Social Engineering

The objective of this paper is to report back on an organizational framework, which consisted of human, organization and technology (HOT) dimensions in holistically addressing aspects associated with phishing. Most anti-phishing literature studied either focused on technical controls or education in isolation however; education is core to all aspects in the above-mentioned framework. It is evident, from literature, that little work has been conducted on anti-phishing preventative measures in the context of organizations but rather from a personal user-level. In the framework, the emphasis is placed on the human factors in addressing phishing attacks.

Now days, the dependency on the smartphones and the web applications are elevating to huge extent and thereby the need to work on the security and privacy is there. As per the Annual Reports from prominent platforms of antivirus and malware analytics patterns, the there are millions of attacks per month on the network based environment. With the implementation patterns of advanced tools and technologies including Python based packages and open source distributions, the overall performance can be elevated. The presented research manuscript is presenting the use cases and the implementation patterns for the cyber security in IoT based scenarios with the effectual cases and overall performance with the cumulative analytics. Python integrates more than 2 lac tools and libraries which can be used for scientific, mathematical, engineering and social applications with cyber analytics patterns. All these tools and frameworks can be integrated from the repository of Python software. As the research scholars, academicians and practitioners keep on working with research projects, the Python based tools can be used because of the ease as well as high performance programming.

While there are no new frauds, internet technology provides new opportunities for fraudsters by facilitating volumes of attacks that law enforcement then struggles to address. Moreover, since context can affect how potential victims respond to frauds, crisis context influences how fraudsters design frauds. This article assesses fraudsters’ fraud design strategies during two external crisis events that impacted Australia: The Black Summer Bushfires that occurred from September 2019 to March 2020 and the onset and first year of the COVID-19 pandemic that occurred from January 2020 through January 2021. Targets, during these crises, were more likely to be vulnerable according to Steinmetz’s model victim for social engineering framework. This study shows that, in both crises, fraudsters deployed the social engineering techniques of “authority” and “scarcity,” techniques that are more likely to be successful based solely on initial contact. Fraudsters designed their requests to be easily actioned and crafted their scams to reference very recent events as the external crisis events evolved. Thus, they targeted broad audiences with minimal personal involvement. Furthermore, this study shows that fraudsters, when disseminating their scams via social media outlets, attempted to build “social proof” to expand their potential victim pool to include the marks’ social circles.

The article argues that moder-nity cannot be analyzed as one single entity. Some theorists and historians reduce modernity to political and scientific efforts that are based on discourses of exception, unbounded intervention and some kind of radical planning. In contrast, the author argues that modernity must be analyzed in terms of a lasting friction between norm, normality and exception, that is different modes of problematizing modern societies. From c.1880 to c.1960 there have been very different approaches of tackling social problems and maintaining social order within. Some of these efforts had a totalitarian bias, some had not. The urging question is how to relate them.

Social engineering has become a menace in our virtual world and is an effectual way to attack our systems. The objective of this study is to discuss different existing social engineering techniques and aspects of social engineering. This paper presents the various social engineering techniques and after the comparison among them a conclusion is drawn.

Organizations invest heavily in technical controls for their Information Assurance (IA) infrastructure. These technical controls mitigate and reduce the risk of damage caused by outsider attacks. Most organizations rely on training to mitigate and reduce risk of non-technical attacks such as social engineering. Organizations lump IA training into small modules that personnel typically rush through because the training programs lack enough depth and creativity to keep a trainee engaged. The key to retaining knowledge is making the information memorable. This paper describes common and emerging attack vectors and how to lower and mitigate the associated risks.

In 1949, the Communist Party of China pledged that its approach to health care would differ markedly from that of the former Nationalist government and the "imperialist" West. For the next thirty years, under Mao's leadership, the People's Republic of China made improving the health of the entire population a central pillar of its policy. International health stakeholders came to view it as a statistical outlier in its ability to achieve better health outcomes with limited resources. The People's Health is the first systematic study of health care and medicine in Maoist China. Drawing on hundreds of files from rarely seen party archives and oral testimonies from experts, local cadres, and villagers across China, Zhou Xun shifts her historian's gaze away from official statistics towards the records of local institutions and personal memories that reflect and give voice to lived experiences. Through the everyday interactions of policy makers, national and local administration, and communities, Zhou illustrates the dynamic relationship between politics and health, and between individual lives and the political system. Presenting case studies of internationally acclaimed public health initiatives in the PRC - the anti-schistosomiasis campaign and the Barefoot Doctor program - this book offers the first thorough, politically neutral analysis of their background, execution, and national and international repercussions. Opening a unique window into the lives - and health care - of individuals living under communism, The People's Health examines the links between local interest, cultural sensibilities, resources, and abilities, exploring the often unforeseeable consequences of political planning and social engineering.

