mirahmad amirshahi

The objective of this research, conducted at the edge of advertising knowledge, is to present a comprehensive model for predicting future trends in the field of visual metaphors in advertising through the evaluation of scientific performance and knowledge structures. To achieve this purpose, in this quantitative review, we have endeavored to extract prevailing patterns in the realm of visual metaphors in advertising and provide some implications to advertising strategists, marketers, and researchers interested in this field. For this aim, after selecting an appropriate literature search strategy and applying screening criteria, we extracted 743 articles from the Scopus database. These articles were subsequently analyzed using "RStudio" and "VOSviewer" software. The findings of this research, in the first section, have provided a comprehensive evaluation of the science performance by extracting the annual publication trends and identifying the most cited articles, journals, and authors. Additionally, it has determined the core journals in this field using Bradford's Law and assessed author productivity through Lotka's Law. In the second section, through the analysis of co-occurrence, co-citation, and collaboration networks, this research has contributed to a comprehensive assessment of the conceptual, intellectual, and social structures of knowledge within research domain. In the third section, the proposed research model is presented, illustrating the evolutionary process and future research directions in the field of visual metaphors in advertising.

The present study aims to explain the behavioral pattern of utility service consumers toward engagement in online brand communities. Many companies seek to attract and communicate more with customers; therefore, they try to strengthen their relationships with customers by creating online brand communities and customer engagement. Utility companies are affected by this trend in recent years while, compared to hedging companies, they face more challenges in this area. In the extant literature, few studies have investigated the types of behavioral responses of utilitarian service consumers in online brand communities. Therefore, this study seeks to develop a behavioral model for utility service consumers to ensure their engagement. It divides the consumers based on their behavioral differences and by examining each category of them separately in an independent phase.
 
The required data for this study were collected through purposive sampling, dealing with two groups of consumers with different behavioral responses to engagement in online brand communities. The study continued through conducting semi-structured interviews and using the content analysis method. In its first phase, participants were consumers of one of the three Internet service providers in Iran (namely Shuttle, Hi Web, and Mobinnet) who had to connect with the online brand communities but did not desire to engage. Data were collected from 12 consumers. In the second phase of the study, participants were consumers from one of the same three Internet service providers (i.e., Shuttle, Hi Web, and Mobinnet) that had connected and engaged in the online brand communities of one of the mentioned companies. Data were collected from 10 of these individuals. Next, the data obtained from the two phases were coded by the thematic analysis approach. Eventually, the final model of consumer engagement in online brand communities was extracted.
 
Dimensions and components of consumer engagement in online brand communities include brand-related factors (i.e., brand position in the consumer's mind and brand satisfaction), individual factors (i.e., possibility of presenting the ideal self, consumer attitude towards people with a high level of engagement, perceived usefulness of the engagement, consumer involvement with the product, consumer motivation from the occurrence of engagement and consumer openness), social factors (i.e., quality of community members' interactions with each other and content source), and factors related to the online brand community (i.e., the extent to which consumer expectations from communities are met, community commitment to interactions with consumer and the attractiveness of the content).
 
The research results underlined the role of the mentioned components in consumers of utilitarian service toward engagement in online brand communities. The dimensions and components identified were expressed in a final figure. The six components of brand position in the consumer's mind, brand satisfaction, consumer involvement with the product, perceived usefulness, community commitment to interactions with consumers, and attractiveness of the content were repeated in the findings of two phases, highlighting the relative importance of these factors compared to other factors. Therefore, brand managers should pay special attention to these components. These findings help managers better understand consumers’ behavior and design or refine their communication strategies accordingly.

Fashion is a subset of creative industries and has roots in the culture of a region. In Iran, despite the long history of the textile industry and clothing production, a limited number of brands in the fashion industry have been able to get promoted to strong brands at home or abroad. Most foreign fashion products find their way into Iran through either official or smuggling imports. Unfortunately, there are also domestic manufacturers who, despite the good quality of their products, sell them domestically with foreign Hem Tags, the act that can be translated as a sign of the lack of strong domestic brands in the Iranian garment industry. What are the problems of fashion branding in Iran? What factors have weakened branding in this country? What are the steps of the branding process in this industry, how should the branding of mass and luxury fashion styles be done in this industry, and what are the differences in branding details? The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive model of branding.

