Thriving in a New World Economy

Contemporary textbooks on sales management acknowledge that the content and task of the sales function varies according to the circumstances, from a simple order taker to the creative selling of intangibles. However, the role of sales in the literature tends to be about the content of the formal sales function in established businesses where the product or service is given and ready to be sold. The role of sales is described as a function that contributes to conceiving, producing, and delivering customer value by understanding customers’ and/or sellers’ needs and fulfilling them with the bundle of goods and services fitting those needs (Weitz & Bradford, 1999). When new products/services are developed, the role of sales is said to be to identify customers’ needs and wants, often in collaboration with the marketing function (Ernst, Hoyer, & Rübsaamen, 2010). At its broadest the scope of the sales function is defined as developing and managing customer relationships (Anderson, 1996; Jackson et al., 1994; Wotruba, 1996).

Franchising plays a major role in the U.S. economy by providing growth and jobs. The International Franchise Association reported in 2009, the franchising sector was accountable for 9.5 million jobs and provided nearly $845 billion of economic output to the U.S. economy. Furthermore, for every new franchise business an estimated 20.6 either direct or indirect jobs are created and an additional $2.2 million output is achieved (Chabowski, Hult, and Mena 2011). The International Franchise Association also reported that there has been a 15 percent increase of franchising establishments in a 9 year period (2001 – 2009) from 767,483 to 883,292. Given these financial indicators, franchising has a major impact on the U.S. economy.

The value of trust plays a critical role in social and economic exchanges (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Butler, 1991; Giffin, 1967; Kumar, Scheer & Steenkamp, 1995; Morgan, 1994). Trust also has a significant impact on e-commerce activity (Bhattacherjee, 2002; Gefen, 2000; Green & Pearson 2011; Kassim, & Abdullah, 2008; McKnight & Chervany 2001; Tan & Theon, 2003). Furthermore, trust levels and trust development processes have been shown to vary cross-nationally (Doney, Cannon, & Mullen, 1998; Gefen & Heart, 2006), and affect differences in e-commerce between nations (Greenberg, Wong-On-Wing, & Lui, 2008; Kim, 2008; Mahmood, Bagchi & Ford, 2004; Schumann, Von Wangenheim, Stringfellow, et al., 2010). However, cross-cultural studies of the relationship between trust and e-commerce activity have only been conducted at the national level with no studies to date investigating the relationship of trust to e-commerce activity among within-nation regions. This gap in the literature is troublesome given that a number of scholars have demonstrated that within-nation regional differences are a key area in need of further research (Fukuyama, 1995; Lenartowicz & Roth, 2001; Locke, 1995; Peterson & Smith 2008; Stelzl & Seligman, 2009). Therefore, the role that trust plays in e-commerce activity among withinnation regions should be further investigated. This paper explores within-nation regional differences in e-commerce activity and investigates whether trust is significantly related to regional e-commerce activity.

Organisations have to invest in the relationship with their customers before transactions can take place that generate revenue. This is particularly true in service relationships and presents a challenge for salespeople – how to create the right sort of trusting connection that can lead to a benecial exchange relationship. Art specialists can be considered to be the sales personnel of ne arts auction houses (Thornton, 2008). Their roles include providing expert information, oering advice, acting as a seller and intermediary, relationship cultivation and being the main point of contact for customers. This study will consider how to build and maintain long-term service relationships from the salesperson’s perspective. Six ne arts auction houses have participated in the study (from 6 countries including the US). They are leading businesses in their own markets, have an international customer base and maintain oices in dierent cities within their territory. Exploratory semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 specialists from these auction houses (i.e. three per organisation). The data was analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Trust is commonly acknowledged to be one of the key variables in establishing customer relationships (Swan, Bowers and Richardson, 1999). The vast majority of specialists deem mutual trust to be not only important, but essential, for their connection to and dealings with their customers. When discussing the elements of trustworthiness, most respondents identied ‘competence’ rst. Competence does not only denote a specic set of skills, but also technical and market knowledge (Selnes, 1998). The second aspect of a specialist’s perceived trustworthiness can be categorised as ‘honesty’. According to the specialists, honesty means delivering on promises, transparent processes, providing reliable provenance information, guidance and advice. A third antecedent identied may be labelled ‘benevolence’ and comprises a trustee’s perceived benign attitude towards the trustor, i.e. the willingness to do them good without extrinsic rewards (Sirdeshmukh, Singh and Sabol, 2002). Trust evolves in situations marked by vulnerability and uncertainty in which an individual’s state of incomplete knowledge about another actor’s behaviour requires them to trust that person (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt and Camerer, 1998). Thus, customers have to be convinced that the specialist has their best interests at heart and cares for their success in the auction sale. The evidence suggested that ‘similarity’ or a feeling of t is important for a salesperson’s perceived trustworthiness. Similarity is described as familiar or shared attitudes demonstrated by the actors, which allows them to predict and understand the other’s intentions and/or behaviour (Johnson and Grayson, 2005). Mayer

et al

. (1995) point out that although the characteristics of trust are intertwined, the degree to which they are present in a trustee and observed by a trustor can vary. When analysing the data related to a specialist’s trustworthiness, it became apparent that competence has the highest priority for customers, followed by honesty, benevolence and similarity.

It was found that trust in the other party, time and repeated interactions were the most common themes that emerged from the analysis. Taking time to build the relationship can be linked to the series of individual transactions, or ‘acts’ that build into episodes and nally sequences as outlined by Holmlund (2008). Nevertheless, Ravald and Grönroos (1996) identied customers usually evaluate the relationship as a whole rather than the individual oerings or exchange episodes. One issue highlighted by several respondents is the fragility of trust, as it can also be damaged or destroyed within a few moments. Asked how trust aects their interaction with a customer, the large majority of specialists explained that the latter shares information about the object, their motives, expectations and preferences more readily in a trusting relationship, leading to the development of greater customer value.

Salespeople have to be aware that trust develops over time and across all interrelated stages of their interaction. It is not suicient for the latter to display the identied antecedents only during the initial encounters and then rely on this trustworthy impression for the remainder of their connection. This research shows that sustained interpersonal trust impacts positively on building long-term relationships, and is developed over the course of the intertwined interaction levels of acts episodes and sequences. The wealth of experience, information and understanding regarding the customer’s motives and preferences incrementally increases strengthening the relationship, resulting in greater relationship quality.

The advent of the Internet has altered the role of the business-to-consumer salesperson in persuading the multichannel customer (MCC) to make a purchase. The literature is scant regarding in-person selling techniques to reach the MCC. This paper extends the examination of selling high-technology products to the MCC and develops a conceptual sales model incorporating bounded rationality, signals, and information asymmetries purchase intention and actual purchase. The model emphasizes the MCC’s satisficing purchase intention, acknowledges perceived information asymmetries for both parties, and highlights the salesperson’s influence on the sales outcome for the purchase of a high-tech product through signaling.

In business to business (B2B) markets the firms pricing strategy can either help or hinder the salesperson in growing sales. Annually, the sales force is assigned strategic revenue generating goals. Sales force control systems, of which sales force compensation is a part, are established for the purpose of directing and evaluating individual salesperson behavior and progress towards those goals. Pricing strategies and goals are created as a function of marketing in response to the dynamic environment which includes changes in customer demand and competitor strategies. As a result of divergent functional orientations, marketing is product or service focused and sales is customer focused, the goals and strategies created may also be incongruent. The purpose of this research is to use expectancy theory to examine how aligned and misaligned goals of the pricing and sales force compensation strategies shape B2B salesperson behavior.

This study designs and conducts a laboratory experiment that replicates the experimental study of Weber and Camerer (2003). In the replication, however, this study includes a more realistic aspect of real-world strategic changes, the different employee cultural compositions within the post-change groups. The findings confirm that cultural conflicts are one of the major reasons for post-change performance deterioration. This study also finds that cultural dominance is present in the post-change group and affects the post-change performance when the group includes a different composition of salespersons from the pre-change groups. The managerial implications are provided to help build a strategy for successful strategic changes to manage the post-change integration process, because dominating post-change group structures are common in the real world. This study also investigates the learning process within the experimental setting and finds that the development of collaborative learning contributes to competitive knowledge development, which in turn contributes to organizational performance.

The challenges imposed by developing and emerging markets in marketing strategy formulation have long been the concern of marketing scholars (Kotler 2000; Schultz 2006), Some countries in the region, such as Ghana, are making strides toward more democratic governance (Whitfield 2005), While the Ghanaian marketplace is a potentially fruitful research domain it is also no doubt challenging. While review of the extant literature reveals an increasing interest in the adoption of market orientation concepts for managerial application in sub-Saharan African market settings, the small business domain appears overlooked. To that end, the purpose of this paper is to assess the patterns of market orientation within the small business sector in rural Ghana and thus makes a contribution to the marketing literature.

The researchers conducted a pilot study involving covert observation techniques (see Stafford and Stafford 1993; Gill and Johnson 1997; Omar 1997) and face-to-face interviews, with a convenience sample of ten small businesses. The observation involved monitoring the activities of small businesses including customer care/service, pricing tactics, distribution, marketing communications, and product/service quality (see also Appiah-Adu 1998), The data were transcribed and content coded to reveal the underlying themes (Goodwin et al. 1997), Through the interview and observations, it appears customer care is a top priority. Rural small businesses in Ghana are also employee-oriented. While no formal research is conducted in these small businesses, they do continually solicit feedback, provide value and anticipate needs, which underlies the philosophy of market orientation, according to Gray and Hooley (2002).

Recent global events have made it clear that the well-being of developed economies is intricately connected with the wellbeing of the citizens from the rest of the world, especially emerging and underdeveloped economies. Developed economies must do more to enhance the well-being of the emerging and underdeveloped economies, than just offer charity, else, the growth of developed economies will be exploitative and unsustainable. However, emerging and underdeveloped economies (EUDEs) differ from developed economies on several dimensions, e.g., social, cultural, economic, legal and regulatory environment; knowledge bases as well as absorptive capacity; and the number and quality of key economic player (Arikan 2010; Burgess and Steenkamp 2006; Cohen and Levinthal 1990; Paswan and Trang 2012). These economies also suffer from an unfavorable gap in the demand and supply of resources such as basic needs related resources, skilled human resource, and knowledge resources. This is where developed economies can help, not by providing charity, but by providing a catalyst which empowers the citizens to help themselves. Based on the literature on entrepreneurship in emerging economies (Paswan and Trang 2012), we propose that entrepreneurship at the grass roots level in the form of small and medium private enterprises may be the answer, and franchising could be the catalysts to jump start this process by providing the right knowledge (which does not necessarily mean opening more McDonalds or KFCs in emerging economies).

Global expansion is virtually an imperative for family businesses and is no longer avoidable as a strategic choice. Globalization strategies are far from the norm, however, among small and medium size family enterprises. This article reviews the primary opportunities and drivers for globalization, highlights the distinct characteristics of family businesses that may enhance or constrain global expansion, and provides a framework for strategically evaluating business capabilities and global market opportunities.

The ten principles of cowboy ethics, as developed by James Owen (2004), have gained attention and application, particularly in Western U.S. states, in recent years, as evidenced by their adoption by both business and government entities. This paper examines Owen’s principles for parallels to commonly used ethical frameworks drawn from moral philosophy. A sample of students enrolled in a Marketing Ethics class at a Western U.S. university completed an open-ended survey matching ethical frameworks to the cowboy ethics principles. Though levels of agreement were not particularly high, parallels were most often drawn between cowboy ethics principles and Utilitarianism, the Golden Rule, the Professional Ethic, and the TV Test or Open Forum Rule. Further research of a more structured nature may help to identify clearer roots for the cowboy ethics principles.

Consumption and in particular sustainable consumption behaviour is expounded to be very unpredictable in literature. Most of the behavioural studies and models have not been able to predict consumer actions in different contexts and situations. The reason could be the fact that consumption is much more than just a social and economic process of buying goods, it is a mean of forming and expressing identity, a mean of articulating the characteristics of human mind that have developed due to cultural and societal influences. In this research, we are trying to explain consumption pattern by linking them to the personal values and beliefs of individuals. Personal values have been found to be an important factor in determining the type of product an individual would buy.

Previous research has shown that men and women, within the family unit, have unequal power and, hence, ability to change the thoughts and/or actions of each other (Olson and Cromwell, 1975). Consequently, the man has greater purposeful influence over his spouse and, therefore, ability to exert his decisions (Kranichfeld, 1987). Changes to women’s economic status, including access to education, work, etc. has resulted in challenges to prior beliefs about the role and purchase influence of each family member (Commuri and Gentry, 2002; Xia et al. 2006). Consequently, increased women’s power within the family unit has enabled them to challenge the family status quo resulting in renegotiating consumption decisions and expenditure patterns within the family (Lee and Beatty, 2002). This renegotiating may be resisted by the husband, leading to conflict and the wife exerting resistance through various acts of consumption.

While existing literature talks about the choice between the use of private or public transportation and refers to the economics of transportation like travel times and reliability as well as environmental concerns (See for example VanVugt, Van Lange and Meertens 1996), there is no comprehensive empirical analysis about the drivers of a consumer’s behavioral intention to use mass transit systems. The context of this study is to explore the consumer’s intention to use of mass transportation systems, as compared to individual transport, using the context of mass rail transit.

Research on the image of destinations began in the early 1970s with Gunn’s work in 1972 on how destination image is formed and Hunt’s work in 1975 on how destination image is measured which since then and after destination image today remains one of the prevalent topics among researchers (Stepchenkova and Morrison 2008; Gallarza et al. 2002; Pike, 2002). While the topic of destination image is popular among authors in human science disciplines, it is difficult to define what a ‘destination image’ exactly is, as this term has been defined and used differently in a variety of contexts and disciplines (Gallarza et al., 2002; Pearce, 1998; Echtner and Ritchie, 1991).

Destination image is frequently described as simply impressions of a place of perceptions of an area. Hunt (1971) defined image as perception held by potential visitors about an area. Um and Crompton (1990) defined it as a gestalt of holistic construct. A more integrative definition was given by Echtner and Ritchie (1991) as the sum of beliefs, ideas and impressions that a person has of a destination (Tasci and Cartner 2007). However, there is no clear definition of destination image regardless of the papers and each author looked into the topic from some aspects and from different disciplines.

The universally acknowledged importance of destination image has led to a substantial body of research on this topic. Not only in the field of tourism, but also in several other disciplines, including geography, environmental planning, psychology and marketing has been carried out significantly (Echtner and Ritchie 1991) from different approaches and perspectives (Gallarza et al. 2002). All the authors believed that they can promote the destinations through destination images but don’t really explore the way that how people construct the image of places over time. Then the marketing perspective could be another good way to study the topic from a consumer behavior field.

This paper recapitulates the history of destination image from the early year into different stages. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of destination image research based on a combination from tourism, marketing and consumer perspective. In order to provide a more comprehensive theoretical framework of destination image, a conceptual model from tourism and marketing perspective will be developed based on previous literature. In doing so, this paper provide an integrative review of the existing literature and suggest a conceptual model, and propose some ways that such an understanding of destination image from these new approaches can be implemented into researches and policy decisions.

In the pre-internet era destination marketing organizations (DMOs) were effective and influential in media content placement and in the coordination of destination positioning initiatives, but since the internet arrived the centralized control over destination information dissemination is almost impossible (Grovers and Go 2003). Therefore, it is necessary to research and redefine the role of internet and ICT in shaping destination image. The marketing and consumer behavior researchers should go so far as to highlight the new consumer of the postmodern era. The world is more complex and filled with a variety of consumer who are ontologically disparate and who polysemically read the world around them in exceptionally nuanced and oftentimes orthogonal ways (Batat 2011). Then a conceptual framework regarding destination image should be develop in order to indicate a new perspective of postmodern research in marketing and consumer behavior. A conceptual framework that is useful in consumer research and can be used in managerial implications.

In order to build and sustain global brands, many organizations have moved beyond the bounds of traditional business thinking to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach to innovation. Marketing experts have recognized for some time that the field incorporates theory and practice from many disciplines other than the subjects taught in a traditional business school, for example: psychology, sociology, communication, semiotics, anthropology, design, urban geography, visual analytics, etc. and the relatively recent addition of behavioral economics. However, in the context of today’s emerging global network economy, the proliferation of participatory online social platforms, and the open source movement, there is also a drive towards attaining an even deeper understanding of how brands can retain their essence while at the same time delivering contextual relevance to (and meaningful interaction with) customers around the world (Do, 2009). In this brief paper, the potential of using aspects of archetypal psychology (from the writings of C.G. Jung) and phronesis, a concept put forward by Aristotle, may produce a methodology that leads to enhanced communication across cultures.

