Finding New Ways to Engage and Satisfy Global Customers

Despite the progress made in the study of sustainability, there is still very little research on provocative environmental ads. The latter have been used by many companies in recent years to promote sustainable development practices and in response to consumer skepticism of green advertising. Our research aims to enrich the green advertising literature by investigating greenbashing ads, with a focus on consumer perceptions and attitudes to these provocative environmental ads. A mixed method approach was taken, including the use of both qualitative and experimental research methods. The findings indicate that on the whole greenbashing is viewed unfavorably and has a negative impact on brand image and consumers’ attitudes and perceptions.

The exponential growth in digital media has led audiences to shift their attention to a variety of media and information sources, i.e. consumers increasingly engage in a multiscreen experience, and media multi-tasking has started to represent the norm (Bardhi et al. 2010; Holmes et al. 2005). Media multi-tasking is defined as “the consumption of two or more commercial media vehicles or content” (Bardhi et al. 2010), either sequentially (monochronic) or simultaneously (polychronic). Multi-tasking is a common trait among consumers where an individuals’ time allocation may be distributed along a continuum between monochronicism and polychronicism (Bluedorn et al. 1992). The extant literature suggests certain negative impacts of media multi-tasking; however there is limited research on how individuals experience media multi-tasking and its effect on advertising effectiveness. We propose to explore (a) attention fragmentation and extent of attention switching (visual attention) and (b) whether media multi-tasking impairs information processing, comprehension, and retention. Further, inclusion of factors (message length, type of appeal, audience, and features of the medium) that may affect the relationship between media multi-tasking and the dependent variables enriches the study.When media are experienced simultaneously, the foreground medium dominates over the background in the audience’s attention. Furthermore, media multi-taskers have been found to frequently shift their attention from one medium to another, constantly switching between the two (Pilotta and Shulz 2005), suggesting attention fragmentation and reorientation (Nightingale 2004; Brasel and Gips 2011). Moreover, media multi-tasking may impair information processing due to the division of cognitive resources (Pool et al. 2003; Mortenson and Ellis 2013). Yet, these negative effects of media multi-tasking may be mitigated by various coping strategies (Bardhi et al. 2010; Alzahabi and Becker 2013).This study uses an experimental mixed factorial, between subjects, 3 (media multi-tasking condition) × 2 (product category involvement level) design. Participants viewed a 14-minute video with two advertisements on a laptop and then completed various tasks as per the manipulations. Time spent in fixation, average gaze length, extent of switching, and self-assessed visual attention are used as measures. Product, brand, communication message recall (aided and unaided), as well as product and brand recognition are used as the measures of learning.The results demonstrate that individuals engaging in media multi-tasking show lower visual attention levels than non-media multi-taskers. The effects of media multi-tasking on learning were contingent on “relevant” vs. “irrelevant” condition as was the role of product involvement and context appreciation. Our research underlines the need for media planners to design multiplatform campaigns integrating a variety of touchpoints.References Available Upon Request

Research in sensory marketing provides evidence for the great potential of sensory imagery to create sensory consumer experiences. Especially in the context of food and beverage advertising, the targeted appeal of the senses through sensory imagery seems to be promising. However, there are still some research gaps relating to the concrete effect sizes of sensory appeals and possible mediators such as product design. This paper aims at closing these gaps by focusing on two different research issues. First, it investigates the effects of sensory imagery on marketing-related key performance indicators (i.e., sensory perception, product design, and attitude) by using analysis of variance. Further, the paper examines underlying causal relationships between these potential market success factors by applying PLS-SEM. The findings support the usefulness of sensory imagery in advertisements, as it appears to be a valuable approach to address specific senses and to have a positive impact on consumer perception. Moreover, the results reveal a causal chain of several direct and indirect effects between relevant performance indicators. Implications for marketing managers can be derived from this research on how to design powerful advertisements and effectively appeal to all five human senses by relying on sensory imagery.References Available Upon Request

Innovation is important to the improvement of healthcare delivery (Carter and Grover 2015; Keown et al. 2014). This paper addresses how healthcare innovation acceptance may benefit from value-expressive advertising that positions the innovation in the context of a self-image of the targeted user (Carter and Grover 2015; Johar and Sirgy 1991; Keown et al. 2014). Value-expressive advertising represents a type of advertising that aims to create an image of the user of a product or brand that is congruent with their self-image. Instead of emphasizing the functionality of a product or brand, value-expressive advertising seeks to highlight images that relate to the intended user. Value-expressive advertising creates an image of a product or brand which can be extended to a user’s self-perception. This can occur based on the product image or when an image of a typical user is included. Based on one’s self-concept, when a person finds a product or brand that has a congruent user image, the need for self-congruity is met. Self-congruity corresponds to various self-images (Aguirre-Rodriguez et al. 2012; Johar and Sirgy 1991; Malär et al. 2011). These represent an actual self-image, an ideal self-image, an actual social self-image, and an ideal social self-image. Positive attitudes precede individual or organizational actions in relation to innovations, thus affecting a decision to adhere or adopt innovations (Cabana et al. 1999; Wisdom et al. 2014). The model that is developed in this paper is based on two major relationships seen in the literature. First, value-expressive advertising that successfully reflects a person’s self-concept is positively associated with self-congruity (Aguirre-Rodriguez et al. 2012; Johar and Sirgy 1991; Gonzalez-Jimenez 2017; Sirgy 1985). Second, when the need for self-congruity is met, it is positively related to individual’s attitudes towards the tangible as well as intangible properties of the product or brand (Kressmann et al. 2006; Quester et al. 2000). Adopting the conceptualization of Johar and Sirgy (1991), the proposed model addresses how four self-image dimensions are associated with four self-congruity dimensions leading to a positive attitude towards an innovation in healthcare. Future research is needed to examine the relationship between the value-expressive appeal of healthcare innovation, related clinician self-congruity, and attitudes towards the innovation.References Available Upon Request

From a conventional theoretical perspective, brand identity (BI) and brand image (BIm) are two distinct notions: BI originates from its internal stakeholders (e.g., managers) and is defined as a stable and enduring concept, while BIm focuses on how the brand is perceived by its external stakeholders (e.g., consumers). Arguing that the development of the co-creation paradigm in branding demands a recasting of brand management, this paper revisits the conventional theoretical notions of BI and BIm and their reciprocal relationship.In this research, we take a restricted view of co-creation by assuming that co-creation in branding can only occur under specific conditions supported by previous research: (1) evidence of direct interactions between brand managers and staff and consumers; (2) brand managers should ensure access to information to consumers; (3) consumer active participation in the process of brand management; (4) the co-created brand must be perceived by consumers and managers as affecting their identity and personal life, which implies a collective acceptation by both parts of the risks intrinsic to the brand. Under such context, we propose consumers as internal brand stakeholders.Drawing on a seminal theory on identity in sociology, we present preliminary insights from a longitudinal case study investigating the brand management of a leading brand in the postgraduate higher education sector selected in accordance with the foundational prerequisites of brand co-creation exposed above and from the perspectives of both managers and consumers. The research covered a period of 4 years and included among multiple sources of evidence, 67 in-depth semi-structured interviews with 42 informants, mostly internal brand stakeholders—i.e., managers (e.g., managers, faculty, and staff) and consumers (e.g., students and alumni).Findings suggest that BI management develops as a corrective process that entails managers’ and consumers’ co-engagement in addressing brand issues. A brand issue for consumers becomes an issue for managers, and brand issues are addressed by both parts in order to project a favorable image of the brand to outsiders. Managers and consumers co-engage in BI management because they are concerned with how outsiders will perceive the brand and by implication themselves, as internal brand stakeholders. This leads to the conclusion that, within a context of co-creation, BI and BIm are reciprocally and recursively connected.References Available Upon Request

Since the massification of the Internet and digital platforms, printed media outlets around the world began to register what Anderson, Bell, and Shirky (2013) call postindustrial journalism. This work proposes to verify how the creation of value of potential advertisers occurs in a situation of brand licensing with a printed media outlet, considering the service-dominant logic (SDL) (Vargo and Lusch 2004). Formed by 11 foundational premises (FPs) and 5 axioms (Vargo and Lusch 2016), the service-dominant logic (SD logic) focuses on the marketing centered on service (as process). It implies interaction and unity among the beneficiaries. It also suggests a focus on working together to create mutual value. Stakeholders are seen as generic actors (Vargo and Lusch 2011) and are connected in actor-to-actor (A2A) networks, which evolve to a service ecosystem concept. For the SD logic, the value co-creation is based on the participation of all actors, which integrate resources, and enabled and constrained by institutions (as rules), perceiving the value on context in use (Vargo et al. 2008; Chandler and Vargo 2011). As its central goal, this paper aims to investigate how the creation of value by potential advertisers of printed media outlets in a brand licensing case occurs from a service-dominant logic. For this, we chose a qualitative-exploratory research, with the application of a case study (Yin 2015) for an empirical analysis. Three interviews were carried out with managers from printed media outlet and from a partner company, directly involved in the project. Weekly published by the newspaper Zero Hora—one of the five most popular quality papers in Brazil—Donna Magazine, a publication aimed at the female audience, has suffered a significant restructuring since 2012, when it was transformed in business nucleus. From there, it started working with side business, among them, brand licensing product lines. “Donna by Charlie Brownie,” a project that consisted of selling brownie kits during Easter and Mother’s Day in 2016, was one of them. Created in 2014, based in Porto Alegre, a metropolis located in the South of Brazil, the brownie store Charlie Brownie has had a partnership with Donna Magazine since it was founded, especially in the participation of events. In February 2016, about 2 months before Easter, the business nucleus talked to the candy store to propose the creation of a line with brand licensing. The proposal was accepted, and both companies worked together to develop a kit with three different models of presentable packaging, which were composed of pieces of brownie and a small decorative frame. In summary, the business model of licensed products adopted by Donna Magazine consists of dividing the profits of the products sold with the partner company. Charlie Brownie was responsible for the development of the product (work is done internally and with a partner design company) and for the commercialization of the kits, while Donna participated with the dissemination of the line through its printed and digital platforms.References Available Upon Request

This special session presents a variety of research analyses related to the broad, multicultural scope of not-for-profit and nongovernmental organizations (NPOs and NGOs), which includes the arts/culture/heritage, charities/philanthropy, economic development, education, health, religion, social, sport, and sustainability sectors. The session also features interactive discussion of the multicultural relevance and implications of the session research topics for nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations worldwide. Multinational NPOs and NGOs are challenged with reaching and establishing relationships with markets and stakeholders on a global scale. NPO and NGO organizations which are more geographically and culturally limited benefit from leveraging innovative ideas, data analysis/management tools, scalability of models, and best practices of sector leaders around the world. This session also focuses on the difficulties of impact and measurement assessment for NPOs and NGOs, which are rooted in the inherent differences in the national/cultural, financial/operational structures, missions, and organizational cultures of these organizations. It examines opportunities for NPOs and NGOs to adapt applications of traditional marketing theory/practices to achieve synergistic change and growth.Research presentations which form the basis of this special session focus on the topics of: Cross-cultural examination of arts sector governmental policies and development of standardized economic analyses Co-production and social service providers’ performance: Parental satisfaction with childcare markets Understanding consumers in the bottom of the pyramid and subsistence markets Advancing mission-based metrics Panelists discuss the broader questions of what nonprofit research on these topics may contribute to for-profit marketing and management (which is the reverse of the common question of what for-profit marketing has to contribute to nonprofit research and practice.) Significant research has been conducted in the not-for-profit arena which also has applicability and value for for-profit research/practice, including studies exploring coopetition, coproduction, performance measurement, social value creation, and stakeholder orientation.

This special session presentation is designed to explore and discuss cross-cultural arts/culture sector governmental policies, development of comparable statistics, and economic analysis. Baumol and Bowen’s (1966) analysis of the performing arts was the first in-depth exploration of the sector from a cultural economics standpoint, and it made a powerful case for the economic necessity and rationale for public support (economic welfare) of the arts.Governments around the world, at national/regional/local levels, play important roles in supporting arts organizations, both directly (via financial public support subsidies) and indirectly (via tax legislation and incentives). However, those same governmental entities can hinder the creative industries with political and bureaucratic decisions, constraints, and requirements (Frey 2003). For example, European artistic institutions have typically been managed with public administration/influence and heavy government budget subsidies, while US arts organizations tend to be independent, albeit with less government support and the accompanying risk of failure. It is interesting that, over the last decade, country models around the world (particularly of European and English-speaking nations) have continued to shift closer to the US model in terms of government policies/support (e.g., incentivizing the rise of foundation funding and tax incentives to increase private and corporate support). This movement in the direction of greater international commonality of government policies and support is expected to continue.The effort of collecting statistical information on cultural activities, demographics, and financial/economic data remains an “apples-and-oranges” proposition from a cross-country analysis and reporting perspective. Standardized structures for data collection, common methodologies, and robust empirical cross-sectional and time series analyses are needed for accurate comprehensive assessment on a global scale. Recognizing the importance of developing comparable statistics for the creative industries, including the arts, UNESCO, and other institutions, has developed mapping exercises and economic/statistical analysis projects to provide governments, arts and culture sector organizations, and other stakeholders with the information that they need for decision-making, policy refinement, best practices development, and strategic management/marketing.A recent example of a global economic analysis of the arts/culture sector is the Cultural Times–The First Global Map of Cultural and Creative Industries study (2017), a collaborative effort by CISAC, UNESCO, and EY. That study defines ten distinct categories of creative industries: cultural heritage, printed matter and literature, music and the performing arts, visual arts, audiovisual media, cinema and photography, radio and television, sociocultural activities, sports and games, and environment and nature.Efforts to classify and analyze governmental arts policies from a global perspective assess cross-cultural economic impacts of the arts, and standardized arts sector statistical reporting worldwide are still in their adolescence. For those interested in research involving the economics of art and the governmental structures/policies which affect the sector, publications which encourage and promulgate that work include the Journal of Cultural Economics; Cultural Policy; Empirical Studies in the Arts; Journal of Political Economy; International Journal of Arts Management; Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society; Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly; International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing; and Arts and the Market.References Available Upon Request

Authors such as Brandsen and Pestoff (2006) assume that mechanisms of co-production are able to foster customer engagement in the service delivery process and subsequently improve organizational performance. Based on this idea, this paper investigates whether mechanisms of co-production correlate with social service providers’ organizational performance. Considering a classification of Pestoff (2012), we distinguish between economic (e.g., donations or payment of membership fees), political (e.g., improvement suggestions), and social (e.g., planning of social events) co-production of service providers and their customers.The basic populations considered are German citizens who have children in day care facilities. Parents represent indirect customers of childcare providers (Smith and Friedman 1994) because their children are the direct beneficiaries. The online survey that provides the data for this study yielded a sample of 843 parents. The study uses the generated data to validate a model that includes the perceived degree of co-production as an independent variable as well as person-organization (P-O) fit and the perceived level of information supplied to the parents (e.g., about daily routines) as mediators. We consider parental satisfaction as well as corporate image and loyalty intention as indicators of social service providers’ performance. We measured these latent constructs by means of reflective scales. In addition, we conceptualized organizational image as a reflective-reflective higher-order construct. The data resulting from the online survey was analyzed with SEM methodology.SEM results show that the perceived degree of social co-production at the organizational level has significant effects on the information-supply and P-O fit perceptions. Furthermore, social co-production has no significant direct effects on the considered indicators of performance. Mediation analysis reveals indirect effects of social co-production on all performance indicators. The level of economic participation has significant direct effects on corporate image and loyalty intention but no effect on the mediators. Interestingly, the effect of economic co-production on loyalty intention is negative. Political co-production has significant positive effects on P-O fit and the level of information supplied to the parents as well as a moderate effect on parental satisfaction. The empirical analysis reveals mediation effects of both assumed mediators on the relationship between political co-production and organizational performance. A multigroup analysis reveals no distinct differences in latent constructs’ mean values and path coefficients between the subsamples of public organizations’ clients and nonprofit organizations’ clients.This study demonstrates that co-production relates to organizational performance. Political and social co-production strengthens (mitigates) emotional attachment to the organization (information asymmetry between customers and service providers), which in turn improves perceived organizational performance. These findings suggest that social service providers should consider implementing participatory mechanisms of social and political co-production. However, because of the negative effect on customer loyalty, managerial decisions with regard to economic co-production have to be made with caution. The single-source bias as well as the considered survey design, per se, might have set limits to the internal validity of the present study. Future research could thus consider experimental designs, additional observable data (e.g., cost data), and other fields of activity (e.g., nursery homes or elementary schools).References Available Upon Request

Research about consumers in subsistence marketplaces (Viswanathan and Sridharan 2009; Viswanathan and Rosa 2007) has grown substantially in line with interest in this market. Beyond the development literature, which has always had a focused interest in such consumers and their reactions to various development interventions, recent interest in such consumers has stemmed from the seminal work of CK Prahalad (Hart and Prahalad 2002) on the so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid, where a role for businesses in reducing poverty has been articulated. Consumers in such marketplaces seem to face a variety of constraints which affect their behavior, and these are typically based around income, economic stability (e.g., high inflation), political factors (e.g., governance, political instability, legal systems), and infrastructural challenges (e.g., distribution channels, erratic electricity supply, unreliable transport). Such constraints lead to consumption behaviors that are likely to deviate from existing models where such constraints are less of an issue.A number of themes arise in the literature. One common theme is based around differences in urban and rural environments. For example, rural consumers seem to shop more frequently, form closer relationships with local retailers, spend less on technology, and have fewer technological capabilities. Likewise, typical demographic variables (e.g., urban versus rural environments, age, gender) also seem to influence consumption with younger consumers having a better knowledge and capability to use technology. As might be expected, income level is a key factor in explaining consumption behavior. Other individual-based factors also seem to be very important, including literacy level, which seems to affect how such individuals process information on products, packaging, and advertising. For example, low-literate consumers are typically seen to process information pictographically rather than textually. Similarly, low-literate consumers are more likely to be characterized by concrete information processing which suggests a focus on individual attributes rather than more abstract trade-offs between multiple attributes.Given the more typical collectivist cultures of many subsistence marketplaces, such consumers are often seen to be heavily influenced by their social context and rely on a good deal of social capital to make decisions—where possible, the assistance of friends and family, for example. Social networks act as an important learning resource that consumers can draw on when needed. These social networks manifest themselves further through local opinion leaders who can also heavily influence decision making. The literature points to some interesting reactions toward price. The typical assumption is that lower prices are better, addressing the affordability constraint. However, as in economically wealthier markets, prices are highly subjective, and individuals have been shown to react more favorably to products and services which have a small positive price compared to when the product and service is free. Although interest in the area has increased substantially, research in the area is fragmented and spans a number of disciplines. This analysis synthesizes existing knowledge about consumer behavior in subsistence marketplaces, highlights gaps, and presents a future research agenda. Implications for not-for-profits and a future research agenda will be outlined.References Available Upon Request

Every organization measures performance, and historically, the various measures used in business are largely financial in nature. While the primacy of financial and operational metrics to the various stakeholders is appropriate for most organizational types, more is needed to measure the efficacy of nonprofit organizations as they are primarily motivated by their missions. However, measuring performance on the mission side of the double bottom line has proven to be more difficult. How do NPOs measure their success against their stated missions? Perhaps a more basic question is, how should they measure their success against stated missions?This session analysis discusses various ways in which mission-based metrics can be used for evaluating organizational performance, adopting and implementing new programs, deciding among new initiatives, recruiting employees and volunteers, and communicating with various stakeholders including boards of directors, donors, governmental agencies, constituents, legislatures, and the public at large. Current practices are addressed, as well as challenges to adopting and measuring mission-based performance metrics in various types of nonprofit organizations.References Available Upon Request

In France, tourism sector is very important, and competition is high between all tourism sites and cultural heritage places. The development of augmented reality technologies can represent many ways to enhance tourist experiences. It can provide an answer to the issue of increasing competition, differentiation, attractiveness, and loyalty faced by many tourism organizations (e.g., Neuhofer et al. 2012, 2014). Considering the mixed potential effects of technology on tourism experience (Mukherjee and Hoyer 2001; Neuhofer et al. 2012, 2014; Nowlis and Simonson 1996; Thompson et al. 2005), the objective of this research is to clarify the effects of mobile technology on the attractiveness of cultural heritage tourism experience. For this paper, the field of the research was the biggest castle of Loire Valley, Chambord Castle, and a specifically new technology was considered, the augmented reality. The overall visiting experience was analyzed during the on-site visit. Following many researchers interested in sophistication strategies (Mukherjee and Hoyer 2001; Thompson et al. 2005), the perceived value approach is mobilized (Holbrook 1999; Galarza and Gil 2008). So the question was: what is the effect of using an augmented reality tool on the tourist experience considering the perceptual value dimensions?Obtained from a qualitative approach (behavior observation and individual in-depth interviews), results show positive and negative impacts of augmented reality technology on visiting experience. These impacts can be structured according to a spatiotemporal approach. For example, concerning the hedonic value, the use of histopad tends to transform the path visit because the visitor is in search of “QR code” to have access to the augmented reality in the rooms of the castle. And paradoxically, persons who do not use histopad will adopt a more exploratory behavior, less goal-oriented. They dwell more on small details and take pictures. This research allows to better understand both the positive and negative effects of the use of this technology on the different perceived value dimensions (excellence, efficient, epistemic, hedonic, experiential stimulation, aesthetic, social, link values). As a synthesis: We notice that two dimensions of the experience can be underlined: the spatial dimension and the temporal dimension. Both observations and interviews revealed that the use of augmented reality tends to change spatial and time considerations about the tourism experience as well as value dimension perception. This research confirms the ability of Holbrook’s conceptual framework to be applied to the tourism experience. From the consumer behavior perspective, the multidimensionality of the tourism experience can be viewed and analyzed through value multidimensionality. This article underlines also positive and negative effects of value dimensions during on site visiting experience with augmented reality. The various contributions of this research must be appraised in the light of the limits of this study which represent so many new research issues. At first, a quantitative approach could be conducted to confirm and extend our results. Then, other mobile technologies’ effects could be studied during all stages of the tourism experience (pre-, during, and post-travel stage). Finally, this framework could be extended by considering other concepts (such as flow theory) or the relationships between different types of values with other constructs like satisfaction or loyalty.References Available Upon Request

This chapter contributes to the still very reduced marketing literature that deals with big consumer behavior data using cloud analytics by summarizing some of the main extant academic researches and by introducing new applications, datasets, and technologies in order to complete the picture. Both internal “purchase history” and external Web-based customer reviews and social media data are discussed, organized, and analyzed. They cover volume and variety aspects that define big data and uncover analytic complexities that need to be dealt with.