In the early 1990s, a centre-right government declared that they would implement a 'system shift' in Sweden, often perceived as a 'model country' in the context of welfare policy discourse. The neoliberal ideology inspiring this shift had already influenced the Social Democratic governments of the mid-1980s, in its attempts to find a way out of the economic problems of the 1970s. It was not until the 1990s however, that an increasing number of social spheres, and a substantial part of the population, started to become seriously affected by the cutbacks in the public sector and the reorganization of the welfare system. This chapter is an introduction to the volume Transformations of the Swedish Welfare State: From Social Engineering to Goverance, which, using an analytical framework based on Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality, contributes unique case studies of the ongoing transformations of the Swedish welfare state, addressing questions such as: What kind of changes have taken place, what were their rationalities and what have the effects been?

From the Publisher:

In this provocative volume, the authors argue that public
education is a central part of American civil religion and, thus, gives us an unquestioning faith in the capacity of education to solve all of our social, economic, and political problems. The book traces the development of America’s faith in public education from before the Civil War up to the present, exploring recent educational developments such as the No Child Left Behind legislation. The authors discuss how this faith in education often makes it difficult for Americans to think realistically about the capacities and limitations of public schooling.

Bringing together history, politics, religion, sociology, and educational theory, this in-depth examination:

Raises fundamental questions about what education can accomplish for the citizens of the United States.
Points out that many supposedly opposing viewpoints on public education actually arise from the same root assumptions.
Exposes the gaps between our pursuit of equity in schools and what we really accomplish with students.
Looks at ways in which education can be organized to serve a diverse population.

In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing is a fraudulent e-mail that attempts to get you to divulge personal data that can then be used for illegitimate purposes. There are many variations on this scheme. It is possible to Phish for other information in additions to usernames and passwords such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers and mothers' maiden names. Phishing presents direct risks through the use of stolen credentials and indirect risk to institutions that conduct business on line through erosion of customer confidence. The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial o...

Today, social engineering techniques are the most common way of committing cybercrimes through the intrusion and infection of computer systems. Cyber security experts use the term “social engineering” to highlight the “human factor" in digitized systems, as social engineering attacks aim at manipulating people to reveal sensitive information. In this paper, we explore how discursive framings of individual versus collective security by cyber security experts redefine roles and responsibilities at the digitalized workplace. We will first show how the rhetorical figure of the deficient user is constructed vis-à-vis notions of (in)security in social engineering discourses. Second, we will investigate the normative tensions that these practices create. To do so, we link work in STS on the politics of deficit construction to recent work in critical security studies (CSS) on securitization and resilience. Empirically, our analysis builds on a multi-sited conference ethnography during three cyber security conferences as well as an extensive document analysis. Our findings suggest a redistribution of institutional responsibility to the individual user through three distinct social engineering storylines – “the oblivious employee”, “speaking code and social”, “fixing human flaws”. Finally, we propose to open up the discourse on social engineering and its inscribed politics of deficit construction and securitization and advocate for companies and policy makers to establish and foster a culture of cyber in/security and corporate responsibility.

Ever since the evolution of banking, there have always been a number of unscrupulous individuals who have tried to breach its defenses in order to gain access to valuables. In the course of time, the physical attacks have become slowly less necessary because banking has steadily gained an online presence. Formerly, it was impossible to authorize a transaction through a mobile phone using the Internet. However, now that is more than possible, it is an extremely popular way of having transactions. As a result, security within financial institutions has shifted focus from physical to virtual measures. The most important component of a good financial IT security infrastructure is security Karishma (2010). In this scenario, the need for ensuring that information is kept confidential, adhering to accepted norms of privacy and making it available to authorized users at the appropriate time, assumes great significance. This is particularly valid for the banking sector where day-to-day opera...