Social-media marketing is growing rapidly. Social media tools such as blogs, wikis and networks like Facebook and Twitter are quite common in the business-to-consumer context. However the adoption of social media in business-to-business companies is still in an early stage due to privacy, security and content ownership concerns. The aim of our paper is to investigate the current use of social media tools in B2B companies and to analyze potentials and challenges of social media activities in the capital goods industry. We aim to develop managerial implications for B2B companies of how to implement social media activities and how to use social networks effectively for communication and customer retention.

With the popularization of social media, companies have had to change their communication strategies and approach to attract customers. Social media are web-based media and mobile technologies for social interaction and communication, and it can include social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn), micro-blogs (Twitter, Tumblr), blogs, wikis, video sharing sites (YouTube), among others. Social media has a powerful advantage in letting users contribute and share information and ideas, in different ways that were never achieved before with traditional media. In other words, it presents a wide range of new sources of online information that are created, developed, shared, and commented on by consumers in order to know and learn about products, services, issues, and brands (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2004). Therefore, social media is an excellent tool for companies to generate stakeholder dialogue and engagement (Fieseler, Fleck, & Meckel, 2010; Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). Using social media for communication presents also great benefits for companies such as competitive advantage inexpensive collaboration, real-time communication, and online archiving (Pressley, 2006, as cited in Schneider, Stieglitz, & Lattemann, 2007; Mangold & Faulds, 2010).

Faced with market saturation and intense competition, the credit-card industry has turned to the youth market as the final untapped market segment to sustain profitability. However, the vulnerable status of this market segment means that they might be exposed to debt accumulation and a worrisome future. Correspondingly, marketers are expected to prioritize social responsibilities without posing harm to other stakeholders. In an effort to enrich the knowledge about youth market vulnerability to credit card, this paper reports the development of several important new constructs and a structural equation model with empirical results. Following the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), three sequential processes of consumer attitudes and patterns of credit card usage are conceptualized. Our theory argues that attitudes towards deferred gratification and instant gratification function as antecedents to consumer susceptibility to credit card effects, which subsequently affect the degrees of problematic credit debt accumulation. A sequential study of qualitative and quantitative methods was employed and the current paper reports the main results on the validity of measurement and the structural model.

Contemporary research in the fields of the psychology and marketing studies are more and more focused on the role of emotions in the human behavior (Hogg and Vaughan, 2008). However, the traditional approaches to measure the emotions are susceptible to various distortion and may not fully reflect the real situation. Therefore many authors have been proposed the psychophysiological measures as a complementary solution. Current study investigated the relationship between the self- report measures and the facial muscle activity (EMG) during the human interaction situations where the race factor was taken under consideration. The results for self reports and EMG showed expected discrepancy.

The ability of a country to develop, adapt and exploit its innovative potential is essential for its long run economic performance in today’s global economy (Krammer, 2009). It has been believed that culture either fosters or inhibits innovation. Certain cultural profiles have a greater propensity to support varied innovatory activities (Jones & Davis, 2000). However, there is limited knowledge about how culture influences national rate of innovation. The objective of this study is to address the research question: How does national culture influence national rate of innovation in the long run? Building from the previous study, we aim to update the relationship between national culture and national rate of innovation with current data and contemporary measurements. We will focus on the most important economic factor of national rate of innovation –research and development (R&D) investment to evaluate how national culture impacts the effect of R&D investment on innovation over the time. To our knowledge, this study is not only the first to employ the four major contemporary cultural value dimensions of Hofstede (1980), Schwartz (1994), GLOBE (2004) and Gelfand (2011) to study national rate of innovation, but also to utilize the longitudinal data from 1995-2010 in order to understand how culture impacts innovation outcome over the time. The contribution of this study is three-fold. First, we will examine how cultures influence the effectiveness of R&D investment and impact national rate of innovation in the long run. Second, by applying all contemporary cultural value dimensions to explain national rate of innovation, we may then evaluate the reliability and congruence of various culture value dimensions. Third, as we find that culture moderates the effect of economic factor on innovation, we provide a dynamic perspective to consider innovation in the complex social and cultural contexts. This study will demonstrate how culture-level values can be broadly utilized to lead future international business and cross-culture studies, providing further theoretical and managerial applications.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) the estimated number of international migrants

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has increased globally from about 150 million people in the year 2000 to 214 million people today. This dynamic phenomenon makes societies across the world more multicultural every day and a lot of businesses around the globe acknowledge that in their marketing (Rao 2006; De Mooji 2004; Usunier and Lee 2005; Trompenaars and Woolliams 2004). Regardless if companies identify a specific ethnic group as a target worthwhile to research, the fact that societies become naturally more multicultural, is something the research community has to discuss because researcher”s claiming to have the finger on the pulse of societies, is worth little if there is no concern about the immense natural growth of cultural nuances in societies and its potential impact on the application of market research methodologies.

The problems of over-consumption, environmental degradation, and depletion of resources have initiated research in the area of sustainable consumption. The basic premise of sustainable consumption seeks to address the negative impacts of dominating consumption patterns in affluent countries and their need to substantially reduce their consumption to achieve sustainability (Schrader and Thorgersen, 2011). With this macro-level problem in mind, researchers have focused on the roles and responsibilities of both companies and consumers. On the consumer side, two perspectives prevail. First, consumers can choose environmentally friendly products and ‘green’ consumption (Moisander, 2007). The second perspective is that consumers can consume less or even choose not to consume. These perspectives entail a moral obligation and personal commitment to downscale consumption to reduce or eliminate negative externalities on people and the environment (Press and Arnould, 2009). Consumer-centric and company-centric viewpoints are both necessary. With this research, we take a consumer-centric approach. More specifically, we are interested in consumption that is less wasteful. We look back in time to the days of the former East Germany and examine behavior commonly known as Marke Eigenbau (loosely translated as ‘Do-It-Yourself Brand’). Recent discussions have highlighted Marke Eigenbau as a movement against mass production, however, research has not realized Marke Eigenbau to its fullest potential, and thus we analyze Marke Eigenbau in the light of sustainable consumption and the lessons that can be learned from a society with limited resources.

In this exploratory study, we use an interpretive methodological approach (Lincoln and Guba, 1985), which allows us to investigate consumers’ use-innovative approaches to produce their own goods and extend product lifecycles in DIY efforts. Data was collected in areas of the former East Germany. Twelve informal, unstructured interviews assisted us in developing our final interview guidelines. These guidelines were then used for twenty formal interviews with informants who had experiences from living in a planned economy, which shaped their current consumption behaviors. Interviews were conducted in German, digitally recorded and transcribed in German (and later translated into English). Informants were interviewed in their homes or at local coffee shops. Informants varied in ages from 27–77 years old and interview times ranged between one and two hours.

This study identifies three preliminary themes that illustrate how consumers sought meaning to their DI Y activities; (1) Scarcity – the driver for innovation: To fill the void of unavailable but desired consumer goods, East Germans became efficient in collecting and reusing products in very innovative ways. Our informants stated that rarely were things thrown away even when the product didn’t serve its intended purpose. Eventually, out served goods were integrated with innovativeness, frugality, and ingenuity became national values and the productive ownership and creation of things was elevated to a virtue. Scarcity was seen as a challenge to the industriousness of a culture that prided itself on its engineering and scientific ability. (2) Self-expression through Marke Eigenbau: Marketing was limited in the command economy. People could only buy what the state deemed important. Variety was sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. For instance, there was mainly one type of car, the Trabant. But, this didn’t stop East Germans from modifying their Trabants to fit their own sense of style and uniqueness. The need for uniqueness and variety trumped the need for efficiency so, again, East Germans turned to DIY activities. (3) Meaning and purpose for old material possessions: Our data analysis illustrate that DIY behavior infused meaning into objects allowing each object to represent a story of its creation, use, and in many cases the maintenance and improvement of the object over time. This is partially a result of the immense personal effort and innovativeness that goes into not only purchasing, but also maintaining goods. This reflects a different culture of ownership of material possessions than what we see in the West. The labor spent maintaining, improving, and sometimes stylizing vehicles made the ownership more personal.

In conclusion, in terms of sustainability, Marke Eigenbau, as practiced in East Germany, is somewhat different than modern DIY. Products, for example, were usually assembled from an assortment of whatever materials the East Germans had available and often involved a painstaking process to find the materials necessary to even begin the project. This inadequate supply and the nonexistence of home improvement stores make Marke Eigenbau a subject of unique consumer behaviors. We discuss how this research can be applied in a world where raw materials are becoming scarcer and in a world where sustainability and the preservation of the environment are becoming increasingly important.

Obesity is currently one of the most important health concerns in America, with roughly one-third of American adults now considered obese (Flegal et al., 2010), and unhealthy dietary habits are cited as one big reason for this societal malady. Consumers associate organic food with healthy and low-calorie nutrition (Schuldt and Schwarz 2010), although there is no empirical evidence that organic food has better nutrient quality compared to conventional food (Dangour et al. 2009). Consequently, the sale of organic food products in the United States has risen from approximately $1 billion in 1990 to nearly $25 billion in 2009 (OTA, 2010). So while organic food products are surely and steadily gaining acceptance among Americans, marketers are still grappling with the question of what would be effective strategies to market organic food products to customers.

In today’s world of tourism when people can go travelling easily because of many low cost carriers, city branding becomes a crucial point to be considered in the need of elevating city’s position among the other competitors as it can attract more tourists. Bandung is the capital city of West Java – Indonesia, which tourism has become very phenomenal as it has been increasing time to time (bandung.go.id). Bandung city is true to have so many potentials such as in culinary, fashion, beautiful mountains, heritage buildings, etc – which are very good, since anything special in a city might attract tourists (Hospers, cited in Dinnie, 2011). But then, it’s been a huge question if there is any urgency to brand Bandung and differentiate it from others in the purpose of gaining competitive brand value – as the theory of place branding (Ashworth, 2009; cited in Dinnie, 2011) which is more complex than branding products and services (Freire, 2005; cited in Dinnie 2011). Yet, it is a difficult task to do since images associated with a city are intangible and abstract (Dinnie, 2011). Additionally, even though cities have several different target audiences, the core brand stance must be consistent – One city, one brand (Dinnie, 2011). So that this research will measure CBBETD of Bandung city as tourism destination from the tourists’ perspective and whether the results have any significant impacts toward Bandung tourism and also toward future development of Bandung city branding.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how environmental perceptions elicit different sets of emotions and these emotions in turn influence festival visitors’ post-visit evaluation. The present study study adopted the Mehrabian-Russell (M-R) model in environmental psychology in order to better explain how visitors react to the festival physical and social environment. Data were collected from festival goers using an onsite and post-visit survey in 2008 at three community-based festivals in Texas.

The study results demonstrated that certain aspects of festival atmospherics engendered moderate to strong positive emotions and indirectly affecting overall satisfaction. Specifically, loving and joyful feelings elicited through uniquely themed and diverse activities and entertainment along with quality service delivery were associated with generating visitors’ satisfying experiences at festivals. The findings of the study have theoretical an practical implications. For practice, the study offers some guidance for festival organizers to create positive emotion-inducing atmospherics, which positively influences visitors’ overall satisfaction. For theory, this investigation contributes to furthering our understanding of festival visitors’ post-vist behaviors by confirming the proposed model within the M-R framework.

Destination competitiveness as such is central for all National Tourist Offices (NTOs) and Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) as it is considered as the main outcome of all marketing endeavor (Pike 2008). The Österreich Werbung (Austrian NTO) explicitly states that its main concern is “gemeinsam mit allen österreichischen Tourismuspartnern für den Erhalt bzw. den Ausbau der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit des Tourismuslandes Österreich zu sorgen”

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(Österreich Werbung 2011). In academia, Ritchie and Crouch’s (2003) notion seems to be the one other researchers agree to rely on. They argue that

This study aims to identify the role of visitors’ relationships with service providers, other customers and their companion(s) in festival experience, suggesting the integrated festival quality model which combines relational constructs with the current five-dimension functional quality model. Like other forms of services, festival is a social activity. Festival encounters involve a series of social relationships in the presence of multiple service providers and other visitors who share the servicescape with and other customers on service experience has been substantially examined. Additionally, festival visitors usually visit festivals with a group of some size. As the indigenous presence of social groups involving families and friends in the leisure and tourism activity has been recognized, attending festivals is also a leisure activity that is most often shared with companion visitors. In the festival literature, family togetherness or socialization has been identified as one of the most common sources of motivation for festival customers. Despite the importance of social groups in the festival encounter, there is little, if any, research that empirically examines the role of festival visitors’ relationships with their companion visitors in festival quality and satisfaction research.

An onsite survey was conducted from Nonsan Strawberry Festival, which was held in April 13-15, 2012. A total of 215 completed responses were received. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using SPSS AMOS 20 was used to test the proposed model and hypothesized relationships among the constructs. All hypotheses examining a positive effect of visitors’ relationship with service providers, other customers and companion(s) were supported by the data and the proposed model also had an acceptable fit to the data.

It appears that relational aspects have not been explored to any great extent in the festival quality literature and there are a number of questions that lend itself to the analytical framework in festival quality literature. By examining the importance of relational aspects of festival service experiences, this study suggests that festival operators need to keep in mind that considering how a festival visitor encounters social relationships with whom and how those influence his/her festival experience is important for successful marketing. Providing visitors with an opportunity for positive and supportive relationships with service providers, other customers, and their companion(s) using festival programs and services will help improve visitors’ festival experience. As important as a festival visitor perceives the process and outcome of the social relationships at a festival, he/she will accordingly enjoy the festival experience. This is an important part of relational quality because social enjoyment has been identified as one of the major festival motivation. However, it should be noted that all social relationships make important, but complementary contributions to visitors’ satisfaction judgment. In particular, in order to derive joint enjoyment between visitors and their companions, festival programs and services need to focus on shared activities of exchanges, considering that people usually visit festivals in a group of some size.

By incorporating multiple observable relationships associated with service quality specific to a festival setting, this study provides insight into festival service research applicable to many tourism services involving diverse social relationships. The findings indicate that there are various types of social relationship contributing to festival quality and all of those can similarly and differently influence festival service experience. Therefore, in addition to conventional functional quality elements, it is important for festival organizers to recognize the importance visitors’ social relationships in offering satisfying festival experiences.

Researchers and practitioners have noted that consumers seem increasingly comfortable with online viral advertising campaigns that encourage individuals to pass along a marketing message to others by Internet or e-mail. World-renowned companies, such as Nike, Budweiser, Ford, GMC, Levi’s and De Beers have successfully used viral advertising in social media, including YouTube, Facebook and blogs (Borroff 2000; Morrissey 2008; Rechtin 2009; Solman 2008a, 2008b; Steenburgh, Avery and Dahod 2009; Thompson 2010).

Previous research related to the viral process has noted that viral messages need to be funny or intriguing, appeal to the imagination of consumers, related to easy to use or visible products, well targeted, come from a credible source, and are adapted to new technologies (Dobele et al. 2005). The purpose of this paper is to study under what conditions ads become viral, and what are their antecedents and mediators.

Previous advertising research has found that specific ad appeals and executional characteristics of ads influence consumers’ attitudes toward the ad (Bagozzi, Gopinath and Nayer 1999; Batra and Ray 1986; MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch 1986; MacKenzie and Lutz 1989; Tellis 2004). Different advertising execution strategies range from strictly informational to highly emotional (Severn, Belch and Belch 1990). We analyze three of the key ad appeals used in the most successful viral ads currently circulating online: sex, humor, as well as ad informativeness.

In viral studies, researchers found that when product or marketing information comes via an e-mail from a person the consumer knows, the receiver is more likely to pass along this information and forward the e-mail to other consumers (Phelps et al. 2004). We hypothesized that an advertisement received from a known interpersonal source, such as a family member, friend or Facebook contact, will lead to a more positive attitude toward the ad and to a higher chance of forwarding the message, than an advertisement from an unknown source.

In order to test our hypotheses, we used a national consumer sample. We found all three types of ad appeals significant for both attitude toward the ad and viral intentions. We confirmed that humorous and sexual ad appeals positively influence attitude toward the ad and viral intentions. We also found that informative appeals have a positive effect on attitude toward the ad. The results of the statistical analysis, including both viral intentions and the actual viral behavior, confirm that the humorous appeal has the highest importance for viral advertisements and the highest potential when creating ads with the intention to make them viral. Our findings support this previously hypothesized relationship between humor and viral advertising, clarifying the role of humor in the modern viral ads. This represents a step forward for both marketing theory and practice and an empirical confirmation of the importance given to humor by the advertising world.

