Dr Lydia Windisch

Australian Indigenous children's participation in mainstream early childhood education has been markedly low when compared with non-Indigenous children. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Indigenous parents may not be sending their children to these programs because such programs are considered culturally inappropriate. The aim of the present study was to investigate Indigenous parents' attitudes to Indigenous-specific early childhood programs. Eighteen parents whose children attended Indigenous-specific child care centres and playgroups completed a questionnaire that contained questions by which they evaluated the importance of early childhood education and other related cultural issues. Results of the parents' evaluations indicate a high level of support for early childhood education in an Indigenous-specific context. It is suggested that aspects of Indigenous-specific programs may be usefully adopted in the development of more inclusive mainstream early childhood education programs.

Web 2.0 technologies are empowering consumers to co-produce online brand communications and thereby co-create brand meaning. As both consumers and marketers are increasingly using video-sharing websites to showcase their brand communication efforts, viewers of these ads are inadvertently becoming part of the co-production process as they create context around the ads (in the forms of reviews, comments and ratings). The environment in which such online advertisements are viewed has significant effects on consumer perceptions of the ad message, and ultimately impacts the persuasive properties and efficacy of the ad. This study reports on research conducted to test the source effects of consumer-generated advertising. Schlinger's Viewer Response Profile (VRP) is used to assess the impact of three source variables: ad creator, ad popularity and motivation for creation of the ad. Findings confirm the importance of popularity ratings on consumer ad evaluation, and also suggest that certain source effects result in consumers being more critical in their evaluation of the ads.

Objective: To investigate gender differences in beliefs about condom use among young, sexually active, heterosexual Australian adults. Design: Cross-sectional survey of 1,113 adults aged 18–26 years. Setting: Higher education institutions across New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. Method: Participants were recruited during higher-education orientation activities and asked to complete an anonymous survey. The survey captured beliefs about condom use and demographic data. Results: Although males were more likely than females to agree that their partners endorsed the consistent use of condoms, they were less likely to agree that their friends would support consistent condom usage. Males were also more likely to believe that condoms reduce sexual pleasure and give the impression that they are sexually promiscuous. Conclusion: Normalizing the purchase of condoms, repositioning condoms as erotic stimuli, and creating a supportive peer environment using peer-to-peer communication tools may bring about more positive perceptions regarding consistent condom use. Gender-specific safe sex campaigns should also be developed to address the different pattern of condom beliefs held by males and females.

Purpose - Explores whether product placements in computer games have a weak or strong influence on consumer attitudes towards the brand. Design/methodology/approach - Reports how advances in computer/video game technology have presented marketers with an opportunity to create accurate simulations of their products in games. Provides a relevant literature review on product placements and computer games; draws on Barnad and Ehrenberg (1997) theory of the 'weak theory of advertising' to examine whether product placements games have a 'weak' or 'strong' effect on brand recall. Outlines a number of hypotheses; tests these in a experiment in which the spontaneous and prompted recall of consumers was tested. Findings - Reveals that those people who already had a pre-existing positive attitude towards the brand demonstrated no increase in their brand attitudes after exposure to the brand in the computer game, but had levels of spontaneous and prompted recall that were higher than those that had low pre-existing attitudes. Reports that gamers who were less predisposed to the embedded brand became more favourable towards the brand after exposure to the brand placement. Research limitations/implications - Restricted sample; examine brand recall and changes in brand attitude with respect to purchase intent; determine the efficacy of computer games that feature numerous other brands. Originality/value - Tests the 'weak theory of advertising'.

How B2B firms in the People's Republic of China [PRC] view, value and manage their corporate reputation has received little research attention. Drawing on multiple case studies, our findings confirm that firms are utilizing certain Western conceptualizations of corporate reputation, including the leveraging of intangible forms of corporate reputation. However, many of the firms were also using the hitherto underemphasized elements of firm–government relationships and government regulatory policies to create positive assessments of a firm's reputation among key stakeholders. Notwithstanding our findings that corporate reputation is valued as a means of gaining competitive advantage and dispelling perceptions that Chinese products/services are low-cost and low-quality, concern remains that building reputation capital among stakeholders may result in a loss of price competitiveness. Finally, unlike the framework proposed by Barnett, Jermier, and Lafferty (2006), our results suggest that B2B firms in China do not impose clear boundaries between reputation and ‘corporate reputation capital’. Nor does there appear to be an emphasis on disaggregating the constructs of identify and image from that of reputation.

There are compelling reasons for educators to consider incorporating virtual worlds (VWs) in their marketing curriculum. That said, the ways in which VWs can be implemented into the teaching curriculum are many and varied. This article reports on two studies in which notionally similar graduate classes are taught about marketing in Second Life (SL). The degree of student and instructor immersion is intentionally varied: One class is taught entirely in SL, by a technically expert instructor, while novice/intermediate instructors teach the second class in an interactive tutorial setting. Taken together, these studies offer marketing educators insights into developing “full” and “lite” approaches to teaching in SL, thereby lowering the barrier to uptake of the technology by catering to a broader spectrum of both instructor and student competencies, interests, and abilities.