In 1931, an uprising of Greek Cypriots proclaiming “Enosis” (political union of Cyprus [with Greece]) swept the island of Cyprus, then a British colony. Rapidly recovering from the initial shock, British authorities seized the opportunity to abolish representative institutions (long considered an impediment to the sound administration of the island) and impose limitations on freedom of expression. Under Governor Sir Richmond Palmer, an era of authoritarian rule began. The broader aim of British rule in the 1930s was to reshape Cyprus as an ideal polity, whose inhabitants would thrive materially and civically; however, the two preconditions for the establishment of such a polity—the neutralization of local politics and the international isolation of the island—would be rendered unattainable owing to the activity of Greek-Cypriot notables who seized the opportunity of a vacancy in the Throne of the Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus to restructure a political arena with international ramifications.

The failure of ‘progressivism’ to gain traction in the current political landscape can be diagnosed in many ways. The diagnosis pursued here, partly in response to a set of recent debates, is that social democracy and neoliberalism have been artificially divided by the spectre of Marxism. But now that Marxism is no longer a serious geopolitical force (though it remains quite potent in academia), the time is ripe for the two ‘centre-left’ movements to come together by recovering their common Fabian heritage, which stresses the value of social experimentation.

The article examines the emergence of urban countercultures and social movements in Christiania, Copenhagen, and Haga, Gothenburg in the context of the Scandinavian welfare state, from the 1970s to the present. Specifically, it investigates the relations between urban governance, gentrification processes, and social movements in the urban restructuring of Scandinavian cities. While Christiania today remains a space for counterculture, the struggle to save Haga contributed to a gentrification of the district, as it became officially " re-evaluated " and upgraded. The article examines the similarities and differences in the urban movement trajectories in these two cases, highlighting their " place politics of open space. "

... potential malware, and the number of such websites has increased by around 190,0000 since 2008 (see Google's Safe Browsing ... We used the Windows command Ipconfig/displaydns to display the contents of the DNS resolver cache after pinging the domain ... View Within Article. ...

16th century ‘face to face’ persuasion scams adopted to letters, telephone, fax and Internet with the development of new communication technologies. In many of today’s fraud schemes phone numbers play an important role. Various free-to-use on-line tools enable the scammers to hide their identities with fake names, bogus business websites, and VoIP services. These fake businesses or personas can appear more legitimate when connected to a phone number, enabling a faster, more personal contact to the victims. With the typology of a sample probe of 374 emails, commonly used in business proposal scams, the emails were categorized and tested to see how believable the proposals sound once the scammers were contacted by phone. The research can be explored in a 5-channel interactive audio installation called ‘Let’s talk business’ that uncovers which business proposals and scam schemes are commonly used, and how believable the proposals sound once the scammers are called.

Niniejsza praca licencjacka dotyczy analizy działań społecznie odpowiedzialnych na różnych poziomach działania. Autor pracy stawia trzy tezy, które stara się w ciągu całej pracy potwierdzić, są to: nieskuteczność kampanii społecznych oraz brak rozróżniania działań stowarzyszeń od działań z zakresu społecznej odpowiedzialności przedsiębiorstw. Dodatkowo autor poddaje analizie zagadnienie współpracy obu podmiotów i jakie niesie ona szanse oraz zagrożenia.

Autor pracy stara się ukazywać aspekt kampanii na różne sposoby, pierwszym jest ukazanie istoty zmiany postawy odbiorcy, co jest istotą realizacji działań kampanii oraz zestawia ze sobą wiedzę płynącą z psychologii oraz inżynierii społecznej. Następnie wykazuje aspekty definicyjne związane z terminologią słów wchodzących w hasło kampania społeczna oraz dostępnymi, już gotowymi definicjami. Na końcu rozdziału zestawia ze sobą marketing społeczny z marketingiem komercyjnym oraz wykazuje główne różnice między nimi. Następny rozdział skupia się na sposobach przekazu oraz komunikacji realizowanej w ramach działań kampanii społecznych, który łączy się ze zjawiskiem rozwoju technologicznego oraz zmieniającej się struktury społecznej.
Pod koniec rozdziału autor skupia się na przedstawieniu komercyjnych działań społecznych, a mianowicie CSR i CRM, które są formami pomocnymi dla przedsiębiorstwa pod kątem działań antyrynkowych, zwiększających zaufanie oraz przywiązanie klientów do marki. Trzeci a zarazem ostatni rozdział jest przedstawieniem metodologii oraz analizą badań pt. Kampanie społeczne i ich odbiór, które reprezentują stan wiedzy respondentów na temat kampanii oraz ich zdania o nich. Badanie to pozwoliło na stworzenie zestawu wskazówek dla potencjalnych organizatorów działań społecznych odpowiedzialnie. Autor potwierdza słuszność postawionych przez siebie tez.

