ECU Posters

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  The consumer-based brand equity development in the Australian luxury and upscale hotel sector

  Sharon Shan

  A main strategy for a luxury or upscale hotel to succeed in a competitive market is to develop a strong brand which is recognised, trusted and preferred by the consumers. This strength of a brand is defined as the consumer-based brand equity. There is limited research identifying factors that drive consumer-based brand equity in the specific sectors of luxury and upscale hotels. This limits managers in this sector in being able to efficiently manage their brands. Therefore, the current research investigated antecedents and measurements of consumer-based brand equity, based on the specific hotel consumers’ expectations and perceptions of a strong brand (e.g. a reputable business endorsed by the consumer community, a complex outlet where consumers need to consistently feel comfortable and desired, and a business promise about the quality and reliability). The prevalent influence of the consumer-generated content online to hotel brand equity has also been tested in the current research. A mixed method using focus groups and an online questionnaire in the sequential stages has been adopted with detailed findings presented in the poster.

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  The development of a test of letter and number reversal tendency for primary school children

  Janet Richmond and Ted Brown

  Development of a standardised instrument to assess visual perceptual skills or primary age school children using letters and numbers

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  The effect of family ownership on financing decisions of listed Vietnamese companies

  Trang Tran

  The poster is a visualisation of my research proposal. Family firms play an important role in the global economies, especially in Vietnam. There have been studies on family firms' financing decisions; however, the results were mixed. On the one hand, family shareholders have strong control motives. Hence they are argued to employ more debt because debt is a non-control diluted security. On the other hand, family shareholders are risk averse, and have incentives to pass down their businesses. Thus, they may prefer equity since debt incorporates bankruptcy risks. The literature gap calls for a demand of investigating how family ownership impacts on financing decisions of listed Vietnamese companies. I will use panel regression approach to analyse data collected from listed companies on Vietnam's stock exchanges from 2008 to 2016. The regression results will show the effects of business characteristics (e.g, size, age, profitability, tangibility), corporate governance quality and family ownership on corporate financing decisions. My research has significance to researchers, practitioners and the Government

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  The factors impacting customers’ intention to use of an online grocery retail store

  Mitra Maboud

  In an effort to increase sales, most major retail companies seek to recruit and reward loyal customers for regular frequent purchases. Companies inspire and reward their loyal customers to enhance repeat purchase and sales opportunities. There are a number of factors influencing the customers’ mindset in choosing a specific grocery store, such as loyalty, word of mouth, risks, brand image and brand value. Further analyses of these factors will assist company’s customer relationships and marketing strategy development and implementation.

  The benefit of developing loyalty among customers is to increase repeat purchase behaviour (Das, 2014; Jarvis & Wilcox, 1977). Customers’ satisfaction can increase the rate of customers’ repeat of purchase through developing habitual use of the store (Chiu, Hsu, Lai, & Chang, 2010, 2012). In this study, the researcher aims to determine the major factors affecting customers’ use of instore grocery versus an online grocery store, and to develop a new model to show this relationship.

  This research will enable the retail companies to gain a better understanding of the factors that impact customer’ intentions to use the instore grocery channel versus online channel. Furthermore, the researcher will develop a model of the relationships impacting satisfaction, habit, loyalty and the intention to repurchase instore and online. The researcher will also contribute to the literature by providing a greater understanding of the factors which impact the customers’ use of grocery stores.

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  The validity and inter-unit reliability of custom-made SurfTraX GPS units and use during surfing

  Oliver Farley, M Andrews, Josh Secomb, Tai T. Tran, Lina Lundgren, Chris Abbiss, and Jeremry Sheppard

  The purposes of the study were to: i) gain further understanding of the movement patterns during surfing using custom made GPS units which are designed for surfing (SurfTraX, Gold Coast, Australia), and ii) determine the validity and inter-unit reliability of these units.

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  Tracking 6 Weeks of training/surfing sessions of adolescent competitive surfers: Just what are these young surfers up to?

  Oliver Farley, Josh Secomb, Joanna R. Parsonage, Lina Lundgren, Chris Abbiss, and Jeremry Sheppard

  The assessment of weekly and even monthly surf practice/training hours is vital for understanding the loads these up and coming surfers endure. Such information will help understand what kind of training these athletes are undertaking, how long they are surfing, what they consider training, and also areas that should be improved upon in terms of specific training. The purpose of this study was to establish surfers' training hours in terms of strength, balance and conditioning hours, as well as surfing hours, coached hours and competition hours. The monitoring of the athletes will provide insights into the weekly surf hours compared to land-based training these athletes do.

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  Understanding pro-environmental behaviours of National Park visitors

  Kourosh Esfandiar

  Visitors’ inappropriate behaviour (e.g. littering) will impact nature-based tourism sites such as National Parks which play critical roles in mitigating climate change. This study examines what are the antecedents of national park visitors’ pro-environmental behaviours? Is there any difference between individualistic and collectivistic nations in terms of PEB amongst national park visitors? This study proposes using “An Integrated Pro-environmental personal norms Model (IPM) as the proposed research model based on Schwartz’s NAM to examine the above questions.