The present study tries to provide a comprehensive model for the Iranian fashion industry by reviewing the existing literature and theories, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with the country’s experts and specialists, and also adopting the method of Multi-Grounding Theory. The researchers adopted Snowball sampling methods and carried out interviews until reaching a theoretical saturation.

The data was analyzed by MAQXDA software and 744 codes, 255 concepts, and 10 categories were extracted. Also, 88 articles, books, reports and etc were reviewed. The required data for this study were gathered via conducting interviews.

According to the achieved results, branding in the fashion industry includes three major stages of pre-branding, branding, and post-branding, while this study explored eight steps of branding, including 1) branding requirements, 2) branding opportunities, 3) branding challenges, 4) brand identity, 5) brand positioning, 6) application of appropriate marketing tools and blends, 7) brand evaluation, and 8) growth. The remaining two categories are about the difference between luxury fashion branding, mass branding, and the order of branding steps.

Due to the nature of services, service failure is inevitable in the delivery of services. When customers encounter service failures, they are likely to engage in negative behavioral responses, such as complaining, spreading negative WOM, and switching providers. Thus needs to be managed to overcome them. The main purpose of this study is to find the service failure pattern in banking industry of Iran. Content analysis technique was used to identify the pattern of service failure. To find banking industry experts, targeted sampling was applied, leading to theoretical saturation after conducting 12 interviews. The MAXQDA software was used to analyze the results. According to research results, 'failure in services arena', 'failure in brand citizenship behavior', 'failure in organizational attitude' and 'failure in customer relation management' are among the most important influencing factors in banking service failure. Service failures are not completely unavoidable, even for the best service organization. If allowed to continue, poor service delivery threatens the long-term survival of the banks. Being aware of key areas of service failure, banking CEOs can develop appropriate strategies to avoid inefficiencies, put an end to customer churn and also improve their competitive position.

Deciding whether or not to invest in a venture is a strategic decision that leads the financial resources of the venture capital companies. This research intends to provide a framework for evaluating and ranking ventures that apply for capital, considering various success factors. The novelty of this research is the application of Prospect Theory as a framework which is based on behavioral strategy in the decision-making of venture capitalists. To conduct this research, first, by reviewing the literature, the most important factors influencing venture failure has been identified, then experts’ opinion who are active in venture capital companies has been gathered. Next, a framework based on Prospect Theory has been developed. Finally, this framework has been used in one of the venture capital firms to evaluate the twelve ventures seeking capital. According to the results,, instead of making decisions based on final results, human beings make decisions based on the perceived value of gains and losses. At the same time, the value of losses has a greater effect on decision-making.

The luxury industry, especially in Apparel, has attracted a lot of attention as a profitable industry, which, besides economic value, contributes to the development of high quality products via enhancing the competition among Luxury brand owners. Therefore, the present study sets out to design a pattern for purchasing luxury brand Apparel in Iran using Grounded theory. The required data is collected through conducting a semi-structured in-depth interview with a couple of luxury brand owners and their customers in Tehran City. The data is classified and analyzed through open, axial and selective encoding processes. According to the results, the identified categories are organized in six groups, (namely causative conditions: product and brand functional factors, customer individual factors, and social factors affecting customers, interventional conditions:purchasing deterrents. strategies: customer relationship management, after-sales service and consequences: creating loyal customers, repurchasing customers, buying expensive items from the same brand, buying other supply items organized in-store and word-of-mouth), thereby resulting in the final pattern.