While we did find a positive relationship between sexual appeal and both attitude toward the ad and viral intentions (and behavior), the sexual ad occupied the third position regarding the strength of its effect, following humor and informative ads. Regarding another characteristics of the ad, its source, the data analyzed did not support our hypotheses that ad source influences attitude toward the ad and viral intentions. This can be due to consumers not finding ads coming from strangers any different from ads originating from friends. Another reason can be related to the manipulations of our experiment and to the fact that in real-life situations consumers might place a higher importance on ad source than in the context of an experiment and online survey.

We confirmed the mediational role of attitude toward the ad in relation to viral intentions, and its positive influence on viral intentions, relating a modern advertising variable related to viral ads to the classical attitude toward the ad. These findings contribute to the theoretical integration of viral intentions in the classical advertising framework, and note the importance of attitude toward the ad for viral behavior.

A 2007 survey reported that one in three Internet users make purchase decisions influenced by sites with social contents (Wasserman 2007), social networking websites such as Facebook.com. Although Amazon.com is not a typical social networking website, like Facebook.com, Amazon.com meets the definition of a “social networking location” by letting their customers post reviews and ratings, and thus falls into the categories of online feedback system, recognized by Yang and Peterson (2003). Shoppers on the Amazon.com not only search for products that appeal to their needs, but also consume those consumer-generated product reviews (CGPR) as well as the ratings of those products. The current research examines the persuasiveness of consumer-generated product reviews based on the matching effects between the types of the persuasive messages (Transformational or Informational) and individuals’ information processing styles. The paper refines the scale of Need for Cognition (Petty, Caccioppo, and Kao 1984), emphasizes importance in understanding the selling power of vast consumer-generated product reviews, and extends the scope of e-word-of-mouth (e-WOM) research by recognizing the persuasive function of customer-generated product reviews on retailing websites.

Countries with transitional economies represent a large and growing share of the world population, production and wealth. Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) alone have a combined GDP of approximately twelve trillion dollars (O’Neill, 2011). With the recent addition of South Africa, the expanded block, BRICS, represents the largest growing market in the world.

The emerging market of Colombia and especially its second largest city, Medellin, has regained its allure for multimillion dollar investment by fashion giants. This is good news for the country but also a threat to local fashion brands. Consumer knowledge and the understanding of youth are fundamental in this process of gaining market. However, relevant managerial local decisions are usually done by intuition because teen consumer commercial data is scarce and expensive, and the academic and public data is nonexistent. Marketers also assume general global teen information applies to the Colombian market without adverting cultural differences. This qualitative research aimed to comprehend the changing urban adolescent consumer and their relationship with fashion by identifying value segments in Medellin, Colombia. The methodology included an exploratory research of 10 key informant interviews with fashion and teenager local experts. The ethnographic research carried out with 16 teenagers between 13 and 18 years of age from different socio-economic backgrounds and genders. Four segments were found reflecting teenagers’ main cultural values for wanting fashion products and brands. Local adaptations and expressions of values could be found to be different in these segments depending on the “accompanying value”. Our exploratory research results could be useful to brands targeting adolescents or brands wanting to connect with nostalgia and the interior desire of being young. Results could also provide direction for further examination.

A decade has passed since C.K. Prahalad and his colleagues first introduced the notion of the “bottom of the pyramid” (BoP) into the managerial lexicon (Hammond and Prahalad, 2004; Prahalad, 2004; Prahalad and Hammond, 2002; Prahalad and Hart, 2002). Briefly, the BoP thesis states that the world’s poor are an increasingly attractive market, especially for multinational corporations. While the top of the pyramid is characterized by relative wealth, its long-term attractiveness is limited owing to high levels of current market penetration, bordering on saturation. By contrast, while the bottom of the pyramid is relatively poor, its long-term prospects are very attractive because of low levels of current market penetration offering the potential for rapid growth in the future. However, to fully leverage this potential, converting the very poor into active consumers will require considerable innovation in terms of products, business models, distribution networks, and especially price-performance relationships for products and services. To date, most companies have failed to generate the necessary innovation, preferring instead to simply transplant offerings developed for their traditional markets (Dawar and Chattopadhyay, 2002).

Our study is centered on understanding a paradoxical behavior of BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa): consumers manifest an escalation of luxury consumption at rates, which are disproportionally higher than increases in their disposable incomes (e.g., Mishra, 2010; Astmon

et al

, 2011). Western behavior models fail to adequately predict or explain this phenomenon in a consistent manner. We believe that, while BRICS’ cultures are quite diverse, they share the common dynamic aspect – progressing from collectivism to individualism (Parker

et al

, 2009). Such a transition activates certain behavioral mechanisms leading to self-expression via consumption of luxury goods and services - a pattern shared across the BRICS.

To discover this pattern, the present paper starts with the analysis of luxury consumers using a particular market – Russia. It then develops a three dichotomies approach to build a theoretical framework describing the behavior of luxury consumers. thereby, contributing to the body of cross-cultural consumer research. This framework is then used to develop a typology of luxury consumers basing itself on the principal drivers of the consumer demand, namely, transformative life experience, social mobility and wealth projections. The different needs for status, uniqueness, and attitudes towards luxury of the various categories of luxury consumers are discussed.

Data used in this research comes from government, academic and private sources (e.g. Russian census service RosStat, Russian Institute of Sociology and Euromonitor International), describing demographic and economic characteristics of Russian consumers from as early as 1959 to as recently as 2011. These data are processed and interpreted in conjunction with cultural analysis described in the paper to conceptualize social mobility in the contemporary Russian society and identify consumer groups with similar behavior patterns. The paper analyzes the dichotomies, formulates research propositions, outlines directions for future research and discusses managerial implications for the marketing of luxury goods in Russia, thereby contributing to the body of cross-cultural consumer research.

A direct-to-consumer website (DTCW) is defined as a brand-sponsored website that offers prescription drug information to the general public. As such, it is a promotional effort by a pharmaceutical firm, similar to direct-to-consumer advertising in magazines or on television. Increasingly, Americans search online for prescription drug information; 33% of American adults and 45% of Internet users have looked online for drug information (Fox and Jones 2009). Thus, pharmaceutical firms are putting enormous resources into developing brand-specific websites. Also, DTCW has become a vital and ideal source of drug and health information for consumers (Davis 2010). With the growth of DTCWs, several concerns regarding the efficacy of these sites have been raised. For example, studies show that information presented in a DTCW is not highly reliable (e.g., Huh, DeLorme, and Reid 2005). However, past studies largely focused on the website design and its features. Prescription drug information is also disseminated by non-commercial third-party websites. For example, PubMed Health’s website, produced by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, offers exhaustive facts about drugs. This website often appears near the top of search engine results for most prescription medications. Yet, despite the growing importance of DTCWs, relatively little is known about differences in consumers’ evaluation of pharmaceutical brands and information found on DTCW versus third-party websites. It is unclear whether a non-commercial third-party website produces more favorable consumer evaluations than a company-sponsored DTCW. In addition, research has yet to examine the influence of consumer characteristics (e.g., risk perception and product knowledge) in such evaluation. Thus, the current research attempts to address these issues by examining consumers’ evaluations of a third-party versus a brand-sponsored website. It also investigates the moderating effects of perceived risk and product category knowledge.

Picture within the advertisement has a role to communicate meanings which are delivered by the marketer to the customers. The problem here is whether customers have good understanding on the picture or not.

This Research has a limitation which is only compare the difference in perception for the posters between college students of Management & Business in Switzerland and Indonesia. Those two countries are chosen because of the big difference culture and behavior in “the Hofstede”country scores. The subjects of this research are bachelor college students who take major in management from two different top universities in two different countries.

Influence of customer’s individual traits, attitude and other behavioral variables with loyalty to a brand and subsequently its performance implications to the firm is an intriguing question for number of researches. However, little attention has been paid to study brand loyalty constructs in the media industry especially in Indian context. It is in this context the present paper has attempted to test a conceptual model proposed earlier by Chaudhuri and Holbrook, (2001) and Halim (2006) with some modification. The paper tries to explore the causal relationship among brand trust, brand affect, purchase loyalty, attitudinal loyalty and brand performance.

Service and sales employees represent a substantial segment of the global workforce, and firms’ economic success hinges upon their performance. Firms opt to organize sales and service tasks differently; these duties can be merged or separated into distinct units of the organization. Sub-optimal organization of sales and service may lead to low job satisfaction, inadequate job performance and up to 100% annual employee turnover rates.

This paper suggests that obtaining ambidextrous skills, i.e. the ability to engage in ostensibly contrasting tasks that are interdependent and non-substitutable for the firm, may assist in organizing sales and service in an ideal way. Deliberate allocation of financial and human resources between sales and services drives strategic realization of ambidexterity. This is likely to result in positive performance outcomes and a sustainable firm strategy. Consequently, ambidexterity should be leveraged at all levels of the organization to support an optimal mix of sales and service. To this end, the decision for organizing sales and services calls for top management team’s ambidextrous skills.

Researchers and practitioners have always been interested in factors that provide richer explanations of variances in salespersons’ effectiveness and performance. In the extant research, most of the focus has been on issues such as motivation, personality, job involvement, commitment and job satisfaction. It is interesting to note that purely cognitive approaches have not addressed a fundamental aspect of what potentially makes one salesperson highly successful and another not so – gut feeling.

How does the sales organization contribute to the creation of value to a firm and its customers? Understanding sales’ pivotal role in the creation of value has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers alike (Lindgreen and Wynstra 2005). Taking up the issue in their review of relevant literature, Haas, Snehota, and Corsaro (2011) convincingly argue that prior research has dealt with sales’ value-creating role mostly per assumption and not systematically. Despite of scholars’ extensive focus on sales’ performance outcomes, the two most prominent salesperson behaviors under investigation in the sales literature (i.e., adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling) have been shown to account for only 9% or less of the variance in salesperson performance (Franke and Park 2006). And research that explicitly addresses the question of how the sales function adds value to the customer is still in its infancy. Accordingly, Singh and Koshy reflect (2010, p. 2): “we do not yet know if business-to-business salespersons actually create value in their relationship with customers”.

Blattberg and Deighton (1996) used a decision-calculus approach to construct a simple model, the BD Model, which helps managers find the optimal balance between spending on acquisition and retention to maximize the customer equity. However, little explicit research has simultaneously addressed the question of dividing spending between acquisition and retention and balancing the objectives of short-term market share growth and long-term customer equity. In response, this study develops a model and methodology to analyze the relationship between optimal spending budget and short-term objective of market share growth with the long-term objective of customer profitability. The current study developed a segment-based market share model (SBMS) to describe how allocating a budget to two programs, to meet customer retention costs and customer acquisition costs, affects the size of customer segments of three representative types, namely inertia, potential switcher, and newly acquired, resulting in market share growth. This work then combined the SBMS and the Blattberg and Deighton (BD) model to devise a method for conducting nonlinear programming and sensitivity analysis with a spreadsheet to balance the short-term objective of market share growth and the long-term objective of customer equity (CE) to arrive at the optimal spending allocation for customer acquisition and retention. We then manipulated the differential unit cost of the marginal effect for customer acquisition and retention and the size of the inertia segment on the focal brand to explore the allocation effect on the two objectives.

Despite years of scrupulous debate about market orientation and positioning, still these concepts, on their own, do not offer impressive firm performance (Siguaw, Brown, and Widing II 1994; Han, Kim, and Srivastava 1998; Kaynak and Kara 2004], unless they are employed synergistically with the aim of achieving long-term success (Porter 1996, 2001; Pelham 1997; Bigne, Vila-Lopez, and Kuster-Boluda 2000], This review paper fills this gap in the literature by attempting to find answers to two questions: What is the relationship between firm market orientation capability and firm positioning strategy? And what are the relationships between specific sub-market orientation strategy and individual sub-positioning strategy? The article sheds light on these issues within the context and aims to contribute to the debate.

This paper investigates the relationship between trust and the organizational capacities of innovative firms and proposes a conceptual framework for assessing the multilevel links between trust and stakeholders’ choices, motivations, and cooperative schemes. A particular emphasis has been placed on the mediating role of employees and customers who coevolve under conditions of bounded rationality. Our study suggests that cooperation among the primary stakeholders provide a necessary, albeit not a sufficient condition for building organizational capacities and sustaining the firm’s competitive advantage. Our research places a particular emphasis on the pivotal role of middle managers as key actors in providing soft information to key stakeholders (Mintzberg, 1994), and as moderatos when planning, formulating, and implementing strategic decisions. Moreover, the middle management’s central function as moderators in strategic decision making has been amply highlighted in strategic management literature (Wooldridge et al., 2008; Mair and Thurner, 2008; Huy, 200). While thinking strategically, brings the management to plan, command and implement strategy, doing strategy requires a continuous effort of sensemaking (Weick, 1995).. Balogun and Johnson’s (2004) consider sensemaking as ’a conversational and narrative process through which people create and maintain an intersubjective world’ (p. 524). In this regard, the use of cognitive structures and interpretive schemes whereby executive and middle manager, employees, and customers define goals and propose meaningful actions constitutes a particularly important step in building organizational capabilities.

Recent conceptualizations of marketing in emerging market contexts posit that demand aggregation is more appropriate for enhancing firm performance than conventional demand differentiation strategies commonly practiced in highly advanced economies (Sheth 2011). To contribute to the advancement of research in this area, we empirically test this proposition in Ghana’s rural bank savings mobilization programs. We follow the theorectical proposition in consumer cultural theory that consumers reinterpret objects of non-local origin within their local consumption norms. Results suggest that although all four demand aggregation activities (i.e., accessibility, acceptability, awareness and affordability) were directly associated with preference (i.e., demand aggregation advantage) for bank savings, only affordability is positively linked to demand aggregation advantage. Moreover, the effect of demand aggregation activities on bank lending practices was mediated by demand advantage among existing consumers but not new consumers. These findings have significant implication for the advancement of Sheth’s (2011) classic demand aggregation advantage theory.

Technological advances in the service industry have led to the transformation of service delivery, from face-to-face service encounters to self-service (Lu, Chou, and Ling, 2009). By the introduction of self-service technologies (SST) previous interpersonal care in the service sector has been gradually substituted by the do-it-yourself option (Ding, Verma, and Iqbal, 2007). SST is defined as the technology interfaces which enable consumers to produce services independent of direct service employee involvement (Meuter

et al

., 2000). Examples of SSTs include ATM’s, information kiosks, online banking, flight check-in kiosks, self-service gas pumps, and self-checkout registers at brick-and mortar retail operations (Campbell, Maglio, and Davis, 2011).Today consumers make a choice between being served or serving themselves using a self-service technological interface with the service organization (Kasper, 2006). Since the implementation of new technologies is very cost-and time-intensive (Curran

et al

., 2003) continued or high use of the self-service technologies may be desirable for those intuitions that invested to SST. So understanding the factors underlying the usage level of SST may be as important as exploring the initial acceptance of these technologies. In this research we have made an attempt to compare the consumers who are non-users, moderate users and high users of self-services technologies.

Services account for a very large portion of the economic activity in most countries. In addition, marketing researchers have recognized a shift in companies’ business orientation, from a goods-dominant logic to a service-dominant logic (Lusch and Vargo, 2006; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Therefore, service quality becomes a critical aspect of most companies’ marketing strategy. Academic research on service quality has focused mainly on determining service quality dimensions, understanding service quality antecedents, and relating service quality to key outcomes, such as customer satisfaction and performance. Still, there is limited research on how service quality perceptions differ among countries or cultures.

Music continues to be a “considerable component” (Oakes, 2007) in marketing communications, especially television advertising. Research has shown that music can affect attention, recall, and purchase intention. However, relatively little is known about popular music’s effect on attitude especially when the song in the ad is a favorite song. This study found high likeability for song, artist and brand in television ads in general, and in particular, when the song and artist were considered in terms of being a favorite with preference towards original vocal integration. This study also found the favorite song genres were evenly divided between classic rock, pop, and hip hop, with justifications for it being one’s favorite primarily based upon the song qualities (e.g., beat). Finally, consistent with prior research (Janata, et al., 2007), the autobiographical memory triggered by one’s favorite song was overwhelmingly a positive emotion and memory.