Nowadays, companies such as the Amazon and Booking have developed personalized websites. Advances in tracking and personalization systems enable them to learn more about their consumers and to adapt their website accordingly in order to improve their online services (Tam and Ho 2006). However, while prior research on web personalization investigates the technological development supporting the personalization system (Hauser et al. 2014; Liang et al. 2008), little is known about the web personalization experience and its value for consumers. With an interpretive approach, this paper tries to bring a deep understanding of the web personalization experience and the value creation process.In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 consumers (9 women and 11 men, aged 21–64) to consider common and different perceptions (Vernette and Giannelloni 2015). We varied the sample composition by using purposive sample (Miles and Huberman 1994). We selected informants following some criteria: age, gender, web expertise, and web usage. Analysis and interpretations followed the grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967).Regarding the experience on personalized website, it emerges from the results that most informants perceive web personalization and personalized advertising as a whole experience because of retargeting. With retargeting, informants are exposed to the same personalized message on the website and later on personalized ads displayed on other websites. In addition, most informants indicate they experience a loss of control during navigation as the website automatically personalizes content based on their surf behavior. The analysis highlights that characteristics of the web personalization experience can both create or destroy value. For instance, while the loss of control experienced during navigation generates negative emotional reactions such as an impression of categorization, it can also enhance guidance in website navigation when content is relevant. Besides, the analysis indicates that value creation aspects usually counterbalance value destruction ones.This paper extends the experiential marketing literature by specifically addressing the web personalization experience. While prior research focused on the technological development supporting the automatic adaptation of the website, this research examines web personalization in a marketing perspective by providing a deeper understanding and conceptualization of the web personalization experience and the value creation process.References Available Upon Request

Despite the rising popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT), consumer acceptance continues to grow at a slow pace. For example, the adoption of health and fitness wearables is still relatively low, and approximately half of consumers abandon their wearables within the first 6 months. This pattern means that firms engaged in IoT industry have difficulty recovering their development and marketing costs.Previous research on IoT’s consumer acceptance uses mainly technology acceptance models (TAMs). Academic literature highlights three limits of TAMs: first, these models only measure the intent to use or adopt the new technology, and they don’t consider the specificities of individuals and/or contexts. Second, they predict the acceptance of a new technology according only to two functional factors leaving out other potential sources of value in IoT adoption and sustained use. Third, the results of empirical tests are mixed and inconclusive, which leads some researchers to question the validity of such models.More recent empirical studies take different approaches by considering different technologies or different contexts. They offer a complementary view but also a fragmented view of IoT’s consumer acceptance. There is a need for more integration.This paper takes steps in this direction. We conducted a netnographic study on two online virtual communities debating fitness wearables. Eight threads were selected according to the relevance of the topics and the frequency of exchanges.Drawing on the service-dominant logic theory, the perceived value conceptualization, and the customer experience approach, data analysis reveals both value co-creation (gains) and co-destruction (pains) determinants addressed through different experiential dimensions.Moreover, it highlights several interactions between the specific determinants of both sides of the coproduction process which rely on the consumer’s agency that could lead to “compensation phenomena” and bypass strategies.On the one hand, the psychological cost may be compensated by three forms of social sharing that we identified among members of the two virtual communities. On the other hand, our results also highlight two avoidance strategies in order to counter IoT’s planned obsolescence. The findings of this study have key implications for IoT marketers and suggest future research directions.References Available Upon Request

Analyzing consumer postpurchase behavior is a common and ongoing practice. Advanced technology utilized by consumers has facilitated more convenient methods to input feedback and to provide feedback that is immediate in nature. Postpurchase behavior has been studied extensively in the packaged goods industry and in particular the service industry where service quality gaps identify potential explanations for postpurchase behavior. This study argues that the service quality evaluation model does not adequately address the new dimension of provider ratings of the consumer. Specifically, the impact of the provider’s rating of the consumer on the consumer’s perceived service quality is not understood, nor is the impact of the provider rating of the consumer on consumer postpurchase usage behavior and consumer attitude toward the provider. Expected expansion of formal systems within the service environment for providers to rate consumers supports the need for further study and empirical analysis to advance understanding of service quality evaluation.References Available Upon Request

Direct marketing is characterized by its high practical relevance, and it requires decision-makers to consider a variety of success factors to ensure the success of campaigns. In particular, the choice of recipients has substantial importance, and this selection can be based on various types of information. Information that reflects the behavior of potential recipients may offer better forecasting quality than demographic data, but this common assumption has not been substantiated empirically. On the basis of empirical data, this article examines whether such data can produce improved forecasting quality. The data set consists of the customer base of a German insurance company. With path analysis, the authors reveal that behavioral data achieve better predictability than demographic data. The consideration of these aspects thus allows for economically more advantageous management of direct marketing campaigns.

Despite humor’s promising ability to positively address customer complaints, little research has sought to investigate its role in recovering from service failure on social media. To address this research gap, this study investigates the role of humorous response to customer complaints on social media. We postulate that humorous response has a favorable influence on perceived excitement of the firm. However, humorous response needs to be implemented with care as it negatively influences perceived trustworthiness of as well as overall attitude toward the firm. However, when the customer complaint is also humorous, a humorous response is more effective in intensifying the positive effect on perceived excitement of the firm and lowering its negative effect on perceived trustworthiness of and overall attitude toward the firm. The current study utilizes a scenario-based experiment in the restaurant context. The findings of this study will provide insights into how service organizations can better utilize the humorous response strategy in response to customer complaints on social media.References Available Upon Request

This research has attempted to find out which information will influence people to try new healthy foods and whether the type of unfamiliarity of food or the variety-seeking behaviour in consumers plays a role.Consumers seek variety in their menu and also seek new dishes to avoid boredom. But when the marketers introduce new healthy foods, most of them fail. Especially in a country like India, where the onset of non-communicable diseases like diabetes which are related to unhealthy food choices is high, the onus is on food marketers and the government to encourage people to make healthy food choices without compromising their taste buds. A pseudo-experiment was conducted with 385 subjects with 12 different versions of the survey where the type of unfamiliarity of food and the information presented about the taste expectation and health benefits were manipulated. Three types of unfamiliar dishes were used—one in which ingredient was new, the other in which known ingredients were cooked in a new format and the third one where both the ingredients and format were new to the respondents. Willingness towards trying the food and the variety-seeking trait were measured.Results show that the variety-seeking behaviour of the subjects has an impact on their willingness to try a new food. Also, the type of unfamiliarity of the food influences the willingness and has an interaction effect with the information. The results also indicate that the people are more hesitant to try a new ingredient than they are with a new format. Also, the study reiterates the findings of the earlier researchers that people do not tend to believe that the healthy foods can be tastier. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and also recommend some solutions for the food marketers. This study would help the restaurant marketers to provide the right kind of information in influencing the people to choose a healthy food when it is new to them and for those who seek variety in their food choice.References Available Upon Request

Consuming, whether for satisfying basic or superfluous needs, is an activity present in any human society. One of the main principles of marketing is that consumers do not only buy goods or services but also the benefits they can derive from them. As products have intrinsic utility or hedonic value, consumers can, through their buying habits (among other influences), develop similarly utilitarian and hedonic levels of purchase values or even conspicuous values from the shopping experience. Therefore, the paper’s main objective is to evaluate the importance of utilitarian, hedonic, and conspicuous values present in a brand new car purchase. Data were collected by a survey with individuals who purchased a brand new car as of 2010 in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. By the results, we observed the main influence of utilitarian and hedonic values on satisfaction for all groups and the influence of conspicuous values only for lower middle class.

While conceptual suggestions, practical advertising guidelines, consumer perceptions, varying results from industry domains, and differences in measurement and methodology have created a set of findings that is rich and interesting (Kalra and Goodstein 1998; Noseworthy and Trudel 2011), previous studies in positioning lack the establishment of comprehensive set of strategies capable of operationalization by marketing executives and scholars. The aim of this paper is to develop a scale measuring consumer-based and managerially relevant generic typology of positioning strategies applicable to all offerings—tangible and intangible and low and high involvement. Positioning is defined as the particular bundle of benefits selected by the firm to be created and delivered to the target customer that reflects the “value proposition” (Ghosh and John 1999; Noseworthy and Trudel 2011).A review of the literature reveals that some of the early and widely referred to typologies (e.g., Aaker and Shansby 1982; Wind 1982) are conceptual. Similarly, other extant typologies including Hooley et al. (1998), Kalra and Goodstein (1998), Kim and Mouborgne (2000), and Punj and Moon (2002) are conceptual. Concerning empirically based typologies of positioning strategies (e.g., Crawford 1985; Easingwood and Mahajan 1989), these reflect mainly organizational practices and managerial views, and not consumer-based perceptions in spite of the call for consumers’ perceptions. These gaps in the literature further underscore the inspiration for this paper. We followed Mentzer et al. (2001) and Grohmann’s (2009) multi-item and multi-study scale development and validation process involving literature review, focus group interviews, and large-scale surveys using members of the general public. Our scale development and validation process encompasses systematic methodical adherence and attention to key steps of the process (Churchill 1979; DeVellis 2017; Spector 1992). In the absence of comprehensive typology of positioning strategies, our study has generalized and extended previous research findings on the concept of positioning by developing a comprehensive scale measuring positioning strategies. More specifically, in line with extant literature (e.g., Sprott et al. 2009; DeVellis 2017; Churchill 1979), this paper puts forward a reliable and valid measure of the concept of positioning taking into consideration consumer input and managerial relevance. We are confident that this new set of four constructs (impressive service, prestigious, cool and attractive, and value for money), grounded in theory and practice and exhibiting extrinsic and intrinsic attributes of offerings and consistent with executives’ positioning activities, will be appreciated by scholars and practitioners across differing industry domains.References Available Upon Request

Product recalls are increasing worldwide. According to recent Reuters news, US automobile recalls hit record in 2016 with 53.2 million recalled products. This increase is attributed to several reasons such as increased product complexity, high product quality and safety expectation, global production, and closer monitoring by companies and government agencies. The results of product recalls influence firms depending on the recall reason(s) and the consequences they cause. Despite product recall management and communication during a product harm crisis could be very decisive, communication and marketing strategies are still under examined areas of the crisis management context. Especially when this increase is considered, managing recalls gains more and more importance. Harm crisis can damage firm reputation, decrease the interest of investors and customers which could affect the returns in a negative way, etc. Besides these deficiencies, firms are confronted with remedy costs which could reach high amounts. An optimum communication strategy could be a less costly strategy in harm crisis communication and managing processes to help firms to minimize the negative effects and costs for the firm. The main aim of this study is to provide understanding of how a company can minimize the negative effect of a product recall on financial value by benefiting from recall message characteristics. Studies concerning with minimizing the negative effect of product recalls by applying marketing strategy are rare. Therewithal to best of our knowledge, the recall message content’s impact on financial value in the product recall context has not been investigated. This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining this gap.References Available Upon Request

The evolution toward a service-dominant logic necessitates a reexamination of how value is created and a consideration of how co-created value impacts marketing strategy. The effect of co-created value networks on a specific aspect of marketing strategy; market segmentation is examined. Heterogeneity in market demand as represented by the intensity level of customer participation in value creation, in combination with stages of value creation, and customer type is identified as a new basis for market segmentation.

As firms are increasingly innovating to be more environmentally and socially responsible, academicians are highlighting how little we know in terms of the organizational capabilities required to develop such innovations. Additionally, very little is known about whether or not these innovations pay off for firms in the form of triple bottom-line rewards. Through the lens of stakeholder and market-based capabilities theories, this study (1) examines the organizational capabilities that foster sustainable innovation, along with contingencies, as well as (2) its impact on the triple bottom line. This empirical study reveals that market-based sustainability and organizational unlearning positively impact sustainable innovation. Additionally, we examine a firm’s status as a publicly owned firm as moderating the relationship between market-based sustainability and sustainable innovation, while we also examine organizational learning as interacting with unlearning to influence sustainable innovation. Finally, we find a complicated and interconnected relationship between the three dimensions of the triple bottom line: environmental performance, social performance, and economic performance. For managers, our study provides guidance on how to develop sustainable innovations and the expected benefits from this activity. For academicians, our research advances our understanding of the organizational antecedents, contingencies, and consequences of sustainable innovation.References Available Upon Request

The call for examining the fit between service innovation and market orientation is highly indicated. Market orientation can be treated as the key for enterprises to pursue creative advantages and create customer value. Service innovation is the channel for business development and usage of technology. With their well co-aligned, different enterprises can adopt effective responsive and proactive market orientation strategies to focus on innovative strategies that result in consistent goals and actions. Therefore, the purpose of this study focuses on service innovation and market orientation in a system integrity fit analysis. Empirical data for hypothesis testing are collected from top-ranked companies in Taiwan, yielding 140 valid samples. Performance implications of fit are examined using fit as matching approach. The findings indicated that the fit of market orientation and service innovation plays an important role in explaining business performance.

The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of sustainability orientation of service organizations on new service development (NSD) competence and NSD performance. The study also investigates the mediating effect of NSD competence on the relationship between sustainability orientation and NSD performance. As NSD programs continue over a long period and are susceptible to technology changes and market competition, this study aims to examine the moderating influence of technology turbulence and competitive intensity on the relationship between NSD competence and NSD performance.The conceptual model of the paper is based on the source-position-performance (SPP) framework of Day and Wensley (1988) and the natural resource-based view (NRBV) perspective of Hart (1995). While the SPP framework offers a guide for attaining competitive superiority, the NRBV perspective proposes that competitive advantage can be rooted in organization’s capabilities that facilitate environmentally sustainable economic activity (Hart 1995). The model of the study proposes hypotheses that would examine the relationship between sustainability orientation (Claudy et al. 2016; Roxas and Coetzer 2012), NSD competence (Menor and Roth 2008, 2007), and NSD performance in terms of financial and nonfinancial performance measures.The study proposes a cross-sectional, two-stage survey at the NSD program level in the Finnish hotel and resort industry context. In the first stage, the NSD program managers will provide data related to the organization’s sustainability orientation. In the next stage, senior managers of the NSD programs will provide data related to NSD competence and performance. The respondents will be drawn from a list of individuals linked to NSD programs of 1848 service organizations in the Finnish hotel and resort industry. The hypothesized relationships will be examined by structural equation modeling (SEM) method based on AMOS platform. The study constructs are proposed to be measured by existing measures. Sustainability orientation will be measured in terms of sustainability culture and sustainability practices (Claudy et al. 2016). NSD competence will be measured in terms of NSD process focus, market acuity, NSD culture, and IT experience (Menor and Roth 2008). The model of the study proposes firm size and firm age as control variables.The study is expected to contribute to the marketing literature by explaining the sustainability orientation-driven NSD performance in the presence of NSD competence. It can also explain the impact of organization’s orientation toward environmental sustainability on the competence needed to develop new services. Based on the expected contributions, the study offers several implications for researchers and practitioners.References Available Upon Request

This study explores the challenges and opportunities of social innovation in two multicultural societies, namely, France and the United Kingdom. We use the Cajaiba-Santana (2014) definition of social innovation to examine how the social innovation concept fits patterns reported in the context of multicultural societies following different acculturation modes. As pointed out by Cajaiba-Santana (2014), the social innovation literature is positioned around two lines of enquiry: institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell 1983) which explains the role that institutions play in informing practice and structuration theory (Lettice and Parekh 2010; Giddens 1984), which explains the process of social action and evolution.This study adopts an institutional perspective with a photo-elicitation methodology to capture consumer perceptions of modest dress and to identify, first, the role of the national context in shaping individual perceptions and, second, to capture the different institutional logics in action. We asked participants in both contexts (the United Kingdom and France) to share their conception of fashion in general and modest fashion in particular, via photo-elicitation. Whilst the intent of innovations in dress may not be social innovations, the way people use certain objects in different ways or understand certain changes differently may generate spillover effects (externalities) which do have implications for social value. Considering the “action and structure dichotomy”, we capture the social motivation process of the different stakeholders.References Available Upon Request

There has been substantial research focused on sustainable advertising (Cummins et al. 2014), communications (White and Simpson 2013), environmental concern (Bhatnagar and McKay-Nesbitt 2016), and intentions and behavior (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002). It is widely known that shoppers play a role in providing sustainable behaviors and environmental protection (Bhatnagar and McKay-Nesbitt 2016). Additionally, retailers play a major role in environmental sustainability (Green and Peloza 2014; Ku et al. 2012; Leonidou et al. 2011). The present paper examines how retailers can help shoppers make sustainable decisions by communicating with them through their smartphones while they are in the store.According to Grewal, Roggeveen, and Nordfält (2017), one of the emerging ways retailers are facilitating consumer decision-making is through using technologies. Using regulatory focus theory, we argue that sending different messages to shoppers when they are in a choice situation may increase their choice for sustainable alternatives over regular options. Prevention-focused shoppers look to prevention (i.e., the negative effects of not being sustainable), are concerned with preventing problems and losses (Shah et al. 1998), and “proceed cautiously as they pursue goals” (Bhatnagar and McKay-Nesbitt 2016, p. 2). Promotion-focused shoppers are concerned with promoting positive solutions to problems (i.e., positive effects of being sustainable) and trying to achieve those goals (Crowe and Higgins 1997).In an online-based experiment, 147 respondents were exposed to text messages before they had to choose a product. The messages contained either a neutral message, a preventive-focused sustainability message, or a promotion-focused sustainability message. The results show a significant main effect on sustainable shopping behavior. Interestingly, shoppers receiving sustainability messages with a prevention-focused message were the most likely to make a sustainable choice. There were no differences in evaluating the retailer, products, value of the product, or sense of annoyance, indicating that the messages drive sustainable choices while not hurting the retailer in other ways. The results extend regulatory focus theory in a shopping setting and open up for interesting future studies on how to help shoppers make more sustainable choices while keeping retailer perceptions indifferent.In conclusion, technologies used inside stores have a great potential to affect how shoppers behave. In this study, we have shown that by carefully choosing the right focus of the messages conveyed, retailers can make sustainable alternatives more attractive for shoppers without appearing annoying. By using technologies with geo-positioning support, retailers can help the shopper make more sustainable choices and subsequently make shopping a little bit more sustainable.References Available Upon Request

The importance of consumer touchpoints to brands and retailers is rapidly growing given the complexity of the customer journey, which is increasingly becoming omni-channel (Verhoef et al. 2015; Payne et al. 2017). Despite the increasing importance of touchpoints, the issue of whether specific customer segments encounter and prefer specific touchpoints is still unexplored (Lemon and Verhoef 2016). This is relevant as brands and retailers are called to define touchpoint journeys that matter. Brands and retailers are challenged to (re)design touchpoints for delivering a seamless customer experience to heterogeneous and dynamic segments of consumers in an omni-channel context (Homburg et al. 2017). With the aim to understand customers’ attitudes and behaviors, many marketing researchers use generational cohort segmentation (Bolton et al. 2013). Generational segments show similar behavioral characteristics that are a function of their similar formative experiences, technologies, and reactions to cultural and environmental changes (Soares et al. 2017). Academics and practitioners have focused on generational differences in terms of human values, attitudes, and behavior. However, no study has addressed how generations differ in how they encounter touchpoints. For instance, millennials may prefer electronic connections, whereas for other generations, personal contact (salespeople, customer service, and call centers) may remain crucial elements of the journey (Lemon and Verhoef 2016). Moreover, boundaries across generational segments are not well-defined. Academics and practitioners largely use generational cohorts that have been identified in the US context only. Even within the US generational segmentation, no consensus can be found in the literature over the time span of each generational cohort. The present study, deployed in two different countries, Italy and Japan, aims to understand how generations differ in encountering touchpoints in a retail setting and to provide an empirical generational segmentation based on touchpoint exposure across generations in two different countries. As far as the Italian sample (as the analysis on the Japanese sample is still in progress), the study was able to find new cutoffs for the various cohorts. Moreover, a significant difference has been detected across generational cohorts in the frequency of touchpoint exposure in grocery retailing. Results suggest two issues for discussion: generalization of the generational differences across countries and design of customer journeys based on different generational cohorts.References Available Upon Request

While creativity is one of the core factors that influence the success of new product development (NPD), its antecedents and consequences on new product development have not yet been fully examined in the literature. Specially, the mediating role of team member’s creativity on NPD success is yet to be clarified. This study thus aims to develop a theoretical framework that integrates the effects of trust, knowledge integration, and team sensemaking capability on team members’ creativity, as well as the mediating effects of team members’ creativity on NPD success. A total of 312 samples were collected from NPD team members working in high-tech firms in Taiwan, using a self-administered survey. The partial least squares (PLS) approach was used to assess the proposed hypotheses. The empirical results show that trust has a significant effect on creativity, knowledge integration, and team sensemaking capability, while knowledge integration and team sensemaking capability have a significant effect on creativity and NPD success. Team members’ creativity mediates the influences of trust, team sensemaking capability, and knowledge integration on NPD success. The results of this study can deepen our understanding of the dynamic role that creativity plays in the NPD process.References Available Upon Request

This paper explores the influence of friendship on the relationship between heuristics and biases on decision-making within entrepreneurial founding teams. The research question builds on the recognition that better decision-making promotes venture success. The entrepreneurial environment is characterized by high levels of complexity, ambiguity, and time constraints. By employing heuristic shortcuts, the mind is able to attend to a vastly larger number of decisions in a given space of time than if it were to consciously and deliberately evaluate each and every alternative in the decision-making process. While extant literature in entrepreneurship has begun to focus on the role that heuristics and biases play in shaping the decisions that entrepreneurial teams make, most research has focused on the individual entrepreneur. However, large portion of ventures are founded and led by teams rather than by individuals. Further, most of the literature available on the nature of the entrepreneurial team focuses on how the team functions once it has been established or how a team within a company possesses degrees of entrepreneurial orientation.This paper is concerned with friendship as it pertains to the practical application of entrepreneurial founding teams whose friendship precedes the venture and did not begin for the purpose of starting the venture. Friendship may have both negative and positive implications for the founding and operation of the entrepreneurial venture, providing for both strengths and weaknesses in the organization. This paper develops a number of researchable propositions, which can be tested and then either accepted, rejected, or extended in empirical work. The methodology connects characteristics of friendship from extant literature to a series of previously identified bias groups which can logically be expected to influence decision-making classified within previously identified stages of entrepreneurial venture development. The product of this work is a series of researchable propositions, as well as managerial implications to consider when entering a venture.References Available Upon Request

