.

The Future of the Australasian Marketing Academy: Challenges and Priorities

In this introduction to the special section on the future of the Australasian marketing academy, we reflect on the rapidly changing academic environment and the challenges and priorities this raises for the marketing discipline. Specifically, we consider the value of marketing education and research to stakeholders, how marketing can contribute to emerging challenges across business and society, how the marketing academy can amplify marginalised voices and be more inclusive, and the health and wellbeing of marketing academics. Next, we present key findings from research we conducted to examine issues of equity, inclusion and wellbeing within the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) member environment. We highlight which problems persist and where change is needed to challenge exclusionary dynamics and foster a more inclusive academy. To unpack and draw further attention to these issues, we then introduce the six papers that comprise the special section. Collectively, these papers present provocations on the future of the Australasian marketing academy and invite you to consider where we should be headed and what actions must be taken.

Research performance of Australian and New Zealand marketing academics: Achieving rigor and relevance

Assessing academic performance is challenging and assessing academic performance that makes a contribution to society is especially challenging. Evaluations need to take into account academic rigor and the relevance of the work. We suggest relying on whether an article is published in an elite journal does not necessarily lead to a significant scientific contribution or practical relevance. Rather, to gain insight into a scientific contribution, academic rigor and relevance judgments have to be made as to the work’s contribution to discovering and verifying knowledge in the discipline and across disciplines. While qualitative judgments can be made, indicator-driven metrics play an important role in objective assessment and several citation metrics are readily available to assist in assessments. We suggest there is a need for a portfolio of performance indicators, as there is no one best measure of success. Different indicators highlight different aspects of performance, hence the portfolio approach. We conclude by outlining eight key areas that should be considered when making academic performance assessments.

Gender Equity in the Marketing Academy: From Performative to Institutional Allyship

The fair treatment of women in the workplace, where they experience both opportunities and constraints, has been on and off higher education agendas for decades. Yet, institutionalised gendered constraints still shape the careers of female academics, including those in the marketing academy, resulting in disrupted or obstacle-heavy career journeys and the underrepresentation of women in senior positions. Furthermore, progress towards gender equity is hampered by institutional resistance to change, favouring performative rather than genuine and transformational institutional allyship. We draw upon personal experiences, recollections and anecdotes garnered over the years – synthesised with literature – to examine systemic gendered constraints within our collective career span. We propose institutional allyship as the intentional efforts needed by the marketing academy to address systemic and structural gender inequities and achieve second-order change by integrating gender equity outcomes throughout organisational decision-making. Specifically, we suggest nominated actions within a Gender Equity and Inclusion Charter for the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) and its member universities as a first step.

Guest editorial

This Special Issue “Connect, Engage, Transform!” is associated with the 2018 Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) conference held in Adelaide, Australia in December 2018. The conference theme of “Connect Engage and Transform”, which is also the theme for this special issue recognizes the need for business researchers to connect with external stakeholders such as businesses and policymakers. Researchers should engage with different stakeholders to make an impact. All papers presented at the ANZMAC conference and related to the general theme of business-to-business marketing were eligible to submit their manuscript for consideration to this special issue.

The Strategic Change Matrix and Business Sustainability across COVID-19

This study’s case narrative presents the Australian digital marketing firm (DUK). DUK successfully transitioned across the 2020 Australian business economic downturn created during the COVID-19 global pandemic. DUK’s competencies, capabilities and competitiveness form its 3Cs Market Intelligence Framework. When these 3Cs are expanded, and then networked with Porter’s Five Forces model, along with the firm’s decisive pivot with knowledge inclusions, the DUK strategic change matrix can be used to portray a firm’s matrix-box of its current multi-dimensional business components. The strategic change matrix approach offers a firm a visual map that can be matrix-boxed and quickly interpreted. When faced with adversity, a firm can remap its matrix-box into an expanded form that includes its proposed enhanced competitiveness business solutions. These solutions can then be operationalised to form potentially sustainable business pathways into the future. This approach is particularly useful when a firm is confronted with a perceived economic, or game-changing business crisis, or when a firm makes the strategic decision to pivot, and to seek a new sustainable business-enhancing pathway, or when a firm just wants to visualise its ongoing business pathways into the future.