Marketing FutureCast Lab is a research and analysis lab targeting on international marketing trends. It was created in 2008 as a part of ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon and has, as financing members, about 20 large national and multinational companies (TAP – Portuguese Airlines, Portugal Telecom, Unilever, Nestlé, Santander, Heineken Group… ).

So far, the lab analyzed over 140 new trends, creating digests (short reports), developing market studies with innovative methodologies and supporting innovation processes inside partner companies.

The logics underlying our approach is that sustainability (either economic, social, environmental or cultural) will brand not only the companies’ organizational structure but also each of the substantiations of new buying and consumption patterns inside the new normal we live in, where nothing is the way it was in the past.

New worries characterize this age of brand scrutiny. Social responsibility – companies’ or individuals’ – reflects in the market, in the choice of brands and selling points, in leaner processes to decide acquisition, in the transparency of digital media where companies show the consumers their inner reality.

Increasing competition for students, funding and support has made universities, MBA programs and other educational parties realize a growing need to market themselves to their key stakeholders as well as to differentiate themselves from their competitors, i.e. to brand themselves. Discourse about branding higher education has emerged in marketing literature during the last few years but is still rather scarce and fragmented. This paper contributes to yet limited higher education (HE) branding literature, the purpose being to explore co-branding possibilities of a Master’s degree program, its host city and an annual international cultural event arranged in the city. The qualitative empirical data covers both interviews with the employees of the program and other stakeholders, as well as a survey among the students of the program. The results suggest that educational programs and institutions could obtain differentiation and brand synergy from related city and festival brands through close cooperation and networking with surrounding stakeholders, i.e. co-branding. Moreover, the results show that even if the host city is not considered a strong brand itself, it is possible to benefit from the place brand ‘entity’. Close cooperation is favourable to the host city and the cultural event, as well as to the program.

This study seeks to rank scholarly marketing journals in five major subareas using website, opinion and citation data. The five major marketing subareas are identified as the most popular US marketing doctoral program areas. The selection and ranking of scholarly journals in each of the five marketing subareas is based on the average unweighted normalized ranking of input from marketing doctoral program directors/chairs, journal editors, the literature, and citation data. The ranking of scholarly journals by marketing subarea offer an objective ranking of journal quality for use by marketing departments, doctoral programs, doctoral candidates and scholars wishing to submit their manuscripts to the most influential journals in their marketing subarea.

Despite a proliferation of journals devoted to the marketing discipline, from 261 in 2006 up 98% to 517 in 2011 (Cabell, 2011, 2006), marketing journal ranking studies consistently rank the top five scholarly journals in marketing as

Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science

and the

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

(Bauerly and Johnson, 2005; Yoo, 2009; Baumgartner and Pieters, 2003). Nonetheless, ranking journals representing scholarship in the field of marketing as a whole overlooks additional journal collections of top tier scholarly journals representing discrete and sizeable subareas. This study continues work on subareas of marketing (Baumgartner and Pieters, 2003; Chan et al 2011; Gorman et al, 2011; Kumar and Kwon, 2004; Hult et al, 2009) by (a) focusing on all major subareas of marketing and (b) using a multi-item measure approach to journal ranking.

To identify the most common marketing subareas, the study focused on sustained subareas offered by marketing doctoral programs in the US. Of the 108 schools was sourced from the AMA (2011), six schools were removed as they do not offer the doctoral program. The websites of the useable sample of 102 schools were examined to identify specializations offered in the marketing doctoral program. When this was not clear, the program director of the program was e-mailed and invited to list the institution’s marketing doctoral program specializations.

Seeking input regarding the top tier scholarly journals in each of the five subareas of marketing followed a sequential solicitation of journal ranks from key informant groups. The first group was 62 marketing doctoral program directors (referred to as ‘institutional’), followed with editors of the journals cited by the program directors. For both groups, the e-mailed request to participate required three weekly waves. The next data source was marketing subarea journal ranking studies in the literature, resulting in two subarea ranking studies for each subarea with the exception of logistics & SCM that included three ranking studies. As there was only one journal ranking study for international marketing, the second study used ranked journals in international business. Finally, average citations per article per journal over the decade 2002 to 2011 were sourced using the Google Scholar software (Harzing, 2011). Each of the four sources ranks (institutional, editor, literature, citations) were ranked by normalizing the raw data. The overall ranking score for each journal was a normalized average of the four source ranks.

Even though each subarea’s overall ranking is the unweighted mean of four independent data sourced rankings, none of the marketing subareas is significantly related to the citation ranking, a remarkable finding given the practice that citation data is an unequivocal measure of scholarly impact. This finding strengthens the value of this study because although each subarea includes a ‘top five’ marketing journal (with high citations/article), these journals are not necessarily ranked highest overall. For all subareas, there is a significant relationship between overall ranking and institutional ranking suggesting that doctoral program directors/chairs, presumably as a result of their professional experience, are able to combine attitudinal and citation data into their assessment of journal quality. The lack of significant differences in average citations/article between each subareas’ collection of journals encourages confidence that each subareas’ collection of journals possess an overall similar level of scholarly impact according to citations/article, and that no one subareas’ collection of journals outperforms another.

This study investigates “ukukhothana” as a form of conspicuous consumption and destruction among poor black youth in South Africa. Ukukhothana is an isiZulu word and translates loosely as “to lick like a snake” (Nkosi, 2011) and those who engage in this activity are known as iZikhothane (“the lickers”). In highly-stylized public displays, competing crews gather to flaunt and taunt: they parade their wealth—typically luxury brands, but also cash—while boasting of their superiority. The displays culminate with acts of conspicuous destruction during which the luxury products are ripped, smashed, or burned. Based on qualitative research conducted in several townships, including depth interviews and observation, this study yields insights into the main features of ukukhothana as well as the drivers for engaging in this behavior. We conclude by comparing and contrasting ukukhothana to other forms of behavior.

Conspicuous consumption is the behavior whereby individual displays wealth through extensive leisure activities and luxury expenditure on consumption and service (Veblen 1898; Trigg 2001; Griskevicius et al. 2007). The tendency to display wealth is no typical only to consumers in developed countries, but also in developing countries. The phenomena of conspicuous consumption are even more prominent in the society where cultural and social categories are diffused and the environment undergoes rapid changes. Wealth and exhibition of possession become important for the society members to communicate themselves (McCracken 1988). In the emerging countries, such as China, the demand growth for luxury products has attracted many global luxury brands producer to execute the opportunity (Chu 2012). Globally, in 2009, the growth was contracted, however, in 2010 the market for luxury goods were estimated to reach $222.9 billion, a 10% growth from the prior year and is predicted to reach $307.3 billion by 2015 (KPMG 2011).

Although still in its infancy, anti-consumption literature has shed some light on the motives behind consumers’ avoidance of commercial products and brands. Country-based consumption resistance—the focus of this paper—has been examined mostly through the effects of ‘country animosity’ and ‘consumer ethnocentrism’ on reluctance to buy foreign products (Lee, Motion, and Conroy, 2009). Yet, despite the importance of these concepts, alternative country-based issues are likely to underlie anti-consumption decisions. Hence, this work delves into the country-based antecedents of product avoidance—that is, it explores the country-based components/antecedents of consumer resistance and anti-consumption; moreover, the authors take a broader look at the roots of country animosity. To accomplish these purposes, a qualitative, interpretive approach is adopted.

Consumer socialization (Ward 1974) or consumer development (McNeal 2007) is the area of marketing concerning “consumer orientation” of the individual, i.e., their growth in the areas of material and symbolic consumption, as opposed to physical and cognitive development in other areas. In fact, “functioning” in the “marketplace” is a sign of growth and maturity (Scott 1974 p.2). Any parental book, such as

The Wonder Years

(Altmann 2006), can give evidence on how children grow up through various areas of consumptions (diapers, toys, apparels, foods, etc.). For example, at one month of age, babies learn to look at themselves in

mirrors

on their

car seats

or in their

cribs

. Inevitably, when they grow older they start learning the symbolic meaning behind those products, such as parents’ love, which is accompanied by brands and price tags.

Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs is allowed currently only in the United States and New Zealand. Promotional spending on DTCA has grown from $2.5 billion in 2000 to $4.5 billion in 2009. DTCA has been an issue of intense debate since the early years of its existence (Hoek, Gendall, and Feetham 2001; Royne and Myers 2008; Pol and Bakker 2010). Therefore, DTCA is undoubtedly an important topic that deserves researchers’ sincere attention (Farris and Wilkie 2005; Gellad and Lyles 2007). The research on DTCA has grown in a fragmented manner across several disciplines such as marketing, communication, public health, pharmacy, economics, medicine, and so on. There has been little to no effort to bring together these diverse bodies of literature and identify critical research trends and themes that would bring a holistic understanding to this intriguing body of research and show the way to future researchers to explore further in this area. Research on DTCA has been described as lacking in empirical content, rigorous methodology, comprehensive model building, and cause-effect studies. This study aims to review studies on DTCA with the aim of exploring the past and current trends in research, offering a comprehensive and inclusive definition of DTCA, identifying key themes on DTCA research, and providing potential agenda for future research.

This study adopts an interpretive research approach to explore the consumer experiences of a self-identified group, “Single Mothers by Choice” (SMCs). These women are either in the process of becoming mothers, or have attained motherhood, with the help of the assisted reproductive technologies (ART) industry. In the mid-nineties, the fledgling ART industry sought to serve heterosexual couples in (preferably) long-term committed relationships that faced problems in conceiving naturally (Houston, 2004). A decade later, the profit seeking industry’s rapid embrace of “other mothers,” (single and lesbian women) is indicative of an evolving marketplace that is largely unregulated and may be selective of who it serves (Houston, 2004). The potential vulnerabilities of such a marketplace invite further exploration by consumer researchers. Research on motherhood indicates that this life-stage experience involves extensive transitional consumption as women undergo the physical and socio-cultural transformation into becoming mothers. Recent research on new mothers’ consumer experiences (Jennings and O’Malley, 2003; Prothero, 2002; Carrigan and Sczmigin, 2004; Thomsen and Sorensen, 2006; Banister and Hogg, 2006; Voice Group, 2010) challenge dominant theoretical assumptions that consumers are automatically motivated to make informed decisions to consume through transitory life-roles (Voice Group, 2010). In this research we seek to understand the lived experiences of SMCs as they attain motherhood through ART.

The first phase of our study consisted of netnographic discourse analysis (Kozinets, 2010) of posts and blogs from select online communities of self-identified SMCs to understand and contextualize their consumption experiences in the ART marketplace. In the second phase of the study we recruited eighteen informants to participate in e-mail and Skype interviews (Ballantine and Creery, 2010). Since we aimed to understand overall consumer experiences in the ART marketplace, we included SMCs who traversed the entire gamut of the motherhood experience. We invited our participants to narrate their life-stories of how they initially decided to become a parent. Interview topics ranged from their reproductive background, romantic relationships, kin and social networks, careers and finances, and ideas about motherhood and family.

SMCs exchanged surprisingly candid technical, financial, and medical information in their online discourses. Preliminary findings from data analysis through iterative readings conducted independently by the two authors revealed that many SMCs described receiving positive reception as prospective customers at the ART clinics. However, social exclusion and fear of disapproval from social and kin networks were prominent in these discussions as were signs of defiance and celebration of independent decisions within virtual SMC communities. Womens’ consumption experiences in the ART industry, which due to its position as unregulated and largely unaccountable to customers, has been known to differentially treat single women (straight or lesbian) and heterosexual, married couples (Houston, 2004). In addition, our data analysis include accounts of treatment misinformation, inadequate screening processes of sperm donors, and deliberate withholding of financial obligations indicate a discernible lack of consumer control in a life event fraught with emotional investment in the consumption process. Our findings show that conceiving through ART is the least desirable choice for all women irrespective of their single or married status. ‘Trying to make a baby’ through the conventional route of love, marriage and sex, is portrayed as a positive experience of welcoming a child into the world to a two parent loving family. It is a powerful narrative that is ingrained in the cultural fabric of most societies. ART is often the last, desperate effort to experience pregnancy and biological motherhood for many women (Hertz, 2006). Previous research has indicated that heterosexual couples who resort to ART due to infertility problems draw strength and support from each other as they experience the emotionally and physically strenuous journey to parenthood (Fischer, Otnes and Tuncay, 2007). SMCs on the other hand report loneliness as they contemplate becoming single mothers through ART with the added burden of secrecy for fear of disapproval and exclusion from social networks (Hertz, 2006).

In conclusion, our research extends previous research on motherhood related consumer experiences (Fisher, Tuncay and Otnes, 2007; Houston, 2004) by developing a conceptual model that describes the transitional life-stage of SMCs and their interactions with the ART marketplace. The model outlines individual and collective resources of SMCs and other influences that contest and shape their experiences as ART consumers. The model illustrates how the advent of scientific technology, combined with fading boundaries of the digital and physical world of human social networks, influence evolving consumer experiences of women who choose to become mothers without the direct help of Mother Nature.

This study focuses on alcohol consumption in Ireland. The aim of this research is to investigate how young Irish consumers use alcohol in their endeavour to construct a coherent social identity within a culture of excessive alcohol consumption. The research also investigates the socialisation process that works to encourage this apparent excessive consumption. Essentially, the research focuses on exploring the ways in which social values and attitudes with respect to alcohol consumption are fashioned, sustained and expressed through the process of socialisation. In addition, the research focuses on gaining a greater understanding of how individuals resolve the tension that exists between the desire to achieve social inclusion through conforming to group norms that promote consumption versus the desire to retain an element of agency or control over one”s own consumption behaviour. The research also aims to identify a number of public policy recommendations that can contribute in a meaningful way to future social policy formation.

India evolved into an emerging economy based on its economic growth for the last two decades and its demographic dividend. India resiliently weathered the global financial crisis by growing at an average rate of 6% to 9% during 2007-2010 as compared to its erstwhile traditional growth rate of 2.5%

1

(Tata Statistical Outline of India 2008-2009, 2009-10. Economic, social and demographic metamorphoses dramatically altered the competitive landscape of Indian businesses. The banking sector which was critical for bridging the large rural-urban divide and achieving India’s financial inclusion goals, also transformed significantly. Yet even though income levels were rising and 81% of households saved, 36% kept their savings at home as cash (The Marketing Whitebook 2009-2010). About 48% of urban and 62% of rural Indians did not even have a bank account (Naik 2008). As regulatory restrictions eased, multinationals and the Indian private sector rapidly entered the market, increasing competitive pressure on the public sector (i.e., government owned) banks that had hitherto operated more for achieving government mandated financial inclusion goals than for profit. By 2009, India had 27 government banks with 85.8% of the branches and 77% of deposits; 21 private sector banks with 13.7% of the branches and 18% of deposits; and 30 multinational banks with 0.5% of branches and 5.2% of deposits (

www.rbi.org.in

).

The rising popularity of mobile phones in the South African population, currently 80% ownership (All media products survey, June 2010-July 2011), indicates both the importance of these devices and acceptance of mobile technology amongst this group, in which there is wide disparity in terms of socio-economic status. The high penetration of mobile phones presents this medium as an attractive platform for marketing communication activities. To implement effective marketing communication campaigns, using the various features hosted by mobile phones, requires understanding of a) which mobile phone features people have access to; b) which mobile phone features people make use of; and c) how often people use specific mobile phone features. The purpose of this study is to build segmentation profiles based on the mobile phone features people use and the frequency of use. These segments were compared on attitudinal and behavioural factors concerning the importance of mobile phones and social transformation within the context of a postmodern environment.

Emerging markets are those in the process of transitioning from being centrally planned to democracy driven with a more independent economy that is market-orientated. Emerging markets are currently experiencing rapid economic growth. Because of current and past economic and political situations, emerging markets also typically differ from developed markets.

The objective of this study is to propose a testable model of service entry in Russia. This paper attempts to identify areas of focus for firms considering investing in emerging markets. At the core of this framework is the assumption that consumers in emerging markets behave differently than those in developed countries. Each country experiences globalization differently. These differences are primarily due to diverse historical and cultural backgrounds, demographics, economic resources and development priorities, as well as the current and emerging political-economic trends. This is why companies need to learn about the economic and social conditions in emerging markets in order to be successful.

In summary, this paper attempts to identify a number of important variables likely influencing Russian customers to approach foreign services. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, variables that are likely to influence Russian customer to intend to approach new service were identified and include: normative beliefs, motivation to comply, valence and strength, ability to choose and the price of service offered. Finally, a potential moderator of the intention and actual action that is the first time service encounter was also proposed. Trust in the services provider is thought to moderate this relationship. In times when Russian market becomes flooded with foreign investors, this paper offers areas of focus for the companies that wish to enter this rich in opportunity market.