Many studies strive to explore the role of organization agility and organization flexibility on the success of new product development. Nonetheless, under environmental volatility, the impact of organization agility and organization flexibility on performance on each type of product innovation (radical and incremental innovation) is not fully understood. Drawing from the concept of dynamic capabilities, using survey research, and analyzing data with regression analysis, the results show that environmental volatility strengthens a relationship between organization agility and radical innovation performance. However, environmental volatility weakens a relationship between organization flexibility and radical innovation performance. Lastly, the role of environmental volatility does not appear in case of incremental innovation. We expect that this study extends the concept of dynamic capabilities and sheds light on diverse effects between organization agility and flexibility for each type of product innovation under environmental volatility.References Available Upon Request

Technological advances have increased the ease with which consumers can avoid traditional advertising messages. Brands have thus sought alternative ways to communicate with their consumers (Lee and Faber 2007). Product placement in mass media programming is one of the alternative methods adopted by brands, and it has maintained its import both to practitioners and researchers alike (Karrh 1998; Russell 2002; Nelson 2002; La Ferle and Edwards 2006; Gupta and Gould 2007).In-game advertising (IGA) is the burgeoning frontier for communicating with consumers in western media. Practitioners have largely adopted the video game channel for their advertising purposes, spending over $2.75 billion worldwide in 2015 only (Statista 2017). According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA 2017a), the computer and video game industry in the United States alone was worth $30.4 billion; this figure was $101.1 billion in 2016 for the worldwide market (Newzoo 2017). Further, in the United States, more than 150 million Americans play video games. Video games though present a relevant medium to reach a massive and engaged audience.In this article, we present the results of a comprehensive meta-analysis on the effects of in-game advertisements on brand attitudes, focusing on three major factors already tested in the product placement literature. After extracting the data, we analyzed three different relationships: gaming time → brand attitude; brand familiarity → brand attitude; and brand prominence → brand attitude.First, the results show that gaming time has a positive effect on brand attitudes. That is, participants who played the game for more time showed higher attitudes toward the brands presented in the games. Second, brand familiarity did not impact brand attitudes. The overall effect size was not significant across studies. Hence, participants’ attitudes toward the brand did not differ across different levels of brand familiarity. Finally, we also find that brand prominence did not affect consumers’ attitudes toward the brand. Taken together, the results suggest that in-game product placements might be effective in generating more favorable consumer attitudes, but this will depend on the time people spend playing the game and will not depend on the level of brand familiarity and location of the placement (central vs. peripheral).References Available Upon Request

According to evolutionary psychology studies (e.g., Buss 1989), women select partners mainly based on their financial prosperity, highlighting the importance of financial success among males. In that sense, Gulas and McKeage (2000) found that exposure to advertising containing idealized images of financially successful males reduced males’ level of self-esteem. However, they investigated only negative effects in terms of self-perceptions, but not advertising effectiveness, and more importantly, they did not include in their analysis attractiveness.The present research aims to cover this gap, focusing on comparison of marketing effects of using successful versus attractive male spokesperson in advertising on male and female consumers. Among two experimental studies, we demonstrated that when a male consumer compares himself to an attractive male spokesperson, the attitude toward the ad is positive; but when he compares himself to a successful male spokesperson, the attitude toward the ad is negative. Thus, men who compare themselves with a successful spokesperson show a similar derogation effect as women who compare themselves with an attractive model. Additionally, the use of a successful male spokesperson results in reduced purchase intention only on males due to negative effect created by jealousy; the negative effect disappears when also female receivers are considered.References Available Upon Request

A brand represents not only the relationship an organization has with its customers but also with its employees. The existence of incongruences in employee behavior during service transactions can disrupt the successful delivery of brand experiences (Clemes et al. 2000) and signal the need for proper alignment of frontline employee (FLE) behavior with brand values. One such incongruence was recently identified by Du Preez et al. (2017) when studying behavioral consequences of internal brand management among FLEs. The authors posited the existence of different operational worlds within the same organization that can cause different interpretations of brand-oriented behaviors. As a result, the two forms of brand-oriented behavior, in-role brand behavior (IRBB) and extra-role brand behavior (ERBB), cannot be successfully aligned with the organization’s vision. This might occur due to the increase in importance attributed to the employee branding role, causing managers to mistakenly embed ERBB in job descriptions without fully understanding them and treating ERBBs as IRBBs and confusing FLEs.We used the Delphi study method to research three different service organizations that agreed to participate in this study: a health services organization, an outsource call center, and a department store chain. Per Delbecq et al. (1975), a three-step strategy was adopted to explore the proposed research question. Our results showed that managerial and FLE’s perception of IRBBs was very similar. Nevertheless, while managers displayed a reasonable level of agreement with the classification of ERBBs, FLEs disagreed with the classification of practically all extra-role items. While the vast majority of in-role behaviors were correctly characterized, extra-role behavior still came across as a gray area for the participants indicating that managers and FLEs of retail organizations cannot differentiate one behavior from the other.The results indicate a need to coordinate marketing and HR activities to proper align employees’ behaviors with the values of the brand. A clear differentiation of the two types of behaviors would play an important role to decrease FLE role ambiguity and affect FLEs’ role clarity, job performance, and ultimately the customer experience.References Available Upon Request

The British Crown Dependency of Guernsey is set to hold an island-wide referendum by July 2018 on the island’s electoral process. The Guernsey government believe the outcome of the referendum will impact the way members of Parliament [deputies] are elected and envisage the creation of ‘political parties’ or ‘formal alliances’ in eagerness for the 2020 general election. The creation and introduction of political parties [political brands] on Guernsey would be unprecedented to the current-historic political environment of a non-party system structured by independent, individual politicians. However, research has overlooked this proposition from the perspective of island citizens-voters. This presents a unique opportunity for the proposed piece of research, which will have an impact as to whether political parties [political party brands] are desired by Guernsey citizens-voters and, if so, how will new political parties be created and conceptualised.This research problem is grounded in the subdiscipline of political branding. Political branding can be seen as the application of consumer branding concepts, theories and frameworks to the political environment. It is acknowledged political parties, politicians, candidates, governments and campaigns can be conceptualised as political brands (Nielsen 2016; Pich et al. 2016; Scammel 2015). Despite the advances in political branding research and development into a sophisticated area of study, it remains complex and under-researched. In addition, there are explicit calls for further research in this area particularly in new settings-contexts and more research from a citizen-voter standpoint, which in turn will advance-develop the subdiscipline of political branding (Needham and Smith 2015; Nielsen 2016; Pich et al. 2016; Scammel 2015). Therefore, an investigation of political branding in a non-party political environment such as Guernsey and subsequent study of post-electoral reform would give valuable insight in to existing independent political brands and assess the prospect of the creation-development of political ‘party’ brands. More specifically, this study will seek to understand whether citizens-voters desire political ‘party’ brands, explore their ideal political brand formation and ascertain whether the introduction of political ‘party’ brands will strengthen political engagement. Further, the findings will offer internal political stakeholders the opportunity to design, create and develop their political brands in line with the wants and needs of the electorate, which in turn should strengthen political engagement, maintain personal relationships between politicians-voters and allow for the establishment of a tailored approach to political brand management in nontraditional political environments. The findings will have implications on Guernsey’s electoral process and similar island communities.References Available Upon Request

Prior literature has shown that the acceptance of new technologies can improve the long-term performance of sales forces and firms. However, new technologies are likely to introduce obstacles to acceptance, especially for those technologies that represent a massive change for the user. Sales force members who drastically change their work processes in order to integrate a technology sacrifice both time and effort and may be distracted from their primary goals (e.g., hitting deadlines or sales goals). Thus, we investigate how perceived technological change can negatively moderate individual motives to accept a new technology. Furthermore, we analyze how managerial support can help overcome the acceptance issues caused by perceived technological change.Data for this study was collected from 163 sales force members via an online survey. Respondent data was collected using a private market research firm that provides access to online panels. We utilize structural equation modeling for factor analysis and OLS regression for testing the hypotheses.We find that perceived technological change negatively moderates the influence of individual goal orientation on to acceptance of new technology. We also find that managerial support, as opposed to team goal commitment, will positively moderate an individual’s goal orientation onto acceptance of new technology. This suggests that managerial support is necessary in order to encourage acceptance of technologies that present drastic change for the end user. Post hoc analysis takes a deeper look into potential curvilinear effects, a three-way interaction, and differences among categories of technologies. This analysis reveals that the negative influence of perceived technological change specifically affects the acceptance of behavioral-based technologies, as opposed to outcome-based technologies, thus necessitating the moderating influence of managerial support.This study demonstrates the acceptance issues presented by technologies associated with drastic perceived technological change. This article identifies and suggests how to more appropriately enhance acceptance of technologies that introduce drastic changes by sales force employees, thus enhancing potential long-term organizational performance.References Available Upon Request

Food well-being (FWB) is defined by Block and colleagues (2011) as “a positive psychological, physical, emotional, and social relationship with food at both the individual and societal levels” (p. 6). But to our knowledge, this definition has not yet explored the experiential dimension of food consumption from the consumers’ perspective. Our objective is to clarify this experiential approach to consumer FWB, drawing on psychology and philosophy research into well-being (and specifically the eudaimonic approach to well-being) and recent developments concerning the role of mindfulness on this construct.Through a consumer-centric and interpretive approach, we combined phenomenological interviews, photo-elicitation, and personal diaries to better understand the FWB manifestation in consumers’ lived experiences. Informants were therefore asked to think aloud about a well-being event connected with food, and their narratives were recorded as data.The emerging findings reveal that memories of experiences of FWB pointed to features of components of mindfulness (Baer et al. 2006; Brown and Ryan 2003): enhanced attention to and awareness of current experience or present reality, being attentive to communication and sensitively aware, observing visual elements, describing beliefs and opinions, nonjudging, and nonreacting to the inner experience. FWB experiences place the consumer in a centerpiece of his own consumption, whether they take place at the time of food acquisition, preparation, eating, or post-eating. The meanings of FWB vary: a search for authenticity in acquisition, a culinary challenge in preparation, a gustatory pleasure, a pleasure associated with commensality, or effects of food on the body in eating phase and finally one’s orientation toward responsible behavior in a post-eating phase. We propose to enrich FWB developed by Block et al. (2011), considering it not only a positive relationship with food but also a eudaimonic experience in which mindfulness activities play a role and may apply to the different phases of food consumption.Our findings may help public authorities and healthcare professionals, as well as consumer associations and any other stakeholder involved in food consumption/production, to integrate mindfulness in experiences of food consumption.References Available Upon Request

It is widely acknowledged that ethical consumption is increasing and ethical fashion is now in “high demand” (Bray et al. 2011; Domeisen 2006; Manchiraju and Sadachar 2014). However, it is also argued that, although consumers are able to form opinions based on ethical issues, their purchasing behaviour may not match their claimed intentions (Bray et al. 2011; Joergens 2006). This should therefore have a severe attenuating effect on the market penetration of ethical fashion, unless the purchasing decisions are really made because of other factors, which could be determined in a subsequent study, if appropriate. This apparent conflict is one of the driving forces for the current study. Whilst some researchers state that there is a growing awareness amongst consumers of ethical and sustainable issues, others claim that there is a lack of knowledge and a “disconnect” amongst consumers. If this lack of awareness were a more accurate reflection of the situation, it could explain the relatively small effect of ethics and sustainability on purchasing behaviour. Therefore, this study intends to investigate consumer attitudes, by the level of commitment shown by the sample of UK consumers, to pay a premium for ethical and sustainable fashion.Young consumers are particularly influenced by trends and by the fashion press and media. As a result it is believed that they are the most enthusiastic of all consumer groups when purchasing fast fashion (Martin and Bush 2000; Morgan and Birtwistle 2009; Birtwistle and Moore 2007). This is supported by Mirza (2004) who states that the young are tomorrow’s decision-makers and influencers. However, other literature suggests that whilst the young consumer favours the idea of buying from an ethical source, in fact, their lack of “moral imagination” does not apply such principles in practice (Joy et al. 2012). This could lead to a disproportionately negative effect on the application of the ethical values to the acquisition of fashion items. If this were correct, it could be one possible explanation as to why the apparent appreciation of ethical issues is not born out in actual purchasing decisions. Naturally, ethical considerations are not only of relevance in the fashion market.Whilst some researchers state that there is a growing awareness amongst consumers of ethical and sustainable issues (Parker 2011), others such as Payton (2013) claim that there is a lack of knowledge and a “disconnect” amongst consumers. If this lack of awareness were a more accurate reflection of the situation, it could explain the relatively small effect of ethics and sustainability on purchasing behaviour detected in surveys by Joergens (2006) and Shen et al. (2012). However, the low level of awareness means that the studies do not appear to give any significant indication as to the durability of the movement, or whether like so many other trends within this industry, it will disappear and will not be sustainable. Both Joergens (2006) and Shen et al. (2012) identified a potential willingness to pay extra for ethical and sustainable fashion, but neither could demonstrate a significant inclination to do so in practice. Both research groups concluded that an increase in knowledge of ethical and sustainable issues was essential to improve the chance of success of the movement. This study, which is work in progress, intends to investigate whether consumer attitudes in Britain have changed since the Joergens (2006) study and whether they differ from those more recently investigated in Hong Kong by Shen et al. (2012), by the level of commitment shown by the sample of UK consumers to pay a premium for ethical and sustainable fashion.References Available Upon Request

Social media have indisputably changed the way consumers and brands interact. Nowadays, many users generate contents on brands they like, or do not like, and share those opinions with other consumers from all over the world (Smith et al. 2012). In this environment, the opinion of some content providers has gained a lot of credit among their peers. Called “social media influencer (SMI),” their influence is such that before deciding to buy a product, some of their followers would systematically consult the SMI’s opinion (Moon and Han 2011). Brands did not fail to notice this particular influence and a vast majority of them seized the opportunity to develop partnerships with influencers to see their products praised by the SMI. The practice is called product placement (PP) (Russell 2002).Yet, the context of SMI presents several differences with that of traditional PP which suggest an original persuasion process that deserves scholar and managerial attention. First, the strength of the relationship between SMIs and their audience, relying on parasocial interaction (Lueck 2015), is quite unique in the marketing and advertising context, where audiences do not usually share a personal relationship with the source of the commercial message (Colliander and Erlandsson 2015). Second, SMIs endorse products at a pace that has never been considered before. They are “serial recommenders,” implying high frequencies of attempts of influence. Recommendations—of potentially different brands in the same product category—may impact subsequent ones in a looping mode. Third, the audience’s involvement in the communication and the PP is also unique: although targets of PP in movies do not watch movies for the PP, SMIs’ followers seek SMIs’ opinion on products and brands. Finally, most audiences do not clearly identify the commercial dimension behind a PP offered on social media (Boerman et al. 2017), which increases the effectiveness of the practice (Charry and Tessitore 2016) and calls for additional investigations on consumers literacy and empowerment.The objective of this work is to investigate the persuasion process at play in the very specific context of SMIs’ PP and to provide a better understanding of consumers’ responses and empowerment. In order to do so, we will focus on the relationship between SMI and their followers; followers’ attributions of SMI’s motivations; the impact of the repetitive dimension of the practice, also at different levels of satisfaction, especially on engagement; and factors of consumers’ empowerment.References Available Upon Request

Providing a valuable website experience has become a challenge for marketers (Bodoff and Ho 2016). The rapid growth of content on the Internet and the competition to catch the consumer’s attention lead companies to redefine their action plan. The objective is not only to produce a relevant and adapted content but also to provide a compelling experience on their website. This online competitive context leads companies to show a growing interest in web personalization (Tam and Ho 2006).Prior research generally focused on the company’s perspective and mainly studied the technological development supporting the automatic adaptation of the website. However, as experience is key in website navigation, it is important to go beyond technical aspects by examining the web personalization experience and its value for consumers.Our project aims to understand web personalization from the consumer’s perspective by analyzing the web personalization experience, its antecedents, and consequences. We first consider the experience and the value creation process. Is the experience on personalized websites valuable for consumers? Second, we analyze the factors influencing the web personalization experience. Does the company need to point out that their website is personalized? Finally, we examine the outcomes of the web personalization experience by considering both behavioral and relational responses toward the website.Therefore, this doctoral project consists in three distinct papers. Firstly, a qualitative research has been conducted to have a deep understanding of the web personalization experience and the value creation process. The second paper will further investigative the web personalization experience by examining the antecedents and consequences of the experience through experimentations and quasi-experimentations.Our research will consequently have both theoretical and managerial contributions. The theoretical contribution will consist of providing a conceptual framework adapted to the consumer’s perspective by deeply analyzing the web personalization experience. The managerial contribution will first include insights on the web personalization experience and the drivers creating a compelling and valuable experience for consumers. Second, it will include the analysis of the impact of the web personalization experience on consumers’ responses toward the website.References Available Upon Request

Fashion blogging has been booming in the last few years, transforming traditional forms of fashion communication (Kristensen and Christensen 2017). As the readership and following of fashion blogs have grown, it is important to understand their influence on consumer behavior. Exploratory studies have identified certain attributes of bloggers that are important to readers (e.g., Clarke and Johnstone 2012; Marwick 2013), but quantitative research on the topic is necessary to test whether findings from these studies can be generalized to a larger population. This study contributes to existing literature by providing empirical evidence of consumers’ attitudes and behavior toward fashion bloggers.Using an online survey, data from a sample of Jordanian fashion blog followers (n = 184) were collected and analyzed. Attitudes toward the four core characteristics of a “good blogger,” trustworthiness, expertise, authenticity, and personal relevance to the reader (Clarke and Johnstone 2012), were measured by means of 12 items developed from the literature, rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree (three items for each attribute).The findings show that fashion blogs are an important influence on consumer behavior (Clarke and Johnstone 2012; Halvorsen et al. 2013). Respondents perceived the blogger’s authenticity as the most valued attribute influencing their consumption behavior, followed by trustworthiness, self-relevance, and expertise. The findings also show that fashion blogs are predominantly read by younger women, who follow them for inspiration, to gain knowledge of latest fashion trends, and to discover new items to buy. Most respondents were more likely to purchase a fashion product that they first saw on a blog, especially when it had been recommended by more than one fashion blogger, which indicates a need for consumers to fit in with their communities. The study demonstrates that bloggers need to be genuine and honest, stay relevant and connected, and avoid being too commercial to be successful. Marketers should be more aware of the opportunities and challenges presented by fashion bloggers and find ways to reach these powerful opinion leaders to promote their products and expand their brands’ market coverage.References Available Upon Request

Rapid development of digital technologies not only opens numerous possibilities to individuals in the whole world but also creates premises for the digital piracy. Though being a worldwide phenomenon, digital piracy seems to be of special importance in the case of emerging markets.Many emerging markets have perfect broadband and Wi-Fi infrastructures; their population is highly literate in terms of the use of digital technologies, eager to follow the newest global trends, etc. All these mentioned conditions seem favourable for the digital piracy.On the other hand, the factors that influence digital piracy are not necessarily the same for all digital products: for instance, pirating of entertainment-related products includes specific relations with personal traits, emotional factors, and external conditions (Sheehan et al. 2012). The object of this study is illegal obtaining of movies that represents a large portion of overall digital piracy and often is linked with lower purchasing power of the population (Moores 2008; Rone 2013).Moreover, current societies are largely characterised by dynamism and novelty-seeking behaviours. In many cases, novelty-seeking may be considered as an expression of the need for uniqueness, status-enhancing opportunity, or at least as an opportunity to be appreciated among associates—especially, when younger audiences are considered (Knight and Kim 2007).This study aims to analyse novelty-seeking in the context of illegal downloading of movies among a young population. Furthermore, the effect of moral emotions (guilt and shame) and various neutralisation techniques on the illegal downloading of movies are analysed as well.The study is based on data that was obtained via survey in Lithuania. The country is a leader in terms of broadband communications and Wi-Fi availability—favourable infrastructure for acquiring digital products both legally and illegally (Corcoran 2017; Shaffer 2018). The research analysis is based on 422 respondents’ responses.The study shows the importance of novelty-seeking in the context of movie piracy. It specifies the relation of novelty-seeking with attitude and behaviour, highlighting directions for further research.References Available Upon Request

Company sales often suffer as a consequence of consumer animosity. Despite a significant number of studies on the antecedents of consumer antipathy, the effect of personality traits has never been examined. Meanwhile, just as the scholars have tested alternative antecedents of animosity, evolvement of the trait theory revealed that another important predictor of behaviour is personality. In this light, our study looks at the animosity of Ukrainian consumers towards Russia and aims to (1) identify personality drivers and behavioural outcomes of consumer animosity and (2) examine the moderating effects of key socio-demographic variables (gender, age, education, income, religion) on the link between animosity and product avoidance. Structural equation modelling indicated that neuroticism and openness are positively associated with animosity, while extraversion and conscientiousness have a negative effect on this feeling. Besides, animosity was found to influence purchase behaviour. Finally, certain socio-demographic characteristics, namely, gender, age, education and religion had a moderating effect on the link between consumer animosity and product avoidance. Marketing implications, limitations and future research avenues are provided.References Available Upon Request

The chief marketing officer (CMO) is the highest-level representative of marketing in a firm, giving marketing a voice in the top management team and critically shaping the firm’s marketing strategy. However, the business press has questioned the contribution of CMOs to firm performance, also by pointing to the short tenure of executives working in that position. Indeed, some research studies find no impact of CMOs on sales growth and shareholder value. However, other studies do find an effect, with the mixed nature of the findings indicating that CMOs do not automatically add to firm value, but rather some do while others do not. The value of having a CMO in the top management team is not the only controversy, but more fundamentally, mixed empirical evidence has also left a question mark over the economic value of spending on marketing per se.Using a managerial capability and resource orchestration perspective, we propose that the two major controversies in the marketing literature regarding CMOs and marketing spending’s firm value contribution can be brought together and be reconciled. In brief, our conceptual perspective suggests that marketing investment needs managerial marketing capability to be effective and that CMOs likely differ in terms of the level of managerial marketing capability they possess. More specifically, we conceptually link personal characteristics (e.g., education, experience) of CMOs to three capability drivers—CMO’s human capital, social capital, and managerial cognition—in order to explain differences in managerial marketing capability. Further, we propose that managerial marketing capability drives CMOs’ ability to orchestrate effective marketing investments and marketing asset deployment decisions, resulting in enhanced firm value effects from marketing spending.To test our conceptual model, we collected data from multiple sources (e.g., Execucomp, Bloomberg, Compustat) over the time period from 1997 to 2014. To simultaneously estimate the different relationships of interest, we specified a three-stage least squares (3SLS) model. The results of the model show that CMO’s marketing and firm experience, but not industry experience, as well as education, and support through other marketing executives in the firm positively predict a CMO’s managerial marketing capability. Finally, providing support for our conceptual perspective, the estimation results show that managerial marketing capability strengthens the relationship between marketing spending and firm value, revealing an important pathway through which CMOs contribute to firm value creation.References Available Upon Request

This article explores possible legitimacy-building mechanisms for social enterprises with difficult-to-measure outcomes and hostile contexts. Interviews were developed with managers of enterprises offering complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) services, taken as an example of social enterprises in a hostile context. Our findings indicate that CAM enterprises rely on relationship building and consumer education to establish pragmatic legitimacy; the quest for moral legitimacy is expressed through the hybrid organizational form, human capital and professionalization attempts, formalization of procedures, and strategic alliances. Building on Suchman’s (Academy of Management Review 20:371–610) three levels of legitimacy, we propose a mechanism through which enterprises use pragmatic legitimacy to enhance moral legitimacy and to create a feedback effect between moral and pragmatic legitimacy so that ultimately cognitive legitimacy can be achieved.

