4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions
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Item Clover SA's brand heritage and consumers' price sensitivity and purchase intentions(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Goerge, Barbara Refilwe; Anning-Dorson, ThomasThe South African market environment is highly competitive and is characterised by inequality, growing unemployment and rising inflation. The degree of disparity in South Africa’s consumer environment may be the most noticeable aspect as it has one of the highest per-capita expenditure Gini coefficients in the world making it one of the most unequal countries on the planet. Despite this, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) rate continues to climb by 3.1% in 2021 indicating that despite the prevailing economic and socio-economic issues, the country is seeing a higher flow of revenue and expenditure on goods and services. Consumers are also becoming bombarded with brand communication which increases the level of competition amongst options available to consumers. This makes understanding consumer and shopper behaviour important, more so in terms of the factors that drive purchase intent which is paramount for the success of a brand. In light of this, the research sought to delve into brand heritage and what purpose it serves in in today’s ever-changing economy. Underpinning the research, South Africa premium dairy and milk heritage brand, Clover, was used. With its heritage rooted in South Africa for over 100 years, the intention is to establish whether indeed brand heritage plays a role in purchase intentions for this premium product. Drawing on a comprehensive literature review, the study endeavoured to investigate how brand heritage serves as a significant signalling mechanism for consumers by conveying important information about the quality, consistency and pricing of the brand. This is significant as it helps managers understand the important variables impacting customer purchasing behaviours in South African segment and how to successfully use heritage brands in this market. By employing convenience sampling through a quantitative research methodology, 450 online surveys response were collected and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to validate the measurements used. Of the six hypotheses, five were supported by the data, however also indicating that price sensitivity does not moderate the relationship between brand heritage and purchase intention. The findings and conclusions provide implications for marketing professionals in the product retail space and further provide suggested areas for future research. It provides actionable recommendations marketers can use when looking to optimise their brand strategies in a competitive marketplace.Item Diasporic Landscape: A Geosemiotic Analysis of Greekness in Johannesburg(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Vratsanos, Alyssa Vida Castrillon; Baro, GillesAfter a number of waves of immigration of Greeks from Greece, Cyprus, and the established Greek diaspora in Egypt, South Africa is home to a sizable Greek community – concentrated in Johannesburg – that has established its own cultural identity in the country and left indelible traces of Greekness in the semiotic landscape of the city. In this dissertation, I explore the discursive, multimodal processes employed to inscribe Greekness – the quality of being of Greek heritage – in the city of Johannesburg. The overarching aim of this study was to analyse how members of the Greek diaspora in Johannesburg negotiate and perform their Greek identity and how Greekness is inscribed in various spaces in the city. In particular, it aimed to answer the following research questions: (i) How are certain spaces in the city of Johannesburg materially constructed as Greek spaces?; (ii) How is Greekness semiotically constructed?; and (iii) How is this constructed Greekness experienced by social actors, in the context of a European diasporic community in Johannesburg, a city in the Global South?. Empirically, this linguistic/semiotic landscape study made use of multimodal data, in the form of ethnographic field notes, photographs of signs, interviews, and newspaper articles, which were analysed within Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) geosemiotics framework. Previous works by McDuling (2014) and McDuling and Barnes (2012) have examined the Greek diaspora in Johannesburg from a sociolinguistic perspective, with a focus on language shift and maintenance. This study differs significantly in approach, shifting the focus from language use to an analysis of the signs used to assert and inscribe Greekness in Johannesburg, thereby drawing this subject matter into a linguistic landscape study of the diaspora In the empirical chapters of the dissertation, I used geosemiotics as a methodological toolkit to analyse several themes that arose from my data. First, I analysed the role food plays in inscribing Greekness in Johannesburg through an analysis of the Greek foodscapes in the city, such as Greek restaurants and supermarkets, as well as the food-centric elements used in other Greek spaces to communicate Greekness. I then introduced the concept of syncretism as a term that can be applied in a semiotic sense, to describe the ways in which signs and symbols from various, sometimes incompatible, aspects of Greek history and identity are deliberately displayed side-by-side in a space and operate in aggregate to communicate homogeneous and ‘authentic’ Greekness. Finally, I took a ‘semiotic approach’ (Van Leeuwen, 2001) to authenticity and analysed how authenticity in the Greek diaspora is semiotically constructed both visually and aurally in Greek spaces in Johannesburg. This study argues that the Greek diaspora in Johannesburg seeks to construct spaces in the city as recognisably and undeniably Greek, deliberately distinguishing themselves from the rest of the city, including other South Africans and other diasporas, by using a constellation of multimodal and multisensorial signs to convey a sense of homogeneous Greekness. The types of signs that are used to inscribe Greekness are all linked to the desirability – and by extension superiority – of Greek culture, heritage, and history. Thus, the ways in which Greekness is inscribed by the diaspora in Johannesburg rely on a process of self-exoticism (cf. Iwabuchi, 1994).