Product placement, which is the appearance of brands in motion pictures, television programs, video games, and other entertainment venues has seen tremendous growth in the United States and worldwide. However, product placement is relatively new in Hong Kong and has seen some backlash among consumers. Several studies have examined consumers’ attitudes toward this practice, and some have compared cross-cultural attitudes. The present study examines attitudinal difference across U.S. and Hong Kong consumers regarding attitudes toward product placement in movies. Results indicate several significant differences in attitudes, indicating a need to consider standardization modification strategies when exporting U.S.-based entertainment to Hong Kong.

The purchasing power of historically invisible groups is growing and yet we continue to see instances of entertainment and leisure venues either outright denying access to them and/or at least degrading the service that they receive. We study this and other such discrimination and injustice against groups based on gender, religion, skin tone, body image, weight, sexual orientation, language, disability, and other demographic markers (Walsh 2009). We provide a historical perspective, discuss our qualitative methodology, present our findings, and conclude with some recommendations for marketers and researchers in supporting the transformation of the lives of consumers in oppressed groups and segments from positions of being discriminated against and experiencing marketplace injustice to a position of fair and equitable treatment in a marketplace reflecting social justice.

We have developed a theoretical perspective on why these injustices are differentially perceived across groups. Thus, our research questions are as follows: To whom does Entertainment and Leisure Marketplace Discrimination occur and how? Do members of traditionally dominant groups and traditionally marginalized groups differ in the perceptions of Marketplace Discrimination? How are service provider reactions to allegations of Marketplace Discrimination perceived by members of marginalized groups?

We collected primary data in the form of depth interviews and drew heavily from extant literature. Respondents represented various ethnoracial backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, religions, etc. (cf. Motley and Henderson 2008; Motley, Henderson, and Baker 2003; Spiggle 1994). The coauthors and student collaborators interviewed people identified in multiple ways. The interviews were either conducted face-to-face or over the telephone, via the internet (e.g., Skype). Each interview was audio and/or video-taped and were between 40 and 90 minutes long. Interpretations of emergent themes were derived directly from interview transcripts, interviewer notes and the extant literature. The themes were independently developed by the co-authors and their research assistants, and while the labels differed, the interpretations overlapped.

We believe that the emergent themes from our data are best captured by our theoretical framework: liberation psychology. At its core, liberation psychology concerns the interaction between individuals and society (McKown 2005). Liberation psychology assumes that oppression often includes a tacit acceptance of inequities by oppressors and oppressed. From this perspective, oppression reflects lack of awareness of societal conditions that maintain oppression. The key to overcoming oppression is thus the development of “critical consciousness” on the part of oppressed people, or an awareness of social and economic contradictions, particularly the conditions of social inequality. Adams, O’Brien, and Nelson (2006) focus on three central tenets of a Liberation Psychology analysis: adopting the perspective of the oppressed, recovering historical memory, and de-ideologizing everyday experience (Martin-Baro, 1994, p. 30).

Liberation Psychology provides the perfect theoretical base to account for our marketplace discrimination data. We maintain that if more entertainment and leisure marketers adopted the perspective of the oppressed, they would be less likely to create/tolerate such circumstances. In addition, to the extent that marketers are able to Recover Historical Memory they would understand the context in which their traditionally marginalized customers put what they may believe are innocent mistakes. Lastly, by moving past feelings of guilt and confronting the issues head on, owners and managers of entertainment venues will be able to have a productive dialog with consumers about what constitutes fair treatment.

The framework of Porter’s value chain(1985) is extremely useful for manufacturing firms to conduct competitive analysis and formulate strategy. However, Cultural products carry a strong symbolic value which is determined by the social and cultural meanings associated with it that allow consumers to express individual and social identity via the purchase and use of the product. We believe the original value chain is not applicable to firms marketing cultural and creative products. Based upon case study from the experiences in Taiwan, we propose a Culture Creative-Based Value Chain (CCVC). Drawn from CCVC, we find there are three different business models utilized by firms, namely, company with marketing competence, craftsman/designer brand, and vertically integrated company. We also compare the various value activities of CCVC for the three business models.

Experiential products in categories such as leisure and entertainment can be consumed by more than one individual at the same time as they are as well pure public or mixed private/public goods. That is, consumption of products like movies, restaurants and concerts can be shared (Belk, 2009). Everyday experience tends to support the conjecture that individual consumption of experiential products increases in group contexts, where affect and other group processes should positively influence individual willingness to extend or even participate in the experience. Thus, individual consumption should depend on observable group characteristics when individuals share but there are sparse antecedents in the literature on this subject. This is an exploratory study on the effect of two basic group characteristics on individual consumption when sharing: group size and group composition. The interaction of group size and level of choice is explored as well. The study presents distributions of estimates for a random parameters model estimated on panel data of television viewing from a novel geography: Mexico. Implications for marketers include the possibility of improving the design of products and promotions to optimize shared consumption, enhance customer satisfaction and increase sales. Theoretical implications point to the need of a better understanding of group consuming common choices.

In recent years, the western world has observed the growing popularity and gradual consolidation of the ethical consumers who express ethical concerns through consumption. Research efforts to model the ethical consumer mostly draw on attitude-intention models and ignore existing ethical decision making models in the business and consumer context. Also, a major issue in this field is the attitude-behaviour gap, where consumers claim to be ethically concerned, but do not behave accordingly. To overcome these issues, we propose a new model drawing from a number of models in the general field of ethics and marketing.

The present paper broadens the domain of ethical consumer decision making by taking into account different models that have been studied in the broader field of ethics and marketing, that could allow us to further advance the explanatory ability of existing ethical consumer decision making models such as the widely used models of Ferrell & Gresham, (1985), Trevino (1986), Rest (1986), Hunt & Vitell (1986) among others.

One of the main contributions is of this model is that decision making does not only refer to the evaluation of a specific ethical behaviour, but also to the recognition and evaluation of the ethical issue related to this behaviour. Thus, the enactment of the behaviour should be examined in relation to the recognition and evaluation of an ethical issue.

A review of the extant literature on ethical consumer behaviours allowed us to identify other variables that might influence the process of evaluation of a moral issue. For instance, previous studies acknowledged that ethical consumer behaviours might be a form of constructing a self-identity (Shaw & Shiu, 2002). Also, relying on empirical studies and previous models on ethical consumers, we have identified variables that can play their part on the evaluation of specific ethical behaviours:

the expected effectiveness of the behaviour

the ethical value of the behaviour and

the fit between the behaviour and the ethical self of the individual

Finally, a number of empirical studies in the ethical consumer field discuss the issue of information and information search. However, it has not been included in any model as a construct of importance until the moment. For instance, a large number of studies suggest that the absence of relevant information reduces the likelihood of ethical consumer behaviour (Mohr et al., 2001; Uusitalo & Oksanen, 2004). Also, new technologies and the Internet facilitate the dissemination of information on corporate practices and ethical alternatives in the marketplace (Chatzidakis & Mitussis, 2007). This implies that the type of informational search (passive or active) and the information gathered can play an important role both in the recognition and evaluation of the ethical issue (e.g. animal cruelty) and the evaluation of the ethical action (e.g. boycotts). Media coverage draws attention on certain issues (Carrigan & Attalla, 2001), whereas repeated exposure to moral issues facilitates their recognition (Gautschi & Jones, 1998).

This research effort is currently at the data collection phase. The first empirical results will be available for presentation early in April and well before the annual AMS conference.

In a recent reaffirmation of past research, Ahearne et al. (2005) and DeCarlo et al. (2007) have shown the positive relationship between product knowledge and performance. The latter also indicate that level of product knowledge and selling skills mediate not just past performance but also future performance expectations. While salesperson knowledge has received considerable attention in marketing (see Sharma et al. 2007 for a recent review) there has been less focus on salespersons’ product knowledge. Given the pace of technological advancement, product knowledge is a critical component of a salesperson’s ability. Based on data collected from automobile salespeople, this research first hypothesizes and confirms that:

This article reports the findings of a study, conducted among 234 tourists who visited Cyprus, aiming to identify the drivers and outcomes of an eco-friendly attitude. Using structural equation modelling, it was confirmed that deontology, law obedience, and political action of tourists positively influence the adoption of an environmentally-friendly attitude. In turn, this was found to be conducive to an eco-friendly behavior which ultimately enhances his/her satisfaction. The study findings have important implications for business managers and public policymakers, while directions for future research are provided.

The primary distribution functions for tourism are information services and facilitating booking and payment of tourism products (Buhalis, 2001). Previous research has predominantly focused on particular aspects of the distributions process. The largest body of literature relates to information search processes (see Gursoy and McCleary (2003) and Cai, Feng, and Breiter (2004) for recent reviews).The purchasing function has drawn less research interests (see Woodside and King (2001) for an overview) and the booking function is almost ignored in the literature (see Wolfe, Hsu, and Kang (2004) as an exception). However, tourists are using different channels for each function and therefore display complex shopping behaviours in an ever increasing multichannel environment. Pearce and Schott (2005) showed how tourists navigate a mix of channels during various stages of the purchase process. One of the core challenges in this field is understanding consumer behaviour in a multichannel context (Neslin et al., 2006). It is therefore a need to extend work on tourists’ behaviour beyond information search process to include more detailed analysis of booking and purchase behaviour in order to develop a more complete understanding of the distribution process from the visitors’ perspective.

Lotteries are used in many countries to raise money for public policy making. Pricing strategies in this product category are unique, because although the game’s nominal price is relevant for revenue earning, its effective price – which includes the expected value of a lottery ticket - determines purchasing decisions.

This research explores how to affect the effective price of lottery tickets and thus increase their demand. Specifically, the authors propose a model to estimate the probability of a jackpot rollover in lottery games under both random and conscious number selection. In addition, the authors present a demand model for lottery games, where the effective price is the main predictor. Finally, they discuss how marketing actions can affect the effective price and, consequently, the demand for lottery tickets. The data is provided by Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, a mayor player in the lottery games industry in Chile.

Over the last several years social media platforms have gained much attention among marketing practitioners. It is widely acknowledged that consumers use social media platforms as pre-purchase information sources in order to make more profound buying decisions and in order to minimize their perceived risk (von Wangenheim and Bayón, 2004). In this context, consumers rely rather on online word of mouth (eWOM) than on conventional marketing messages. For example, the marketing research agency Nielsen revealed that 78 percent of consumers trust statements made by their personal network compared to 14 percent who trust statements made in advertising (Holzapfel and Holzapfel, 2010). Therefore, eWOM on these emerging plattforms is of concern not only for customers but also for marketers (Mangold and Faulds, 2009; Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003). While textbooks mainly focuses on the application of social media strategies (Holzapfel and Holzapfel, 2010; Safko and Brake, 2009; Weinberg, 2009), the academic research has investigated the characteristics of contributing customers and their motives of seeking information proactively. However, less attention has been paid to the processes and influences involved on the receiver’s side (Cheung et al., 2009). This paper investigates the determinants on online WOM recommendations on social media platforms.

With the inconvertible effect of globalization, a growing number of websites today sell their products to more than one country. The effects of cross cultural differences on buying behaviors are widely acknowledged. Therefore, a consideration about attracting and retaining online consumers from different countries and cultures is gaining importance. What are the basic motives that make consumers buy from online retailers? Does being hedonic or utilitarian matter? This paper examines the roles of hedonic and utilitarian values on online shopping by comparing cross culturally the Turkish and US consumers. A total of 264 students participated to the survey from Turkey and USA. Findings showed that Turkish and US consumers differ according to their hedonic and utilitarian values in online shopping. While Turkish consumers use online retailers to socialize with others, the US people use it to relax.

Because luxury consumers tend to be trendier, more affluent and educated than mainstream consumers, they often are described as potential early adopters of technology (Okonkwo 2010). Luxury firms are heavily promoting branded mobile apps, iPad catalogs, and mobile web sites in order to maintain customer relationships and keep luxury devotees connected to their brands 24/7. In order the test these claims, the current study examines the ways that luxury values relate to consumer behavior in an integrated multichannel retail setting. Thus, we conduct an empirical study of luxury consumers and their acceptance of quick response (QR) code technology.

In this preliminary report, ethics, CSR, and sustainability teaching and learning appear to be taking place in the AACSB accredited business schools and marketing classrooms. Business schools and marketing departments within graduate/undergraduate business programs in the United States are both incorporating and assessing learning objectives in ethics, CSR, and sustainability. However, CSR and sustainability lag behind ethics. This is not surprising since ethics has been a focus of business schools and AACSB for quite some time. It is likely that the focus by AACSB on these areas will continue to drive changes in business schools.

The readability of textbooks affects student performance and textbooks that are less readable result in lower average marks (grades) in the specific course. The readability of textbooks is one of the aspects in communication that requires attention in the South African context. South Africa is a country with 11 official languages, with many students reading textbooks that are not written in their first language, but rather in their second (or even their third or fourth) language. It has been estimated that approximately 80% of all secondary scholars in South Africa study in a second language. There has been an increase in the number of textbooks published in different parts of the world (as has taken place in South Africa) and there has also been an increase in the number of publications in different languages. In some instances, international editions are adapted for a local market (specifically a country) while in other situations, a textbook is written by local authors for use in their own environment. Various reasons can be identified why textbooks would be adapted from their original US edition or written by local authors, including the provision of local examples and the cost issues associated with the importing of textbooks.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare marketing research textbooks that have been written for a South African context to determine the readability of these textbooks and compare with those written in the US context.

There are numerous methods for determining readability including the Flesch Reading Ease, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index, Gunning’s Fog Index and the SMOG procedure. Research conducted by Chiang, Englebrecht, Phillips and Wang (2008) examined scores based on these methods determined that the readability scores using several methods were highly correlated (p<.0001), therefore making it necessary to only use one measure.

Marketing research textbooks that had been written specifically for the South African market were identified. Electronic copies of each chapter of the South Africa adaptations were obtained from the publishers. From each chapter, all tables and figures as well as assessment questions and references were removed. Four marketing research textbooks marketed in the United States were chosen for the study. Because three of the texts have multiple authors, samples were extracted from each of the chapters of the textbook.

The texts adapted from the South African market are written at the same readability level as all US texts except for the Hair, Bush, and Ortineau text. This suggests that students are required to read at the level of their US contemporaries. The importance of adapting texts to the South African market may be more about applying concepts using cultural examples and less about English as a first language. Limitations associated with this research include the limited number of SA marketing research textbooks that can be analyzed in this study as well as the development of readability formulae being dated. Future research can be conducted on locally-authored marketing textbooks as well as examining the comprehension of students of the specific textbooks.

As the field of business ethics has evolved, the marketing domain has been a natural context for and recipient of much ethical consideration. One reason for this might be that many of the critical issues facing modern businesses, such as sustainability and social responsibility, can be considered marketing ethics issues (Murphy, 2010). Marketing has been a significant contributor to applied ethics from the early days of business ethics research. Several of the original ethical decision making models emerged from marketing scholarship, such as the Ferrell-Gresham (1985) and the Hunt-Vitell (1986) frameworks, and they remain among the most highly-cited studies in the marketing ethics literature. Recent literature reviews confirm that issues of marketing ethics continue to grow in importance to the marketing profession (Schlegelmilch & Öberseder, 2010).

Due to the large number of commercial messages that consumers are exposed to on a near-constant basis, many print advertisements remain unnoticed by the intended target audience, leading to substantial reductions in advertising effectiveness (Ha 1996). Consequently, the development of approaches to improve consumer attention and to successfully cut through the clutter of competing advertising messages remains a constant challenge for marketing practitioners (Rumbo 2002). The importance of attention as the initial step to a positive consumer response is recognized by various models such as AIDA (attention-interest-desire-action); these models are built on the premise that only those elements of a message that receive sufficient attention from the audience will receive cognitive processing capacity, and that attention is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for subsequent stages in information processing and decision making. In the case of print advertisements, the allocation of cognitive processing capacity by the consumer requires a minimum amount of visual exposure time. As such, precise knowledge of that exposure time and of the exact elements that consumers may actually pay attention to is of significant importance for marketers if they wish to improve advertising effectiveness. In order to gain additional insights into how consumers process information from print advertisement, this study measures visual attention using eye tracking technology. The current paper presents selected findings from a larger eye tracking study conducted in the context of the airline industry, a sector subjected to constant and comprehensive cost-cutting demands that also – and especially – necessitate an improvement in their advertising efficiency and effectiveness.

