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Faculty of Commerce
and tourism marketing. At a postgraduate level research
is encouraged at the Honours, Master’s and Doctoral
levels. The Marketing Section continues to engage key
questions in both the scholarly and applied domains
of marketing. Justin Beneke, Elsamari Botha and Dr
Mignon Reyneke published papers in accredited journals
and presented papers at peer reviewed conferences.
Research conducted in the Section covers a wide
spectrum of issues: Justin focused on consumer brand
value, loyalty, and digital media marketing. These
include local publications in the South African Journal
of Business Management, and Acta Commercii, as well
as international publications in noteworthy outlets such
as the Journal of Product and Brand Management. In
a collection of journal articles and conference papers
Elsamari and Mignon looked at both the online and
traditional market spaces to asked questions about
the effects of predictors such as online presence,
emotion, purchase intention and their relationships
with dependent variables such as trust formation, viral
marketing, product types and high net worth markets.
Gert obtained his PhD for a thesis that addresses the
issues of network competence and network capability in
business-to-business markets for the first time in South
Africa. He goes on to confirm the mediation power of
trust and commitment in the quality-loyalty-satisfaction
causal chain within buyer-supplier dyads. The Marketing
Section also saw an exponential growth in its post
graduate research activity and noteworthy Masters’ topic
includes models to consider complex time perspectives
and spontaneous infection theory in social networks. The
UCT Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing (Director:
Emeritus Professor John Simpson) is aligned with the
Marketing Section.
The main purpose of the UCT Unilever Institute of
Strategic Marketing is to develop marketing theory
and information for the uniquely South African market
place. This has become a critical source of marketing
intelligence for South African marketers and is widely
used by corporates, market research houses, advertising
agencies and academics. 2012 was an exceptional year for
the institute and their unique analysis of buying behaviour
in emerging black consumer markets has spurred a new
conceptualisation of the dynamic nature of these markets.
Hence, major corporations across South Africa are keen to
engage John Simpson, Martin Neethling and Paul Egan
on these insights.
The Professional Communication Unit (Head of Unit: Dr
Terri Grant) has the responsibility for teaching career-
based communication practices across the faculty at
both under- and postgraduate level. The PCU also offers
its services to other faculties and institutions in both the
public and private sector. Since 2010, when the local
actuarial science qualification was introduced locally
under the auspices of the Actuarial Society of South
Africa (ASSA), the PCU has played a national role in
examining the professional communication exemption
examination and providing curriculum advice. Dr Terri
Grant graduated with a PhD at the end of 2012.
Her PhD entitled, Scenario Pedagogy: a negotiated,
multimodal approach to developing professional
communication practices in higher education, gave
rise to two conference papers during 2012. The first,
‘Developing sustainable professional communication
practices through Scenario Pedagogy‚ a multimodal
and collaborative approach to teaching and learning
in the commerce domain’, was presented at the
Association of Business Communication conference in
the Netherlands during May. The second, ‘Sustainable
Business practices for Sustainable Futures: Professional
Communication Pedagogy in HE’, a joint paper, was
co-presented with colleague, Mr Gao Nodoba, at
the annual HELTASA conference in November 2012
in Stellenbosch. Two journal articles based on PhD
chapters have been submitted. One is under review;
another, ‘Higher education drafting practices in
professional communication and identity formation’,
has been accepted for publication in the Journal of
Modern Education Review, an international journal.
The Section of Applied Management (Head of Section:
Ms Alison Meadows) is responsible for core management
subjects on the Business Science degree, as well as
presenting four postgraduate diplomas in Management
(specialising in Tourism Management, Sport Management,
Marketing and Entrepreneurship). The Section produces
unique research within these fields of study. Dr David
Priilaid’s research continues to focus on cue-conditioning
where the key line of enquiry is how people consume
cues like price and brand – and how through this style of
consumption, given time and experience, people become
increasingly conditioned by these cues. Dr Richard George
wrote several journal articles on tourism crime-safety,
specifically on tourists' perceptions of Table Mountain
National Park and the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The UCT
Development Unit for New Enterprise (DUNE) is also
aligned with the Section of Applied Management.
The UCT Development Unit for New Enterprise (DUNE)
in collaboration with the Manufacturing, Engineering
and Related Services SETA (MerSETA) is busy finalising
the scoping and programme development of a Masters
Programme in Technology-Based Entrepreneurship. To this
end, DUNE and MerSETA have signed a Strategic Alliance
Agreement which sees MerSETA committing R1.2 million,
over 15 months, towards the costs of a detailed scoping,
budgeting and programme development process which will
determine the steps and resources needed to implement