Corporate greed has received increasing attention in recent years with various stories hitting the headlines. Customer satisfaction and corporate social responsibility are known to have a positive effect on corporate reputation among customers, but perceived corporate greed is likely to impede their effect. Corporate greed, customer satisfaction, corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation are considered, and a research model is proposed. Data are collected from among commercial banking customers, and mediated regression analyses are undertaken. The effect of corporate greed on corporate social responsibility is found to be stronger than on customer satisfaction, while the effect of corporate greed on corporate reputation is completely mediated via customer satisfaction and corporate social responsibility. Implications are discussed, limitations are noted and possible areas for further research are indicated.References Available Upon Request

In this exploratory study, multiple consumer online and offline actions, along with external factors were analyzed and then fused with existing and gathered in-store consumer behavioral data sets to develop a richer and more complete view of the various interactions which lead to consumer bonding to a retail chain. While the time period analyzed was limited, the richness and detail of the data enabled a more complete view of how online consumer activities interact with and explain in-store consumer behaviors and the sales results which occur. In addition, two other external variables, weather and adjacency of competitive retail facilities, were used to enhance the “real world” situation in which consumers operate. These provide additional insights into why consumers interact with retailers the way they do. This analysis provides guidelines and insights into the potential value of more detailed and complex retail store/consumer analyses going forward. Based on the results of this initial study, it appears the approaches used in this analysis are transferrable to other situations and might be used around the globe.Of great importance is evidence that a grounded theory approach (Ellis 1993) might be the optimal one in analyzing consumer behavior at the retail level. The authors argue that it is the combining of multiple inputs that enables the exploration of big data using a “test, evaluate, and measure” approach, which provides the greatest insights into how consumers actually behave in the marketplace. They further argue that this approach likely surpasses traditional limited hypothesis testing now used in retail analytics.References Available Upon Request

Consumers are becoming more and more active in interaction with luxury fashion brands via social media platforms. In the meantime, consumer addiction to brands is seen as one of the most important ways in which consumers engage with brands. Extant literature on brand addictive behavior suggests both positive and negative consequences from brand addiction. However, in the context of luxury fashion brand consumption, little is known about consumers’ brand addictive experience with social media marketing and whether social-media-facilitated brand addiction leads to negative or positive consequences.An online survey based on Qualtrics panel resulted in a sample of 570 responses from consumers in the U.S. A theoretical model was tested with structural equation modeling. The results indicate that social media marketing efforts have a salient impact on consumer engagement with luxury fashion brands’ social media contents that in turn influences highly consumers’ brand addiction. The results suggest that luxury fashion brands’ efforts in social media marketing can enhance consumers’ brand addiction through their active engagement with the brands’ social media contents. Another important finding is the significant impact of brand addiction on both consumer pleasure and consumer guilt in the social media marketing context.Our finding supports the positive addiction theory that suggests that brand addiction does not always result in negative consequences. These findings entail a new perspective for understanding brand addiction as a different behavioral addiction compared with other addictive behaviors such as compulsive buying.References Available Upon Request

Luxury brands have the capacity to provide novel and meaningful emotional experiences which enrich consumers’ sense of self. This process is known as self-expansion, a strong motivational factor for developing and nurturing a relationship. As such, luxury consumption offers more than conspicuous or hedonic value; it contributes to an extended sense of self. Such benefit appears particularly attractive for millennials, who are at a stage in their lives when they seek out experiences and search for novelty combined with depth of perspective as well as doable challenges. This study, based on 229 millennials ages 25–39 years old, demonstrates how meaningful experiences strengthen the relationship with luxury brands through self-expansion and highlights the role of brand identification and the moderating effect of self-esteem. The findings shed a new light on the motivations behind luxury purchases, beyond projecting a social image. Luxury brands can also help millennials develop new perspectives, elevate one’s sense of self, enrich their self-concepts, and as such enhance strong customer-brand connection. This view becomes particularly relevant as a counterargument to some criticism to luxury consumption as linked purely to materialistic motivations.

Microblogs, or short blogs, are a social media channel commonly used by fashion brands, and luxury brands are no exception (Kim and Ko 2012). Luxury firms are utilizing microblogs and bloggers to promote their products and connect with their customers (Straker and Wrigley 2016). This new trend has led to increasing interest in studying how microblogs can be utilized effectively within luxury marketing. In this study, the emotions consumers experience as a result of microblogs were regarded as key for effective management for luxury fashion brands. In particular, envy, an emotion often associated with interpersonal comparisons, was examined because it relates to both luxury consumption (Belk 2011; D’Arms and Kerr 2008) and social media (Chou and Edge 2012).This experiment study investigated the following questions in the context of luxury brand microblogs: (1) How does microblog content trigger envy? (2) Do these feelings of envy influence consumer purchase intentions? (3) If so, does envy mediate the relationship between microblog content and purchase intention? This study focused specifically on two features that are among the most prominent to viewers: the race of the blogger and the featured brand image. By using both self-congruity theory and social comparison theory, six hypotheses were developed.Responses from a total of 141 female participants aged 18 years and older were collected through MTurk. Findings revealed a high level of racial congruence between respondents and bloggers elicited envy (H1). However, there were no significant differences in envy between high and low congruence level of respondent self-image and brand image (H2). It was found that envy elicited from congruence between respondent and blogger race increased purchase intention of luxury handbags (H3a). Similarly, envy from congruence between respondents’ self-image and brand image also predicted purchase intention (H3b). Furthermore, envy served as a partial mediator for congruence levels in blogger race and purchase intention (H4a), but it did not mediate for such relationship in brand image (H4b).The study revealed envy’s role in microblog marketing strategies for luxury brands, which concludes that luxury brand managers should utilize envy to its fullest potential in the context of microblogs. In terms of theoretical implications, this study addresses the research gap regarding the role of emotions in luxury brand microblogs. New knowledge of envy’s role in increasing purchase intentions through microblogs can advance understanding of fashion blog strategies and how they relate to brand marketing.References Available Upon Request

The global personal luxury goods industry is facing a “new normal” of lower growth over the long term (Bain & Company 2016). To compete in the strained market environment, many luxury brands try to launch limited-quantity (LQ) products to enhance the attraction of some items. Although scholars and practitioners paid a lot attention to the concept of LQ products, there is little theoretical investigation in the effects of limited-quantity scarcity (LQS) messages on luxury brands. Therefore, as more and more luxury brands try to adopt the strategy of scarcity, a systematic investigation in the effects of LQS messages on luxury brands is required. To clarify the effect of LQS messages on luxury brands in different consumption contexts (i.e., cognitive and emotional consumption), the current study aims to examine the moderating effects of emotional/cognitive consumption contexts and product visibility on the relationship between the LQS messages and some luxury consumers’ important behavioral variables, such as purchase intention (PI) and willingness to pay (WTP).This study employed a 2 (scarcity messages: LQS vs. control) × 2 (consumption contexts: emotional vs. cognitive) × 2 (visibility: visible vs. invisible) between-subjects experiment design and used a fictitious luxury brand in all conditions of this experiment. Participants were 460 eligible college students in Taiwan and were randomly assigned to the conditions. The result shows that LQS messages are not equally effective in all consumption contexts of luxury brands. Specifically, LQS messages can raise luxury customers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay only in the emotional consumption context. If the luxury product is visible, the effectiveness of LQS messages can even be much more obvious (in comparison to the invisible product) to stimulate consumers’ purchase intention. In practice, the study suggests marketers in the luxury brand industry to apply LQS messages on visible luxury products for customers in emotional but not in cognitive consumption.References Available Upon Request

When designing communication materials, practitioners consider not only what words will be used but also how the words will be presented. It is because a word conveys meanings in terms of what it speaks as well as in terms of how it speaks through color, layout, typeface, etc. Although much academic attention has been paid on several physical properties of typeface, understandings about typeface shapes are scarce. In contrast, it is a common practice to merely change typeface shapes in renewing brand logos. To close the gap between academic and practice world, this research aims to investigate how typeface shapes affect persuasion of different types of communication messages. In addition, this research further compares the above effects across English, traditional Chinese, and simplified Chinese.Based on social identity theory (Turner 1985), shape literature (e.g., Jiang et al. 2015), and writing system literature (e.g., Pan and Schmitt 1996), this research suggests consumers will perceive group-oriented (individual-oriented) information presented in circular (angular) typefaces more persuasive than in angular (circular) typefaces. Moreover, these effects will be strongest in traditional Chinese, followed by simplified Chinese, and weakest in English.Two experimental studies were conducted to testify these hypotheses in the contexts of brand names, name cards, and advertising. Results show that typeface shape indeed influences consumers’ perceptions toward messages. Study 1 reveals both in the contexts of brand name and name card, when natural-meaning names are presented with circular typefaces, consumers perceive these names as more group-oriented; but when the names are presented with angular typefaces, they are perceived as more individual-oriented. In addition, these effects are more salient in traditional Chinese than in English. Study 2 demonstrates group-oriented appeals induce higher persuasion when presented in circular than in angular typefaces, while individual-oriented appeals are more persuasive when presented in angular than in circular typefaces. Further, the effects are stronger in traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese than in English.References Available Upon Request

Participatory impact assessments are used to assess and evaluate the effects of a measure like the introduction of a new technology or a new legislation by integrating potentially affected stakeholders. As a concept of management consulting and political advice, impact assessments shall support well-balanced and lasting decisions by gathering objective data on possible effects of alternatives. As a manifest consulting function, this goal is typically openly communicated to stakeholders. Although widely neglected in theory, impact assessments are also conducted to build trust and commitment among stakeholders, to share responsibility and risk, and to legitimize and enforce decisions. Such functions which match with typical relationship marketing goals are usually implicit and therefore termed latent consulting functions. However, if latent functions are exercised one-sidedly, e.g., by withholding or distorting information, the other party will be unable to achieve his goals. In this paper the relationship between latent and manifest consulting functions of impact assessments is analyzed from a relationship marketing perspective by drawing on equity theory. It is discussed how the two functions can be balanced within the process of stakeholder integration in order to exploit the full potential of impact assessment as both an instrument of decision support and relationship marketing.

International relationships are increasingly critical to the organisations’ survival. There is a surge in international research investigating how relationship marketing (RM) can be adapted across cultures. Majority of the studies argue for the use of cultural dimensions to pinpoint a suitable RM strategy for a specific country (Samaha et al. 2014). There is, however, some evidence questioning the reliability of traditional cultural values in the international RM research (e.g. Lichy and Stokes 2017; Sun 2017), implying an emerging cultural shift.In the current realities of globalisation, including global transport, widespread migration of people across borders, development of information and communication technology and global media culture is not stable and homogeneous, but complex and evolving. Some even argue that in the global marketplace, consumers are exposed to a diverse range of local, global and foreign cultural influences, and all of these influences shape consumer identities and consumption preferences (Kipnis et al. 2014). Thus, studies that consider international RM should also change their perspective on culture to reach solid conclusions.In the face of this cultural shift, some envision a global consumer with a homogeneous hybrid culture that incorporates all national cultures (e.g. Wilk 1998), while others theorise a heterogeneous multicultural consumer, who can navigate with ease between multiple cultural norms depending on the situation (e.g. Cleveland and Laroche 2007). Whichever prevail, the underlying characteristics of this globalised consumer point to cosmopolitanism as a common trait (Kipnis et al. 2014; Sobol et al. 2018).This study aims to explore the consumer profile and consumption preferences of cosmopolitans by studying expatriates, the archetype of cosmopolitans (Skrbis et al. 2004). However, previous studies suggested that risk-taking and novelty-seeking cosmopolitan consumers embracing individualist values might not be the best base for RM strategies which thrive in collectivist societies upholding conformity and security (Samaha et al. 2014). To understand if and what RM strategies can be the most suitable for them, in-depth interviews were conducted with expatriates of highly diverse backgrounds and nationalities from all five continents. The exploratory findings imply that expatriates, when moving from one country to another, prefer to keep established relationships with their service providers and global brands because these are essential to maintain continuity and stability in their dynamic life. In line with the recent research, product attributes and demographics, like age and education, are found to be more reliable base for building RM strategies than traditional cultural values.References Available Upon Request

There is a significant relationship between the relational models used by customers and the way they respond to organisational interventions and services. A clear relationship exists between relational models and customer experience in terms of consumption emotions, customer satisfaction, and recommendation intention. It is therefore obvious that organisations that want to improve their customers’ experience should seek tools that allow them to activate or influence relational models. A number of studies already showed that it is possible to activate relationship norms by priming customers with specific words and images. However, all of these studies used fictional relationships between individuals or between organisations and individuals. In our study we investigated the opportunities that organisations have to activate relational models and customer experience by priming existing customers with specific words and images. Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to activate or influence relationship norms among existing customers, but only when the cognitive capacity of the customer is limited and only if the images used fit within the intrinsic motivation of the customer to enter into the relationship with the organisation.

Trade fairs, trade shows, or exhibitions are planned events where “manufacturers, distributors and other vendors display their products or describe their services to invited persons including current and prospective customers, suppliers, other business associates and the press” (Bonoma 1983, p.76). Despite the relevance of trade fairs for business, the literature depicts a body of knowledge formed by topical studies conducted from specific backgrounds and contexts. The research focus tends to be fragmented and centered in the individual perspective of each stakeholder with a view to maximize trade fair investments. Yet, recent developments in the literature have enlarged the scope of the field, by bringing comprehensive insights. There has been research in approaching trade fairs from more holistic perspectives, such as relational, learning, and economic geography. Research approaching exhibitor/visitor interaction and business relationships has the underlying idea that trade fairs represent a relevant context for relationship building (e.g., Sarmento et al. 2015). The line of inquiry reporting the trade fair as a context for learning emphasizes the information gathering at trade fairs as part of learning processes for firms (e.g., Bettis-Outland et al. 2012; Tanner et al. 2001). The most overarching inquiry for trade fair studies lies in the dynamic perspective building on economic geography (Power and Jansson 2008), highlighting the trade fair role as collective marketing platforms that industrial agglomerations or geographical clusters can use to sustain their presence internationally (e.g., Rinallo et al. 2016).References Available Upon Request

In the last couple of decades, there is a general agreement in the literature that brands can be anthropomorphised. Researchers use human analogy to analyse brands and suggest that brands are entities that consumers perceive that they have certain gender (i.e. Azar 2013, 2015) and idiosyncratic personalities (i.e. Aaker 1997). This stream of research goes further and argues that consumers form human-like relationships with brands (Fournier 1998; Veloutsou 2007; Alba and Lutz 2013; Veloutsou 2015; Alvarez and Fournier 2016). The existing research examines very few other aspects of the nature and the components of the consumer-brand relationship except its valence, from brand love (Carroll and Ahuvia 2006; Hwang and Kandampully 2012; Wallace et al. 2014; Karjaluoto et al. 2016) or brand passion (Albert et al. 2013) to brand dislike (Demirbag-Kaplan et al. 2015; Dalli et al. 2006) and brand hate (Bryson et al. 2013; Zarantonello et al. 2016; Hegner et al. 2017). However, when the human relationships are examined, researchers appreciate that there are other components of the relationship that are of importance for a healthy, long-lasting and flourishing relationship. Respect is appreciated as one of the most important benefits in social exchange (Arnet et al. 2003) and in close relationships (Markman et al. 1994), plays a powerful role in human life and is key for quality human interaction (Dillon 1997). There is a clear need to operationalise respect in a manner that the measure can be easily adapted and used in other market situations. The development of such a scale is the second objectives of this paper. Therefore, this work reports the findings of three studies that aim to better understand and operationalise respect.The first study draws from literature from various disciplines and aims to define respect. In study two items were generated. Both the definition of respect and the items were sent to 15 marketing academics to secure content validity. Two samples in the UK were collected to generate data for this third study. The first sample consisted of 194 respondents who were asked to answer the questionnaire having in mind a celebrity that they are familiar with. The second sample consisted of 217 respondents who were asked to answer questions on the degree that they feel that their selected brand of cars respects them. The seven of the nine items had high correlations with the direct respect measure (over 0.53 for respect to the brand and over 0.54 for respect from the brand) with one more with high correlation for the respect to the brand. All items were loaded to the same factor in factor analysis with an eigenvalue of respect to the brand and the same seven as in the previous analysis to the same factor with loadings over 5.31 for respect from the brand and Cronbach’s alpha of 0.94 for respect to the brand and 0.92 for respect from the brand. In the CFI the standard loadings were 0.71 for respect to the brand and over 0.68 for respect from the brand, while the CFI and GFI were 0.99 and 0.98 for respect to the brand and over 0.97 and 0.95 for respect from the brand, respectively. Therefore, it can be argued that these seven items capture respect.References Available Upon Request

Amid the shift in emphasis from marketing mix to relationships, prior research has extended the seminal work of Fournier (1998) and drawn on different theoretical perspectives to examine consumer-brand relationships (CBR): (1) identification perspective based on social identity theory, (2) trust-commitment perspective as in relationship marketing literature and (3) emotionally based concepts derived from interpersonal theories. This diversity has made marketers uncertain about what would be the most appropriate relationship-building strategies that will foster brand loyalty. Particularly, recent development in the last approach centred around brand love, a construct having been criticised due to consumers’ possible difficulty in acknowledging their love for a brand (Albert et al. 2008; Bagozzi et al. 2017). This study extends prior research and integrates the main concepts derived from the above main approaches to propose a framework investigating the impact of perceived quality, brand identification, brand trust and brand relationship closeness on brand loyalty. Especially, this study argues for the concept of brand relationship closeness that captures emotional aspect of CBR and includes consumers’ love/passion, intimacy and interdependence with a brand (Berscheid 1994).A survey using a sample of 400 consumers of fashion clothing in Vietnam, an emerging market context, reveals that the impact of perceived quality on brand loyalty is mediated by brand trust and the impact of brand identification on brand loyalty is mediated by brand trust and brand relationship closeness. The findings contribute to the greater understanding on the link between distinctive relationship concepts, which are similar to Fournier’s (1998) brand relationship quality dimensions, as well as provide support that these concepts span three phases of the relationship development process: cognitive—affective—conative. Trusted and close relationships built upon the relationship foundation mirroring brand identification and perceived quality in turn become driver of brand loyalty. This study also contributes insights into emerging market research stream to advance the body of knowledge on CBR and maintain its practical relevance. Furthermore, the study provides practical implications for marketers in Vietnam and other similar market contexts to take into consideration to maximise the impact of relationship-building strategies. Particularly, they need to focus on building brand trust and brand relationship closeness, in order to transform perceived quality and brand identification into brand loyalty.References Available Upon Request

This paper examines and empirically tests the relationship between service brand orientation (SBO) and firm performance and whether this relationship is influenced by relationship marketing orientation (RMO) as well as customer orientation (CO). Using a moderated hierarchical regression analysis, the empirical part of the study employs data from 584 service firms from an emerging market setting to test the hypotheses. The research results indicate that (1) service brand orientation is a multidimensional construct and has a direct, positive relationship with firm performance at an aggregated level; (2) the core tenets of the three orientations—an emphasis on reciprocal firm-customer relationships—make them suitable complementarities that generate ameliorating effects on firm performance; and (3) the effect of the SBO × RMO interaction statistically edges that of the SBO × CO interaction in significance from the current study.

