Editorial

AULD LANGE SYNE

The third of six issues in a volume does

not normally herald momentous events

in the development of a journal but in

this case you might already have noticed

to what I am alluding, namely, a change

of publisher. John Wiley Publishers have

purchased JCB from Henry Stewart

Publishers. We are extremely sorry to

lose Henry Stewart who championed us

from the beginning and have been so

supportive. Kerry Barner (our previous

Publishing Editor) in particular has been

absolutely fabulous—wonderfully

efficient yet easy and fun to work

with—rock-on, Kerry. As this is being

written over the New Year, however, I

can say ‘out with the old and in with the

new’. We are delighted that John Wiley

has seen the achievements of the Journal

so far and has positively projected its

future potential. With its publishing and

marketing force around the world, we

are in for even greater success. Thanks to

Henry Stewart for getting us here and to

Wiley for our exciting new era.

Apologies to our authors in this issue

for not leading with their work, because

it is they who provide the successful

‘product’ in which publishers place their

confidence and it is you, the reader, who

provides the quality assessment which in

turn leads to commercial success. So, to

these papers. We have excellent

contributions from North America and

the UK in this issue. The themes this time

are ‘socially aware’ consumption, global

marketing and types of marketing

‘message’.

First up is the paper by Sally Hibbert,

Gillian Hogg and Theresa Quinn. By the

time this issue appears we will be well

into the New Year and past Christmas,

the season of goodwill to all men and

women, but this paper explores aspects

of socially aware consumption. In the UK

there is a commercial operation that

gives its profits to a social cause,

homelessness. The main ‘product’ from

which revenue is generated is a

magazine entitled ‘The Big Issue’, which

is sold by individual vendors on the

streets of the UK. There are equivalents in

other countries, especially the USA. The

paper here explores consumers’

motivations for purchasing the magazine

relative to their desire to engage with the

social cause. The magazine is seen as

worth buying for itself by some, while the

‘helping’ motive of course is a strong one.

But the physical appearance of some of

the vendors does not encourage some

consumers to buy the magazine and this

issue needs to be addressed.

Harper and Michelle Roehm examine

a currently fashionable approach to

marketing communications, namely, to

provide ‘staged’ messages, either by

splitting the message into television

advertisements between which there is

other television content or to reveal only

part of the message which aims to drive

consumers to (eg) a website for the next

part of the message. The experiments

reported by Roehm and Roehm,

however, suggest that the approach can

be effective in enhancing brand attitudes.

They also suggest that there might need

to be some tangible incentive to engage

with the ‘second’ stage of the message.

This might be at odds with some

experiences in the UK where it has been

found that some segments are positive to

more participative engagement with

advertising, for example, as

underpinned by Gestalt principles

(Evans et al., 2004). The approach clearly

aids communication evaluation though,

because the more personalised and

interactive media such as the web can be

tracked so that accountability can be

assessed.

Deirdre Shaw, Emma Grehan, Edward

Shiu, Louise Hassan and Jennifer

Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 3, 157–158 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817 157

Thomson explore consumer values in the

context of ‘ethical’ grocery buying. They

reveal great insight, via the use of

qualitative research techniques.

Consumers’ underlying values can help

to explain consumption choices in terms

of ‘ethical buying’ but not all values will

be relevant in such contexts. Retailers can

use this knowledge to underpin their

marketing. Deirdre will also be editing a

special issue of this Journal on ethical

consumption and there are further

details in this issue.

Our practice paper for this issue is by

Hamish Pringle and Les Binet. They

explore the use of celebrities in

marketing campaigns. This popular

approach, also based on opinion

leadership and expert/referent power

concepts, is evaluated in this paper

which takes the IPA award-winning case

studies as the context. Their analysis

points to financial value in using

celebrities, especially when targeting

younger segments which are celebrity-

oriented. There are further benefits

though, through the less tangible channel

of ‘publicity’, because many sections of

‘the media’ are also celebrity-oriented.

We are all familiar with examples of

(initially) favourable links between

particular celebrities and certain brands,

but where the celebrity does something

naughty and damages the brand, if not

themselves!

Enjoy these papers in the new-look

Journal and thanks again to all concerned

for making it such a success.

Martin Evans

Managing Editor

January 2005

REFERENCEEvans, M., O’Malley, L. and Patterson, M. (2004) Exploring

Direct and Customer Relationship Marketing, Thomson,

London, Chapter 12.

Editorial

158 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 3, 157–158 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817