Inhibitors of social media as an innovative tool for advertising and marketing communication: evidence from SMES in a developing country

Materialism has been given great attention in the consumer behavior literature. How materialistic tendencies are shaped by advertising has also been documented. Yet, the impact of consumers’ materialism on their perceptions of ads is not clearly understood. The goal of this research is to examine the relationship between an individual’s materialism and his/her perceptions of various kinds of advertising. Using four specific advertising appeals (i.e., interpersonal, prestige/status, achievement, and appearance-related), attitudes toward the ad, and thoughts elicited by the advertisement were measured and compared across high and low materialism groups. Significant differences were found between respondents from the two groups with respect to the evaluation of each type of appeal. When prestige/status, achievement, and appearance-related appeals were used in advertising, they were evaluated more favorably by consumers with high levels of materialism than by consumers with low levels of materialism. In contrast, advertising that used an interpersonal appeal was viewed more favorably by consumers with low levels of materialism. The results of this research provide implications for marketers on three perspectives: the furthering of our conceptualization of the materialism construct, the design of promotional communication for specific target markets, and the public policy dimension of targeting consumers more vulnerable to certain appeals.

The paper is based on information which is a combination of store advertisement and consumers’ path inside the store along with product information. With this information, the authors find how advertisement affects the behavior of consumers when making the decision. The findings suggest that advertisement has a small impact on customers inside the stores. Null effect is determined, and one standard deviation in advertising has an impact on store traffic by 1.2%. But the impact at a lower end of the model is observed. One standard deviation in advertisement has impacted the store sales by 8.4%. Based on further data mining, the research has found that there is no significant improvement in the number of customers, but the increase in sales is because of the higher quantity of purchases by the existing consumers. However, the effect of advertisement on products placed in the same or nearby shelf is not found, the impact on product varieties in the same segment is also not found. Based on these research findings, the authors find the right approach towards advertisement.
The research is limited to consumers of retail industry in a Tier 3 Indian city of a developing geographic segment only.

Informal Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in their respective economies over the world particularly in the African continent. This paper reviews various theories on SMEs towards understanding the potential of the informal sector in the context of African countries. The paper uses a theoretical approach for the purpose of assessing the challenges that have affected the development of the informal SMEs sector over the years in both the developing and developed world. Economically developing countries in Africa pose unique challenges to informal SMEs development compared to the developed countries. The paper reviews the theories that define the rise to informality in Africa by identifying the key determinants for the emergence of informal SMEs. A conceptual framework for assessing informal SME’s potential for Africa is developed. The conceptual framework is based on the Fishbone diagram developed by Kaoru Ishikawa (1986). This paper discusses the intricacies of the applicability of the proposed conceptual framework to assess the potential of the informal SMEs in Africa and the way forward for the formalization debate.