The goal of this session is to emphasize the role of the attention-getting process on several aspects of consumer behavior. The four papers examine the impact of attention with a common focus on experimental designs using eyetracking devices.Huddleston and Behe present an original research on the influence of simple vs. complex displays on purchase intention and visual attention measured by eye-tracking. They conducted an experiment with displays consisting of 6, 12, and 24 products (vegetable plants). Participants were equipped with eye-tracking glasses. Attention devoted to displays, likeliness to buy, and time to choose is measured.Behe and Huddleston present a second original research on the influence of product placement in displays. Their goal was to understand how product placement in a horizontal merchandise display influenced product choice. Participants equipped with eye-tracking glasses were asked to look at the displays and select one product from each display that they were be most likely to purchase or could indicate they would not buy any of the plants.Bigné, Alcañiz, and Guixeres conducted an eye-tracking study to investigate how customer’s visual attention in a virtual reality setting affects consumer behavior. Their research goals were to compare visual attention and time spent on three tasks (finding out both well-known and unknown brands and a brand-free choice) and by four scenarios (2 VR model, 360° photography and 3D scenario × VR immersive formats, desktop monitor and virtual reality headset).Clement offers us to think about the complexity of data analysis from eye-tracking experiments. He suggests that if eye-tracking technology is an opportunity to study consumers’ responses to shelf displays, in-store advertisements, and not least how people select daily commodities, the analysis of data becomes highly resource demanding, and it poses a challenge for both academic and commercial researchers. Clement gives an overview of his fast developing toolbox by examples from his latest research.Together, the four papers offer new light on the interest of eye-tracking technology to understand multiple aspects of consumer behavior, especially attentional processes during exposure to marketing stimuli in real-live environments.References Available Upon Request

Virtual reality, VR, is challenging marketers to understand both brand interaction and the customer experience at the point of sale. In order to test the usefulness of VR in retailing, research must address how the customer’s visual attention in a VR setting affects his/her behavior. There are two main drivers for this research. First, there has been an enormous growth in recent years in the use of neurophysiological methods to measure visual attention. At the store level, previous works show that attention to products measured through eye tracking influences consumer decision. Second, VR is being increasingly adopted by brands, but research is lacking into comparisons between VR formats. We aim to compare visual attention during two consecutive tasks related to shopping behaviors in a VR retail environment. Thus, we integrate neurophysiological measurement of attention and VR.Our research goals are to compare visual attention and time spent looking at products and to measure the sense of presence evoked by the VR experience. To do so, a virtual representation of a set of supermarket shelves was created. The procedure consisted of a single-factor experiment of 2 VR immersive formats: a desktop monitor and virtual reality head-mounted display glasses. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two formats. Data were gathered from 100 participants exposed to one of the two scenarios: using head-mounted display glasses, HTC Vive, with Tobii Pro VR eye tracking integrated directly into the glasses, and Tobii TX 300 for tracking visual attention through the monitor. Participants completed two consecutive tasks: a search for a given brand and a search for any brand in a given category. The data were complemented by a questionnaire to measure sense of presence and recall of stimuli.Our findings suggest that sense of presence is high in both VR scenarios, which shows that participants perceive a high level of realism; visual attention given to products through a desktop monitor and head-mounted glasses was not significantly different but varies by task, with more time spent on the two tasks when wearing the HTC Vive glasses than with the monitor.References Available Upon Request

Consumers are not able to process all the information from the environment to make their decisions. Therefore, in uncertain situations, people follow up judgment heuristics to simplify their decisions (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). Those heuristics are a mechanism that helps to simplify the decision process, and one of this heuristics is known as anchoring an adjustment. The anchoring effect is a judgment where we consider an anchor point to do estimations. That is, a different start point makes people change their estimations, because there are biases to the anchor (Jacowitz and Kahneman 1995). Then, the purpose of this work is to measure the anchoring index in the context of national brand and store brand prices. In other words, the National Brand price working as an anchor for the consumer estimation of the Store Brand price. Furthermore, to identify the antecedents and the consequents of this Anchoring Process.The study uses a structured questionnaire to gather data from 192 individuals from Portugal and 220 individuals from the United States of America. Furthermore, a structural equation modeling is used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that the consumer behavior has a positive impact on brand equity. Such as antecedents, price sensitivity has a negative impact on anchoring, hedonistic behavior has a positive impact on anchoring, brand equity of the national brand has a positive impact on anchoring, and brand equity of the store brand has no impact on anchoring. Such as consequents, anchoring has a positive impact on purchase intention, and anchoring has a negative impact on switching intention. In addition, a chain of indirect effects is presented.The findings allowed the better understanding of the impacts of the studied variables on anchoring process. The overall results may support private label’s managers to understand the consumer’s perception toward their brands, such as the uncertainty toward the store brands compared to the national brands. In addition, to understand that the consumer, in uncertainty situations, may use judgmental heuristics to solve their tasks. This work is a new approach of anchoring index measurement, identifying how an individual may do estimations in an uncertain environment. Furthermore, this study integrates concepts and relationships in a single empirical study with relevant data, providing a model that illustrates a chain of important effects, between antecedents and consequents of the anchoring in a context of store brands versus national brands.References Available Upon Request

Social responsibility has become a cornerstone marketing policy, enabling brand differentiation in a high-growth market. By distinguishing between symbolic and utilitarian associations of social responsibility, our study identifies two levers for consumer brand commitment. We posit that utilitarian associations enhance consumer brand commitment by strengthening consumer trust in a context imbued with fear and skepticism about consequences of consumption for health. We also argue that brands can encourage consumer commitment through their environmental and philanthropic engagements by conveying values with which consumers can identify. This second commitment lever is argued to be particularly effective for consumers with strong social/environmental personal norms. We empirically test our research model on a sample of regular consumers of organic food brands validating the two pathways from social responsibility to brand commitment. The moderating role of consumers’ personal norms on the process was also confirmed regarding the philanthropic dimension but not the environmental one. Contributions and implications of these findings are presented in the discussion part.

In recent years, a growing number of studies have examined the role of narratives in marketing, with the majority focussing on the use of narration in advertising. Today’s consumers are engaging with enormous amount of narratives in form of online reviews. Consumers use stories to give meaning to their product experiences and make decisions (Nielsen and Escalas 2010). They read and process stories shared by other consumers to shape their own judgements. Nevertheless, our understanding of how different individuals process narratives and the mechanism that underlies their diverse behaviour is very limited. This research aims to examine how different segments of consumers evaluate online reviews that are written in a narrative form. Drawing on marketing and decision science literature, it suggests that consumers’ decision-making style (e.g. maximizers and satisficers) explains their information usage behaviour and evaluation strategies (Schwartz et al. 2000; Karimi et al. 2015). It can therefore influence the way narratives are processed.In order to test the relationship between consumers’ decision-making style, evaluation strategy and narrative processing behaviour, video recording techniques were used. Ninety-five participants were recruited and exposed to a number of reviews in a laboratory environment. As they were interacting with online product reviews, their information processing behaviour and verbal protocols were recorded. Findings revealed that decision-making style of consumers has a significant effect on their information processing behaviour. The relation between the decision-making style and information processing behaviour is mediated by the evaluation strategy they adopt. That is, satisficers are more prone to adopting a holistic approach to product evaluation which leads to analytical information processing, whereas maximizers tend to focus on detailed evaluation of product attributes that can prompt narrative processing behaviour.References Available Upon Request

Marketers are in the business of communicating and delivering value to customers, and organizations invest substantial amounts of money into the copy, design, and presentation of collateral to promote their products and services. Much study and testing has been conducted to determine the most effective formats to communicate with customers. Yet, when developing syllabi to create the same level of communication with students, most marketing educators create dull, difficult-to-read textual documents.Exploratory research into the use of graphic-designed syllabi incorporating color, images, and callouts indicates that a colorful, well-designed syllabus not only improves student comprehension and engagement with the material in the syllabus itself but also results in better attitudes toward the course and instructor. Several hypotheses were developed: H1: Students will perceive a graphic syllabus to be higher in (a) novelty and (b) perceived usefulness than a textual syllabus. H2: Involvement in the reading task will be higher with a graphic syllabus than a textual syllabus. H3: Students’ attitude toward the (a) course and (b) instructor will be higher for a course with a graphic syllabus compared to a textual syllabus. Two exploratory studies were conducted in two different academic semesters at a private liberal arts university in the Northeastern United States. In both studies, students completed an online survey at the beginning of the semester, evaluating the course based only on the syllabus. In the first study, syllabi from five different instructors were compared. H1 and H2 were supported with significant results, and the results for H3a and H3b were marginally significant. In the second study, a quasi-experiment was conducted among undergraduate students in three course sections taught by the same instructor. Once again, H1 and H2 were supported, as was H3a. However, H3b was not supported.The studies provide strong evidence that a graphic syllabus is superior to the traditional text-based syllabus in several regards. First, students were more involved in reading the syllabus. Given the importance of the syllabus in communicating expectations, policies and the structure of the class, the increased involvement is a clear advantage. Second, students perceive graphic syllabi as being more useful in conveying course information—evidence that the graphic syllabus is more effective. Third, graphic syllabi appear to significantly improve students’ attitudes toward the course.References Available Upon Request

The general acceptance of globalization and free trade across most national governments has led to the massive proliferation of foreign goods across the globe within the past few decades. As a result, the consumer adoption of imported products has been researched extensively as well; however, the majority of the studies have focused on developed countries, leaving less developed and developing countries vastly unexplored when compared to their counterparts. Research has also been found lacking in areas pertaining to the potential disruption that foreign product adoption has on the consumers’ purchase decision process. Key determinants such as consumer ethnocentrism (i.e., CET) and animosity warrant further investigation into how and where these determinants exert the most influence during the purchase decision process. This research seeks to examine the effects of CET upon the attitude formation stage of the process to assess its impact upon consumers’ attitude toward the use of foreign products. This study specifically examines the consequences of CET within Mexico, a country recognized as an emerging market by many reputable sources of international economic information.The study utilized a quasi-experimental group survey research design and multiple methods of analysis, producing results to support all three research hypotheses. Firstly, CET was shown to have a significant positive effect upon attitude toward the use of products imported from a developing country. Secondly, CET displayed a significant negative direct effect upon attitude toward the use of products imported from a developed country. Lastly, CET exhibited a significant positive effect upon attitude toward the use of domestic products.The general conclusion is that CET significantly impacts the product adoption process via consumers’ attitude toward the product. This effect is negative when the product is made in a developing market that is either foreign or domestic. Conversely, this effect is positive when the product is manufactured in a developed market. These results suggest that countries whose consumer market exhibits high levels of CET prefer products that are domestically produced. Additionally, ethnocentric consumers of developing countries may actually prefer products from other developing countries over developed countries due to perceptions of similarity and connectedness with that developing country. These findings lead to managerial applications whereby marketing efforts (e.g., forming joint ventures and strategic alliances) can be utilized to bring market similarities to the forefront when advertising to these consumers.References Available Upon Request

This study examines how ethnic Indians use technology in the acculturation process to enhance their subjective well-being. In brief, this study attempts to address two major research questions: (1) does acculturation impact the usage of technology and (2) does technology help alleviate the stress and enhance the well-being of an ethnic group who left their home country. From these research questions, a series of research hypotheses are developed and empirically tested with data from a convenience/snowball sample of 173 ethnic Indians residing in the United States.We propose Indian immigrants to the United States experience culture shock and stress during the acculturation process. In response, these individuals seek methods of dealing with their feelings in order to preserve their life satisfaction. We hypothesized that three of the subcomponents of the Acculturation to Global Consumer Culture—cosmopolitanism (H1a), social interactions (H1b), and identification with global consumer culture (H1c)—would encourage Indian immigrants to use WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends. The results indicate support for H1a. Conversely, H1b and H1c are not supported.The second research question deals with the impact of WhatsApp technology on user well-being. Our general proposition is immigrants face challenges in the acculturation process and turn to WhatsApp as a method of dealing with these issues, and the connection with people of a similar culture through WhatsApp results in enhanced well-being. The results indicate the use of WhatsApp is indeed related to increases in life satisfaction (H2a), well-being (H2b), happiness (H2c), and positive affect (H2d). Furthermore, using WhatsApp is found to reduce negative affect (H2e). In sum, WhatsApp appears to be a very effective coping device for Indian immigrants struggling with their adaptation to their life in the United States.From a research perspective, the results help address the earlier question “Does the use of technology for communication influence well-being?” While the majority of research has indicated technology provides a conduit for individuals to enhance their life satisfaction, others have found electronic social networks to have a negative effect on subjective well-being. In this situation, the results are unequivocal—WhatsApp increases the positive elements of subjective well-being while diminishing negative effect.References Available Upon Request

Tradition has been described in consumer studies as a powerful instrument for consumer identity construction even in a globalized consumer culture (Izberk-Bilgin 2012; Varman and Belk 2009; Türe and Ger 2016). In these terms, tradition can perform significant role in contemporary multicultural marketplaces (Cruz et al. 20017), cultural acceptability (Sinha and Sheth 2017), and brand evaluations and choices (Dogerlioglu-Demir et al. 2017). Drawing on these recent studies, we contribute to the literature exploring how consumers use tradition in fostering identity in an emerging market. Particularly, we shift the discussion involving tradition versus globalization to explore the traditionscapes, that is, a fluid consumer’s appropriation of certain traditions as a resource to build their identity at large in emerging markets. To explore this concept empirically, we adopt a multilevel approach involving qualitative and quantitative data collection with South Brazilian consumers connected with gaucho traditions. At the exploratory level, we identify three themes that describe consumers’ appropriation of certain tradition as a resource to build their identity: (1) cultural drives, (2) identity formation, and (3) tradition value. Even that in a symbolic way, tradition allows building a sense of belonging recognized as unique and locally accepted as source of identity. Following it, we observe that tradition serves as an indexical cue useful to deal with globalization flows and to express cultural attachment. At the confirmatory level, we conduct a survey with 600 participants at a gaucho tradition show. Results provide evidences for the qualitative predictions that tradition attachment is a cultural identity process and tradition value is influenced by the three levels of identity (regional, social, cultural). Findings indicate that traditionscapes is a relevant concept to describe the way consumers appropriate certain traditions as a resource to build their identity in emerging markets. We observe yet that consumers want to preserve traditional values in their identity projects not necessarily in opposition to global culture own. Discussions provide novel insights to marketers and local governments in considering the importance of traditionscapes when in emerging markets.References Available Upon Request

This study aims to provide a new perspective to the 20-year-old question on why consumers engage in customer citizenship behaviour. Customer citizenship behaviour concerns the voluntary helpful behaviours performed by customers to the benefit of the firm and may include advocacy and helping fellow customers in using the service. Grounded in the social exchange theory, it is presumed that customers perform these behaviours in appreciation of the benefits they believe they have received from the firm. Despite the proliferation of studies on citizenship behaviour, the link between technology acceptance and customer citizenship is not well understood. Most studies examining technology acceptance theory are concerned about consumer perceptions and behaviour prior to service trial, with many professing that customers’ beliefs of the benefits of the technology may impact their attitudes, intentions, and adoption behaviour. Some studies have also focused on customer behaviour in the post-consumption stage, where continuous intention of the technological service is often examined as the dependent variable. In the modern consumer marketplace, characterised by self-service technologies, however, it is also important to further understand the social interactions among consumers, where customers assist one another in using the self-service in the absence of direct interactions with employees. Thus, it has become necessary to broaden the thinking about technology acceptance models and behaviour in the post-consumption stage, beyond continuous intention, and to understand how beliefs and attitudes after consumption may impact on other types of behaviours, such as customer citizenship behaviour.Hence, this study considered the possibility that customers who hold positive beliefs of the self-service may develop positive attitudes and, in deliberation of the benefits, engage in customer citizenship behaviour. Five belief factors from the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model were considered in this study. Customer satisfaction and affective commitment were explored as cognitive backward- and affective forward-looking attitudes, respectively. Advocacy and helping behaviour were studied as subdimensions of customer citizenship behaviour. The descripto-explanatory, quantitative research design entailed a survey of 538 South African mobile banking application users. The measurement and structural model encompassing two second-order factors (post-usage beliefs and customer citizenship behaviour) delivered acceptable fit, and the research hypotheses were accepted.Theoretically, the findings offer confirmation that within the self-service technology environment, beliefs will impact on attitude and ultimately behaviour. However, the difference is that after the service has been consumed and satisfaction and commitment are gained, behaviour may take the form of citizenship actions, as explained by the social exchange theory. Furthermore, it is foreseen that the adoption of digital financial options could result in another 1.6 billion people becoming part of the financial system and contribute to employment for over 95 million people and monetary deposits of over $4.2 trillion across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Thus, practically, the findings offer a starting point in investigating initiatives to stimulate adoption of digital financial services in emerging market countries, such as using cell phones to conduct financial transactions, and that may lead to greater benefits.References Available Upon Request

Mission statements arose in response to what Levitt (1960) described as marketing myopia, whereby many of the problems plaguing US organizations were the result of businesses seeing themselves only in terms of what they did. Rather, they should have been doing so in terms of the customer’s needs that they satisfied. By failing to define themselves effectively, they became vulnerable to other alternatives that satisfied the customers’ needs more effectively, and were not able to alert themselves rapidly enough to the fact that customer needs changed.Mission statements have since become accepted as an important part of the strategic planning and implementation processes of organizations (Keller 1983; Pearce and Robinson 1991). Externally, they signal the organization’s professional identity, frame its choice of activities, and facilitate positioning vis-à-vis its competitors (Hartley 2002; Short and Palmer 2008). Internally, they help clarify the philosophy and intent of the organization to its employees and customers (Davies and Glaister 1997).The purpose of the study was to determine whether there are mission statements that help companies stand out or whether most organizations end up saying very similar things to others. Using the content analysis software, DICTION, we analyzed the mission statements of 110 Fortune 500 companies on Hart’s five dimensions of certainty, optimism, activity, realism, and commonality (Hart 1984a, b, 2000, 2001). We also used DICTION to calculate the following variables for each mission statement: insistence, variety, embellishment, and complexity.The preliminary results show that in many cases mission statements don’t serve as effective tools with which to differentiate firms and that many firms end up saying the same thing as most others. From a managerial perspective, the results of the study highlight the fact that managers should not view the mission statement as set in stone but rather as a malleable tool that should guide strategy and especially marketing strategy. As conditions in the business environment change, so too might the definition of business.References Available Upon Request

This research investigates how customers process delightful consumption experiences and, more specifically, whether consumers use intuitive System 1 processing or analytical System 2 processing. Furthermore, we investigate how this affects the magnitude of customer delight and behavioral intentions and whether this effect is moderated by the type of consumption setting, i.e., hedonic versus utilitarian. It is hypothesized that (1) customer delight can result from both System 1 and System 2 processing; (2) that System 2 processing has a stronger positive effect on customer delight and, in turn, behavioral intentions; and (3) that this effect is stronger in a hedonic consumption setting. The conceptual model and hypotheses will be tested in a 2 (processing: System 1 versus System 2) × 2 (consumption setting: hedonic versus utilitarian) experimental design. This research aims to contribute to customer delight literature by looking at this marketing construct through the lens of psychology. It will thus explain “how” customer delight works, i.e., its underlying, intrinsic processes. It aims to offer managerial implications by showing which processing system leads to the strongest customer delight and, in turn, strongest behavioral intentions.References Available Upon Request

This paper looks at brand engagement in the context of employees and B2B firms, two areas that are largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement in social media, two key drivers of employee brand engagement are identified using the content analysis tool, DICTION, namely, optimism and commonality. Employees of top-ranked and top-rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media. This allows the construction of a 2 × 2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations and offers human resource and marketing managers different strategies in each case. This paper demonstrates how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on how stakeholders engage with brands.References Available Upon Request

Marketers often depend on third parties to do the work for them, such as advertising or research agencies and distributors of goods and services (Bergen et al. 1992). Agency theory provides a strong and apposite conceptual framework to understand and explain these associations. In these relationships, a party called the principal assigns work to another party called the agent, who then does the work (Eisenhardt 1989). For example, salespeople and their managers share an agency relationship, where the manager is the principal and the salesperson is the agent. As agency relationships prevail in real-world marketing issues (Bergen et al. 1992), a better understanding of the role of agency theory in marketing is important to marketing scholars and is valuable to practitioners.Twenty-six years have elapsed since Bergen et al. (1992) published their work on agency theory in marketing. Agency theory is still relevant in marketing today. However, since 1992, there has been no other thorough update of the literature on agency theory in marketing-related contexts despite the various developments in marketing, such as the advent of the Internet. In this paper, I provide an updated review of the literature on agency theory in marketing-related contexts, namely, salesforce management and compensation plans, business-to-consumer marketing, business-to-business marketing, advertising agency-client relationships, marketing management and shareholders, and sponsorships. I also identify new avenues for research on agency theory in marketing.References Available Upon Request

While extant research has devoted considerable attention to seller-buyer relationships during the development sub-phase, the implementation sub-phase has received considerably less attention. In particular, the study of post-installation interactions has been very limited. Seller-buyer interactions during the post-installation phase can facilitate marketplace success by generating positive word-of-mouth effects which hastens the diffusion process (Hoyer et al. 2010). For example, Gertler (1995) advises sellers to seek post-installation feedback in order to address buyers’ operational problems with the innovation. Proactive interactions initiated by sellers with buyers after the sale lead not only to favorable buyer-level outcomes (e.g., customer satisfaction) but also seller-level outcomes like greater innovativeness and higher new product success rates (Challagalla et al. 2009). DeBruicker and Summe (1985) note that after buyers become familiar with an innovation, they often request additional features and capabilities. Therefore, sellers who seek product-related input after installation are well positioned to develop product upgrades (Meyers and Athaide 1991). Such upgrades can increase a buyer’s dependence on the seller by providing enhanced benefits (Scheer et al. 2010) and building switching costs (Ganesan 1994). Against this background, we investigate the determinants of sellers’ post-installation knowledge generation through interactions with buyers and the effect of such interactions on expectations of relationship continuity.The results of our empirical study suggest that sellers engage in post-installation product knowledge generation under certain antecedent conditions. Specifically, the extent to which sellers engage in such relationships is a function of perceived buyer knowledge, prior relationship history, and technological change. These results suggest that sellers consider both the buyer’s ability, signified by perceived buyer knowledge, and motivation, based on prior relationships, before seeking post-installation product-related feedback. Further, such relationships are more likely when technologies change rapidly because they can dissuade buyers from switching to competitors offering newer technologies. We also find that engaging in such interactions enhances expectations of relationship continuity only when technological uncertainty is higher. Once again, stemming the potential loss of buyers to competitors with newer technologies provides the underlying logic. Thus, because sellers have to be judicious in expending their relationship resources, our results offer useful guidance on appropriate situations for undertaking such postlaunch interactions.References Available Upon Request

E-retailers and other industries are observing an explosion in the offer of tools that they have available to use. Even though many of these technologies are open source, they imply an investment to install and implement. The adoption of a new technology is a major step with implications that go beyond the initial decision itself. The effort that has to be put in place to implement it must not be neglected. This research uses neo-institutional theory to study the adoption of social networks, a technology highly dependent on implementation but with a zero adoption cost. New technologies and techniques keep pressuring managers to decide under high uncertainty and will benefit acknowledging the main prevailing reasoning behind adoption. While some firms are expected to follow a rational decision process, some others may decide as a response to social pressures. Considering that a misfit between the technology and the goals and characteristics of the firm can result in large differences during its implementation, the motivations for adoption should be noticeable in the pattern of utilization. As social media is a ubiquitous phenomenon that a firm cannot ignore, the adoption of a social network like Twitter allows to study if the level of implementation of an innovation increases with the increase of time since adoption. Using a sample of e-retailers from the United States and Europe, the final dataset used to estimate the model was composed of a total of 1310 firms with Twitter presence, and 1148 of them had posted at least 1 tweet. To empirically test the claim, we used a hurdle model. The estimation provides evidence that the firms in the sample have a lower probability of publishing the first tweet, the longer is their presence on Twitter. The utilization level, according to the number of tweets posted, is lower for those firms adopting later. We conjecture that the findings point towards a decision process based on social pressures. The question of competitive rivalry leading to adoption due to social pressures provides more clues to a better understanding of some of these decisions.References Available Upon Request

Our specific focus in this paper is on customer participation in the NPD process (i.e., customer involvement as co-developers). Within this collaborative NPD process, customers are engaged in idea generation, selecting various attributes of a new product offering and acting as co-developers of new products and services (Fang 2008). Our research contends that customer participation’s effectiveness in regard to new product performance and commercializing innovative new products is dependent on the level of absorptive capacity (ACAP) of the firm. ACAP is a dynamic capability that can help utilize the firm’s knowledge structure to acquire, transform, assimilate, and exploit external knowledge and apply it to commercial means (Zahra and George 2002). Substantively, we suggest that without a high level of ACAP, customer participation in NPD is rendered wholly ineffective in regard to the innovativeness and performance of new products.Our primary contribution to the literature is illuminating the positive, moderating role of absorptive capacity (ACAP) between customer participation in NPD onto innovativeness and new product performance. While it has been noted that the innovation and success of a customer co-developed product likely depends on internal capabilities (e.g., existence of a technology champion) (Chesbrough and Crowther 2006), previous research has not specifically looked at ACAP in this moderating role, instead focusing on proxies, such as R&D expenditures or firm size (West and Bogers 2014). As such, we examine ACAP outside of the R&D expenditure operationalization that has previously hindered open innovation and absorptive capacity research. We suggest that without proper levels of ACAP, customer participation in the NPD process essentially has a null effect. Thus, firms with low ACAP are not equipped to integrate customers into the NPD process and should avoid doing so as it could lead to lost time, effort, and resources.In a study of 241 firms of varying sizes across 14 different industries, we investigate the effect of customer participation on new product development performance. We confirm that overall customer participation is positively related to new product development performance and that the effect is mediated by innovativeness. We also demonstrate that these effects are contingent upon the absorptive capacity of the firm in question such that firms with high absorptive capacity stand to gain more from engaging their customers in new product development than firms with low absorptive capacity, especially at the later stages of the NPD process. As such, this study shows that firms must honestly evaluate their own levels of ACAP to maximize the innovative output from customer participation in NPD.References Available Upon Request

Existing studies on autonomous driving examine automated driving functions based on theoretical consumer ideas or, in a few cases, referred to driving simulations. However, we find a lack in research on how consumers perceive and evaluate automated driving innovation technology in real driving conditions. Focusing on available “Level 2”-series functions, in this paper we concentrate on the effect of driving experience on perception and valuation of the automated driving functionalities. We developed and conducted a user experience study with a pre- and a post-questionnaire, a standardized test-track and 197 test drivers using either Mercedes-Benz E-Class or Tesla Model S. Results indicate that consumers expect much more than already provided by the technology. We found a high influence of driving experience on the consumer perception of automated driving functions.