The joining of consumers to online brand community provides the brand managers with potential opportunities offered upon extensive interactions and establishing strong emotional relations between the firms and customers. A review of the studies performed so far show that the research on the importance of the joining of consumers to Online Brand Community, as a first step toward having them engaged with the brand, is by far inadequate. Therefore, the aim of the present work is to fill in this research the gap and identify the factors hindering the virtual relationship between the firms and their customers. The required data was collected via a qualitative approach based on thematic analysis, purposive sampling, and interviews with 12 consumers of three internet service providers (Shatel, HiWeb, and Sabanet). The data was then, coded and analyzed, and the network of the extracted themes was developed. The main themes identified in this research included negative consumer’s attitude toward the social networks, the product type, preference of the company’s interests over the customer’s interests, lack of the customer’s awareness of the presence of the company on social networks, less than enough involvement of the consumer with the product, the consumer’s dissatisfaction with the brand, provision of alternative services, inappropriate image of the Online Brand Community, devaluation of the other members’ information, and failure to offer attractive financial incentives.

In recent years, customers rely on social networks to choose brands and make buying decisions and actively connect and engage with brands on social networks. They share their information and experiences about products and services of brands with other customers through social networks. Therefore, the emergence of social networks and their ability to engage customers much better than before, has made marketing researchers and professionals to seize this opportunity via realizing customer engagement concept and taking advantage of social networks. Hence, the purpose of this study is to present antecedents and consequences of customer brand engagement in social networks through a model. In this study, the results and findings of previous studies have analyzed by means of Meta-Synthesis approach through seven known steps of method, and found 24 variables as antecedents and consequences of the customer brand engagement model in social networks. The variables were divided into two groups; one as antecedents containing 4 concepts and the other as consequences including 2 concepts. After that, the validity and reliability of the obtained model was evaluated and then final model was presented. The findings of this study provides valuable insights into the antecedents and consequences of customer brand engagement in social networks for academic researchers and also creates value for organizations and brands.

Nowadays personal branding is considered a very important issue for specialists like the university professors, as one of the important classes of experts in the society, and the success criteria of personal branding activities is their perceived brand equity by the students. The purpose of present study is to investigate the effective factors involved in personal brand equity of university professors.

This is an applied study in terms of purpose and it is a survey-analytical study in terms of method. The statistical population consists of the students at Azad University Central Tehran Branch in Iran, Faculty of Management and the data were collected from 275 students using probability convenience sampling method. Structural equation modeling and SMART PLC has been used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that competence of professors, the students' awareness of them and the instruction perceived quality by the students affect the professor brand equity through affecting the extent of attachment between the students and professors and the effect on the communicative variables such as commitment, trust and loyalty.

Today being good in what we are doing as an expert doesn’t pay off enough and we can’t expect others to know our competencies and respect that while we are not communicating that thing properly through personal branding. Findings show that university professors must take a good care of their awareness, competencies and perceived instructional qualities which all let them have higher brand equity through communicative variables and benefit a lot from that.

Customers’ purchase behavior is one of the main criteria and critical success factors of e-commerce and online businesses which is similar to traditional businesses with some differences. Therefore, this study tries to reach a model for analyzing the online re-purchasing intention in B2C transactions. This research has been done in the framework of interpretive philosophical paradigm, with inductive approach, in qualitative method and the theme analysis technique using interviewing tools. Accordingly, an interview was conducted with 36 people including 6 e-commerce experts, 13 brokers in Internet business and 17 re-purchasing customers. After coding the interviews, 120 codes were reached at the first stage and final codes had been retrieved which were classified in 21 basic themes. After final analysis, the basis themes were divided into four organizing theme: psychological theme, technological theme, institutional and customer-orientation theme. Among these four themes, the concept of technology in e-commerce has the greatest emphasis. Organizational issues, customer-orientation and psychological issues are at the next rankings, which can also be considered as important which can be considered by as e-commerce managers.