The Mighty Wurlitzer : How The CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford

This well researched investigation by Hugh Wilford, published in 2008, reveals the extent of the covert front organisation network, which the Central Intelligence Agency ran from its inception during the Cold War.

"... from behind the scenes, the spies exercised complete control over the recipients of their covert largesse. ..."

Dubbed 'The Mighty Wurlitzer', by its architects and critics alike, the intended implication by the Agency would have been one reflected in the above quote. A desired projection into the current time, would be one of an omniscient CIA and it's larger apparatus, manipulating and steering the unwitting American public to its 'merry' tune. ...

Let me sketch out here my vision of the cloistered cornucopia of AD 2100: Management of Planet Earth is entirely rationalized. Nature still nurtures. Artificial intelligence is history. The Machine has met its Master. The rich are enraptured. The poor are happy. The ducks of demography are all in a row. Never more is heard the discouraging word. Welcome to my sanguine vision of our future totalitarian utopia.
~
Climatologist Kent M. McGregor reviewed the entire book favorably in: AAG Review of Books. 2 (2) 2016, pps 84-86. He writes of my chapter: "David Nemeth's chapter is an incredibly idiosyncratic personal monologue in which the future becomes a kind of totalitarian dystopia. Using several parables, he elucidates an unusually positive view of a future wherein increasing happiness abounds and human desires and needs are satisfied. An elitist oligarchy uses a carefully designed code of best practices to manage the earth's resources. The result is a productive socioeconomic society in which the lower class has been dumbed down and now live happily in a kind of fool's paradise. He included a frank discussion and comparison to the social situation in North Korea, where citizens are required to appear to be happy."

Dr. McGregor's synopsis is accurate, but the futuristic society I describe is not a "totalitarian dystopia." It is instead -- and significantly -- a "totalitarian utopia."

A city built in Brazilian midlands by a communist architect in a non-Marxist economy that aspired for social equality had disturbed minds in academia of architecture, sociology, urban planning and other areas for many years. Fascination with utopian plan of a new Brazilian capital had undergone several phases of radically shifting opinions, from the dark description as “the backside of the moon” to positive appraisal of being “more than modern”. And while a wide pool of literature exists analyzing various implications of Plano Piloto this paper will primarily focus on the spatial performance and social implications of superquadras. Superquadras became a new residential typology in Brasilia, a very particular way of spatial organization that was striving to craft new ‘above-modern’ experience of dwelling while forming urban fabric of unique quality. Moreover, as large residential neighborhoods were to account for all housing in the new capital, superquadras were supposed to play primary role in upbringing of new members of Brazilian society. Thus, superquadras become an intriguing point of reference, according to which first, new spatial effects of ideal modernist urban dwelling complex can be evaluated and second, social aspirations embedded in superquadras can be assessed within structural challenges faced by new Brazilian capital.

Social engineering has become a menace in our virtual world and is an effectual way to attack our systems. The objective of this study is to discuss different existing social engineering techniques and aspects of social engineering. This paper presents the various social engineering techniques and after the comparison among them a conclusion is drawn.

This article considers selective transfers of knowledge between Swedish and German architects and urban planners from the early 1930s to the mid-1940s. It contextualizes such transfers with regard to transnational practices of social engineering in this period. By analysing mutual observations by protagonists working in institutions such as the DAF Reichsheimstättenamt or the Swedish state commission on housing, Bostadssociala utredningen, it argues that transfers were motivated by a shared conviction that architecture and city planning could contribute to an ‘ordering’ of society. Experts in both countries were committed to the ideal of an organic community, which, to them, appeared to be threatened by modern mass society, but could be restored by spatial interventions based on objective, scientific knowledge. Due to this overarching frame of reference, architectural concepts could easily be cleared of their respective ideological context, allowing for cross-border communication. Transnational planning paradigms such as the ‘neighbourhood unit’ could be made to conform with political projects as different as the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ in Nazi Germany and the ‘People’s Home’ (folkhemmet) in Social Democratic Sweden.