This study focuses on the complexity of atmospheric cues in online retailing. It tries to answer how context visual complexity of an online retailing Web site affects enjoyment of consumers. Furthermore, it asks whether other intervening variables (i.e., processing fluency and perceived control, self-construal) affect the relationship between visual complexity and enjoyment. The results indicate that an e-retailer Web site is evaluated as more enjoyable when presented in low visual complexity than high visual complexity. Also, mediating roles of processing fluency and perceived control are assured. Furthermore, the findings suggest that in low context visual complexity condition, the respondents with interdependent self-construal experience more perceived control compared to the ones with independent self-construal; in high context visual complexity condition, the respondents primed with independent self-construal experience more perceived control compared to the interdependent ones.

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) remains a topic largely ignored by academic scholars (Taylor 2015), despite innovative digital technology, which has created vibrant opportunities and revolutionized the traditional “outdoor” medium (Bauer et al. 2011; Kinetic 2014). Furthermore, empirical research on digital signage (DS) is scarce (Bae et al. 2016) – particularly in the emerging market context – and does not address shoppers’ experience of DS as mall atmospheric stimuli.This paper presents a study which explored South African shoppers’ experience of DS in order to understand how it might influence their emotional responses and shopping behaviors. It draws inspiration from the fields of environmental psychology and retail atmospherics to propose that when contemporary shoppers experience retail atmospheric stimuli such as DS as positive, they are likely to stay longer, visit a mall more often, and/or spend more.Brakus et al. (2014) demonstrated that DS in the retail environment evokes brand experience on a cognitive level when providing product information (thus utilitarian value) but evokes sensory and affective dimensions when offering spectacle and entertainment value (hedonic). In this study, the utilitarian and hedonic value of DS as retail atmospheric stimuli is explored by using the Mehrabian-Russell model of environmental influence (also referred to as the S-O-R model) as a theoretical lens. This model is widely used to examine the effect of retail atmospherics on shoppers’ responses (see Mishra et al. 2014).Acknowledging earlier research on shopping experiences and mall atmospherics (Arnold and Reynolds 2003; Fiore and Kim 2007; Sit et al. 2003), an exploratory qualitative investigation was conducted. In-depth interviews with 30 shoppers guided by visual stimuli on DS in three super regional mall environments were used to collect the data.The findings confirmed that digital mall signage as atmospheric stimuli can lead to an emotional reaction that influence shoppers’ behavioral responses in malls, supporting the theoretical model. The content and the quality or quantity of exposure can shape shoppers’ experience of the retail atmosphere. The results suggest that shoppers who see the DS as offering hedonic value will experience enjoyment; and improvement to the utilitarian value of content would also enhance the shopping experience. Overall DS is regarded as positive enhancement and a potential valuable source of information and entertainment. The narrative accentuated the demand for tailored content rather than universal marketer-driven inducements. Specific recommendations to enhance or improve the experience of shoppers exposed to digital mall signage are made.References Available Upon Request

The purpose of higher education in general and marketing curriculum in specific is to create prepared graduates that are well equipped with knowledge and tools needed to succeed in their careers. In an attempt to match evolving needs of future employers and to keep students interested and engaged in course material, educators draw from a variety of approaches to enrich traditional lectures through real-world applications. Here, universities are increasingly incorporating “project-based learning” (PBL) opportunities to help students bridge the gap between classroom learning and practical application of textbook knowledge. While PBL models can vary from institutions to institutions, the most commonly implemented approach is a course-embedded model of PBL.The panel members provide insights about project-based learning from an administrative as well as faculty perspective while addressing fundamental questions of how a PBL culture can be fostered across campus and how educators can implement a PBL model into established marketing courses. Specifically, the special session first discusses strategic and tactical approaches to implement a PBL initiative at the curriculum level, within and across the discipline level, as well as across the campus level. By sharing tips and tricks on how to facilitate the transitioning to a PBL mind-set, educators return to their universities equipped with specific guidelines on how to transform their educational atmospheres. Another focus of the session is to share examples of PBL experiences in a variety of marketing courses, such as marketing research, marketing consultancy, and marketing management. The interactive exchange between panel members and audience members allows for an open dialogue about creation of a PBL culture within and across disciplines, experiences on how to find suitable companies, managing the overall project, and guiding students through the learning experience.The main contribution of this special session stems from the dual perspective discussed by panel members—administrative and practice focus. As a result, attendees can raise concerns or questions related to the general implementation and to specific project concerns about project-based learning. Considering the multitude of topics introduced in this panel, participants will gain substantial knowledge in potential opportunities and challenges in establishing a solid PBL program.

For immigrants, food represents an identity and a personal and community bond. This identity is challenged when the consumer under globalization accepts a job abroad. It will evolve as it comes into contact with other cultures. Our research took place in the cosmopolitan city of Geneva. The sociodemographic, cultural, and structural characteristics of the immigrant population in Geneva are very different from those that are usually studied to analyze immigrants’ integration trends. We conducted 2 focus groups and 13 interviews for our naturalistic inquiry. Our analysis of the data enabled us to identify three identity-related tensions and the strategies devised by our respondents to manage them. We were hence able to establish the link between the discourse and the meaning of culturally marked food.

Some companies may forgo market segmentation strategies as new products and services are developed. Instead, they may consider using consumer collaboration or crowdsourcing. In fact, crowdsourced ideas are closely linked to a variety of marketing innovations. Consider Google’s recent update in India, which allows TV shows and movie reviews from web users right within Google search results (Perez 2017). However, consumers may have contradictory goals between each other.Under ideal conditions, a firm can respond to divergent consumer demand by adjusting product or service offerings accordingly. The strategy of market segmentation, then, is useful to address consumer heterogeneity (Smith 1956). The constraints some firms may face in circumstances that are less than ideal are central to our argument in the development of new products. For example, segmentation may not be a viable option when supply-side resources are constrained, market position depth is maximized, or the addition of a new segment is not profitable. Additionally, segmentation may simply fail to align with a firm’s core mission. Our research, then, addresses the conflict that occurs when segmentation does not play a strategic role in the new product development (NPD) process. Self-segregated groups of consumers are co-creatively involved in NPD but may have contradictory product goals. We explore the outcome, co-competition (Hiler et al. 2017), here.For our study, we used a grounded theory approach combined with content analysis (Corbin and Strauss 2008; Charmaz 2002). We implemented a critical incident technique survey methodology, which permitted participants to pick their own context in which to provide an example of a time they felt a company and/or service provider abandoned and/or betrayed them for another group of consumers (Flanagan 1954; Gremler 2004). Finally, the analysis of the data was conducted using a hermeneutic and phenomenological approach (Thompson et al. 1994) while also relying on models of naturalistic inquiry (Belk et al. 1988).Our research implies that co-competition negatively influences consumers’ attitude toward the company. Value propositions furnished by the firm become lopsided or diluted, and consumption levels (e.g., subscriptions, in this context) are significantly reduced. As a result, empirical examinations that experimentally test the differences in attitudes and behavioral outcomes, as a function of consumers’ varying ability levels and dispositions (proclivity) toward co-creation, would be appropriate and timely contributions to marketing research and management.References Available Upon Request

Comparisons help the organizations to identify areas of excellence and improvement and a path forward. Some authors go beyond the sustainability or the sustainability development “…development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” (WCED 1987, p. 3) and argue that we should also improve the opportunities for future generations (Svensson et al. 2016b). Sustainability has come to include three different areas of performance, economic, environmental, and social, commonly referred to as the “triple bottom line” (Winter and Knemeyer 2013).The main purpose of this study is to compare private and public organizations’ sustainability initiatives, as well as contrast the evolution of their sustainability initiatives over time in the Spanish healthcare sector.In this research has been applied an inductive approach based on in-depth interviews with key informants from a selection of private and public hospitals. The selection of hospitals for study was evaluated by means of judgmental sampling (Fischhoff and Bar-Hillel 1982). A non-probabilistic technique was used, because sustainability initiatives are not widespread in Spanish hospitals. The final sample consists of three private hospitals and three public ones, all of them were general hospitals.The findings provide several research implications. Firstly, though the private and public hospitals studied are in the same healthcare industry and similar operatives, their organizational sustainability initiatives in the past, present, and future differ. Secondly, the scope of organizational sustainability initiatives between private and public hospitals is different, again comparing the past, present, and future. Thirdly, who was and who is promoting, as well who is going to promote them in the organization, also differ between private and public hospitals.The public hospitals have realized that they often began their organizational sustainability initiatives for the wrong reasons and now take time to think about the genuine reasons and objectives for engaging in sustainable actions. They wish to continue with the organizational sustainability initiatives, but with the right motives and values. However, the private hospitals nowadays consider the organizational sustainability initiatives as a kind of competitive advantage that has to be improved continuously.References Available Upon Request

Despite the increasing emerging countries’ share in global exports, this share in figures may still be considered relatively modest if we consider the potential of these countries. This paper has the purpose of conceptualizing and analyzing the decision process regarding brand equity in internationalization processes and the implications of the associations with the country brand. The internationalization process to emerging market companies is a critical variable to increase brand equity as stereotypes of the countries of origin strongly influence consumer reviews on products, as consumer ethnocentrism and social identity theory governs purchasing behavior. Despite the importance of the subject, there are still few papers theoretically approaching both subjects simultaneously to help managers and scholars understand the country of origin effect on the effort of increasing brand value in international markets.How should emerging countries’ companies (e.g., Brazilian) deal with the decision to associate their country (e.g., Brazil) with their products? Based on the case study of two emerging market multinational enterprises (MNE), it is suggested a new approach for the internationalization process of emerging market brands. The two Brazilian companies assessed in this study had different approaches to the country of origin (COO) effect, with antagonist strategies to country of origin associations. While one of them (Embraer) uses the so-called GCCP (global consumer culture positioning), global positioning for all cultures and markets, the second one (Giraffas) opted to a different positioning in international markets. The antagonistic decision about branding between the two companies can be noticed in the process of implementation. Implications on the use of GCCP for both companies and theoretical inferences are discussed.References Available Upon Request

Globalization has the center of attention for many companies as they see the need to expand their product offerings to consumers of a different geographical location as well as of a different culture. Effective international market segmentation (IMS) is an indication of a clear understanding of the what, where and how products are being promoted and sold worldwide (Cleveland et al. 2016). The strategy chosen for a market segment varies accordingly across different cultures. The purpose of this research is to examine whether consumers’ national identity, national animosity and ethnocentrism have an effect on attitude when consumers’ perceived product and country image are added as mediators. Research has been circling around the concept of country-of-origin (COO) for years. There are also several other variations of COO which includes Product-Country image (PCI), country image, product and brand image. COO is widely known as the “Made-in” label, and this COO effect is often overlapped between how a consumer perceive a country image and a product image. Consumers’ perception of a country affects their perception of the quality of a product or brand that is originated from that particular country. In this research, the COO concept was beyond where a product was made-in. Consumer ethnocentrism was used to examine the relationships between national identity and consumer’s perceived product image and country image (respectively). The results show consumer ethnocentrism has an effect on product image but not on country image when national identity is used an independent variable. In other words, for Americans, a “made-in USA” label is more important than portraying an image of USA. This result suggest that Americans have a strong sense of their national identity. This implies that Americans’ impression of their own country is influenced none other than their belongingness to their home country. This study used bags as a stimuli. Although it is a study to determine young consumers’ ethnocentrism, its effect on (1) COO labeled products, and its impact on their (2) purchasing intention, may not be elaborative enough to measure a general mentality of the American community. In many promotional ads, there are many situations where different types of products are used and different market segments were targeted. Thus, for future research, different product types will be used to determine the effect of consumer ethnocentrism and national identity on “Made-in” labels.References Available Upon Request

Cross-border collaborations are becoming increasingly important for innovative marketing in an interconnected world. We know from the international marketing, business, and cross-cultural literatures that, in practice, research projects demand a degree of local adaptation. A key challenge for marketers is to create methodological constructs that capture these local differences. In this regard, the success of future innovations will be dependent upon the research collaborations that we set up and the capabilities that they foster through global innovations. The session presents a number of specific research methodological topics that relate directly to cross-cultural market and innovation research, in the context of how understanding the challenges of achieving metric equivalence can create greater impact of our research and the collaborations that we set up. Using a combination of topical themes, the panel members will share insights from their own experiences and will invite the audience to contribute so as to create a forum for discussing issues such as: Managerial relevance of cross-cultural research. What do we need to know to create evaluation methods to ensure equivalence and enhance validity and innovation internationally? Does the meaning of being innovative change with the level of development in a culture? What is the meaning of generalizability in cross-cultural research? Does the choice of test measure what it is supposed to measure? Sample relevance and generalizing to target populations. What to do when scales display a lack of invariance? Multi-cultural psychometric validation and testing moderation by culture. Pitfalls in cross-cultural research. Cultural and linguistic differences between the populations studied. Overdependence on developed countries to validate scales. Scales that don’t work across cultures. Is there a pan-cultural scale? Advertising across cultures. The panel members for this session are experts in their fields and have extensive experience in working with a range of marketing journals.

Fish has preventive effects against various chronic illnesses that have become a health threat in modern societies. Even though health authorities recommend consumption of fish at least twice a week, consumption in many countries is far lower, for example, in France, so finding ways to increase fish consumption is important. Social marketing is thought to be effective in encouraging healthy eating. In order to apply social marketing, the appropriate target groups need to be identified, but previous studies on the relationship between fish consumption and sociodemographics show conflicting results. Further investigation is therefore needed to produce reliable results for policy makers who prioritize scarce resources.The purpose of the study was to identify sociodemographic characteristics of French households that should be targeted to increase fish consumption up to the recommended amount of two meals per week. Our main target group was households that eat fish, but less than two meals per week. Most likely, social marketing efforts need to vary, depending on how far from the recommended consumption households are. We therefore divided the target group into subsegments, based on consumption frequency. We used scanner data from Kantar Worldpanel of weekly purchases of fish from 20,000 French households during the years 2010–2013. We estimated a demand equation for each subgroup by applying a cluster robust random effect model. The method therefore accounts for the panel data structure of the data as well as provide unbiased standard errors.The results show that households closest to the recommendation level have 2–3 household members, are living in the south or north of France and are quite unresponsive to price changes. Previous studies have shown that these households have similar motivational factors when it comes to fish consumption as those that consume the recommended amount, so inspiring them to increase their consumption by emphasizing their motivational factors, e.g. health benefits, taste and easy to prepare, is likely to be sensible and successful. The segments furthest away from the recommendation level have 3–4 household members, are mostly living in the south of France and are significantly more responsive to price changes than the aforementioned households. We would therefore recommend marginal price reduction in the form of lowering value added tax combined with promotion emphasizing the health benefits of fish consumption, which has previously shown to be important to these segments.References Available Upon Request

The study aims to make two main contributions to the destination image literature: to develop a holistic theoretical model of destination image development in tourists’ minds and to maintain a longitudinal nature to empirically validate the model. To achieve the former, the model treats previsit, post-visit and during-visit variables as a continuum. The latter is achieved by conducting previsit and post-visit survey with the same pool of respondents before and after their visits. To support the model, the study relies on theories of stage, attitude and expectancy confirmation.Literature suggests that travel behaviour is a continuous process with intercorrelated stages (e.g. Cohen et al. 2014). The studies that investigate post-visit image change have either used different samples (Yilmaz et al. 2009) or both pre- and post-visit questionnaires simultaneously (Wang and Davidson 2010). The use of the same respondents guarantees to capture actual changes without interference of externalities (Jani and Nguni 2016).Stage theory leads this study’s framework, which represents destination image development in a sequence of previsit, during-visit and post-visit stages. Furthermore, by making use of attitude theory, the conceptual model depicts cognitive, affective and conative components of destination image. Finally, the image after the actual experience is measured as a difference between previsit and post-visit perceptions based on expectation-confirmation theory. These three theories in this context complement each other.Data collection site is Uzbekistan. It uses self-administered previsit and post-visit questionnaires. The previsit questionnaire includes questions on cognitive, affective and overall image, information sources, motivations, socio-demographic characteristics and screening questions on first-time leisure tourists. The post-visit questionnaire repeats destination image questions and in addition contains questions on service quality, perceived value, satisfaction and future behavioural and perceived cultural differences. Likert-type and semantic differential scales have been used.The survey will be conducted with the help of tour operators. The piloting process revealed this method as the best to overcome difficulties as majority of tourists travel to Uzbekistan through prepurchased tours. The previsit questionnaire will be completed by the tourists right after their arrival to the destination, while post-visit questionnaire will be completed before their departure.References Available Upon Request

Quality evaluation, analyzed from the perspective of diverse disciplines, is a recurring topic in the marketing literature. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the consumer’s ability to distinguish quality levels of a product, compared to an objective (i.e., expert) measurement, within the product category of coffee. Furthermore, the paper aims to explore the moderating effect of the consumer’s level of education in his ability to discriminate qualities. Through the use of the Brunswik model (1955) and a multi-attribute performance approach, perceived and objective quality are compared by means of a set of product attributes, to determine which of these has the greatest explanatory power with regard to overall product performance measurements. Although several researchers have addressed the topic of objective vs. perceived quality, few have enriched their analyses with theories such as Brunswik’s, while fewer still have included moderating variables in the analysis.Pearson correlations between the significance of the attributes to overall evaluations of objective quality vs. perceived quality revealed differences in the way experts and consumers use attributive cues. In the analysis of the four selected cues (aroma, body, flavor and residual flavor), the key attribute in defining an overall objective measurement of quality turns out to be residual flavor, showing the highest statistical correlation, whereas for the consumer’s overall perceived quality assessment, flavor has the highest correlation. Regression analyses were consistent with these results. The general achievement index (−0.133) reveals the consumer’s inability to recognize quality in this product. A breakdown of this negative value into its components indicates that coffees of higher objective value were rated the worst by consumers, and the objectively worst as the best.Consumers may rank the cues differently than experts do. Regarding the moderating effect of some of the consumers’ characteristics on their level of achievement, it appears that level of education may not be relevant in establishing a significant difference between high and low achievers. Experts in this product category have stated that while it is true that there is a trend towards better quality coffee, consumers are not able to identify the level of quality, as their preferences are mostly based on local consumption traditions (Hernández 2017).References Available Upon Request

Do-it-yourself (DIY) research platforms, such as SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, Google Survey, and Tableau are disrupting the marketing research industry. DIY platforms changed the supplier side of marketing research by democratizing the research process. This democratization should prompt a shift in the marketing research curriculum so that our students remain competitive on the market. Expert researchers are no longer the ones writing and analyzing surveys; instead they are conducted by DIY researchers. Using two exploratory studies, we examine both the current curriculum and the skillsets desired for entry-level candidates. In our first study, we collected and coded 86 undergraduate marketing research syllabi to gauge the content taught in the classroom. We find that most classes are not preparing DIY researchers and are instead continuing to prepare traditional marketing researchers. The major difference in these two classroom types is that the DIY researcher needs more practice writing and administering surveys because she will most likely work on the client side of marketing research and will not be surrounded by survey experts. However, traditional marketing research classes are much more analytically focused and are preparing students to work in legacy marketing research firms.In our second study, we collected and coded 479 entry-level job descriptions in the USA to examine skills desired by firms seeking marketing researchers. We find that most courses are preparing their students as traditional marketing researchers and not as DIY researchers. Additionally, we find that DIY researchers are often marketing managers who manage research projects, but only as a small fraction of their total job duties. We discuss the implications of these findings and offer a reengineered syllabus.For the marketing research course to respond to the seismic shift in the marketing research industry spurred by digital disruption, the course itself must change. We believe that the instructor should decide the course design (i.e., DIY researcher or traditional researcher) after examining marketing major job placements and deciding what fits their school’s model best. A course that supports the DIY researcher must have more time devoted toward survey development, report writing, and managerial recommendations. A course for the traditional marketing researcher should continue with the same path (i.e., SPSS, applied client project).References Available Upon Request

Increasingly universities are viewed as “businesses” and “brands” operating in a competitive global marketplace where differentiation plays a key role in attracting students and funding. Consequently, universities and other educational institutions across the globe are looking for ways in which to distinguish themselves. from the. Corporate branding can alleviate universities from a complex set of multifaceted features, which include, amongst others, accreditation, tuition fees, positions in league tables and status in the global marketplace and reinforce an institution’s unique selling point to multiple stakeholders, such as students, academics and funders. Thus, a strong corporate brand can support, for example, charging higher tuition fees, recruiting leading academics and attracting students from underrepresented groups. Nevertheless, higher education [HE], unlike the private sector, has typically less resources to implement branding strategies and has a tendency to be internally focused, unsure what is important for their brand and stakeholders.Despite this move towards “marketisation”, it is unclear whether corporate branding has allowed universities to develop authentic, convincing brand identities, which would help to alleviate these pressures. Further, the link between corporate brand identity and shared values amongst stakeholders has been extensively documented as it is an organisation’s “values” that should correspond with the emotional needs of both employees and external stakeholders. In particular, there appears to be a gap in knowledge concerning corporate branding in universities in both the corporate branding and higher education (HE) literature. The limited research in corporate branding and HE highlights the complexity and challenges of managing multiple sub-brands within a corporate brand and call for more research in this area.Responding to the identified gap in the body of knowledge, it is proposed to develop a model that demonstrates how a university identity can be perceived more positively which in turn contributes to a strong brand image more readily understood in broader terms and wider markets. This model can be applied to different academic disciplines within universities, where there is a mix of subcultures and specialisms, and support the process of developing appropriate branding strategies.References Available Upon Request