With the rise of information technology and its ability to bring individual consumers, together in new force, a viral approach to marketing seems less like an imperative than an option. Though the term Viral Marketing has been around for several years, the marketing world’s understanding of viral marketing is still in its infancy. Though the research surrounding viral marketing has been of relatively high quality, most of them focus on different components of viral marketing campaigns and none of them helps marketers to develop their viral marketing campaign from beginning to end and implement it. The aim of this study is providing an integrated framework with a holistic approach to design a viral marketing campaign on social networks for B2C services in Iran, to be used in order to understand and design better the components of a viral marketing campaign and how they must come together in order to obtain the expected results. For this purpose, first, by reviewing the literature using meta-synthesis, 148 codes were extracted which were classified into 23 themes and 13 categories, and presented in a framework to design viral marketing campaigns on social networks for B2C services. Afterward, in order to revise the framework extracted by meta-synthesis according to the business environment in Iran, a semi-structured interview was used to collect data from industry professionals having experience on designing and implementing viral marketing campaigns for B2C services, and the results were analyzed by content analysis. Based on the obtained results, the final research framework to design viral marketing campaigns on social networks for B2C services in Iran was presented.

One of the significant challenges of service marketing and also its distinctive feature is being intangible. Because of this difficulty, marketing and selling services are more complicated than commodities, and success in it requires more effective branding. Good brands have loyal consumers. Brands are so valuable that some companies add their brand value to their balance sheets as an intangible asset. Branding is a set of strategies that identifies one brand and differentiates it from other competitors’ brand. At present, two prominent features of the insurance industry in Iran are the competitive market (because of the existence of over 20 insurance companies and low market size) and the non-differentiation of insurance policies offered by insurance companies, decreasing operational profit. Practically companies in the insurance industry are in a price war. With this situation, the managers of the insurance companies are not only under increasing pressure to acquiring a market share but also they have problems to communicate with their current customers. One of the ways that insurance companies have used to tackle these problems is brand restructuring. The overall purpose of this study is to design a model of service branding in commercial insurance companies in Iran. Based on the purpose, the method of the present study is a mixed method (exploratory and descriptive-survey) and based on collecting data method is field-library. The research was conducted in the first phase based on the qualitative approach using the grounded theory method. In the qualitative phase, 40 interviews were conducted with insurance industry experts (mainly middle and operational / PR managers). As a result, the most important indicators of effective branding in commercial insurance companies were extracted. In the second phase of the research to determine the priority and importance of the variables, 420 questionnaires were distributed among the population, which 354 questionnaires were completed and gathered (according to the sample size). Data were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. In the qualitative part of the research has been identified 132 concepts, 25 categories, and seven general axes for the branding of commercial insurance companies including technical, support and management capabilities, as well as service marketing mix, environmental conditions, Internal Sales and Marketing Strategy. The results of the second phase of the study indicate that the indexes of each of the seven factors have factor-loading more than 0.40 and the t-value for each of factors is more than 1.96, which is valid. The best rank belongs to technical capabilities (3.91) and then support capabilities (3.70), service marketing mix (3.66), environmental conditions (3.45), internal marketing (3.38), management capabilities (3.23) and sales strategy (3.18). They are all meaningful. The ranking of the factors influencing on the branding of insurance companies shows that technical capabilities (issues related to issuance and risk management) have the most impact on branding and the lowest impact belong to sales strategies. Perhaps one of the reasons for the less priority of sales strategies in this study "compared to other factors" does not trust the insurance companies to marketing activities, because from the perspective of experts of the insurance industry, technical aspects of insurance are the most importance. From the experts' point of view, technical issues should be at the heart of the branding of insurance companies and their differentiation. Insurance companies should focus on their technical issues. In this ranking, the next importance relates to the support capabilities of the insurance companies, which is not as high as the technical capabilities but secondarily. In other words, financial and investment management, information technology, and R&D are very important. The important of them may be due to the concern of insurance companies about paying loss and making an appropriate decision about investments. Financial and investment management is one of the essential aspects that have a significant impact on the branding of an insurance company. At present, the public perception of insurance companies is that they receive premiums, so they try to make as little payment as possible. If insurance companies: 1) receive a premium based on risk (technical capability), 2) deal with the loss and decide to pay fairly and adhere to the standards (insurance capability), and 3) make decision about investment appropriately, They can then pay damages in a way that will gradually erode the negative public image of themselves and build a more favorable image of their brand. Strategic marketing is the next important factor. One of the significant weaknesses of insurance companies is, not defining their target market and do not make differentiated in their product seriously (all insurance companies policies are more or less similar, and they offer identical insurance). Given the importance of rates and processes in this area, it seems justified to rank high. Not being first in the ranking (management capabilities and sales strategies) does not show less effect of them on branding. But it shows the importance of environmental and internal marketing conditions in the branding of insurance products/services. For example, if a company ignores environmental issues or regulations of the supervisor of the industry, its brand will be quickly threated to severe damage by the media and public. Internal marketing in both divisions (insurance company staff) and (agents and marketers) is also crucial because of the specific nature of the insurance services/products and the specific complexities of it and the need for clarification.