The interactive human components of serious cybersecurity breaches continue to be a problem for every organization. Helping people identify social engineering attempts over the phone will be cheaper and more effective than yet another technological implementation. At minimum it will add an important and necessary layer to defense in depth.
Forensic linguistics is the study of language as evidence for the law. It is a relatively new field and has not previously been applied to cybersecurity. Linguistic analysis uncovers several features of language interaction in a limited data set (recorded IRS phone scammers) that begin to answer how forensic linguistics could assist in cybersecurity defense.
This paper will briefly introduce and explain polar tag questions, topic control, question deferral, and irregular narrative constructions in IRS scam phone calls, and offer some starting points for identifying such linguistic properties during the course of a phone call to help improve defense at the human level.

Howard Gruber, a founder member of Psychologists for Social Action, reviewed the dissertation. His review, dated May 7, 1978, as Parkovnick (2015) points out, "... is worth quoting in full, as it captures the very essence of the dissertation":
“This is an effective dissertation and could become an important book. I began reading it very favorably disposed to it. Then I got more and more riled up, made many hostile notes. By the end I found myself almost won over, certainly illuminated. Francks [Gruber’s spelling] has a style that gets under your skin and stays there. This is a good thing and should not get lost in the process of expansion, rewriting, and editing. It will take some work to make it a persuasive book to a less sympathetic reader, and to reduce its present excessive vulnerability to academic criticism. Its very sweep opens many avenues to criticism, crit. of a kind that detracts the reader and potential reader from the central ideas. But all this can be worked out. As an academic type, I often find myself cringing, wanting things toned down. But by the time I finished, I felt that the direction of the change should be to strengthen the tone of the book, to make its central, disturbing message more apparent, bring it more up front.”  Gruber, H. (1978). Review of A history of American social psychology up to the Second World War by Peter Francks [Gruber’s spelling] for Ablex Publishing Corporation, May 7.

Readers should also look at: https://www.academia.edu/60033912/The_Psychology_of_Participation_Revisited_1984_2021

The paper aims to outline the transformation of the institutional system  of what the communist official discourse called the “bourgeois justice” into the “people's justice”, as well as the cadres policy accompanying this transformation in early postwar Romania.

This article summarizes my explorations of the ideology of the Book of Lord Shang 商君書. In my eyes, this text presents the boldest ever attempt to engineer society according to the ruler’s wishes. The authors (a Qin 秦 statesman Shang Yang 商鞅 [d. 338 BCE] and his followers) believe that human beings are invariably motivated by the desire to enhance their economic and social status. This desire can be utilized to direct the subjects to do whatever the state considers desirable, which, in the case of Shang Yang referred to the mutually related tasks of agriculture and warfare. People should be motivated by a skillful application of negative (merciless punishments) and positive (ranks of merit and the adjacent economic, social, legal, and sumptuary privileges) incentives. The real system of ranks of merits instituted by Shang Yang stands at the heart of this highly successful (albeit morally deplorable) attempt to turn everybody into a tiller and a soldier. The authors’ insistence that the universally applied fair, transparent, and exclusive norms of socioeconomic advancement can motivate the population to do whatever the state desires merit attention beyond the specific case of the state of Qin and may be relevant in certain political circumstances even in our days.

The aim of this research was to develop a critical understanding of how social engineering has developed, its uses within penetration testing approach as part of a security audit and to ascertain how people can reduce their risk of social engineering threats. As technology is rapidly increasing and developing, a supplementary number of people are becoming more dependent on this technology, hackers are aware of these statistics and will, therefore, expand their attack range across this technology exploiting as much as they can to gain the information they require.

Cybercrime represents a significant threat for the 21st century, a threat that traditional methods of policing cannot adequately manage. Consequently, new ways of policing utilising specialised teams have been implemented to address cybercrime proactively. One method of policing that has been relatively unexplored within academic literature is covert online investigations, wherein law enforcement creates false identities to interact with offenders from. Existing research has not comprehensively explored what tactics, techniques, and procedures law enforcement use when conducting these investigations. Accordingly, selection and training of employees presents unique challenges. Therefore, this study aims to provide a detailed evaluation of what skills are needed by law enforcement. This information can then inform future training and selection. This study examines in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight New Zealand Police investigators using Applied Cognitive Task Analysis. Dat...