Despite widespread attempts to compile lists of employability skills and competencies, there has not been a clear consensus on which soft skills, in particular, are most critical for employability. This is not unexpected given that each field of study has its own interpretation of epistemology and goal outcomes. Given that the importance of technical and soft skills may differ by specific context, the goal of this study is to identify the skill set that marketing undergraduates need for employability and to develop into a successful professional.While the marketing education literature has contributed to our understanding of the skills that may be important for marketing undergraduates to possess (e.g., Schlee and Harich 2010; Schlee and Karns 2017), there remain two important gaps in the literature that this study seeks to address: first, there is limited effort to study both technical and soft skills together and, second, their relative importance for employability among marketing undergraduates. We address these gaps by conducting a Delphi study with a panel comprising of 12 human resource managers and 15 marketing managers.Among the list of 51 skills identified in the initial brainstorming stage, the panelists selected 20 skills as being the most critical for entry-level marketing jobs and then ranked them on their relative importance. When consensus was established after three rounds, the five most important skills in chronological order were (1) application of marketing concepts/tools, (2) verbal communication skills, (3) creative problem-solving, (4) research aptitude and written communication skills, and (5) knowledge of company’s products. Follow-up interviews were conducted with selected panelists to gain insights into the top five skills identified in the Delphi study. Finally, we compared our results with three different industry studies and discuss their implications for marketing education.References Available Upon Request

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) relates to strategy-making processes and styles that support the companies’ entrepreneurial decisions and actions. Such orientation conveys the company’s level of innovativeness, proactiveness, and proclivity to risk-taking. As a multidimensional construct, there is some consensus in considering EO formed by three dimensions: innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness (Miller 1983; Covin and Slevin 1989). Existing research specifies EO’s antecedent or outcome variables such as environmental and organizational influences, the strategic context, the connection of EO to firm resources and capabilities, performance, etc. (e.g., Rauch et al. 2009).Despite the relevance and extensive interest in the literature, the debate on the notion of EO (e.g., Covin and Lumpkin 2011) has been rekindled by insights and inquiry into its scope, impact in business outcomes, and role in different business contexts. In this study, we address the differential impact of EO’s dimensions in business performance. In addition, we consider the contextual role of technological turbulence. We hypothesize that innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking are positively related to business performance, and we also posit that the interaction between EO’s dimensions is positively related to business performance. We further argue that the level of technological turbulence affects the role and impact of EO and its dimensions. The study’s empirical component was conducted in the context of an emerging economy—Brazil.The fieldwork involved a preliminary qualitative stage with Brazilian managers and a main cross-sectional design. The cross-sectional study entailed a survey applied to 3000 Brazilian top managers in a wide range of industries with more than 250 employees. The survey produced a sample of 361 cases. Findings confirmed that innovativeness and proactiveness have a positive effect on performance. Yet, the relationship between risk-taking and performance is nonsignificant. Regarding the EO dimensions’ interaction, no interaction affected performance positively. However the results revealed that the combination of the different dimensions assumes a distinct effect in different turbulence environments, sometimes having a synergistic effect. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.References Available Upon Request

Nature-, adventure-, and ecotourism (NEAT), often referred to as any kind of nature-related tourism, is recognized by the Government of the Republic of Armenia (Armenia) as a promising niche for tourism development. In light of the growing importance of the NEAT industry in Armenia, it is important to understand factors behind domestic and foreign tourists’ choice of Armenia as a NEAT destination. This work-in-progress project is focused on the examination of tourists’ beliefs, motivations, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions towards Armenia as a NEAT destination.The data collection took place during the high tourist summer seasons in 2013, 2016, and 2017 via self-administered questionnaires distributed among attendants of eco-festivals (i.e. Ecotourism Festival in Vayots Dzor and HayBuis Festival in Tavush regions) as well as participants of guided eco-tours. The final sample of 114 participants is comprised of local tourists (52%) and foreign tourists (40%). Female respondents (65%) dominated the sample. The largest age category was the 21–30 years age group (34%), followed by those 31–40 years of age (23.3%).The findings paint an interesting picture of the state of ecotourism in Armenia. The preliminary results suggest that tourists hold strong positive beliefs of Armenia as an eco-destination and that these beliefs are the strongest predictors of satisfaction and behavioural intentions. The factor analysis produced two separate summary constructs for satisfaction—destination satisfaction and service-tour satisfaction—and for future behavioural intentions: revisit and recommend. This invites further examination of the notion of satisfaction as different perceived types of satisfaction might impact various behavioural intentions differently. The ANOVA results indicate that, in ecotourism context, both satisfaction constructs are significantly impacted by natural and built environment beliefs. The results, however, point to a surprisingly weak impact of motivations on satisfaction and behavioural intentions. Out of three motivation constructs—historico-ecological, nature immersion, and social health—nature immersion had no impact either on satisfaction or behavioural intentions. Meanwhile, historico-ecological motivations were significant predictors of service-tour satisfaction and marginal predictors of destination satisfaction, and social health motivations were strong significant predictors for revisit intentions and marginal predictors of recommend.The results suggest areas for practical improvement. First, there is a potential to improve Armenia’s positioning as a NEAT destination among foreign tourists. Second, while the Armenian ecotourism industry enjoys positive destination satisfaction that impacts behavioural intentions, it misses out on the opportunity to capitalize on service-tour satisfaction. More targeted service policies and practices need to be developed to link service-tour satisfaction to positive behavioural intentions.References Available Upon Request

There is a strong case as to why marketing practitioners and academics should be interested in bottom of the pyramid (BoP) consumers, and renewed attempts should be made to better understand them (Beninger and Robson 2015). While this market is lucrative (the BoP’s combined consumer spending power is estimated at more than $5 trillion (Subrahmanyan and Gomez-Arias 2008)), the sheer size, heterogeneity and ethnographic differences intrinsic to this market make standardized marketing approaches impractical. This segment is also very different from other market segments, not only in terms of their disposable income but also in terms of consumer purchasing decisions and the influencers of their purchase behaviour.At the heart of this contemporary marketing, quandary is the question of value. What value do BoP markets offer big businesses, and in return, how can these firms create value for these market segments? Research has argued that the billions of BoP consumers will elude big business until these questions are answered (Dawar and Chattopadhyay 2002; London, Anupindi and Sheth 2010). Singh (2015) acknowledges that the extant understanding of BoP consumers pales in comparison to the sheer amount of literature examining various components of non-BoP consumer behaviour. It is suggested that this differential is in part due to the challenges that researchers face in conducting research in BoP markets.This research thus seeks to determine how existing research methodologies should be adapted to suit the constraints faced in BoP markets. Using an unconventional approach, which examined the first-hand experiences of 18 researchers through in-depth interviews, this article identifies the constraints faced by those attempting to research the largely misunderstood BoP markets. The thematic analysis identified eight first-order themes, which were further categorised into two second-order themes, namely, theoretical and practical research considerations. The eight first-order themes relate to the research approach, the measurement instrument, the evaluation of abstract concepts, social desirability concerns, language and literacy, the collection of sensitive information, physical location concerns and trust issues.Researching the researcher is novel in that it utilizes an existing methodology in a new context, allowing for insights to be gleaned from constraints faced throughout data collection amongst BoP consumers, providing recommendations to impact best practice research within this field.References Available Upon Request

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been a growing strategic trend among companies, in the hopes to improve their brand outcomes and performance. However, despite the growing investment in such strategies, relatively little is known about how consumers respond to corporate social responsibility activities. Recently consumers started questioning whether socially responsible actions are authentic—i.e., companies are legitimately concerned with the causes they advocate—and whether these same actions are in the core of what companies provide to the market.We are especially interested in the effect that corporate social responsibility actions exercise over brand symbolism (i.e., a brand’s potential to serve as a resource for identity construction by providing self-referential cues representing values, roles, and relationships), which, in turn, is related to a consumer’s emotional attachment to a brand.Not all CSR actions positively affect consumer behavior and brand performance. For instance, past research shows that CSR activities can have a negative or a positive impact on perceived performance, depending on company motivation. We unfold and expand on this last finding to show that CSR actions that are unrelated (vs. related) to a company’s core competence (e.g., helping the local community) increase perceived brand symbolism, which will, ultimately, influence behavioral intentions.This research analyzes how unrelated corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions influence brand symbolism. This research contributes to previous studies showing that CSR actions unrelated to the company’s core business (i.e., with a community focus) have a greater appeal than actions with a focus on company’s core competences (i.e., focus on the consumer). Results from four studies show that CSR actions unrelated to the company’s core business, counterintuitively, increase brand symbolism, which, in turn, influences consumers’ behavioral intentions. We propose that unrelated CSR actions can positively influence consumer perception of brand social responsibility and increase brand symbolism, generating positive behavioral outcomes. The findings have important implications for brands that wish to invest in corporate responsibility.References Available Upon Request

Nowadays, service actors are increasingly behaving offensive, destructive, and hostile with intentions to harm each other, service provision processes, the well-being of the organization, and its brand (Fisk et al. 2010; Grandey et al. 2007; Kähr et al. 2016). The skyrocketing number of negative experiences with service providers within service environments leads to more destructive and offensive hostility as a new phenomenon (Kähr et al. 2016), previously observed in intraorganizational relations (Analoui 1995). We introduce the concept of “targeted dysfunctionality” as a bridging construct that indicates “intended to harm” oriented service actor behaviors. We employed a systematic literature review of the harm-motivated dysfunctional behavior studies in both organizational behavior and marketing literatures. As a further stage of the systematic review, a meta-analytic review was conducted for testing the validity of the suggested typology in service contexts. In the systematic review, we concluded that 4 of 17 constructs (aggression, sabotage, incivility, and production deviance) can clearly explain “targeted dysfunctionality” with two dimensions (ambiguity of harm intention and humanization in service contexts). Based on these two dimensions, we defined targeted dysfunctionality as “(Un)ambiguous dysfunctional actions of service actors that are dominantly motivated by causing harm to other actors and processes in service ecosystems.” One of the main dimensions that delineate a meaningful distinction between sub-constructs is “ambiguity of harm.” Aggression and sabotage constructs have clear relations with “intent to harm” motivation, but it is hard to determine the harm motivation behind incivility and product deviance. The other dimension, which is critical to dissociate the sub-constructs, is the person-targeted/process-targeted dichotomy. Aggressive and uncivil behaviors are clearly directed at a person or a group of people (i.e., teams). On the other hand, the main goal of sabotage and production deviance behaviors is harming organizational processes (i.e., service-providing processes), rather than harming people or organizational members. In the meta-analytic review, we found significant relationships between employee-targeted dysfunctional customer behaviors (customer mistreatment) and dysfunctional employee behaviors (aggression, incivility, service sabotage, and production deviance). Supporting our typology, we found significant differences between the effect sizes of employee aggression, employee incivility, service sabotage, and production deviance. The relationship between aggression and customer mistreatment was trivial (ρ = 0.058). On the other hand, we found strong positive effects of customer mistreatment on incivility, sabotage, and production deviance in different levels (ρ = 0.403; ρ = 0.359; ρ = 0.275, respectively).References Available Upon Request

The United States serves as a hub for international commerce and has attracted businesses from countries all over the world. However, many companies complain about the high litigation costs and the rampant lawsuits in the United States. Take, for instance, the fact that there are 5,806 lawsuits filed per 100,000 persons annually in the United States compared to 3,681 lawsuits per 100,000 persons annually in United Kingdom. Furthermore, there are as many as 3.3 lawsuits per capita in the United States as there are in Canada, the United States’ northern neighbor (Ramseyer and Rasmusen 2010). Why is this?Some commentators suggest that Americans’ vigilance in protecting their rights may explain why they are quick to sue. However others suggest that it might be due to greed and the tendency on the part of Americans to look to lawsuits for possible windfall. Supporters of the “greed theory” point to egregious jury awards such as the $2.86 million awarded to Ms. Liebeck in 1994 for spilling a cup of hot coffee that she bought from McDonald’s on her own lap (Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, P.T.S., Inc. N.M. Dist. Ct. 1994) and the fact that approximately 200 billion dollars per year are spent annually on frivolous lawsuits as ample evidence of greed (Post 2011). However, others think that the existence of a large number of lawyers might be fueling the large number of lawsuits. A case in point, compared to Canada, the United States has more than 15 times as many lawyers (391 per 100,000 in the United States and 26 per 100,000 in Canada).Could there be a “win-win” situation where companies can still do business in the United States without fearing expensive lawsuits? This study draws on literature in marketing and field interviews to provide a framework through which the consumer co-production concept (Lovelock and Young 1979) in services marketing could be extended to the legal system in the United States through alternative dispute resolution (ADR). I argue that although the ADR option currently exists in the United States, it is not widely used because it has not been properly marketed to the public; thus many people are still unaware of its existence. By extending the co-production concept to the legal system, I am not only providing a theory-based framework by which further studies could be conducted in the area, but I am also providing a vehicle by which the public could sold on the advantages of the ADR process over the traditional adversary method of resolving disputes.References Available Upon Request

The aim of this paper is to examine to what extent the economic crisis has affected the impact of customer satisfaction and its antecedents to loyalty. Considering that several economies are facing the effects of a recession or they will face them sometime in the future, studying the determinants of customer satisfaction and the customer satisfaction-loyalty relationship during periods of economic crisis provides important insights to both the marketing academia and to the industry. Therefore, this paper aims to test the influence of perceived value to customer satisfaction and of customer satisfaction to store loyalty during periods of economic crisis.By considering the notion that unstable economic conditions may alter these relationships, the study examines data for two periods in Greece, 2012 the year when the first austerity measures were implemented and 2016 when stricter measures had to be taken and all consumers were influenced by them. As a result, from 2012 until today, liquidity is reduced with consumers having less cash on hand for shopping. This has resulted in remarkable cuts in consumption spending even for necessities.Data was collected through a telephone survey targeting those responsible for the household grocery shopping with a total sample of 2000–2200 respondents, respectively, for the 2 years based upon a quota to represent the six leading grocery retailers in Greece. The model was estimated using Partial Least Square Equation Modeling, and the hypotheses were tested using multigroup analysis.The findings revealed that during periods of economic crisis, the effect of perceived value to customer satisfaction as well as the effect of customer satisfaction to loyalty is greater. Thus, the findings of this study reinforce the need for grocery retailers to develop strategies that will help them enhance their value offering and customer satisfaction rather than to rely on just price-driven sales promotions. Monitoring how customers reassess priorities, allocate their funds, and redefine value during economic downturns is critical for retailers.References Available Upon Request

The current study aims to explore if information/content, interactive features, and design-visual appeal influence consumers emotional states of pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PDA), leading to brand advocacy as an outcome. Therefore, our goal is to understand which stimuli of experience exercise more effect on the three emotional states (PDA) and which of these three better influence brand advocacy.Data from 183 users of CGM were analysed through structural equation modelling (SmarthPLS2.0), and the findings show that all the aforementioned stimuli influence online PDA. Findings also suggest that all PDA dimensions influence brand advocacy.

The creation of customer value is a marketplace advantage important to retailers (Benhamza Nsairi 2012; Gallarza et al. 2016; Ney 2015). The literature indicates that shopping behavior may lead to perceived customer value (Irani and Hanzaee 2011). In this research three types of shopping behavior are examined as antecedents of three dimensions of value that are related to resulting satisfaction with the store. Price-conscious shopping behavior represents an economic orientation where shoppers seek to achieve the best economic value in products they purchase. Recreational-conscious shopping behavior involves shopping behavior that is related to seeking inherent satisfaction with the shopping activity (Kaltcheva and Weitz 2006). Impulsive-careless shopping behavior occurs when a consumer makes a purchase with no previous intention of the purchase and/or consideration of alternatives (Bayley and Nancarrow 1998; Beatty and Ferrell 1998). The three dimensions of perceived value are based on the conceptual work of Sheth et al. (1991) and the empirical work of Sweeney and Soutar (2001). Emotional value is defined as the perceived utility from an alternative’s capacity to arouse feelings or affective states (Sheth et al. 1991). Price value is associated with products that are reasonably priced, offer good value for the money, and are economical (Sweeney and Soutar 2001). Social value represents the utility derived from enhancing the customer’s social self-concept (Sweeney and Soutar 2001). Store satisfaction represents the customer’s overall satisfaction with the retailer and the quality of the merchandise or store (Dabholkar 1993). The analysis was based on an online survey instrument administered to a customer panel consisting of 155 shoppers at Target and 153 shoppers at Wal-Mart totaling 308 respondents. The results indicate that price-conscious shopping behavior was associated with emotional and price value but not with social value. Recreational shopping behavior was associated with emotional, price, and social value. Impulsive shopping behavior was not related to emotional or price value. Emotional and price values were associated with store satisfaction; however social value was not. Based on these results, store satisfaction may be increased by enhancing the retail experiences in shopping behaviors that are related to the various forms of perceived value.References Available Upon Request

In the sales literature, researchers have identified that ethical leadership by sales managers influences various salesperson outcomes, including organizational identification, person-organization fit, extra-role behaviors, and reduced turnover intentions (DeConinck 2015; Schwepker 2015; Wu 2017). Yet, the process by which ethical leadership influences ethical behavior and improved performance by salespeople remains unknown.This paper contributes to the current knowledge on the link between sales leadership and its outcomes by focusing on the intervening mechanism by which salespeople are likely to be influenced by sales manager’s ethical leadership. Specifically, drawing from emerging research on the construct of “worthiness of being followed” (Liborius 2014, 2017), it is proposed that sales managers’ ethical leadership induces salespeople’s behavior, when salespeople perceive that their managers are worthy of being emulated. In addition, it is suggested that ethical leadership enhances salespeople’s perceptions of their manager’s charisma as well as salespeople’s attribution of performance to their managers, which, in turn, enhance a manager’s worthiness of being followed. Two aspects of the ethical climate prevailing in the organization—ethical responsibility and peers’ unethical behavior—are considered as control variables.Analysis of data gathered from business-to-business salespeople supports that when sales managers utilize an ethical leadership style, they are perceived as worthy targets for emulation by salespeople. In turn, their perceived worthiness of being followed serves as a motivational force for influencing outcome and behavioral performance. The results also show that ethical leadership boosts sales managers’ charismatic appeal and performance attribution which, in turn, enhance their perceived worthiness of being followed.From a theoretical standpoint, this paper is one of the first to integrate ethical leadership, worthiness to be followed, charisma performance attribution, and performance outcomes in the sales literature. Further research on this concept in the sales domain could prove useful in better understanding various aspects of supervisor-salesperson relationships. From a practical standpoint, this research could offer valuable insights for sales manager selection, evaluation, and retention as well as for encouraging salespeople’s conformance and performance. Sales managers can be trained on ethical leadership so that they communicate, demonstrate, expect, and receive appropriate behaviors from their salespeople.References Available Upon Request

As the ethnic diversity in the USA increases, we fear that some people aren’t getting treated as well as others. While considerable research has examined the impact of applicant sex in the hiring process, far less has looked at other individual differences. This study investigates the impact of the gender, ethnicity, and religion on the evaluation of professional sales position applicants. Data was collected online with a snowball sampling approach. A total of 640 respondents who have been involved in the hiring process evaluated 1 of the 8 different surveys. The surveys were identical with the exception of the applicant name and ethnic/religious affiliation. These characteristics manipulated the independent variables. The results indicate ethnicity and religious affiliation create more bias in the hiring of salespeople than the sex of the applicant. With the current mood in the US executive branch, this is a real concern, and we fear the bias observed here will only grow.