One of the solutions that leads to different brands being seen in the contemporary advertising space is the use of visual cultural-ethnic identities in their logo, and to achieve this, the use of symbols is of particular importance. But unfortunately, it seems that the choice of symbols by the graphic designer in some cases is tasty, without prior research or in its optimistic state, only by a formalistic approach. The present study addresses this question as a way to create a culture-based logo using cultural-ethnic symbols, and asks how the symbol can be used in an appropriate way to create a logo culture-based?It should be noted that in this research, the culture-based logo is not merely a logo of cultural organizations, such as the logo of museums, universities and cultural centers, although this item can also be subset. But, the meaning of the culture-logo the logic axis is that in the design of the logo cultural-ethnic symbols play a key role in the transfer of organizational concepts, and the main idea behind the designer to create a logo is the symbol and cultural motifs of a people and a culture.This is an applied research objective with analytical descriptive nature and data collection is done by the library method. By analyzing international specific logo elements and presenting case studies, this article will examine how some contemporary logo designs have inappropriately exploited specific cultural groups. In the process, this study will theorize how designers can practice culturally and socially responsible design by researching the context as well as the cultural and historical significance of major elements used to create a logo design. For designers to implement specific symbolic elements, they will need to analyze each of them to understand the multiple meanings and what they communicate to the intended audience. This is an important step in the design process that should be addressed prior to formalizing the final design proposal. Understanding the importance of the symbol is very important when creating a culture-based logo. Symbols can also be confusing or informative, given how well they are designed and the fact that the designer has well investigated the audience of that brand. A review of the global literature on logo design suggests that the design of the logo includes two basic steps, the research phase and the design stage; however, with this in mind, in the research phase of designing a culture-based logo, there are two basic stages Another included: 1. Research on the organizational goals of the brand and the identity that the brand is seeking to create; 2. Research on symbols that are consistent with the organizational identity in terms of explicit and implicit implications. Therefore, designing a logo is not a tweet or only a matter of formalistic and aesthetic issues, but in designing a logo, especially a logo that plays a key role in the symbol, the designer needs to have a thorough and proper research before designing it. One can conclude from the examination of international samples that use the symbol in the design of the logo in line with organizational interests, regardless of the harmony of semantic implications of brand identity. Apart from undermining the cultural values that it the symbol of its text is extracted, the use of such an inappropriate symbol can also have a negative effect on the organizational goals of the companies that use such logos, and this is where brands usually have a significant amount of time and funds to create their own logo. When the resulting logo is used to insult a group or ethnic group or use their visual symbols inappropriately, it can be very costly for both that particular culture and that organization's owner. Also, by exploring the purposeful international samples that used the symbol in the design of the logo in line with organizational interests, regardless of semantic implications of the symbol, it was concluded that, apart from the inhibition of cultural values, the use of such Inappropriate symbols can have a negative impact on brand identity and brand image throughout the brand's life, as well as organizations that create and use these logos.Finally, the result of this essay was that in the majority of cases, the connotational meaning of the symbol in the design of the logo was given more attention, whereas the same attention to the denotational and connotational meaning of the symbol and its alignment with the brand identity was the appropriate way to create a culture-base logo. Also, by exploring the purposeful international samples that used the symbol in the design of the logo in line with organizational interests, regardless of semantic implications of the symbol, it was concluded that, apart from diminishing cultural values, such use incorrect symbols can have a negative impact on brand identity throughout the brand life.