Exploring the Effectiveness of an Energy Efficiency Behaviour Change Project on Well-Being Outcomes for Indigenous Households in Australia

The Koorie Energy Efficiency Project (KEEP) was a Victoria-based, Australian social marketing initiative designed to provide support to Indigenous households so they could better manage their energy bills by reducing or controlling their energy use. The program was delivered by trained, Indigenous project employees who visited Indigenous households in metropolitan and regional parts of the state. During the home visit, they provided an energy efficiency audit, as well as specific energy efficiency tips and advocacy support. Minor draft-proofing products were also supplied to each household. As part of this project, dwelling and householder information was gathered during each home visit, as well as measures of energy efficiency knowledge, behaviours, and well-being of the main householder before and after a home visit. The results indicate that home visits to support the energy efficiency of indigenous households are effective in terms of encouraging new energy efficiency knowledge, behaviours, and broader elements of well-being. Furthermore, the home visit was found to be effective across all home types, but was significantly more effective in reducing energy related stress and discomfort in traditional houses and traditional apartments. These households were also often small and densely occupied. This suggests that when social marketing programs use methods that are culturally suitable and respectful, such as those used in KEEP, they become a powerful tool to help drive social change in Indigenous communities. The authors conclude that such programs in future will be hindered in their effectiveness unless property owners, such as those of social housing, do not urgently address the maintenance of their properties and ensure they provide fit living conditions for the tenants.

“Migrants Are Splendid Types”

Human migration is often a result of flight from post-conflict socio-economic disintegration, where dysfunctional marketing systems exacerbate the suffering of people. Despite the potential trauma and disruption incurred, a move away to systems perceived to be better are favored. Using a historical research approach, this article focuses on the end of World War II that heralded an unprecedented humanitarian crisis involving millions of displaced persons, marshalled in Displaced Persons’ (DP) Camps. This investigation focuses on the “Beautiful Balts” megamarketing campaign in Australia, the promotion of a handpicked consignment of DPs from the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to host-to-be communities, in order to satisfy the economy’s growing need for fresh industrial labour input. The authors argue that this campaign was crucial in dismantling the “white only” frame through the use of the hitherto undocumented process of frame demystification. This campaign set the stage for the opening up of Australia to greater numbers of post-WWII DP migrants from different ethnicities and fundamental changes to beliefs and practices that configured Australian marketing systems of the day.

Investigating the value of a peer-to-peer mentoring experience

Globalization of business skills has become critical as employers have a requirement for culturally adaptable marketing and business graduates who are “work ready” in either Australia or overseas. These students must have both discipline knowledge and soft skills including cultural competence. How students develop intercultural skills at university is discussed. Given that more than ninety percent of local university students do not participate in academic offshore experiences, a focus is on the internationalization-at-home activities that universities offer. This study looks at cross-cultural peer-to-peer mentoring. A paucity of research on the effect of these experiences further enhances the relevance of this topic. This research investigates whether Australian marketing and business students who undertake a cross-cultural peer-to-peer mentoring experience “at home” become more cross-culturally adaptable. A quasi experimental pre and post-test survey shows that this method of an "at home" cross-cultural experience has a significant effect on four of the cultural dimensions. They are Flexibility/Openness, Personal Autonomy, Perceptual Acuity and Fulfilment. This means that as a result of this study, the recommendation for future peer-to-peer mentoring experiences would be to specifically target these significant dimensions as part of the peer-to-peer mentoring agenda. The focus of their agenda on these dimensions would allow peer-to-peer mentors of different ethnicities and those mentors who are Australian born but who mentor students from different countries, to be confident that their work was directly attributable to increasing their mentees’ and their own cross-cultural adaptability. It shows that cross-cultural mentoring for marketing and other business students in an “at home” setting is an important part of preparing business and more specifically marketing students for the challenges of the global workplace.

Creating a governable reality: analysing the use of quantification in shaping Australian wheat marketing policy

This paper analyses Australian policy makers’ use of quantification and technologies of government to implement the project of Australian wheat export market liberalisation. I draw upon policy documents to analyse how quantification has been used to construct a simplified, governable conception of the wheat industry. Policy makers, I suggest, acted upon this constructed reality through assemblages of technologies such as performance objectives, audit, cost-benefit analysis and econometric modelling to facilitate wheat export market deregulation. In addition, this paper shows how quantification was used to delegitimise the social consequences of deregulation and marginalise farmers’ opposition to this shift. Thus, the erasure of the social world enabled policy makers to construct economic objectives such as efficiency and productivity as serving the national interest.

When are they old enough to drink? Outcomes of an Australian social marketing intervention targeting alcohol initiation.

This paper reports on the evaluation of an Australian whole-of-community social marketing intervention targeting social norms, which aimed to reduce inflated perceptions of the prevalence of underage drinking and increase the age at which alcohol initiation is considered acceptable. A community-wide intervention was delivered in a single community over a period of 2 years, targeting adolescents, parents and community members. Pre-and post-intervention computer-assisted telephone interview surveys were conducted in the intervention and a matched comparison (control) community. A total of 417 respondents completed both surveys (215 in the intervention community and 202 in the control community). The intervention community saw an increase of 6 months in the average age at which it is perceived to be acceptable for young people to have a sip/taste of alcohol and 5 months in the average age at which it is perceived to be acceptable to have weak/watered down alcohol. Furthermore, there was a reduction in the perception of the prevalence of alcohol consumption by young people to a level consistent with actual underage drinking rates. In comparison, the control community saw no change in any of these variables. This study provides preliminary evidence that a whole-of-community social marketing intervention can change perceptions of the prevalence, and acceptability, of underage drinking. Given the central role of social norms in decisions regarding alcohol consumption, these changes have the potential to reduce parental supply and thus underage drinking.

