Orientation: With many organisations vying for the same talent, it is important to ensure that the correct methods are utilised in identifying and attracting the best talent to an organisation.Research purpose: This research investigates the impact of social media on the recruitment process in South Africa.Motivation for the study: As the competition for qualified talent increases, organisations need to understand where to focus their resources to attract the best talent possible. The use of social media is growing daily and its use in the recruitment process seems to have grown exponentially.Research design, approach and method: The sample comprised 12 recruiters, spanning a wide range of industries in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and a thematic analysis was utilised to identify themes and subthemes.Main findings: Despite still utilising some traditional methods of recruiting, South African recruiters follow their international counterparts, with LinkedIn being central to their respective recruitment processes. The use of Twitter and Facebook for recruitment was found to be substantially lower in South Africa than elsewhere. Without following a focused approach, the volume of work that emanates from using social media may overwhelm a recruiter.Practical and managerial implications: Recruiters cannot execute effective recruitment without applying social media tools such as LinkedIn. However, training in the optimal use of social media is essential.Contribution: This study indicates that LinkedIn has a major impact on recruitment in South Africa, but that social media is not a panacea for recruitment issues.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the existence of familiarity bias amongst individual investors in the South African stock market. Problem investigated: According to Warren Buffet, one needs to maintain emotional detachment if one wants to be a successful investor. However, recent research indicates that the perceptions of companies’ products and brands may influence individuals’ investment decisions in the stock market. This phenomenon implies that the investment decisions of individual investors are not purely based on firm fundamentals as suggested by traditional finance theories, but might be driven partly by the positive or negative attitude they have towards certain companies’ products and brands. The existence of familiarity bias amongst individual investors was investigated to determine if individuals prefer to invest in companies they are familiar with as opposed to unfamiliar companies. Methodology: A quantitative approach was followed. An online survey was used to show images of familiar and unfamiliar company brands to respondents, whereafter respondents were asked to indicate whether they will invest in the shares of the identified companies. The statistical analysis entailed descriptive statistics as well as one-way analyses of variance to test the stated hypotheses. Main findings: The results of this exploratory study indicate that investors do exhibit familiarity bias when choosing between different companies to invest in. Value of the research: The inclination of individual investors to invest in familiar corporate brands can have implications for the marketing industry, financial markets, the performance of companies as well as the investment performance of individual investors in the sense that it would seem that company brands could have an influence on investment decisions.

To avoid risks, consumers tend to be failry thoughtful decision makers. Research has shown that consumers perceive risks associated with purchasing online and as a result online purchasing has not yet reached the numbers that were projected. In order for e-commerce to live up to its full potential, online retailers should gain an understanding of which perceived risks online purchasing consumers are most concerned with. This study aimed to assess the impact of perceived risk on online buying behaviour. Personal interview surveys were conducted in an emerging market whereby 200 respondents that have access to the internet were interviewed in selected malls with regards to their perceived risks when buying online. The results showed that perceived risk does have an impact on online buying behaviour, and that consumers that have not bought online in the past are likely not to do so in the future. The results show that characteristics of emerging markets are sufficiently distinct from developed markets in that consumers in developed markets seem to be more conservative when buying online. Marketers should therefore developed alternative marketing programs when communicating to these markets in an attempt to persuade consumers to buy online.

Orientation: Sensory marketing has become a popular marketing technique to enhance consumer experience. Researchers have suggested that marketers should incorporate as many senses as possible in order for sensory marketing to be effective.Research purpose: To investigate the influence of selected senses – sight, sound and smell – on consumers’ experience, specifically in terms of the tastiness of brandy.Motivation for the study: Even though the use of the senses such as sight, sound and smell is a popular sensory marketing tool in the field of experiential marketing, applying such marketing techniques is a challenging and costly exercise for marketers, and researchers have called for more studies on senses and consumer experience.Research design, approach and method: A full factorial laboratory experiment (2 x 2 x 2) was conducted where 240 spirits consumers indicated the tastiness of a brandy sample under certain conditions.Main findings: Results revealed that, within a laboratory setting, consumers recorded lower levels of tastiness under conditions where more senses were manipulated than in conditions where less senses were manipulated.Practical/managerial implications: The results of the study coincided with previous results, which indicated that, within certain product categories, sensory marketing could actually decrease the consumer’s experience as sensory overload could occur.Contribution/value-add: In the endeavour to reduce possible sensory overload in the alcohol industry, the findings suggest that marketers should not apply sensory marketing indiscriminately to all product categories. For example, on a retail level, where experimental marketing might be too costly or even too complex to apply to some product categories, marketers should rather rethink the use of sensory marketing strategies within certain industries and focus on other marketing strategies, such a brand building.

Millions of rands are spent on sponsorship in general every year, and on sports sponsorships in particular. Yet little is known about the effectiveness of this expenditure. In addition, sponsors are often not sure whether only their brands benefit from a sponsorship or whether competing brands in the same product category also benefit from their efforts.In this study an attempt is made to clarify these considerations by comparing both the brand recall and the brand recognition of companies (and brands) who sponsored the 2007 Cricket World Cup. To determine whether brand recall and brand recognition increased during a sponsorship campaign, a quasi-experimental study was conducted by means of a one-group pre-test-post-test design. The data were collected using a convenience sample of 131 undergraduate students.The results seem to suggest that both the brand recall and the brand recognition levels of the sponsors increased significantly (α = 0,05), but that neither the brand recall nor the brand recognition levels of non-sponsor brands increased. The results therefore show that sponsorship does in fact increase brand awareness, by significantly increasing unaided brand recall, as well as increasing brand recognition and that non-sponsoring companies and brands do not benefit indirectly from their competitors’ sponsorships in terms of brand recall and brand recognition.