Social-Engineering ist eine Angriffsstrategie, die nicht die Technik als Opfer auserkorenhat. Stattdessen wird hier viel lieber – und vor allem effizienter – der Mensch, bzw.sein Verhalten angegriffen. Dieser Artikel zeigt, wie Social-Engineering funktioniert underklärt die zugrundeliegenden Tricks anhand sozialpsychologischer Studien und Experimente.Außerdem werden Beispiele, Warnsignale und Gegenmaßnahmen vorgestellt.Er richtet sich an Sicherheitsverantwortliche und Systemadministratoren, die verstehenwollen, wie Social-Engineering funktioniert und dieses Wissen in ihre Sicherheitsmaßnahmenintegrieren wollen.

I have discussed the work of public relations guru Edward Bernays before. I specifically focused on his 1928 book "Propaganda", in which he laid out his initial ideas in the formation of public attitudes, facilitated by a technocratic elite of manipulation experts. It was in this work that Bernays coined the term "public relations", which drove the perception of his profession away from the negative connotations of the word "propaganda", and its associations with the German effort in the First World War.

He laid out the complex and overlapping relationship between psychology, democracy and corporations, in the vein of a manifesto.

His earlier work of 1923, "Crystallizing Public Opinion", was an attempt to give the field of public relations a more scientific credence. The first word of the title could be associated with a process usually affiliated with chemistry and the older, more arcane art of alchemy.  It is in this mystical style that Bernays engaged in his treatise.

The publication of the book was preceded by Walter Lippman's heavy tome of 1922, "Public Opinion", released the year before. Bernays and Lippmann served together on the U.S. Committee on Public Information.  Bernays is reported in Stuart Evan's introduction to have wanted to condense and refine Lippman's criticism of functional democracy more comprehensively, and in a more condensed format fit for wider public consumption.

Bernays' work appears to have taken the work of Gustave Le Bon as a source of inspiration, and while many other writers and thinkers are referenced throughout the book, sadly there is no attribution or citing of Le Bon's work on mass psychology.

Bernays' prowess as a social engineer is now well known since his death in 1995, largely thanks to popular exposure of his work in Adam Curtis' four part documentary series of 2002 "The Century Of Self". This notoriety was not always so. It was his hidden hand that was behind putting public spin on such events as a coup in Guatemala in 1954, at the behest of the United Fruit Company, as well as his infamous "torches of freedom" publicity stunt of 1929, normalising the social acceptance of women smokers at the behest of the American Tobacco Company. He also played a huge part in popularising the work of his double uncle Sigmund Freud on the North American continent, selling the ideas of Freudian psychoanalysis like a brand. It was not until a time towards the end of his life when the American public became aware of his influence on shaping many aspects of their lives, and even today he is not exactly a household name. One might say that this is the first rule of a good publicist though; the public should be aware of your client or product, not the person with all the power who is selling the idea to you from behind the scenes.

Bernays and his techniques of crystallizing public opinion have now become the embodiment of a system of governance that prescribes its sanctioned reality onto the mass mind. At no point in history has this idea become more pronounced or relevant than now. ...

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2017/01/crystallizing-public-opinion-by-edward.html

ABSTRACT. Working out  reliable scientific – not ideologically-biased -  model of social evolution, defining the criteria for Natural Selection any any level of  complexity or Universal Darwinism, and  sociobiology theoretical  rethinking therefore

The martial arts industry is experiencing immense growth, creating a highly competitive environment where challenges in attracting and retaining customers cause substantial losses and an inability to compete effectively. Customer memberships are the primary revenue source for fitness firms. Understanding buyer motivation is essential for marketing message creation and product development to attract and retain customers. The purpose of this qualitative, exploratory, single-case study was to investigate parent purchase motivation for children's martial arts classes and to document internal buying motives in order to address the problem of acquiring and retaining customers in the commercialized martial arts industry. The study sample consisted of seven parents, two instructors, and two owners. The data collection methods were semistructured interviews comprising open-ended questions. Interviews were analyzed using NVivo® qualitative analysis software to code and analyze themes. The semistructured interviews identified 10 themes. Three new themes emerged—ease of participation, alternative to team sports, and convenience. Study findings contribute to the theory of planned behavior and theories used to predict purchase behavior. Recommendations for practice include refinements of product offerings and marketing messages and the creation of a new market segment, resulting in customer alignment and increased ability to attract and retain customers. Future research is recommended to replicate this study in other geographies, to use the data gathered in this study to seed qualitative research studies, and to weigh the relative influence of the three types of behaviors influencing intention in the theory of planned behavior.