We Are All Ballooning: Multimedia Critical Discourse Analysis of ‘Measure Up’ and ‘Swap It, Don’t Stop It’ Social Marketing Campaigns

We Are All Ballooning: Multimedia Critical Discourse Analysis of ‘Measure Up’ and ‘Swap It, Don’t Stop It’ Social Marketing Campaigns

Actions following adverse drug events - how do these influence uptake and utilisation of newer and/or similar medications?

BackgroundOver the last decade, actions following some adverse drug events received major publicity. This study investigated changes in usage patterns of medications in Australia following two examples - rofecoxib market withdrawal (2004) and warnings about jaw necrosis following bisphosphonates (2007).MethodsDispensing data for COX-2 inhibitors (2000–2008) and anti-osteoporosis medications (2003–2012) were obtained from the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme database. For bisphosphonates, data on Australian marketing expenditures were purchased from CegedimR.ResultsFor COX-2 inhibitors, celecoxib dispensing halved after rofecoxib withdrawal, but meloxicam dispensing increased by 60 %. When lumiracoxib was introduced (2006) there was uptake of prescribing at a faster rate than meloxicam in 2002, its first year of use. For bisphosphonates, alendronate had highest use at the time of the warnings (8.3 DDD/1000/day), dropping to 4.9 DDD/1000/day by 2012. In contrast, risedronate use rose 2007–2012 from 4.1 to 4.9 DDD/1000/day. There was 49 % increase in reported annual expenditure on detailing for risedronate from 2007 to 2008 (to AUD$7.3 million) and only 29 % increase for alendronate (to AUD$3.1 million).ConclusionsThe rapid uptake of prescribing of lumiracoxib and increased use of meloxicam flagged a concern, especially after rofecoxib withdrawal due to safety issues. Bisphosphonates are useful drugs, however the dramatic rise in expenditure on detailing, followed by a rise in utilisation of risedronate could suggest that adverse publicity triggered a marketing response. These examples highlight the importance of tracking utilisation of medication classes in real time, using different data as needed, to ensure that due caution is exercised (and quick intervention provided if needed) for medications in the same class.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-015-1165-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Playing the citations game: From publish or perish to be cited or sidelined

The availability of automated citation counting software has made it easy for citation metrics to be used in the performance appraisal of many academics. This is most evident in decisions about promotion, research funding and salary supplementation. At present, many marketing academics seem to have only a passing interest in how their citations may impact on these decisions. Notwithstanding their limitations, citations can play an important role in building a case for the career advancement of most academics. The questions addressed in this paper are twofold. First, is seeking more citations a somewhat distracting game to be played across one's career or do they provide a reasonably valid measure of research recognition? Second, given that their use is becoming more widespread, how can a scholar's citation profile be linked to their research strategy so that it enhances rather than obscures their contribution? In the language of branding the task is how best to use citations as a point-of-proof of research contribution. Data from the Australian marketing community is used to illustrate how this can be achieved.

Creating a Virtual Learning Community to Engage International Students

In recognition of the continued increase in cultural diversity in graduate tourism and hospitality programs, this study promotes the creation of a virtual learning community to engage international students in the learning process. The study adopted a mixed methods approach to investigate the influence of online discussion forums in the attainment of learning outcomes for international students. Data were collected from commencing international graduate students enrolled in an Australian tourism and hospitality marketing course. The qualitative phase consisted of 99 written student reflections regarding students’ use of an online discussion forum; the reflections were content analyzed, allowing for the identification of relevant themes. The quantitative phase consisted of an online discussion forum participation survey (n = 73). The results of the study suggest that international students, particularly non-native-speaking students, welcome the opportunity to engage in a learning community that reduces cultural and language barriers. Increased exposure to and familiarity with such nontraditional forms of instruction are seen as enablers of positive learning experiences for international students when studying abroad.

Exploring globalization and marketing performance at the 2012 Global Marketing Conference at Seoul

This special issue of the Journal of Business Research features sixteen articles selected from papers presented during the third Global Marketing Conference held in Seoul, July 19–22, 2012, hosted by Korean Scholars of Marketing Science, European Marketing Academy, Japan Society of Marketing and Distribution, International Textile and Apparel Association, and Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. The articles offer readers an interesting mix of topics and methods in complex and global marketing environments. They offer marketing practitioners new ideas and approaches for dealing effectively with the increasingly challenging marketing world and provide marketing researchers insights that may inspire future research.