JOURNAL ARTICLES

Description The assignment for this week 3-7 August 2020 requires you to complete ten scholarly journal article summaries. To complete the process in an efficient fashion, use the supplied template. The research process as covered in this template is an important skill in completing the research proposal given the comments of the panel above. The major areas to focus on are (1) Demonstrate the distinction between theoretical rationale and relevant literature to derive the hypotheses; (2) Analyse how the theoretical contribution is described, and show how the theory links with the purpose of the study; (3) Identify the distinct sources of data and how the data links to the dependent and independent variables; (4) Describe how the data was analysed for either qualitative or quantitative studies; (5) Interpret the results and briefly state the main findings from the study; (6) Under the discussion of the results summarise the research question, the research setting, how the empirical setting was developed and what was found, tell the story what the results say; (7) Discuss the significance of the findings, the relevance to both theory development and practicing managers; (8) What were the limitations and opportunities for future research? Scholarly Journal Article: What resource is available: The template Rather than providing you with a blank template I completed the template myself so that you can see how to get it done. Simply replace the article title, replace the text under the subheadings and keep it short (300 words). Do this for each of the ten articles Provided My example will help you to see how I selected the content from the Akdeniz and Talay, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science paper to populate the subheadings. The Template (Example) Journal article summary Title Of Journal: Example Introduction This research article uses signaling theory to examine pre-consumption uncertainty in the motion picture industry. The purpose of the research is to understand how marketing signals are moderated by culture influencing box office performance in international markets. Key theoretical contributions are (i) understanding the moderation effects of cultural differences, (ii) a unique dataset reporting on dependent variable variation across countries in motion picture studies, and (iii) how a nested data structure adds to marketing signals knowledge in international markets. Theoretical Rationale Information asymmetry refers to an imbalance of power organisations hold over stakeholders about products and services. Business executives hold substantial control over information they provide to consumers in the marketplace. Firms choose which marketing signals such as pricing, product specifications and marketing communication content are released to build brands in the consumers’ mind. When conditions of imperfect information arise, market signaling becomes a competitive advantage to deliver pertinent information to customers. Consumers actively seek out signals and serve as heuristics to assist in consumer decision-making before, during and after purchase. The theoretical explanation is relevant to the motion picture industry, explaining how movie related signals are influenced by different cultures across countries and the impact on box office revenues. Literature To develop the hypotheses the relationship between movie signals, moderated by culture on the dependent variable is derived from the literature. Individualism versus collectivism is explored to explain the relationship between signals and performance under conditions of high and low cultural individualism. The literature on power distance is used to explain how low and high cultural power distance drives movie purchase decisions. The indulgence versus restraint dimension is reviewed to discuss consumer predisposition to enjoy movies. Cultural openness is normally inversely related to ethnocentrism and is a factor under conditions of information asymmetry and relevant to market signaling in this research study. The literature review is validated by the classic Hofstede (1980; 2010) framework of national culture and supported by several contributions from leading culture scholars. The control variables were grounded in the literature using both movie-level and country-level controls to support the hierarchical data research design. Methodology The sources of the movie-level data were from the Internet Movie Database, Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes. Country-level data came from the Hofstede International Social Survey Program, the CIA World Fact book and Euromonitor International to operationalise the dependent, independent and control variables. The dataset comprised of 1116 movies from 27 countries during 2007 to 2011. The analysis of the multi-level data used a hierarchical liner modelling approach with movie-level data at Level 1 and country-level data at Level 2 using Bryk and Raudenbush (1992) notation. Results When models include movie and country level data together with interactions the variation in movie and country levels decreases. The cross-level interactions reduce the variance within countries by 0.28 and between countries to 0.37. The country-level explains 83% of the variance. The results support the hypotheses in terms of direction and significance. Model fit is described by comparing three models. Model 1 shoes the intercept and average revenues across all countries. Model 2 depicts the movie-level and country-level effects with Model 3 adding the interactions. Model 3 provides the best overall fit by -2LL maximum likelihood estimation. Discussion The relevance of culture as moderator explains the relationship between marketing signals and box office performance. Individualist cultures do not use sequels as a signal of movie quality compared to collectivist cultures. High uncertainty avoidance cultures use signals as indicator of movie quality. High power distance cultures place more importance on successful products and brands than low power distance cultures. Moviegoers in high indulgence and open cultures are more sensitive to signalling effects of sequels. The innovation displayed in the research design of this study demonstrates the differences in the use of movie signals by consumers across cultures in an international environment. Implications and Future Research This study demonstrates theory driven research using information asymmetry and signaling theory to test a practical research question: Does culture moderate the relationship between movie signals and box office revenues? This quantitative oriented study opens up an interesting opportunity for qualitative research in doing a content analysis of how cultural cues of a movie are seen across cultures. [300 words] End of template