‘Exchange offer’ is an important sales promotion tool for consumer durables in India. The Indian consumer’s reluctance to retire a product that is still functional, space constraints to store it while purchasing an upgraded product and an inherent need to gain maximum value out of a product, make exchange offers, a popular sales promotion tool amongst consumers. Exchange offers, communicated through advertisements, persuade consumers into action. The deep rooted cultural nuances in the society are reflected in these advertisements directed to the Indian consumer. This study uses content analysis as a research approach to evaluate the nature of exchange offer advertisements in Indian dailies. Findings from this study would be useful to both managers and researchers.

In the destination marketing literature, the exploration of movie-induced tourism has generated great interest in recent years. The basic purpose for movie-induced tourism studies is to explore the image enhancement opportunities that exist through the medium of movies and television programs. While many destination marketers take a positive view on movies’ potential impact on place images, some professionals have asked the question as to whether dark movies will have any adverse influence on destination images. For example, according to

The Detroit News

(2010), when the crime drama

Detroit 187

was shot in Detroit, the city expressed its concern of the show’s potential damage to its reputation. Some of the City Council members believed that the show portrayed Detroit as the crime capitol and proposed to oppose the show’s production on the site. The major questions now for destination marketers are: Will the viewers of dark movies tend to generate more favorable destination images or more unfavorable destination images? Will the viewers of dark movies tend to be more interested or less interested in visiting the embedded tourism site? The objective of this study is to explore these interesting questions which have not been addressed in the literature.

In recent years, consumers’ expectations in terms of corporate obligations have changed, such that the ethical and philanthropic dimensions of Carroll’s (1979) corporate social responsibility (CSR) pyramid have evolved from desired to presupposed responsibilities. Beyond the consequentially increasing prevalence of CSR activities, considerable attention has been given to cause-related marketing (CRM) in marketing research and practice (Bigné Alcañiz, Chumpitaz Cáceres, and Currás Pérez, 2010). CRM is defined as a “process of formulating and implementing marketing activities that are characterized by an offer from the firm to contribute a specified amount to a designated cause when customers engage in revenue-providing exchanges that satisfy organizational and individual objectives” (Varadarajan and Menon, 1988). Existing research supports the notion that CRM exerts an important impact on consumers’ buying behavior and enhances the image of the sponsoring company or brand (Barone et al., 2000; Bigné Alcañiz et al., 2010; Gupta and Pirsch, 2006; Lafferty, Goldsmith, and Hult, 2004; Nan and Heo, 2007). Furthermore, literature indicates that a systematic choice of the cause affects the effectiveness of CRM activities (Varadarajan and Menon, 1988). More specifically, the majority of studies highlight the importance of fit between the cause and the sponsoring company or brand (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore, and Hill, 2006; Ellen, Mohr, and Webb, 2000; Lafferty et al., 2004). There is, however, some evidence that fit might be necessary but not sufficient for CRM success (Pracejus and Olsen, 2004). As such, additional research on relevant cause characteristics is needed in order to guide managerial decisions (Nan and Heo, 2007). With this in mind, this study empirically examines the impact of meta-cognitions in terms of the validity of consumer attitudes toward the cause in a high-fit condition.

The controls of customer contact employee behavior can be thought of as falling into one of two broad groups, formal and informal controls (Jaworski 1988). Under Jaworski (1988), formal controls are the written, management-initiated mechanisms that influence the probability that employees will behave in the manner desired by the firm and informal controls are the unwritten, usually worker-based mechanisms that influence the individual employee’s behavior. While informal controls, such as self controls, have been shown to positively strongly and positively influence customer contact employee outcomes (e.g. Brown, Mowen, Donavan, and Licata 2002; Pappas and Flaherty 2005; Dean 2007; Babakus, Yavas, and Ashill 2009), they also present greater challenges to managers as they are undocumented and controlled by employees. As a result, it is important to understand which methods are available to managers to influence the “unwritten rules” that guide employee behavior. To that end, this paper examines the social influence of the manager on two informal controls, the customer contact employee’s customer orientation and intrapreneurial orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the evident link between sustainability and luxury while explaining and illustrating the green and sustainable strategy of luxury companies. First, the luxury industry, its key figures and players will be presented. Many luxury groups & firms are investing in exploring greener and more sustainable options, especially to answer their customers’ expectations. An overview of what is happening across a number of different luxury product categories will allow understanding this eco-wave. Examples will be given in several luxury sectors: home design, automotive, haute-couture & fashion, hospitality, yachting, jewelry.

The global luxury market represents 200 billion Euros (Bain & Company, 2012). Despite the international economic crisis, it is a booming industry with an impressive growth, driven by the new rich of developing nations such as China and India. Moët Hennessy. Louis Vuitton, created in 1987 only, is the indisputable world leader with a revenue of 23.659 million Euros, an exclusive portfolio of 60 esteemed brands, a retail network of 3000 stores and almost 100000 employees, in 2011. Far behind, there are the Richemont Group, with its emblematic Cartier brand, and the luxury pole of PPR Group, so well represented by the Gucci Group. Beside these big players, many luxury houses have key roles in this highly competitive industry.

The heavy green and sustainable global trend, which is not so new (Henion & Kinnear, 1976), is also present in the luxury industry. Durability, timeliness, craftsmanship, quality, authenticity, know how, are key words for defining luxury. The link with sustainability is thus obvious. Nevertheless, luxury companies have relatively recently accelerated the implementation of their sustainable strategy. The 2007 WWF report, which mentioned the poor grades of luxury firms in sustainability and social responsibility, has maybe accelerated the movement (Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007).

But why is going green such an evidence for luxury companies? First, it is an absolute necessity: companies have limited natural resources to satisfy unlimited wants (Polonsky, 1994). They have to be effective in terms of resource management, which is source of cost saving and profitability. Second, the green luxury consumer is very aware of environmental issues. He is also very demanding and sensitive to the social condition of the extraction and exploitation of resources, meaning to corporate social responsibility. He has the “money power” and is ready to pay premium prices for a more sustainable product. In Asia, in particular, where Taoism and Buddhism represent a long tradition, green consumerism is a powerful movement (Sempels, 2012). It is a global phenomenon. Third, both the governments’ and competition’s pressures are becoming stronger. At last, with new tools of communication, a green and sustainable strategy has a clear impact on brand reputation.

Choosing a green and sustainable strategy is then a major decision. The management has to evaluate the importance of the green market in one hand, and its ability to differentiate its green offering on the other hand (Ginsberg, 2004). And the possibilities go from a “quiet” green strategy” to an extreme green strategy.

Green and sustainable luxury products or actions are launched every day. Let’s just evoke some examples. In home design, the “Green Luxury Home” costs over 100 million dollars, is equipped with sustainable strategy and technology, is part of an eco-friendly rehabilitation project, uses geothermal heating and other renewable power production strategies, and produce more energy than it consumes. The “Kokopo House” uses rain water filtration for kitchen and bathroom, natural ventilation, solar power generation for low-power on-site LEDs, has a green design, and a luxury living. “Acqua Liana”, uses the latest technologies in sustainability and costs $29,000,000. In the eco-friendly luxury yachting sector, “Soliloquy” is the “super- green super yacht”. There are also many examples of green luxury hotels & resorts. Environmentally Friendly Luxury Cars includes famous products and brands like “Lexus RX 400”, “BMW plug-in hybrid car”, and the “Ferrari Hy-Kers” model. Jaguar Land Rover has also a visible sustainable development policy. In luxury green fashion and accessories, the “Hermes- Petit H collection” is an interesting example. It is a collection of “unidentified poetic objects” made from factory scraps and defective materials. The green & sustainable jewelry sector is very active with key actions and players like the Kimberley Process, Corporacion Oro Verde, the Alliance for Responsible Mining, The Responsible Jewelry Council.

In conclusion, luxury & sustainable development is evidence. The power of the luxury consumers is determinant. The eco and social role of luxury companies is huge, and will have an impact on all industries.

Impulse buying refers to buying as a result of a sudden, intense urge to buy without planning the buying situation. Previous research has shown that numerous factors influence impulsive buying decisions of consumers. This study treats ethnicity as a factor that influence consumers’ impulse buying decisions. Data was collected from three ethnic minorities living in the UK: Turkish, Chinese and Indian. These particular consumers are compared in terms of impulsive buying and the results indicate that, consumers’ ethnicity differentially has influence on their impulsiveness. Indian consumers are found to be the least impulsive buyers and significantly different from Turkish and Chinese consumers whereas no impulsive buying difference is found between Turkish and Chinese consumers.

Consumers increasingly display non-allegiance to the consumption system and opposition to firms’ commercial practices. They engage in various acts to proclaim their rejection of the market system through collective actions such as boycotts (Friedman, 1999) or culture jamming (Rumbo, 2002), but also express their opposition in individual everyday practices such as voluntary simplicity (Leonard-Barton, 1981), the rejection of brands (Dalli, Romani and Gistri, 2005) or certain marketing techniques (Roux, 2008a). The manifestations stemming from these various forms of resistance are expressed either in voice or in exit, as described by Hirschman (1970). Previous consumer resistance research has focused on the importance of the situational context in explaining those behaviors, with scant attention paid to the conception of the psychological reasons why some people are more likely to resist than others under the same situational context. In order to go further in the comprehension of the phenomenon of consumer resistance, we are interested in consumer resistance in an individual perspective by examining the motivational processes underlying those behaviors. In other words, what are the intrinsic motivations explaining why some consumers may adopt certain behaviors so as to counteract or defeat marketing efforts (Fournier, 1998)

The norm of reciprocity or repayment in kind, is arguably one of the most prevalent social rules that governs and keeps the balance of the social relations for a long time. At the individual level, it confirms the need to reciprocate, promotes the predictability, and boosts the expectations. Given the importance of customer loyalty to the company, researchers have been trying to identify the antecedents of this construct. Loyalty, by nature, is to be reciprocated between two parties (Solomon 1992). And by reciprocating, the two parties are expected to exchange things of equivalent value, i.e., either “tit for tat”, or “tat for tat”. It is difficult to maintain the relationship, in which the loyalties are asymmetrically exchanged between parties. Yet none of the prior research in B2C identifies “seller loyalty” as an antecedent of customer loyalty. Based on the very simple social exchange rule, the norm of reciprocity, a few simple questions are raised in this study. The first one is,

whether the perceived seller loyalty is a potential antecedent of the customer loyalty

? Second,

what constitutes the seller loyalty from the perspective of the customer?

And the purpose of this study is to answer these questions.

Triple bottom line reporting tend to follow common approaches how it is done. There is rarely seen adapted or modified ‘bottom line’ approaches to specific market and societal characteristics in literature. The objective of this research note is to describe a ‘fivefold bottom line’ approach in implementing and reporting corporate efforts of sustainable business practices. The authors argues that insights from industry of implementing and reporting sustainable business practices based upon different corporate ‘bottom line’ approaches are required in literature. A lesson learned from the presented ‘fivefold bottom line’ approach to implement and report their corporate efforts of sustainable business practices is that it is adapted to fit and make sense in a specific market and society. The triple bottom line approach is usually derived from, or commonly based upon, a Western perspective on the market and society in literature. The authors propose that the ‘triple bottom line’ approach may need to be commonly adapted to the country and cultural context in focus, which is not normally done, but templates are used.

An increasing number of companies are voluntarily disclosing their social, environmental and economic impact. These efforts have allowed corporate leaders to demonstrate to society that their companies are behaving in a socially desirable manner (Gray et al. 1988). The use of reporting standards like those produced by the Global Reporting Initiative have become an integral part of firms’ CSR disclosure strategy (KPMG 2011). The GRI’s G3 Guidelines provide firms an option to declare a specific application level based on what they choose to report. Firms also have the option of 3

rd

party assurance to assure stakeholders that requirements have been met. (Moneva et al. 2006; Gamerschlag et al. 2011; GRI 2011).

There is a dearth of knowledge on the impact of corporate philanthropic initiatives on corporate reputation. This study investigates how philanthropic support impacts customers’ perception of a philanthropic company in Austria and Egypt. Set in the telecommunication industry, the analysis is theoretically anchored in balance theory, consumer ethnocentrism and institutional theory. The findings show that corporate philanthropy has only a minor positive impact on corporate reputation in both countries and that ethnocentrism moderates the link between attitude toward corporate philanthropic support and customer-based corporate reputation.

Companies strive, through branding and other efforts, to push their message out and create a high willingness to pay (WTP) where consumers feel there are few or no substitutes for what these companies are selling. Social Media, however, are making push-based marketing anachronistic. Users of social media typically eschew professional communications pushed at them by faceless, impersonal organizations in favor of more personal conversations. They seek greater engagement with their preferred brands, and involvement, with or without the company’s approval, in creating brand personalities. Their affinity for these preferred brands might well auger the dawn of a new WTP – willingness to participate. This paper presents a model of consumer engagement through social media and argues for re-conceptualizing WTP by using a series of examples showing how companies that engage consumers through social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube stand to reap the benefits of long-term competitive advantages.

Despite increasing interest in understanding consumers’ self-concept, there is relatively limited research on consumer’s self- consciousness, one of the foundations of self concept (Belk, 1988; Chang 2006; Fenigstein et al., 1975). In addition, a disposition to focus attention on one’s self (Buss, 1980), self-consciousness needs to be further explored with another related but different concept – gender consciousness, to provide a well rounded foundation of self concept (Gould, 1996). Gender consciousness, as defined by consumer’s awareness of his/her gender identity (Gould, 1996; Gould and Stern, 1989), has long been considered important in social psychology since “one’s consciousness of one’s own gender will influence one’s feelings about oneself’ (Gould and Stern, 1989, p. 130). However, this concept has received scant attention in the marketing literature. Previous literature suggests that self-consciousness and gender consciousness may provide insights to some key issues of consumer behavior, including expression of values (Millenson, 1985), manifestation of personality traits (e.g. Dichter et al., 1989) and product choices (Gould and Stern, 1989). However, these studies have focused on either self- consciousness or gender consciousness, Thus, this study attempts to address the shortcomings in extant literature and provide knowledge base to marketing managers.

Our study specially focuses on the impact of self-consciousness and gender consciousness on consumer’s brand perceptions. One central step regarding enhancing consumer’s brand perceptions is to increase consumer’s brand sensitivity or consciousness. Such consciousness has been well researched in extant literature and has been widely explored as an instrument for enhancing brand attitude and behavior (Liao and Wang, 2009; Nelson and McLeod, 2005; Mussey, 1997). Furthermore, an interesting perspective with respect to consumer consciousness and brand consciousness is their differential nature with respect to different cultural societies. This study targets two different cultures: that of the U.S.A and China.

Using structural equation modeling, the study found that both self-consciousness and gender consciousness have a significant impact on consumer’s brand consciousness, which in turn, positively relates to consumer’s brand attitudes, brand loyalty, and willingness to pay price premium. Brands, therefore, play a very important role in portraying individualistic personalities in the Western culture. Besides, need for uniqueness partially mediates the relationship between self-consciousness /gender consciousness and brand consciousness. Contrary to expectations, the findings show some interesting differences for the Chinese consumers. First, self-consciousness has a negative impact on brand consciousness. Second, gender consciousness was not related to brand consciousness. Though both self-consciousness and gender consciousness have no positive effect on brand consciousness, our findings suggest that need for uniqueness mediates the relationships. If a brand has a unique appeal, it will create a bond between Chinese consumers and brands.

Findings for the study provide insights for both marketing scholars and practitioners. At the theoretical level, the study demonstrates that self-consciousness and gender consciousness are two related but different concepts, and they can impact consumer’s brand perceptions. The study also indicates the importance of consumers’ need for uniqueness, especially in the Eastern culture. Specifically, need for uniqueness plays an important role in enhancing their brand consciousness and other brand perceptions for both the U.S. and Chinese consumers. At the practical level, the study encourages brand managers to focus on consumers’ consciousness, including their self consciousness, gender consciousness, and brand consciousness, and thus design effective marketing campaigns to evoke consumers’ consciousness.

International trade in counterfeit goods has been showing a steady increase in the new millennium, totaling an estimated $250 billion, or nearly two percent of world trade, in 2007 (OECD, 2009). This increase in buying and selling of pirated and fake goods continues to gain ground despite global efforts to respect intellectual property rights through transnational organizations like the WTO, and a commitment to do so by member countries (WTO, 2012). Academics have examined the problem of counterfeiting from a “supply side” perspective, examining sources of counterfeit goods and factors such as political, legal, and economic infrastructure that may facilitate the practice (Berrell and Wrathall, 2007; Lambkin and Tyndall, 2009).

