http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/524 This section is mainly deals with the publications of IIMK Community in the area of Marketing Management. Tue, 12 May 2026 13:14:48 GMT 2026-05-12T13:14:48Z http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1078 Understanding Consumer Motivations to Share Rumours in the Marketplace Sudhir, Subin Rumours have always been an interesting aspect of investigation in interpersonal communication. Koenig (1985) suggested that rumours are the dominant form of Word of Mouth (WOM) in mass circulation. A rumour is defined as “an unverified and instrumentally relevant information statement in circulation that arises in contexts of ambiguity, danger, or potential threat and that function to help people make sense and manage risk” (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007). Rumours can potentially affect perceptions about the product and brand images, rumours cause changes to the credibility of the brands, and affect customer loyalty (Kimmel, 2004; Kapferer, 1990; Koenig, 1985). The overload of commercially generated marketing communication confuses the customer and guides the customer to explore non-commercial forms of information; like WOM (Meiners et al., 2010). Marketplace rumours are fast propagated, especially through social networks (Kostka et al., 2008). In the recent years there have been many rumours that have emerged in the marketplace and have created drastic effects on the marketing scenario (Kimmel, 2004). But, despite the importance of rumours, there has been little attention paid to rumour research in the marketing context (Kimmel & Audrain-Pontevia, 2010), although this stream of research is not totally new (e.g. Kamins et, al. 1997; Kimmel, 2004; Kimmel & Audrain-Pontevia, 2010)... Research Advisory Committee: Prof. Anandakuttan B Unnithan (Chair-person), Prof. Keyoor Purani (Member), Prof. Unnikrishnan Nair (Member):: Hardcopy of the theses is available in the library. Please contact help desk for reference. Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1078 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1003 Comparing consumer evaluations of services-to-services brand extensions with services-to-goods Jayasankar Ramanathan; Sanal Kumar Velayudhan Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of parent brand characteristics and brand-extension fit on attitude towards the extension in the context of services-to-goods (SG) brand extension compared with services-to-services (SS) brand extension. Design/methodology/approach – A survey design was used to collect data from 626 individual respondents. The respondents were selected using probability sampling from two cities in India. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings – The study indicated that context (SS or SG) moderated the influence of factors on attitude toward brand extension. A favorable attitude towards the parent brand had a greater positive influence on SS brand extension compared with SG brand extension. Quality variance among service types under the parent brand had a higher negative impact on attitude towards SG brand extension than on attitude towards SS brand extension. Practical implications – Managers may prefer extending a service brand to another service rather than a good when consumers have a favorable attitude towards the brand. Furthermore, when the perceived quality of service types under a service brand varies substantially, extension of the brand to a good requires greater concern than extension to a service. Originality/value – The unique contribution of this study is the examination of the moderating influence of the characteristics of an offering (SS vis-à-vis SG) on the link between brand extension attitude and its influencing factors. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol.35 Issue: 7, pp.877-891, https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-02-2017-0026 Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1003 2017-07-18T00:00:00Z http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/964 Goal Congruence in Hedonistic and Utilitarian Reasons for Purchase and Features of a Product Subhash, Jha,; Adhikari, Atanu Using the underpinning of assimilation and contrast theory, we examine whether consumers' reasons for purchasing a product are influenced by its attributes or not. A conceptual framework that differentiated between hedonic and utilitarian attributes and their corresponding reasons for buying a product was developed. The framework was then used to develop two hypotheses for the current study. The study hypotheses tested were after collecting data from 245 respondents. The findings of the study suggest that assimilation theory works well when utilitarian attributes of a product explains the utilitarian reasons for purchase. On the other hand, the contrast theory supports that hedonic reasons for purchase are explained more by the utilitarian attributes of the product. The implications of the research findings are discussed and avenues for future research are offered along with the study limitations. Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/964 2016-06-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/963 Micro-modelling of individual tourist’s information-seeking behaviour: a heterogeneityspecific study Adhikari, Atanu; Mahuya Adhikary Previous research done on tourists’ information-seeking behaviour has focused on aggregate-level information seeking. The aggregate-level study has significant disadvantage in decision-making since actual behaviour of tourists gets averaged out due to aggregation. Understanding the responses of individual tourist’s information seekers in different contexts can be better performed by individual-level study. This study emphasizes the importance of information-seeking behaviour in the context of personal differences between the tourists. Heterogeneity suggests that different tourists behave differently when seeking information. With data of 307 tourists, we first find tourists’ information-seeking behavioural dimensions. We then group the tourists into segments according to these behavioural dimensions, and then investigate the impacts of these behavioural dimensions considering individual-level heterogeneity through hierarchical Bayes estimation. We then compare these estimates with aggregate-level estimates to find Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/963 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z