A strong brand enables an organization to create competitive advantage. Construction industry is one of those environments in which corporate brand building is getting important. The main purpose of this study is to develop a model for brand building in Iran’s construction industry. Grounded theory was used as a research method to create the model. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted. The participants included Sales, marketing, technical, CEO Managers and consultants of construction companies. The results showed six main themes as casual’s conditions of brand building in construction companies. The themes include commitment to customer, quality of construct, identity creation, interactive symbol and Market orientation. Structural Prerequisites factor is a grounded condition to implement brand building strategies. There are five strategies or practices such as image creation, awareness making, adaptive participation, after delivery services and product extension which can build brand in construction companies. The consequences of brand building strategies include brand positive image, positive associates, brand trust and a strong competitive position.

The importance of intangible assets in firm's success is increasing. So giving insight about its quality and measurement metrics is vital for the firms. In knowledge based economy, intangible assets must be the basis of development. Hence intangible assets management is very important and this management without measurement of intangibles isn’t efficient and effective. The aim of this research is to investigate value relevance of intangibles especially unrecorded intangibles and its usefulness in predicting of future cash flow and earnings. The model of Arefmanesh and Rahmani (1394) was used to measure unrecorded and total intangibles. Analyzing of data panel of 143 firms from 1386 to 1392 indicate that there is significant difference between high and low Tec firms intangible assets have positive and significant relation with market value of firms. Also according to research results information about intangible assets is a good predictor of future cash flows and earnings especially in high tech and intermediate high tech firms. Therefore base on findings of this research intangible assets provide useful information for decision of financial statement users.

In the past, companies seeking to build or buy production capacities, but are now looking to capture a place in the minds of consumers. Obtain such a position in the consumers mind, are possible by marketing activities. Therefore, companies should create knowledge structure for its own brand; by focus on marketing activities that aim to establish a favorable response in the target market. But the basic question is: What are the marketing activities that can create value through brand and what is their impact on brand? This study sought to answer the above question, by using "Grounded Theory". Based on interviews marketing professionals of food industry, where brand play a key role in customer purchase, their views and experiences on marketing activities that can increase brand value are collected. This information was analyzed in three stage (open coding, axial and selective coding), and final model was developed. According to the achieved results, items organized in 6 categories: Causal, core activities, context, intervening Circumstance, strategy and action, and based on the effect of marketing activities on brand value was theorized.

One of the main companies’ goals in today’s markets is to maintain their market shares. So, as brands are one of the main assets of companies; therefore, marketers try to vitalize the companies’ brand, in order to maintain their situations in market. Whereas, creation of a new brand is very costly and time consuming and its chance of success is limited, nowadays, more than ever, marketers are trying to achieve their goals through brand extension strategy. Of course, there are some numerous factors which can effect on brand extension acceptance among consumers. In this research some factors such as interest, risk acceptance, situation, and social visibility are recognized as factors that influence brand extension acceptance. But, because of the importance of involvement, this research is conducted to evaluate acceptance of brand extensions in both high and low involvement products. So, the goal of this research is to analyze the impact of interest, risk acceptance, situation, and social visibility on brand extension acceptance. Thus, consumer’s responses about eight new presumptive products which are used eight established brands –four high involvement products and four low involvement products-. In this descriptive survey, the data has been collected by a self-administrated questionnaire. For data analysis, repeated measures, ANOVA, andANCOVA have been used. Research findings indicate, among others, that: interest is the only factor that influences the acceptance of brand extensions in all products.