Successful branding strategies form positive brand images in consumers’ minds, which contribute to brand equity in the long run (Aaker, 1991). Much research suggests that the image of a product’s country of origin (COO) can significantly impact consumers’ brand image perceptions and buying preferences (e.g. Hsieh, Pan & Setiono, 2004; Wang & Lamb, 1983). However, little is still known about how country branding (a country’s whole image, covering political, economic, historical and cultural dimensions), interacts with country product image (Fetscherin 2010). Switzerland has a strong country image and therefore provides a unique case (Yin 2003). Brand Switzerland governed by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs to oversee the communication of the country’s image (

www.imageswitzerland.ch

). This department monitors the view of Switzerland overseas, and has determined that the key brand values should be

trustworthy, premium quality and authentic

with two secondary concepts of

secure future

, and

self-determination

. The objective of this study is to analyse the degree to which Swiss companies use these key dimensions of the official country image.

Intercultural competence is a significant qualification for successful cooperation between international enterprises. Research in this field, however, is mainly influenced by Western paradigms and methodologies which may not be transferred to the Chinese context as they do not adequately reflect important Chinese cultural characteristics. Hence, a qualitative study on Sino-German communication reflecting these shortcomings was conducted to conceptualize a country-specific model of intercultural competence. The findings are of practical relevance for Germans working with Chinese professionals.

Consumers use their imaginations to construct visions in which they become the featured actors of a future situation using the product, affecting purchase intentions, the intensity of the intentions, and the duration of the intentions (Ahuvia 2005; Anderson 1983; Cross and Markus 1990; Garry and Polaschek 1999; Gerrig 1994; Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Markus and Nurius 1986). Using self-verification theory, this study makes an academic contribution by advancing the literature on imagination, self-esteem and social self-consciousness, as encouraged by researchers such as Schau (2000). From a managerial perspective, the topic certainly resonates at the retail level, where decisions are based on many factors- including experience and potentiality of possession and self in an object (Belk 1988). This paper uses Self-Verification theory to support individual traits’, such as knowledge, self-esteem, involvement, and social self-consciousness, in relation to imaginative consumption. In addition, use of imaginative consumption and self-verification theory explains opinion leadership, the small, powerful, and vaguely understood segment (Baumgarten 1975; Goldsmith, Heitmeyer, and Freiden 1991).

The data collected in this research were obtained from a survey instrument administered to college students, primarily between the ages of 18-25, in a large, American-southwest university. All participants were entered in a drawing to win a gift card. A total of 156 usable survey responses were obtained. Scales were borrowed from the literature with all items rated on a Likert-type scale where 1 = Strongly Agree and 7 = Strongly Disagree. All alphas provided for at least minimal reliability (Beardon, Haws, and Netermeyer 2010; Robinson, Shaver, and Wrightsman 1991). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between individual differences and imaginative consumption, and between imaginative consumption and opinion leadership. Fashion involvement, self-esteem, and idea shopping motivation were all significant predictors of imaginative consumption and imaginative consumption, probability of a mispurchase, and fashion knowledge were all significant predictors of fashion opinion leadership. In light of these findings, retailers that appeal to opinion leaders and encourage self-verifying behavior can benefit. Retailers should stimulate thought and action through innovative atmospherics and visuals, special event programs designed to bring these consumers in shops, and by providing ease of access visually and physically to merchandise. In operationalizing these strategies, retailers can invite the consumers subtly to engross themselves in imaginative consumption.

Although a long stream of research has been devoted over the last two decades to the definition and the measurement of the brand equity (Leuthesser 1988; Farquhar 1989; Aaker 1991, 1996; Keller 1993), little attention has been paid to the equity of the retailer as a brand. However, retailers are predominant actors in our current society since they build the bridge between manufacturers and consumers (Baldauf et al. 2009). On the one hand, they are crucial for manufacturers insofar as retailers can choose to remove a brand or to provide it more shelf space, depending on the impact the brand has on the retailer’s performance. On the other hand, they gather in the same outlets various brands and products at competitive prices, making shopping more convenient and pleasant for customers. The main objective of this work is to offer a proper definition and conceptualization of retailer brand equity from the consumer’s perspective that can serve for both researchers and practitioners since we emphasize that former measures badly reflect the concrete “added value” of some retailers (Ailawadi and Keller 2004).

Although a long stream of research has been devoted over the last two decades to the definition and the measurement of the brand equity (Leuthesser 1988; Farquhar 1989; Aaker 1991, 1996; Keller 1993), little attention has been paid to the equity of the retailer as a brand. However, retailers are predominant actors in our current society since they build the bridge between manufacturers and consumers (Baldauf et al. 2009). On the one hand, they are crucial for manufacturers insofar as retailers can choose to remove a brand or to provide it more shelf space, depending on the impact the brand has on the retailer’s performance. On the other hand, they gather in the same outlets various brands and products at competitive prices, making shopping more convenient and pleasant for customers. The main objective of this work is to offer a proper definition and conceptualization of retailer brand equity from the consumer’s perspective that can serve for both researchers and practitioners since we emphasize that former measures badly reflect the concrete “added value” of some retailers (Ailawadi and Keller 2004).

Social media (sometimes referred to as consumer generated media or interactive media) has developed into an area of immense interest for marketing scholars and practioners. Many organizations are using social media as part of their integrated marketing communication programs. Communicating with consumers via social media is thought to be very important especially within the coming years. Despite the importance and increased usage of social media, research on social media usage is lacking when compared to the more traditional components of the marketing mix. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate why and how consumers use social media.

The current research explores why consumers use social media by applying usage and gratifications theory. In particular, this paper explores and identifies what uses and gratifications consumers identify as being important to them as they participate in social media networks. In-depth interviews are conducted with twenty-five consumers about their social media usage. Analyses of qualitative comments identify fifteen usages and gratification themes for social media usage. The fifteen usage and gratification themes combined with comments from consumers provide a rich and vivid understanding of why and how consumers use social media.

This paper deals with a comparative study between Brazil, China and Philippines on services marketing. By focusing on culture, standardization/adaptation, trust and network, attempt is made to illustrate how impact of service characteristics can be handled to smooth marketing of health care services internationally. Data has been collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 21 respondents from Brazil, China, Philippines and Sweden. The result shows that culture has much effect on the operations of Elekta Philippines and China while Brazilian establishment is run by following general marketing practices. Standardization has been common regarding treatment and service quality but some adaptation has taken place in Philippines to treat new diseases not included in the Gamma knife tradition. Trust is found necessary in all the cases but has been built in different ways. In China, guanxi has been used to develop informal relationships with the customers to ensure trust. Trust in Philippines is developed by recruiting relatives and friends and relying on experience in work with old Gamma knife facility. In Brazil, long-term relationships with the customers have been stressed and are built on understanding, business facts, competence and customers’ access to Elekta reference centers.

This study seeks to investigate consumers’ concerns with personal privacy, and security threats to personal information (Ohkubo et al 2005; Smith 2005). The context is potential consumers’ behavioral intention to adopt the RFID technology in the healthcare arena, and the research question explored is: Do patients have privacy concerns resulting from the application of RFID based tracking in the healthcare arena? While existing literature talks about consumer privacy issues in general as being incumbent upon the deployment of technology (Hossain and Prybutok 2008), or of adoption of RFID by the healthcare industry (Lee and Shim 2007), no research has been done specifically concerning the privacy of patients in the healthcare arena.

Health care marketers should assess the levels of consumers’ prior knowledge set before designing health marketing communication messages. Consumer behavior research has established the importance of prior knowledge, yet only part of knowledge directs health behavior. We posit four prior knowledge dimensions which include consumer behavior’s prior knowledge conceptualizations (objective knowledge, subjective knowledge), a discrete measure of knowledge use confidence, and introduce the economic psychology concept of what the individual takes to apply to the self (personal knowledge); and we investigate their impact on health behavior for the USA and their relevance for six other countries. Scales were developed and administered via an Internet survey. Across all countries, personal knowledge is important to understanding the relationship between prior knowledge and health behavior. Countries varied in their knowledge use confidence and subjective knowledge. Objective knowledge was associated with health behavior for only one country.

This paper focuses on exploring the concept of raising awareness of a key healthcare issue, responsible drinking, among students through the use of “live” projects in the form of marketing campaigns developed and run by students. The key knowledge and skills developed through live projects are both pedagogical in terms of teaching, learning and assessment tools and market-place orientated in terms of increased employability for students. Futhermore, the orientation and theme of responsible drinking provides a strong societal dimension which highlights social and moral considerations to students and educates them to be ethical citizens and champions of change among their peers in areas affecting student healthcare and wellbeing.

Hybrid products arise from combining two or more previously independent product categories into one (Gregan-Paxton et al. 2005). A stream of recent research in marketing has demonstrated that consumers process an ambiguous product by applying one or more categories that they judge to mostly fit it (Gregan-Paxton et al. 2005; Moreau et al. 2001; Rajagopal and Burnkrant 2009). Recent research has begun to investigate whether and under what circumstances individuals would use multiple (vs. single) categories to generate inferences about ambiguous products (e.g., Gregan-Paxton et al. 2005). If only one of the key focal goals attached to a hybrid product generating multiple-category inference is activated, this research proposes that (1) single-category inference will occur where inferences are based largely on the category relevant to the active goal; and (2) the hybrid product whose inferences are based on the category relevant to the active goal (i.e., the hybrid product generating single-category inference) will be more positively evaluated, as compared with the hybrid product inducing the same single-category inference in the no-goal condition.

Past research has shown that consumer innovativeness is influenced by demographics and consumer personality attributes, like need for stimulation, desire for novelty, and need for uniqueness. We extend previous work in this area by empirically testing the effect of three time orientations (past, present and future) on consumer innovativeness; using data collected from two countries: India and the USA.

Recent advances in technology have given organizations the opportunity to provide self-service through the medium of technology, and accordingly, the provision of these technology-based services has increased in the last decade (Holman & Buzek, 2007; Lee et al., 2010). Providing consumers with the opportunity for self-service allows organizations to reduce the number of staff members needed to provide a service to customers (Meuter et al., 2000). This allows organizations to speed up a service while maintaining costs, or to maintain speed while reducing costs. Importantly though, when providing these self-service options, organizations must ensure that standards of service are maintained in order to benefit from the reduction in staffing. This generates a requirement that organizations understand why consumers try, and continue to use, self-service technology. While the trial aspects of self-service technology are well represented in research (Curran, Meuter & Surprenant, 2003; Meuter et al., 2005), the process of adoption is represented less so. Central to technology adoption literature is the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis, 1989), and it has been applied to cover employee (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000), customer facing (Lin, Shih & Sher, 2007; Wang & Butler, 2007), and self-service (Alhudaithy & Kitchen, 2009; Pikkarainen, et. al., 2004) technology adoption; however, it has been suggested that improvements can be made to increase the relevance of the model for modern scenarios (Bagozzi, 2007). Specifically, while the cognitive antecedents of technology adoption are well covered, the role of emotion in the process is somewhat underrepresented, or simplified. Accordingly, in development of past methodologies, the current study aims to investigate the role of emotion in adoption, providing a more thorough representation of the self-service technology adoption process.

Metaphorically, a company’s tendency toward sustainability is a result of its DNA. That is, there are properties that trigger or shape sustainability activities within the organization. The company DNA holds the deeply rooted set of values and beliefs that provide behavioral norms that trigger or shape sustainability activities. Crittenden et al. (2011) identified three properties within a company’s sustainability DNA: core ideology, dynamic capabilities, and societal engagement. Collins and Porras (1996) proclaimed that a company’s core ideology was the glue that held the company together—the enduring character of the organization. Trice and Beyer (1993, p. 33) defined organizational ideology as the “shared, relatively coherent interrelated sets of emotionally charged beliefs, values and norms that bind some people together and help them make sense of their worlds.” Since the core ideology does not change continually, the company’s sustainability efforts must fit clearly within the domain of the company’s purpose and values. Thus, according to Crittenden et al. (2011), the company’s core ideology is exemplified by its mission and shared values. Day (1994) refers to organizational capabilities as complex bundles that are deeply embedded in organizational routines. Schreyogg and Kliesch-Eberl (2007) refer to these organizational capabilities as dynamic capabilities which are complex processes across an organization that can be built in different fields and at different levels of organizational activity. As such, Crittenden et al. (2011) propose that sustainable products are more likely to come from companies purporting to be integrated cross-functionally and that value collaboration internally and externally. Societal engagement involves the proactive development of strategies that benefit stakeholders and the organization. The supposition is that a firm’s DNA has an embedded awareness of both societal issues and opportunities to create societal benefits as organizational resources are deployed for competitive advantage.

Given this initial exploration into the sustainability DNA, the decision was made to focus on companies that have a strong sustainability reputation. Corporate Knights (2012), a Toronto-based media, research, and financial products corporation, along with three partners, identify the 100 most sustainable companies in the world on an annual basis. This Global 100 has been released for 2012, and companies on this list are used for the data set in the current research. Thus, the websites for the 100 companies on the list were examined with the following content search guiding the exploration:

Company mission, core values (i.e., core ideology DNA property )

Cross-functional integration and supply chain collaboration in general or related to sustainability (i.e., dynamic capabilities DNA property)

Community efforts and philanthropy (i.e., societal engagement DNA property)

The Global 100 companies are ranked from one to 100 via a rigorous sustainability assessment. In addition to pursing the identification of individual companies’ sustainability DNA, the current research includes a country-by-country evaluation.

As noted in previous research, there is the need to understand

why

companies engage in sustainability. Crittenden et al. (2011) provided a theoretical framework for beginning to understand the underpinnings – the

why

– that companies do what they do. By offering the DNA construct and suggesting organizational properties of this construct, these authors provided an impetus for research into the why. However, there is a need to better understand the composition of the DNA properties before attempting to delineate testable variables. As such, this qualitative research project enables extensive exploration of sustainable companies’ DNA. This review of the DNA properties will offer insight as to similarities/dissimilarities of DNA within a known group of sustainable organizations. If the content analytic method of websites appears to be a fruitful avenue, then the next step would be to identify a set of successful companies that are not on the Global 100 listing and compare their DNA properties to that found in this stage of the research.

Frontline Service employees (FLSEs) are responsible for the effective delivery of services and thus are critical in determining how customers evaluate organizations. Given their focal role in the exchange process it is essential that marketing strategies and programs targeting FLSEs, ensure they (the FLSEs) deliver on organization’s marketing programs and objectives. To achieve employee engagement with strategic actions, organizations develop internal marketing orientation (IMO) as a broad strategic approach which is designed to systematically understand and respond to employees’ needs by delivering the right ‘job’ product. This is analogous to traditional market orientation (MO), where firms gather external information and then respond to external customers’ needs. From the perspective of Internal Marketing (IM), it has been argued that even though management may craft the most carefully developed organizational internal market orientation (IMO), the successful implementation of these programs are contingent on how FLSE’s respond to IMO as a general concept. It is therefore vital for management to develop IMO at the organizational level (i.e. organizational IMO) that is viewed positively by employees. However, to date FLSEs’ perceptions of organizational IMO have been under-researched, which is somewhat surprising, even though some studies exist, given that it is FLSEs who determine whether IMO implementation succeed or fail. To address this gap, this paper develops and tests a conceptual model investigating if FLSE perception of organizational IMO impact on their job satisfaction (JS) and organizational identification (OI) and whether these in turn impacts on their customer oriented behaviors (COB) which is the ultimate focus of implementing IMO targeting FLSEs.

The hypotheses were tested using a sample of 295 frontline salespeople working for a large Bangladeshi general insurance company, using the bootstrapping bias corrected 95% confidence interval procedure in SEM using AMOS 20. The paper also uses the phantom-model approach to calculate specific indirect (i.e., mediated) effects of perception of organizational IMO on COB via JS and OI. The findings of this paper suggest that FLSE’s perception of organizational IMO impact on their COB via JS and OI. This would mean that firms should foster both FLSE’s OI as well JS as both are equally important for positively mediating the impact of perception of organizational IMO on FLSE’s COB i.e. achieve broader organizational actions designed to improve customer outcomes.

