RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ASSIGNMENT

Pankaj Agrawal(MMS I) Roll No. : 05 Article 1: An Analysis of Endorsement Effects in Affinity Marketing
By:- Ka-shing Woo, Henry K.Y. Fock, and Michael K.M. Hui Journal of Advertising, Vol. 35, no. 3 (fall 2006)

Summary: Affinity Marketing is in demand by organizations, to capitalize on the goodwill and promotion of affinity groups to improve their offerings to groups. This study uses the affinity credit cards, to see if there is any impact on group members choice processes if there is use of endorsement. Affinity marketing is the strategy used by organizations providing services and goods to provide special incentives to the group members to leverage the goodwill that they on towards the group. There are three fundamental aspect of affinity marketing; 1) Nature of affinity group, 2) Membership requirement, 3) Interrelationships among the parties in an affinity marketing program. Method and Conclusions: A group of students using university affinity card was selected for the study. A total of 162 respondents participated in the survey, out of which 10 were discarded. Hence a total of 152 respondents were used in analysis. A questionnaire consisted of 13 items of which 5 belonged to affinity card beliefs, 3 for attitude towards affinity card, 3 for attitude towards affinity group and 2 for behavioural intention. A Likert-type rating scale was used. Conformity Factor Analysis was used on affinity card beliefs, attitude toward affinity card, attitude toward affinity group, and behavioural intention to use to assess the fitness of measurement model. It gave a good fit of the data; goodness of fit; comparative fit index. After getting a good fit in the model, two structural models were evaluated. The result showed that, a low degree of explained variance in the construct of behavioural intention was there and that additional factors that may influence behavioural intention have not been accounted for within the model. Evaluation of the other structural model had a better fit than the traditional hierarchy-of effects model with higher degree of explained variance in the construct of behavioural intention. Hence the results confirmed that the extended model have an explanatory effect beyond which the traditional model alone could explain. The correlation matrices and modification indices suggested a scope for improvement of the extended model through modifications. The result of the study confirms the endorsement effects of university as an affinity group on university affinity cards in improving the predictive power of hierarchy- of- effects model.

Article 2: A New Approach to Industrial Market Segmentation

By:- Jean-Marie Choffray, Gary L. Lilien Sloan Management Review, MIT Spring 1978, V. 19, no.3, 17-19

Summary: Market Segmentation is strategically used by marketers to identify their target consumers. Market Segmentation differs significantly from Industrial Market Segmentation. This study focuses on various processes used to segment the market and proposed to use the new processes in specific marketing applications. The buying behaviour in the industrial market is more complex than that in consumer market as many people are involved in the buying process. This study uses cluster analysis to develop a decision matrix. The decision matrix Page 1

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Pankaj Agrawal(MMS I) Roll No. : 05 consists of rows which corresponds to the different individuals involved in buying process, while the columns corresponds to various phases in buying process. Cluster Analysis is used to identify various groups involved in the buying process and group together the groups which are homogenous in their buying process. 100 companies in air conditioning market were selected. Cluster analysis was done and four clusters were formed. The companies in 4th cluster were small, satisfied with the existing condition and concerned about the monetary aspect. These companies relied on outside help like consultants while the companies in cluster 2 and cluster 3 relied on their internal expertise. As compared to companies in cluster 1, companies in cluster 3 had larger air conditioning needs and depends engg. factors while deciding for new air conditioning, while companies in cluster 1 depends more on managerial functions. On the basis of this clustering, the segmentation strategy is decided.

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