Word-of-mouth communication is often a major influence in consumer decision making process. Word of mouth communication is important concept in marketing literature, thus present study has studied the effect of relational benefits on word of mouth communication among customers. This study is a descriptive study was conducted through a survey. The research population was 437 customers of Mellat bank. After data collection, the data were analyzed through structural equations modeling and Lisrel software. The results indicated that confidence and social benefits had a positive and significant effect on word of mouth communication. But, it was revealed that special treatment benefits had not a significant effect on word of mouth communication. Also, fitting indicators suggest that data have been fitted well with the model.

Today, organizations are in need of effective methods of communicating with the customers. That is why many organizations use integrated marketing communication. The basic issue in the present study is how the banking network and financial and credit institutions, may appropriately use this newly-emerged model? The main objective of this research is to identify the components affecting integrated marketing communication. With regard to data collection, the present research is descriptive-analytical and is a case study in which the semi-structured interview tool and theme analysis technique have been used. In this process, the snowball judgmental sampling method has been used. The research community comprises of experts from three departments of public relations and advertising, market development, and research and planning center of Mellat bank headquarters. The number of selected samples equals 10. The results show that this bank has not been really successful in implementing integration and should pay more attention to this approach.

One of the main objects of companies in the market is to maintain and develop their market shares through using their brand. Whereas، creation of a new brand is very costly and time consuming and its chance of success is limited، nowadays، more than ever، marketing agencies are trying to achieve their goals through brand extension strategy. So، factors which influence acceptance of brand extension should be considered. According to this research only a knowledge about product category and the difference among brands in product category، and their interaction are considered as factors which have effects on acceptance of brand extensions. But، because of the importance of product involvement، this research is conducted to evaluate acceptance of brand extensions in both high and low involvement products. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of knowledge about product category، difference in the quality among brands in product category، and their interaction on acceptance of brand extension. In this research، consumers’ responses on eight hypothetical new products that used eight established brand names -four high involvement products and four low involvement products- are investigated. In this descriptive survey، the data has been collected by questionnaires. For data analysis، analysis of variance، covariance، and general linear model repeated measures have been used. Research findings indicate، among others، that: the two above-mentioned factors and their interaction have effects on acceptance of brand extensions in just good products (low involvement) and service products (high involvement) which are made in a foreign country.

With increasing competition in today’s markets, the vital point for companies is to maintain their market shares. Therefore, marketers try to vitalize the companies’ brands, in order to maintain their position in market. Whereas, creation a new brand is very costly and time consuming and its chance of success is limited, nowadays, more than ever, marketers are trying to achieve their goals through brand extension strategy. But, the point which is usually ignored in most researches in this field is that the researchers have not focused on differentiation between different products in analysis of brand extension acceptance. In this descriptive survey, the data has been collected by a self-administrated questionnaire. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire was ascertained with the help of content validity and Cronbach's Alpha respectively. Sampling method of this study was proportional stratified sampling. 420 questionnaires have been randomly distributed among those people present in the chain stores in Tehran and all of them were collected. Finally, 391 questionnaires were suitable to be used for statistic analysis. Research findings indicate, among others, that: *Consumers transfer purchase involvement factors (“previous experience”, “interest”, risk acceptance”, “situation”, “price”, and “social visibility”) from a product with parent brand to the product in a new category with extended brand, in both high and low involvement situation; *Perceived quality is transferred from a product with parent brand to a product in a new category with extended brand, only in low involvement situation.

The holy religion of Islam has set rules and regulations for every aspect of life including business and economic activities. Although it seems that Islamic rules and regulations have not created a specific business or economic system on their own, they require particular principles to be observed to reach the ultimate goal of creation.The current research is of fundamental type and has attempted to recognize principles required to be observed by activists in marketing section according to Islamic guidelines and present a definition regarding the aforementioned principles and design a basic conceptual model of Islamic marketing. In order to achieve the above results, the two main following questions must be answered:What parts and elements are included in marketing and professional activities of marketing?What is Islam’s perspective regarding the elements of marketing and marketing activity?The current study attempts to answer the above questions and collect related concepts of marketing from the Quran and authentic Hadith sources and provide a framework based on classic marketing model of Kotler. Then, we classified the contemplative foundation and associated activities with any elements of marketing process using research literature. Subsequently, the Islamic perspective regarding major and minor elements of marketing were recognized and thus Islamic marketing was analyzed and a basic conceptual model of Islamic marketing as well as a definition of Islamic marketing were presented.

