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    Exploring consumer justification of overconsumption in live streaming e-commerce in China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Marketing at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025) Chang, Yuan
    The aim of this research is to explores how Chinese consumers perceive sustainable consumption and how these perceptions are shaped and enacted within livestream e-commerce environments. While sustainable consumption has gained increasing scholarly attention, most existing research adopts quantitative approaches and focuses on Western contexts, leaving a gap in understanding how sustainability is subjectively constructed and behaviorally rationalized in China’s rapidly evolving digital marketplaces. Drawing on 18 semi-structured interviews and guided by a constructivist epistemology, this study employs thematic analysis to uncover the layered understandings, tensions, and justifications surrounding sustainability in the context of livestream shopping. The findings from this research reveal that consumers often equate sustainability with product durability, frugality, and personal responsibility, but also experience internal conflicts when navigating entertainment-driven shopping platforms. The study highlights how platform features—such as interactivity, persuasive streamer tactics, and ease of returns—both complicate and facilitate sustainable decision-making. Furthermore, consumers adopt various rationalization strategies, including neutralization techniques, to justify overconsumption. This research contributes to sustainability literature by contextualizing consumer behavior in emerging digital economies and expanding the application of ethical consumption theories to livestream retail. Practical implications are offered for platform designers, marketers, and policy makers seeking to promote sustainability in e-commerce.
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    What is news? : an exploration of news consumption in Aotearoa New Zealand comparing older and younger audiences using a uses and gratifications lens : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Communication at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-03-11) Anderson, Kirsty J.
    Technological and societal developments, including digital news, use of mobile devices, and the shared connections of social media, have impacted how and why audiences consume news. This study examined news consumption in Aotearoa New Zealand using a uses and gratifications lens, with a focus on the habits of those aged under 26 years of age and those over 26 years of age. The study produced three articles based on insights from focus groups to examine what audiences use for news, what they think is news, and what they do as a result of news. The articles indicated differences in habits between the two age cohorts, particularly in the use of social media and new media forms. Together, the articles offer three findings towards the overall research question of understanding the factors affecting news consumption and the divergence in news consumption habits between older and younger audiences. Uses and gratifications theory is still relevant for understanding news choices, as needs drive media behaviours and desired gratifications. Although news values are a useful categorisation of the characteristics of news that resonate with audiences, they need to be re-examined in the current media environment. Finally, veracity is proposed as an emerging news value as audiences have more news choice, and it is a key factor determining what news audiences consume and why. This study proposes a new theoretical model for news consumption that includes uses and gratifications theory and news values framework to understand the factors involved in news consumption. This model is explored as a case study using audiences’ responses to the media coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022.
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    Medications : how do we understand expiration dates? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Frankland, Susan
    The expectation of the pharmaceutical industry is that medication expiration dates are automatically understood by consumers. There is a complexity to this interpretation that has not been fully studied. The main aim of this research is to explore how prescription medication expiration dates, are understood by the consumer. An in-depth interviewing, narrative method was used to gain valid and detailed discourse of the individuals perspective of why expiry dates are used by pharmaceutical companies, how it influenced their decisions on storage and/or disposal, and individual views on recycling and/or redistribution of excess and/or expired medications to those in need. Twenty people were interviewed, from varied demographics, using a questionnaire guide, consisting of 18 questions, aimed at gaining information on their personal opinions of pharmaceutical expiration dates. The main findings revealed by the narratives, were that medication expiration dates were only an indication of best efficacy and not something that would cause any serious harm. Interestingly, there was no consensus on the types of medications most effected by expiration dates, or which medications the individual would consume after expiry. The analysis showed that most of the subjects would, and had used expired medications at some point, and were not concerned about experiencing any major side effects. It was also found that a high percentage of participants thought the use of expiry dates on medications, to be a marketing strategy by pharmaceutical companies, in order to generate more sales. Knowledge of the process of disposing of expired medications was limited, and only one participant had any knowledge of the concept of programs to redistribute medication. Support for such programs received mixed results. The majority of participants felt that the risk of taking expired medicine was not a concern; however this only applied to the patient themselves and all would not dispense expired medications to another family member, particularly mothers to children. In summary, the findings of this research highlighted the gap in consumer knowledge of medication expiration dates, the categories of medication most effected by age and for uncovering new ways to examine expired medication for deterioration and efficacy. It was shown that consumers are positive about investigating redistributive programs which could facilitate excess/expired medications reaching those in need and to drastically minimise excessive, current global medication wastage.
