Browsing by Subject "Consumer behavior."
Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Branded gated communities : marketing and consumer perspectives(Bilkent University, 2010) Omeraki, SachferRecent studies on brands, branding and brand communities reveal the processes of brand development, and the actors that take part in these processes. Research also looks at consumers’ individual and collective practices for the creation of brand value and the transformation of firm-based brand meanings. This study contributes to these literatures by exploring two key questions. First, how brands develop and who participates in these brand building processes? Second, how consumers experience and practice brands that become highly problematic? A two stage ethnographic study explores the multiple actors that shape the development of brands, and consumers’ lived experiences with problematic brands in the context of gated communities in Istanbul. Data were collected from developers, governmental and financial institutions, media representatives and consumers, using indepth interviews, observations, commercial media accounts, official documentary records and visual data. The findings reveal that brand-building processes begin much before their launch, and multiple actors play role in these dynamic processes. Rather than tension free, conflicts within and among brand stakeholder groups discipline brand construction performances. On the consumer side, homeowners execute individual and collective brand practices to contest brand rumors and stereotypes, and to negotiate appropriate brand performances. Tensions intensify with the move into the branded house, forming a rather non-democratic community. Overall, the branded house is a complex and multidimensional consumer object that embraces dynamic political, social, cultural, and economic tensions.Item Open Access A case study on the application of qualitative research in consumer behavior(Bilkent University, 1996) Hatiboglu, NevraQualitative studies are often used to examine consumer attitudes and behaviour in relation to a product categoiy or service, usually with the aim of understanding consumer relationship to a brand. This study examines the use of qualitative research in obtaining insights about the perceptions, feelings, and manner of thinking of consumers utilizing a combination of focus groups and projective techniques with a case study. The subjects of the case study are two radio stations. The meaning of music, the meaning of radio, and the meaning of the two radio stations are discussed with regard to the variables of age and sex.Item Open Access Consumer behavior analysis and marketing communications strategy development: the case of Tuborg(Bilkent University, 1995) Deniz, Mehmet AliEfes Pilsen and Tuborg have enjoyed an oligopolistic market stiiicture m the Turkish Beer Industry for decades. This has caused the companies to adopt a sales and product orientation and exert little effort on marketing. However, the market conditions and competition have begun to change recently, by the recent introduction of a new brand, feasibility studies of world giants to enter the Turkish market, and the Customs Union which will decrease the customs tax on import beer. On the other hand, Efes Pilsen has entered into market development efforts in foreign markets. The above competitive moves in the industry by various actors have changed the long-prevailing competitive structure in the industry, especially for the disadvantage of Tuborg. Thus, in this thesis, it is argued that the study of the consumer behavior in the Turkish Beer Market, that has long been underestimated by the agents in the industry, is crucial for Tuborg to compete the changes in the market and find differentiation points that are significant in the eyes of the consumers. It is also discussed that the adoption of a consumer orientation, which takes the current needs and perceptions of the consumers into consideration, is crucial for the success of the communications strategy, which is a sustainable differentiation factor. Therefore, a marketing research has been conducted for the beer market (taking Ankara as a pilot region for application) in order to better understand the needs of the consumers, to find out significant differences as well as similarities among the consumers. Depending on the marketing research conducted, a communications strategy has been suggested for Tuborg . This strategy has been designed to serve to differentiate the brand in the market through communications and also to constitute an entry barrier against the new entrants. On the other hand, the necessary adaptations in the organizational structure of Tuborg to the suggested consumer orientation have also been discussed within the thesis.Item Open Access Does social exclusion motivate consumption to satisfy the need to belong?(Bilkent University, 2009) Yıldırım, GülberkItem Open Access An exploration of the consumption orientation in Romania(Bilkent University, 1992) Isoiu, PaulThis study aims to explore possible causal factors for consumption orientation (interchangeably referred as materialism) in Romania, and to offer possible alternatives to be investigated in future cross-cultural studies of materialism. The employed research method - group discussions - attempts to reveal insights, provide rich and in-depth understanding, and generate new ideas regarding causal factors and traits of materialism. Results of the discussions with people in urban and rural areas, indicated that the macro-environment has been influencing the cultural values, in the last decades, emphasizing the end-states of existence (terminal values). Recent developments in the Romanian society led to changes in the consumer culture, and modes of existence (instrumental values) become increasingly important for Romanians' consumption orientation. Some psychological factors, interacting with these values, seem to affect consumption orientation. Need for freedom, need for selfrespect and social recognition are suggested to be the driving forces for today's Romanian consumption patterns. These needs facing different environmental constraints (restrictions imposed by political, social, or economical reasons) are finalized in conflictual states of mind, ranging between satisfaction and frustration. With the need for freedom and individual achievements (i.e. self-respect, self-esteem, social recognition, freedom of choice) pointed as sources for personal satisfaction in consumption, the Romanian context adds a new dimension to the present sum of materialism's traits (i.e. possessiveness, envy, nongenerosity, tangibilization - Ger and Belk, 1990) - independence. This trait was defined as the "tendency to reject any domination over one's personal life, possessions, or experience.Item Open Access The intertextual circulation: image travelling in consumer culture(Bilkent University, 1993) Cindoruk, Ali V.The aim of the present study is to examine certain characteristics of image travelling in consumer culture through various means and forms of media. Therefore, at the first attempt the relationship and interaction between culture and media is questioned, wherein image is conceived as being the prim ary representational form through this interaction. Consequently, the intertextual circulation of image is examined which is also conceived as to appear as a result of the contemporary relationship between media and culture.Item Open Access Negotiating the norms of consumption : an exploration of ordinary practices of disposing(Bilkent University, 2013) Türe, MeltemRecently, disposing has attracted lots of research attention. While some researchers frame disposing as a practice of ordering, identity management, and psychological relief, others associate it with overconsumption, waste of usable resources, and environmental hazard. Although disposing is related to such seemingly conflicting meanings and consumption practices, consumer researchers mostly bypass the broader structures, grand practices, and ideological and discursive meaning systems underlying disposing practices. Using ethnographic methods, this study explores disposing as a mundane practice, embedded in contexts with socio-cultural, economic, historical, and political dimensions. The research aims to reveal when and how consumers practice disposing by highlighting the normative and ideological structures that help constructing these practices. It also aims to shed light on how disposing might relate to other consumption practices. The results depict disposing as embedded in four meta-practices at the intersection of various tensions and ideologies feeding these. Steeped in these grand discourses of consumption, disposing helps moralizing consumption and allows consumers to experience morality without standing against consumerism or adopting new lifestyles. Rather than just facilitating consumer resistance, disposing also helps consumers to compromise with the market. The results complicate the linear framing of consuming as acquiring-using-disposing by highlighting how disposing reflects on the object’s consumption and is constructive of its value. The study also reveals new practices through which consumers negotiate disposing and highlight a new dimension of object attachment. The results have important implications for the disposition, moral consumption, and value research.