The appearance of mobile has provided unique opportunities and fields through the development and creation of businesses and has been able to create the new job opportunities. The current research tries to familiarize entrepreneures who are running the businesses especially in the area of mobile services with business models. These business models can familiarize them for implementing the new ideas and designs since they can enter to business market. Searching in many papers shows that there are no propitiated papers and researches that can identify, categorize and analyze the mobile business models. Consequently, this paper involves innovation. The first part of this paper presents the review about the concepts and theories about the different mobile generations, the mobile commerce and business models. Afterwards, 92 models are compared, interpreted, translated and combined using 33 papers, books based on two different criteria that are expert criterion and kind of product criterion. In the classification of models according to models that are presented by experts, the models are classified based on criteria such as business fields, business partners, the rate of dynamism, the kind of activity, the focus areas, the mobile generations, transparency, the type of operator activities, marketing and advertisements. The models that are classified based on the kind of product have been analyzed and classified at four different areas of mobile commerce including the content production, technology (software and hardware), network and synthetic.

Innovation and new products have an important role in any company. Successful launching and marketing of new products require targeting innovative consumers. Difference in dimensions of consumer's innovativeness demands different marketing plan. A good understanding of decision-making styles of innovative consumers is imperative for such marketing activities. The main objective of this research is to investigate the effect of consumer's innovativeness on their shopping decision-making styles. Specifically, it aims at evaluating the relationship between two types of innovativeness, i.e. sensory and cognitive, and consumer's shopping decision-making styles. In this descriptive research which is performed as a survey, research population includes students of Islamic Azad University at the campus of Tehran Science and Research Branch of which, a random and proportional sample has been selected. A pretest has been used to check the validity and reliability of the research tool, i.e. questionnaire. Content validity and face validity of the questionnaire have been ascertained. Questionnaire reliability has been assured through the use of both retest reliability and internal consistency reliability. This paper integrates the consumer innovativeness and consumer shopping decision-making styles literature. It is built on the premise that if consumer innovativeness is regarded as a general personality trait, then it would also be reflected in consumer's shopping approaches. Test and analysis of the relationship between cognitive and sensory innovativeness and various shopping styles has been performed by the use of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using LISREL software. After investigating of eight hypotheses, only four of them have been supported. The findings indicate that cognitive innovativeness positively influences perfectionist and high-quality conscious shopping decision-making style; and sensory innovativeness, positively influences three shopping decision-making style (i.e. brand conscious, novelty and fashion conscious and recreational and shopping conscious). The findings of this research help managers to develop a deeper insight into product development and marketing. Marketing communication and brand management of new product should be based on two different types of innovative consumers (cognitive and sensory) and their shopping styles. The findings also provide valuable insights to marketing managers in segmenting and targeting their markets.

The purpose of this descriptive - correlational research is to study the relationship between the salespersons’ personal moral philosophy and their ethical decision making process. It tries to find answers to two main questions: 1) what are the surveyed salespersons’ personal moral philosophy? 2) How this moral philosophy will influence their decision making process? Our Research population, whose opinions were collected using a questionnaire, consisted of the salespersons taking part in the sales training courses offered by the Research Center of Iran Ministry of Commerce. The statistical population size was 300 and according to Morgan and Krejcie’ table (1970), a sample size of 169 was chosen. 137 questionnaires out of 142 were proper to be analyzed. Descriptive analysis of the data indicated that the majority of the respondents were working in industries like food, tourism, insurance, publications and engineering services, as salespersons. In addition, Path analysis, employed for the inferential statistics, showed that the respondents’ main moral principle was idealism, and although idealism directly influenced their moral judgment, relativism was more influential on their moral intention (final step in the ethical decision making process) than idealism.