This study argues that an individual’s religiousness influences his donation practices in multiple and complex ways. Data analysis was carried out under the grounded theory approach, and a series of 34 semi-structured, exploratory interviews were conducted in two European countries with religious different traditions, Portugal and England. The findings support that religiousness is an underlying variable that partly determinates donation practices. Nevertheless, donors state this influence is sometimes present because of background, education, or on other occasions due to personal and intimate reasons. Likewise, there is considerable overlap between such motives for giving behavior between religious and secular donors, and a readiness to give to either religious or secular charities. The interviews and subsequent codifications confirm that different motives, prosocial behavior and the role of religion are closely linked.

Post-secondary instructors have many demands on their time, however student learning in their classes is one of their most important responsibly. We introduce Nugget Notes, a new teaching tool, that recognizes the time and effort demands felt by professors, busy markers, and of course overwhelmed students. With Nugget Notes being only 100 words, students are compelled to engage with course material, synthesize pertinent information, and apply that knowledge to a real life situation or problem. Student and instructor exploratory surveys support the primary learning goals of Nugget Notes.

This paper discusses a class project created by the author titled: “The Klout Challenge”, which helps students gain engagement skills and the capacity to influence within social media. The Klout Challenge helps to fill the void of students failing to develop experience with social media tools for marketing application. This project uses an independent online metric available from Klout.com to assess students’ level of social media influence. The impact of this project stretches beyond the classroom, as some hiring firms are beginning to assess applicants’ Klout scores. Therefore, students who successfully put effort into this project are likely to appear more attractive as job applicants. Educators can use this paper’s five-step implementation plan to adapt this project into a marketing or advertising class.

A before and after analysis for one class that participated in this project reveled significantly higher Klout scores after participating. When the project began, most students were below an average Klout score of 20 (M = 16.7, SD = 10.7, n = 46). Upon project completion Klout scores were significantly higher (p < .0001, M = 39.1, SD = 11.5, n = 44). Students with higher Klout scores said they actively used the social media engagement strategies presented in class. There are two methods an instructor can use for grade assignment. The first grading calculation method is subjective, using the distribution of scores around the mean to assign a letter grade. This method is effective, as it challenges students to compete against one another for a higher score. However, some students prefer fixed grading thresholds known up front. Instructors who prefer to offer fixed grading cutoff points can elect to use a second grading method: take the final Klout score multiplied by 2.00 to arrive at the grade percentage.

Education is a public good that should be utilized to help build an educated workforce that can contribute to economic growth and prosperity. A relationship exists between industry, secondary and tertiary education as role players in contributing to an effective workforce. This relationship seems to be linear in nature and therefore, when an imbalance in any of these environments occurs it can potentially have an effect on the overall economic wellbeing of the specific country.

This paper presents the research findings of a global brand study conducted in South Africa. This empirical research sought to evaluate the relative contribution of the following eight constructs on global brand purchase intent: country of origin, brand familiarity, brand liking, brand trust, ethnocentrism, cosmopolitanism, global-local identify, global consumer culture and exposure to multinational advertising. Step-wise regression models were used for the study’s ten brands. The regression models indicated that brand liking and brand trust were the most important predictors of global brand purchase intent in the studied sample of South African consumers.

The emergent stream of research on branding nations, places and destinations has been growing along with a plethora of definitions, terminology and conceptualizations (Gnoth 2002; Papadopoulos 2004; Kavaratizis 2005; Hanna and Rowley 2008; Fan 2009). By place branding we refer to an articulated set of marketing actions that present the following traits: They are i) different in terms of unit of analysis, ranging from the city to a whole country; ii) may involve multiple stakeholders including local and national governments, citizens, companies, and the media; and, iii) cover a large array of objectives, such as enhancing exports, protecting local/national production, attracting tourists and foreign investors, facilitating international relations, and more (Papadopoulos 2004). While established contributions on “country-of-origin” mostly hold companies’ perspective and deploy the place to improve the attractiveness of other products designed, assembled and/or produced in these places, place branding literature fosters the perspective of governments and individuals (both tourists and local dwellers) and considers the place as the main object of market exchange (Anholt 2004, 2011). Therefore, place branding constitutes an excellent theoretical context by which to improve understanding of the arenas in which markets consume others’ identity, here represented by the identity of a place.

Numerous earlier studies affirm the importance of services for corporations (Moller et al. 2008; Michel et al. 2008). Vargo and Lusch (2004) and Gronross (2007) identify service innovation and improvement as an important means to enhance market orientation and increase firms’ success in terms of profitability, competitiveness and customer loyalty. However due to the specific characteristics of services (Djellal and Gallouj 2001; Menor et al. 2002) i.e., their intangibility, co-production with customers, simultaneity, heterogeneity and perishability (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons 2000; Avlonitis et al. 2001) their development process is to a certain degree unique. As services primarily are processes that are simultaneously produced and consumed, these processes vary and so does the resulting output (Alonso-Rasgado et al. 2004). This complex, relatively intangible, constitution of services, together with the large range of service types, makes services difficult to relate to during new service development (Menor et al. 2002; Johne and Storey 1998). To counter the dynamic nature of services, some earlier studies support the integration of consumers in the service innovation process (Aa and Elfring 2002, Matthing et al. 2004). Matthing et al. (2004) state that ‘Altogether, new service development relies on the difficult task of understanding and anticipating changing customer needs, with little help from traditional market research’, laying emphasis on novel ways to articulate informal consumer knowledge. In this regard, Goffin and Mitchell (2005) and Juarasin (2010) distinguish between two components of innovation in services: service products (manner in which the services are produced and delivered to customers) and service augmetation (manner to ensure service quality, e.g. customer contact, quality of the contact and the serviscape or ambient conditions). These two components combine to form the augmented service offering, an important aspect of which is to incorporate clients experiences and capabilities, a shift from service provider to service co-creation paradigm, in line with the changing role of customers and the value of understanding their needs and problems steming from services. As more and more studies realise the potential of user knwoledge in service innovation, firms are faced with the dual challenge: (a) to identify relevant sources of user knowledge, i.e. from where to get consumer need information pertaining to service innovation, and (b) how to cater to consumers’ expectations in the inhomogeneous and overcrowded market landscape with large array of products, i.e. to gather information efficiently about a large range of products. As consumer conversations shift online, one possible solution may be to listen to consumer discourses in the virtual space through monitoring the Brand Communities, which contain abundant brand related informal knowledge. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) observe that these communities may be of special interest for firms as they behave as information sharing hubs for admirers of a particular brand or product and hold consumer conversations specific to one brand or product in a condensed and relevant form. Although many online platforms such as discussion boards, consumer forums, virtual communities etc. co exist, brand communities (BC) are likely to be the most relevant platforms to listen and engage consumers towards their service innovation efforts as they are formed and structured around a single brand or product, hence acting as information hubs, focused on a specific brand or product. This study intends to address this theme by exploring the potential of brand communities in the context of service innovation. To this objective, one brand community was identified and a ten-month- long netnographic study was conducted. Netnography as research methodology was adopted as it is especially suited to study digitized consumer communities formed through Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). The study followed the nethnographic procedure drawn by Kozinets (2002). At the initial stage the community was observed in a non systematic manner, to become familiar with the particular culture and codes of the group, next the forums of the selected brand community were searched by key words, twenty individual and fifty combinations (e.g. service, store experience, home service, delivery, problem, after sales, experience etc.). In total over 8,000 messages were collected, coded and classified using NVIVO 9. The emerging themes form the basis of our findings, which suggest that monitoring brand communities can provide firms with consumer insights pertaining to (a) “service products”, (b) quality of “service augmentation” in the serviscape, (c) efficiency of the customer contact, and (d) overall service experience on three levels: interpersonal service, remote service, and self-service. These insights can provide firms with informal consumer knowledge about their overall service experience, which firms can use to improve existing “service products” and the overall quality of “service augmentation” at all customer contact points in the serviscape.

The objective is to provide illustration of theory from complexity sciences in service research. The performance of service encounters and the outcome of service quality are dependent upon complex and dynamic interactions between service providers and service receivers. Complexity sciences in relation to the interactive nature of the performance of service encounters and the outcome of service quality is likely to trigger and encourage innovative research designs and alternative methodological approaches to new research problems in service research. A suggestion of further research is to address where and how we can learn from other research disciplines that have explored the addressed aspects from complexity sciences in a more advanced way, and how we can transfer and incorporate these aspects and knowledge into services. The inclusion and consideration of complexity sciences in the performance of service encounters and the outcome of service quality generates a series of managerial and research implications regarding the dynamics and complexity of the interactive nature in services.

Although software and computing process have long been regarded as products among consumers (Armbrust et al., 2010; Skiba, 2011), the advancement of technologies (e.g., high-speed internet) and infrastructures leads to the notion that software and computing can be delivered as a type of service through an innovative technology called cloud computing. Cloud Computing Service (CCS) delivers applications and processing as services via the Internet, while the software and data are stored on servers at a remote location (Armbrust et al., 2010). In other words, under the context of CCS, software and computing process have become a utility such as electricity and water. Advantages of CCS include reduced investment in hardware and software, immediately elevated performance, etc. CCS is believed to be a billion dollar market and growing (Buyya, Yeo, Venugopal, Broberg, & Brandic, 2009). Nevertheless, CCS will reshape the way in which consumers perceive software and computing process (Armbrust et al., 2010) and make purchase decisions. How the notion of CCS diffuses among individual consumers remains unexplored.

Services can easily be imitated and depend on continuous innovation (e.g., Sundbo, 1997); hence service innovation is of strategic importance. Accordingly, service innovation has received considerable attention in the marketing literature (e.g., Storey & Kahn, 2010; Ordanini & Parasuraman, 2010; Umashankar, Srinivasan & Hindman, 2011). The role of external knowledge integration to stimulate service innovations has been a topic among this research. Customers have been identified as an important knowledge source for services. Customers directly receive and benefit from service innovations (Hipp & Grupp, 2005); this is why their ideas should be considered to foster innovations and to increase customer satisfaction. Research has so far focused on the direct integration of customers such as customer co-creation and its contributions to services and service innovation (e.g., Hoyer, Chandy, Dorotic, Krafft & Singh, 2010; Melton & Hartline, 2010; Chan, Yim & Lam, 2010; Vargo & Lusch, 2008). However, disadvantages of direct customer integration such as customers’ limited mindset advancing only incremental, preventing radical innovations and its lack of formalization potential have come to the fore. Hence, recent research has claimed the importance of further examining customer integration into innovation processes (e.g., Ostrom, Bitner, Brown, Burkhard, Goul, et al. 2010).

Findings on indirect customer integration into service innovation processes demonstrate that especially the integration of customers’ ideas in the initial stage of the innovation process provides information on customer needs (e.g., Magnusson, Matthing & Kristensoon, 2003). Furthermore, indirect customer integration usually involves a combination of customer and employee knowledge because customer input has to be analyzed and interpreted by internal knowledge sources. Empirical findings show that employee integration into the innovation development process advances innovation performance (e.g., Odininani & Parasuraman, 2010; Melton & Hartline, 2010; Eisengerich, Rubera & Seifert, 2009). Against this background this study focuses on customer complaints as a potential indirect form of customer integration. Customer complaints information analysis potential to stimulate service innovation has not been examined so far. However, recent studies have discussed the relevance of formalization potential in the innovation process (e.g., Ettlie & Rosenthal, 2011). Formalization is seen as the beginning of knowledge creation since it leads to codification of knowledge. Customer complaint controlling could offer initial possibilities for formalization, since complaints can be categorized and accounts can be identified. Further but equally relevant, complainers show a high level of affective commitment to the service provider (e.g., Evanschitzky, Brock & Blut, 2011). According to the theory of lead users (e.g., Franke, von Hippel & Schreier, 2006) in manufacturing innovation development, complainers could be particularly qualified for and willing to invest into feedback because they benefit directly from contributing to service innovation processes.

Hence, !this conceptual study addresses gaps in current research on other more indirect forms of customer integration. First, while customer complaint handling and stimulation have received considerable attention in the marketing literature, research on customer complaint controlling and complaint information analysis has been largely neglected. In addition, analysis of complaint information to generate ideas for service innovation has not been examined and overlooked to date. Based on this current state of research, we develop a conceptual framework and investigate research questions focusing on the interrelation of two streams of research: service innovation and customer complaint management.

Belgium, a relatively small country, with roughly 10 million people ranks fifth in terms of wine importations with roughly 300 million bottles per year. As a result of a complex history and profound and ongoing political crisis, the country is mainly composed of two communities: the French speaking and the Dutch (Flemish) speaking. Despite the cultural differences in these two Belgian communities and the political difficulties Belgium faces, all Belgians share a common bond, the love for ’bubbles’. The sparkling wine market is particularly important in Belgium and represents 20% of the market in value. The main proposition of this research is that French speaking and Dutch speaking Belgians have different sparkling wine purchasing behaviour. The main intention of this paper is to identify the differences related to the attributes that define sparkling wine. The full length version of this research will explore the impact of culture, demographics, consumption behaviour and how all of this mediates sparkling wine purchase behaviour in the Belgian market.

New Mexico (NM) accounts for just 0.068% of the annual U.S. wine production (ATTTB report, 2011) but the southwestern state’s folklore boasts the oldest winemaking history in the country. NM currently grows 127 varieties of grapes, produces over 700, 000 gallons of wine per year, and is home to approximately 42 wineries and tasting rooms (NM Wine Growers Association, 2012). Majority of NM wineries are small scale operations often founded by individual winemakers who face unique challenges. Although there is considerable coverage in the extant wine marketing literature about the wine business per se, there is limited research from the winemakers’ perspectives. In particular, scholars have called for further research on smaller wineries to understand the producer’s side of the business (Beverland, 2000; Richardson, 2004). Also, given the entrepreneurial nature of winemaking and the extensive marketing efforts undertaken to establish the uniqueness of wineries and wine labels, there is little knowledge about winemakers’ entrepreneurial marketing (EM) efforts. The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the EM dimensions of NM winemakers.

We collected data through participant observation at NM wine festivals and in-depth interviews with seven NM winemakers. Interviews were conducted by one of the authors at participating wineries and/or tasting rooms. Each winemaker was interviewed at two separate occasions, with the first interview eliciting narratives about personal experiences related to winemaking and the second interview generating stories of entrepreneurial marketing efforts. Interviews were digitally recorded and immediately transcribed. Data analysis was performed independently by the three authors through iterative analysis and coding of data and revealed four emergent themes.

The ‘spirit of the pioneer” theme revealed that for serveral of the participants, winemaking as a livelihood typically began with the acquisition of land for growing grapes. The desire to be independent, to be the master of one’s destiny, was a common element across narratives. This trait aligns with the opportunity driven dimension of EM (where the individual possesses creative insights of identifying or creating previously unexplored opportunities (Morris et al., 2002). In the second theme, ‘survival of the fittest,” proactiveness emerges as a strong driver towards surviving in NM’s fragmented wine region to achieve national name recognition. Several informants spoke of learning how to grow specific varietals suitable for the NM terroir through extensive trial and error that require years of hard work often accompanies by failures. Additionally, winemakers learn blending techniques to produce good quality wines, and participate in prominent wine festivals to prove their mettle and validate their winemaking skills are important proactive measures designed to showcase their pioneering efforts. Under the third theme ‘customers know best,’ we observed tensions as informants experienced conflicts between production constraints, consumer demands and personal philosophies. Some winemakers truly want to produce quality wine and improve their offering to consumers from year to year. They take pride in winning winetasting competitions and displaying their gold medals and awards in their tasting rooms. Others, realizing that many customers are not true wine connoisseurs compromised and produced wines with added sugar, fruit flavoring and other additives. They voiced personal dissatisfaction over these choices but cited marketplace demands and consumer ambivalence as reasons for making such disagreeable decisions. The last theme, ‘resource leveraging through networking,’ showcase the individual’s (or firm’s) acumen to make do with less, to seek out collaborative efforts such as borrowing, sharing and other means to work within one’s limited means. As winemaking involves several operational levels requiring knowledge across multiple fields, we found that seeking out and utilizing resources within the network of winemakers is a very important EM dimension that yields results in other areas such as innovation, risk management and value creation processes. Passion, zeal and enthusiasm are believed to be at the heart of the EM concept. NM winemakers demonstrated these in every aspect of their everyday lives. Unlike other products and services where there may be an initial start-up period which goes onto steady operational processes with maturity and growth, winemaking is challenged with continuous uncertainties such as availability of steady customer flow, acquiring and managing finances, and maintaining a steady cash-flow. Hence, irrespective of the number of years in business, pursuing opportunities through proactiveness, innovativeness, minimizing risks through resource leveraging, and creating value through customer interaction are often carried out with the basic idea of survival, a concept that has been largely ignored in EM conceptualizations.