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    Passive users vs. active users : a qualitative investigation of brand page attachment on Facebook : a research report presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Marketing, School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Goldschagg, Caressa
    Brand attachment is the emotional connection consumers have with a brand and is essential in building lasting brand relations. Of equal importance is the construct of brand page attachment; however, it is a relatively new concept with few available studies in the literature. Using the case of Pams' brand page, a home brand of the supermarket chain New World, this study aimed to identify factors that influence passive brand page users to not engage with the brand page. Semi-structured interviews with six users, three passive and three active, were conducted. The interviews explored brand perception, brand page interaction, and brand page attachment. Thematic analysis indicated a direct link between past negative online experiences and the lack of user participation. Brands need to engage with passive brand page users, practically address their concerns, and so increase their brand page interaction to solidify their brand page attachment; this will lead to stronger brand attachment and a more committed consumer.
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    Do older consumers purchase differently? : the effect of age on brand awareness, consideration, and purchase : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marketing at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Mecredy, Philip
    The spending power of older consumers is rapidly rising as global populations continue to age. Yet, little is known about how ageing and its underlying mechanisms impact consumer behaviour. Without knowing whether the purchase patterns of older consumers differ from younger consumers, marketers may be unwisely neglecting or ineffectively targeting older consumers. Thus, across four studies, this thesis investigates whether, how, and why brand awareness, consideration, and purchase differ between older and younger consumers. This research finds that older and younger consumers display similar patterns of double jeopardy and brand duplication in their awareness and consideration of competing brands. Despite these similarities, an inverse-U shape is found for brand recognition and brand recall with the number of brands recognised and recalled increasing across age before slowing down and then declining. A similar inverse-U shape is found for brand consideration in subscription markets. For brand consideration and purchase sets in repertoire markets, a linear decline is initially found across age. However, when controlling for purchase rates to reflect changes in category purchasing, older consumers are aware of and consider more brands than younger consumers. Older consumers also show small increases in purchase loyalty across age groups for supermarket store choice and toothpaste, but not for fruit juice and pharmaceutical prescribing. These results provide the first conclusive evidence of age-related loyalty in some low-involvement categories, as loyalty measures used in prior studies are confounded by category purchase rates. While no loyalty differences were found across age groups for prescribing behaviour, longitudinal analysis reveals that physicians, regardless of age, become less reliant on their core armamentarium as they age and accumulate experience. Taken together, the research indicates that age-related loyalty patterns do sometimes occur, but cannot be explained by differences in awareness and consideration or the mechanisms that would affect these metrics (e.g. cognitive decline and biological ageing). Rather, the most likely explanation is that age-related effects are primarily driven by household lifecycle and accumulated experience. The findings provide strong implications on how to transition older consumers through the brand purchase funnel and outlines a blueprint for future studies of loyalty across age.
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    Is digital advertising effective under conditions of low attention? : the impact of low attention processing on consumer brand consideration and choice : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marketing at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Santoso, Irene Irawaty
    A crucial task for digital advertising is to influence choice despite consumers' lack of attention. Although lack of attention can reduce advertising effectiveness, recent research suggests that incidental exposure to ads while accessing digital content can lead to some outcome for the exposed ads. This evidence prompts four critical questions: (1) is digital advertising effective if processed at low attention; (2) can low attention processing increase brand consideration and choice; (3) what specific brand/product characteristics embedded in the ads are likely to influence the effect; and (4) what measures are appropriate to capture the low attention effects. To address the questions, three experimental studies (n = 1,423) were conducted in laboratory and online settings. The research manipulates two conditions for low attention processing, namely divided attention and incidental attention. The results show that, at least in the Twitter environment, advertising is effective even under conditions of low attention. Although focused attention still drives the greatest impact, low attention significantly increases the likelihood of target brands being included in the brand consideration and selected as preferred brand choice more than ‘no exposure’. The low attention effects were obtained without subsequent correct respondent recognition. This shows that brand consideration and choice measures were capable of capturing the low attention effects that the recognition measure failed to do. However, the results for source factors – factors that can moderate the effect of stimuli on the outcome – are more nuanced. Brand familiarity, utilitarian/hedonic products, rational/emotional appeals, and (mis)matching between appeals and brands affect the results in some unexpected ways when they interact with low attention. The thesis makes substantive contributions to the application of attention theory in advertising research, testing methodology for ads that are not actively processed, and design of advertising that can work at low attention. The findings are particularly relevant to address current phenomena such as multitasking, multiscreening, and ad avoidance behaviour. Unless advertisers understand how to make advertising work at low attention, the practice of bombarding consumers with attention-grabbing ads will continue to rise, and ad avoidance will accelerate, which in turn, will put advertising at a greater risk of being wasted.