This research introduces the concept of the Customer Compromise and proposes a new metric, the ComproScore, to assess customer satisfaction, buying process, and loyalty (Oliver 1980, 1999). We make and test a new theoretical proposition which states that the Customer Compromise mediates the relationships between perceived quality, perceived value, customer expectations, and share of wallet along with customer loyalty.We conceptualize and define the Customer Compromise as an individual’s evaluation of a product while also evaluating the perceived alternatives, along with his/her own expectations and constraints. Specifically, we argue that customers do not solely experience satisfaction toward a product, rather they experience satisfaction toward a compromise; yet the product is part of the compromise. Accordingly, we suggest that a customer buying process is affected by the Customer Compromise and that loyalty derives from such a compromise rather than from satisfaction toward the product.We measure the Customer Compromise by developing a four-factor scale—the ComproScore—we pretested on a sample of 187 business customers. Subsequently, we assess the Customer Compromise nomological validity with a second study conducted through a multisource, two-time period data collection process from 589 business customers. Results reveal good psychometric properties of the ComproScore, as well as its complementary explanatory power in regard to the overall customer satisfaction concept of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (Fornell et al. 1996) and the Net Promoter Score (Reichheld 2003; Keiningham et al. 2007). Theoretical and managerial implications are derived from such interesting new findings which bring a new perspective on customer satisfaction, buying process, and loyalty measurement and management.References Available Upon Request

Many researchers have studied LPs extensively, but their effectiveness remains debatable. Some researchers found positive effects (Keh and Lee 2006), while others have not found any effects of LPs (Sharp and Sharp 1997). Shugan (2005) considers them as shams because they produce liabilities (e.g. promises of future rewards or deferred rebates) rather than assets. They can foster customers’ short-term loyalty to the programme instead of developing long-term company loyalty. The objective of this research is to better understand how LPs can produce assets by creating long-term relationships instead of making customers only loyal to the programme and provide liabilities to the company. Based on a dataset matching behavioural and attitudinal data, this research proposes that some behavioural patterns, based on LP members’ speed of earning loyalty points and redemption rate, will have an impact on the gap between programme loyalty and company loyalty. While a high speed of earning (combined with low redemption) or a high redemption rate (combined with a low speed of earning) will reduce this gap, a high speed of earning combined with a high redemption rate will increase this gap. Our study contributes to both marketing research and practice in two different ways. First, we investigate the gap between LP loyalty and company loyalty by considering them together as an outcome variable. Previous research has mainly investigated both loyalties separately by investigating what their antecedents are and how LP loyalty affects company loyalty. Second, despite the fact that attitudes and behaviours are closely linked (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975), few research have studied the effects of behaviours on attitudes in an LP context. The present research tries to fill in this gap by exploring the relationship between the LP, customers’ attitudes and behaviours.References Available Upon Request

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relative influences of the two types of point management strategy, namely, the point expiration and point maintenance strategies, in the context of status demotion. We postulate that in managing a customer’s accrued reward points, the point expiration strategy, as opposed to the point maintenance strategy, significantly reduces customer’s perceived unfairness, firm avoidance, and patronage reduction. In examining these relationships, we also take customer’s individual characteristics into consideration. The level of self-interest and need to vent are examined as moderating variables in the relationships between the point management strategy and firm avoidance and between the point management strategy and patronage reduction, through perceived unfairness. The current study employs a scenario-based experiment in the airline industry. This study will provide insights into how service organizations can better design status demotion in hierarchical loyalty programs to aid managerial decision-making.References Available Upon Request

Because highly skilled workers greatly improve the economic development of cities, they compete for this important target group. As a consequence, city brand managers face the challenge to identify factors that influence highly skilled workers’ decision for place of residence. Brand attitudes represent a strong predictor of consumer behavior and are mainly determined by brand benefits. Therefore, this paper investigates the effects of city brand benefits (cost efficiency, job chances, social life, recreation, self–brand connection) on highly skilled, potential residents’ attitudes toward a city brand. This is the first study that identifies relevant and irrelevant city brand benefits for highly skilled, potential residents using an adequate method (structural equation modeling). Conducting an online survey, 354 evaluations of the 6 largest German cities obtained from 294 highly skilled, potential residents were collected. The results show that social life emerges as the most important city brand benefit. Self–brand connection also positively affects city brand attitudes. In contrast, the benefits cost efficiency, job chances, and recreation do not affect these attitudes. Based on these results, implications for city brand managers and researchers are derived.References Available Upon Request

Mass-mediated marketplace images produce culturally accepted ideals, archetypes of motherhood that help to legitimate and constitute mothering identities and ultimately shape the consumption preferences. This article focuses on the imagery representation of mothers in magazine advertisements and reflects on how the interpretation of hidden archetypal meanings could open up new windows for marketers specifically targeting this category of consumers. It builds on the theoretical dispositions of consumer culture theory and visual consumption to conceptualise the motherhood portrayal in print media and highlight its impact on consumption choices through the construction of mothering identity. Based on this study, methodological aspects of interpreting images have been extended which resulted in gathering insights from participants via the use of photo-elicitation methods. The findings suggest that mothers in the UK are inclined to conducted visual consumption of mothering images/archetypes that mirror their own ideals rather than prioritising the actual product or service advertised. The research also suggests that there are limited portrayals of mothering roles, ethnical and sexual diversity in magazine advertisements. It suggests further research on mass media advertisements and extended scope of a broader scale in-depth interviews to address the needs and expectations of mothers as consumers.

Social information about the behaviors of one’s peers typically has a positive impact on one’s propensity to save for retirement, yet a recent study by Beshears et al. (2015) suggests that peers’ savings behavior reduces savings rates. The framing of the savings message may also impact savings rates, but results are mixed in terms of whether descriptive (“what others do”) or injunctive (“what one should do”) messages are more effective (Bailey et al. 2004; Croy et al. 2010). The present study aims to reconcile these disparate findings while integrating the literature on peer effects and message framing in the context of retirement savings. We propose that when the message provider is similar to the recipient, interest in enrollment in a retirement savings plan will be greater when the message is descriptive. When the message provider is dissimilar to the recipient, injunctive messages are more effective. We conducted a series of three sequential experiments to test our hypotheses.First, we evaluated our study design and measures with a pilot study using participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Next, we distributed a survey to public employees eligible for supplemental retirement savings. Results indicated that 55% of participants provided their email when felt similar to the message sender and the message was descriptive. When the message was injunctive and the message sender was similar, 73% of participants elected not to provide their email address, suggesting that similarity and descriptive messages are more persuasive. Interestingly, the interaction effect was only significant when the message sender and receiver were similar in terms of race, but not gender or age.Finally, we partnered with the State of Oregon and the office of the Oregon Savings Growth Plan (OSGP) to conduct a widely distributed field study that ultimately allowed subjects to enroll in a supplemental savings plan, thus allowing us to measure real behavior. The preliminary results from this study support the hypothesis that descriptive messages, especially when paired with a message provider who is similar in gender to the participant, are more effective in building interest in supplemental savings. We found no evidence that ethnic similarity between the message provider and the study participant had an influence on interest in supplemental retirement savings.References Available Upon Request

Gender is a central part of self-concept. In today’s changing marketplace, gender identity is increasingly blurred as a consequence of one of the most rapid and turbulent social-economic shifts since the 1960s. The concept of gender has evolved from biological sex (male and female) to gender identity that examines gender from multiple aspects, including biological sex, psychological gender, and sociological gender role. And recent studies further suggested gender identity is a changing concept, and it needs to be studied under different context and with dynamic groups.This study attempts to revisit the gender identity and consumer behavior issue, present the practical and theoretical advance in the past decade, and provide an updated overview of gender identity and its impact on the marketplace and the society. This review addresses the historical background of gender development, two important theoretical foundation of gender identity: gender schema theory and multifactorial gender identity theory and their application in consumer behavior in the past six decades. Through reviewing the research of past 60 years on gender identity, the study found that previous research demonstrates that gender identity has attracted consistent research attention but inconsistent conceptual and contextual approaches. Nonetheless, gender identity is linked with consumer behavior and, given the dynamic and interactive nature of gender identity, the application of contextual and interactional considerations to better complement gender identity theories.Despite previous research efforts, gender identity and its related consumer behavior is still an understudied area. The future study should focus on understanding the relevance of contexts as an important variable for gender identity. In addition, it is important to use a dynamic approach to understand gender as a comprehensive concept and examine the interaction between different aspects of gender identity, and the interactions lead to different consumer perception and choice. Furthermore, as the boundaries of men and women are becoming permeable in consumption, it would be interesting to explore how consumers maintain the balance between the dichotomous pole of masculine and feminine gender identity and understand the difference between men and women as they create gender-related self-image. In addition, gender identity closely relates to cultural change. Whereas popular culture shapes gender identity and creates gender-related consumption, there is also an urgency of anti-gender activities, agenderism, that calls for genderless consumption. It is important that future research investigate the factors that drive agenderism and its role in modifying consumption. Finally, how gender affect social marketing might be another research area, and the role gender identity plays in conflicts in consumption is an important aspect that calls for future exploration.References Available Upon Request

Marketing’s foundation in economics has steered us toward the rational aspects of consumer behavior. Despite some recent recognition of the emotional aspects of consumer behavior, emotions have not received adequate consideration in academic research. Our focus on cognition results from three important factors. First, because our existing paradigms focus primarily on thinking they have generally led us away from studying emotion. Importantly, however, some research suggests that emotional factors underlying consumer decisions can often have a stronger effect than rational forces or functional aspects of the product. As a result, we probably underestimate the power of emotions in consumer choice. The second reason emotion is not given its due is that we have thought of cognition and emotion as generally mutually exclusive. Look back at the various models of involvement, and quickly you will see that mental processing has been characterized as either high involvement and rational (e.g., AIDA) or low involvement and heuristic. Newer theories propose that all human experience and decision-making consist of both cognitive and emotional processes, so both of these factors are important in human behavior. A third reason we have ignored emotion is a result of the constraints imposed by the methods we have used. Despite our desire to peer into the “black box” of the human mind, historically this was almost impossible. Behavior is usually the result of automatic brain functions. People often act for reasons that are not fully known to them or fully rational; therefore, self-reports are not a reasonable way to assess these functions. Fortunately, we have a new arsenal of physiological “neuromarketing” measures of attention, emotion, and involvement including measures such as EEGs, eye tracking, and fMRIs. These techniques can be used to probe emotional responses. Each method provides its own perspective on preconscious physiological reactions that together can provide a rich picture of emotional responses. These physiological measures are becoming increasingly important in marketing research. Even better than relying exclusively on psychophysiological measures alone is to employ these methods in combination with cognitive measures. In sum, it is time to break free of traditional models that focus entirely on cognition and generally ignore emotion. We propose that to understand the consumer experience we need to understand that decision-making is based on both cognition and emotion, and it is important to consider how physiological measures can be used to examine emotional responses.References Available Upon Request

The composition of the choice set strongly influences consumer choice in a way that is inconsistent with the concept of stable preferences (Prelec et al. 1997). During the last decades, researchers have identified a variety of corresponding phenomena, commonly referred to as context effects (Lichters et al. 2015). While context effects in consumer decision-making have several striking implications for marketing research and practice, they also cast the validity of choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis into doubt (Drolet et al. 2000). However, CBC notably differs in certain aspects from consumers’ actual purchase decisions (Meißner et al. 2016). Specifically, CBC sets out to measure consumers’ preferences, relying on hypothetical and repeated choices, often presented in a forced-choice format. These aspects have already been shown to moderate context effects’ emergence (e.g., Ahn et al. 2015; Dhar and Simonson 2003; Lichters et al. 2016).This research addresses the question whether the compromise effect (CE) and the attraction effect (AE) as the most common representatives of context effects truly occur in CBC studies. In a series of three online experiments, we systematically vary the choice set composition of holdout tasks in order to provoke the CE and the AE in both between- and within-subjects designs. By doing so, our research is the first that includes a direct measurement of consumers’ inclination to engage in context effects in the course of a CBC study. As another between-subjects factor, we experimentally manipulate the CBC choice format. Our results reveal significant CEs and AEs in forced-choice CBC, whereas both effects do not occur in free-choice CBC, which allows subjects to opt for a “no choice” instead of a product option.Our results offer confidence for practitioners that typically rely on free-choice CBC, while, likewise, they reaffirm the importance of behavioral estimation models in forced-choice CBC that seek to incorporate context effects (e.g., Chorus, 2014; Rooderkerk et al. 2011). Furthermore, our results are relevant for researchers that seek to develop more efficient choice designs, as advancements allow inhibiting the AE (Sawtooth Software 2017), while other design strategies foster the CE (Huber and Zwerina 1996). Finally, our results point out potential difficulties within recent methodological advancements, which strongly rely on forced-choice tasks (e.g., Johnson and Orme 2007; Schlereth and Skiera 2017).References Available Upon Request

The goal of this session is to emphasize the role of attention grabbing during advertising exposure using eye-tracking devices in labs.Hübner Barcelos, Correa Dantas, and Senecal investigate how the use of a human or a corporate tone of voice on hotels’ brand pages influences information search and customer attitudes on social media. They performed an online pilot study and an eye-tracking experiment in a lab setting to test the effects of a human or corporate tone of voice on social media. This work contributes to the understanding of the branding of hospitality services on social media.Baccino and Cherif conducted an eye-tracking study to investigate the effects of ads displayed in unpredictable locations on websites. Their experiment was design to verify when ads grab visual attention and when “banner blindness” occurs. Specifically, this study explores how attention varies according to the different levels of ads location unpredictability (low_skyscraper vs moderate_pop-up vs high_slide-in) and ads animation (static vs animated).Lacoste-Badie and Kacha examine the effect of color on attention devoted to advertisements displayed on print magazine. The study focuses on the impact of using “colors” and/or “black and white” in print advertisements on attention processes using a remote eye-tracking device, attitude toward the advertisement (Aad), and attitude toward the brand (Ab). Specifically, this study explores the contrast effect between four conditions: (1) color ad, (2) black and white ad, (3) product/packshot in color with a black and white background ad, and (4) product/packshot in black and white with a background color ad.Together, the three papers offer new light on the interest of eye-tracking technology to understand multiple aspects of consumer behavior, especially attentional processes during exposure to marketing stimuli in lab settings.References Available Upon Request

We investigate how the use of a human or a corporate tone of voice (ToV) on hotels’ brand pages influences information search and customer attitudes on social media. Given that social media enables a closer contact with customers, brands have the option to present themselves in a more human or corporate way. We performed an online pilot study and an eye-tracking experiment in a lab setting to test the effects of a human or corporate tone of voice on social media. In the pilot study (n = 105), we show that participants on the more “human” page condition experienced increased closeness toward the hotel and more hedonic value in the experience with the page. As a result, their attitude toward the hotel was also more favorable. In the eye-tracking experiment (n = 30), we show that participants looking at the more “corporate” page had more fixations and increased cognitive load in concentrated areas such as the posts’ texts and the hotel information in the page header. Participants looking at the more “human” page had more spread fixations along the page and increased cognitive load on the page header and other pictures. The findings of the studies suggest that the choice of a more human style of communication on the brand page increased customers’ hedonic value, and, as a result, they engaged in a more heuristic pattern of information search, paying more attention to peripheral cues such as pictures. This work contributes to the understanding of the branding of hospitality services on social media, highlighting the relationship between the ToV chosen by the brand and customer’s experiences and browsing behavior.References Available Upon Request

Product innovation strategy and the successful introduction of new products can contribute greatly to the performance of contemporary businesses. Creativity and innovation are particularly important for firms that transcend national boundaries, operate in a highly turbulent international business environment, and face diverse and volatile market conditions across different countries and regions. Surprisingly, limited research attention has been devoted on the drivers of product innovation strategy and new product performance in the context of export ventures. In an effort to fill this notable gap in the literature, the present study investigates the export innovation process and assesses the extent to which the interplay between relevant organizational, managerial, and strategic factors facilitates the development of an effective export product innovation strategy, which in turn strengthens a firm’s new product performance in export markets. Our findings indicate that participative decision-making, support and collaboration, and learning and development have a significant positive effect on organizational valuing of creativity, which in turn enhances export manager creativity and export innovation capabilities. We also find support for a positive impact of export manager creative on product innovation strategy, which in turn enhances an exporting firm’s new product performance. These results highlight the crucial role of creative thinking skills of export managers and the importance of intrinsic task motivation in the creativity process. The study findings also underscore the importance of upper management attention to the support and encouragement of the creative process within exporting organizations. The implications of our findings for export managers are discussed, and future research avenues are identified.References Available Upon Request

New to the world innovations such as the automobile, telephone, airplane, radio, television, and personal computer have had profound impacts on society. Not only have they changed the way that consumers live and work, but they have given birth to entire industries, industries that in some cases have grown to exceed one trillion US dollars in worldwide revenues. Long before these economy-leading industries emerge, they are at best budding curiosities, with the potential to change the world but without any sense of how to achieve that potential. To understand how these early industries evolve, it would be helpful to look at the history of one to see if there are any identifiable patterns that might be found in other early industries.An investigation of the early automobile industry reveals patterns of competition and economic forces that may be found in other industries spawned by new to the world innovations. Specifically, parallel patterns can be found in the personal computer industry.In the earliest days of the auto industry, although it was not clear that demand was sufficient and sustainable to support an industry, prescient entrepreneurs at first trickled and then flooded into the field to compete in the nascent market. The early competitors were assemblers of parts that were readily available in the marketplace. While some entrants were from related industries (carriage and engine makers), the most successful entrants were new firms (Ford, GM).Despite the economic pressures brought about by the Bank Panic of 1907 and World War I, compensating forces helped the fledgling industry. These included urbanization, an increasing and relatively wealthy population, increasing manufacturing capacity, and the lack of interstate trade barriers in the United States (vs. those faced by European auto manufacturers). Another economic development was the creation of a de facto Marshallian industrial zone. Although early auto manufacturers were located across the country from Iowa to New England, the three major manufacturers eventually migrated their firms to a triangle bounded by Lansing, Detroit, and Flint, Michigan.The key that led to the shakeout of most competitors was the adoption of industry standards for body style, engine, braking, and steering, which enabled mass manufacturing. Other economic factors identified include complementary resources, lock-in, complementary products, and network externalities/public goods.References Available Upon Request

This research speaks to the new funding challenges in the British contemporary arts and crafts sector. Historically, the UK arts sector has relied on funding from Arts Council England (ACE). However, many organizations have witnessed either funding stabilization or reduction for the 2018–2022 period. Nonprofit arts organizations are increasingly asked to diversify their fundraising strategies and capture income from private sources. The UK has a strong culture of voluntary charitable donations; individual donations to charities totaled £9.7 billion in 2016, with no negative impacts arising from Brexit (CAF 2017). Nevertheless, this public goodwill is directed at essential welfare needs rather than the arts. While UK private investment in arts and culture has increased in the last 3 years (including investment from trusts and foundations), new data suggest individual donors favor the largest, London-based visual arts organizations over their regional counterparts (MTM 2017).Thus, this research explores regional, low-to-medium net-worth philanthropy and is framed by a practice theories lens (Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki 1997). Using an interpretive approach including 22 in-depth interviews, data reveal thematic categories addressing nexus of activities and their interconnections in philanthropic practice, as well as the understandings, procedures, and engagements in such a practice.Findings illuminate low-to-medium net-worth art philanthropy, including the ways in which norms and the donation environment come into play in fostering certain types of philanthropic goals, meanings, and actions and not others. By analyzing philanthropy as a practice that encompasses both cause-based and arts support—while distinguishing between these two sets of actions—focus is placed on philanthropic processes: how such actions are learned, discussed, acted upon, and encouraged in social life, and how they might be dependent on the complex circumstances circumscribing philanthropy (Wheeler 2012; Everts et al. 2011). This theoretical perspective affords the possibility of thinking about philanthropic nudging through the social embeddedness of action, rather than just through attitudes and behavioral intentions (Warde 2013). Low-to-medium net-worth individual donations to the arts are still a challenge due to historical, political, and normative factors. As the UK government reduces arts sector funding, there will be an increasing need to communicate this openly to the public, so that individuals can start considering arts organizations within their evoked set of philanthropic beneficiaries, particularly in cases of regional arts organizations.References Available Upon Request

The emotional dimension of prosocial behaviors is now unanimously acknowledged, and research has grown accordingly (Small and Verrochi 2009). Based upon the assumption that emotional responses lead to behaviors, authors have focused on the antecedents of emotions, and very limited research has been conducted to identify the conditions under which emotions lead to generosity (Chédotal et al. 2017). Authors are not unanimous on the consequences of emotions as studies have often led to mixed results. Manipulating the emotional valence (negative vs. positive) and the proximity between donors and beneficiaries, we show that whereas guilt leads to more generosity, positive emotions have the opposite effects and further detail the moderating role of empathic tendencies and proximity.As a cover story for our experiments, people had to answer questions about their TV viewing habits. At the end of the questionnaires, participants were financially rewarded and given the opportunity to keep or to donate the endowment to a fictitious charity. The manipulation of the emotional valence was based on a writing task. Participants were given some time to write a description of an event in which they had done something negative or positive to someone important to them (Sachdeva et al. 2009; Xu et al. 2014). To manipulate the perceived proximity with the victims, participants had either the opportunity to give to a fictitious charity operating in a geographically close area (country of participants) or in a remote area (former Soviet bloc countries). Study 1 (n = 127; M age = 22.69; st. dev = 1.73) investigated the impact of guilt feelings and confirmed that their positive impact on generosity is moderated by empathic tendencies and perceived proximity with the victims. Study 2 (n = 134; M age = 22.83; st. dev = 1.35) investigated the impact of positive feelings and confirmed their negative impact on generosity. Finally, Study 3 (n = 183; M age = 21.05; st. dev = 1.37) generalized results from Study 1 and Study 2 to anticipated feelings.This research contributes to a better understanding the role of emotions that people experience after engaging in good or bad behaviors on charitable giving. Although the positive (negative) impact of negative (positive) feelings on prosocial behaviors have already been suggested in prior studies (Sachdeva et al. 2009; Renner et al. 2013), we clarify the debate by identifying the conditions under which such effects take place.References Available Upon Request

Millennials care about the environment and have positive attitudes toward green products (Smith 2010). Although the research on green marketing and advertising is growing, scant cross-national research has devoted much attention to examining millennials’ perceptions of green products, let alone their behavioral intentions to purchase them. This study aims to investigate the influence of attitude, social pressure, and perceived behavioral control on environmentally oriented millennials’ behavioral intentions to purchase green products in a cross-cultural context. American (individualist) and South Korean (collectivist) consumers are selected for comparison because of their distinctive cultural differences in consumption values as well as their perceptions of green marketing practices. To provide a better understanding of green marketing effects on millennials, this study employs the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as the theoretical underpinning to examine the effects of culture on purchasing green products. The results reveal that consumers’ environmental concern has no direct effects on intention to purchase green products among millennials in both countries. However, the findings reveal that the impact of concern for the environment is actually mediated through attitude toward green product and social influence that subsequently influence millennials’ green consumption behaviors. The positive relationship between environmental concern and attitude toward green product in both countries is consistent with Matthes and Wonneberger’s (2014) study. The results also suggest that cultural effects might influence millennials’ intentions to purchase green products. Both attitude toward green product and social influence are significant predictors of intention to purchase green product in both samples. However, the results show that social influence exerts a much stronger influence on Korean consumers’ purchase intention than attitude does. Although perceived behavioral control is positively related to purchase intention for the American consumers, its effects are being marginalized by the influence of attitude and social influence. This suggests that American millennials do have certain control over their green behaviors. Further analysis of the data shows that American millennials exhibit more concerns for the environment than their South Korean counterparts. Similarly, American millennials’ intentions to purchase green products are higher than their Korean counterparts. In conclusion, this study provides some preliminary evidence concerning what factors motivate young American and South Korean consumers to consume green products.References Available Upon Request

The daily consumption decisions made by billions of people exert a huge toll on the environment. Addressing environmental degradation requires shifting consumer behavior, and researchers have applied theories to grasp the nature and likelihood of enacting pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). Behavioral volition and ascription of responsibility are two pillars supporting environmental locus-of-control (ELOC)—ones’ perceptions regarding personal (internal) and external capabilities and accountabilities with regard to bringing about pro-environmental outcomes. Consumers recognizing and accepting this personal responsibility, and empowering themselves to act in kind, are high on internal ELOC (i.e., INELOC). Studies show that INELOC levels substantially predict consumers’ propensity to enact a broad swath of PEBs. What is missing is comprehending the mechanisms bridging the gap between INELOC and PEBs. Knowledge about pro-environmental initiatives is necessary but insufficient. General constructs like environmental attitudes tend to be poor predictors of concrete behaviors, since they are conceived at different levels of abstraction. Studies scrutinizing how consumer attitudes, perceptions of situational factors, and behavioral outcomes function in a sequence are lacking.With this research, we seek to demonstrate how subjective enabling and constraining conditions, respectively, positively and negatively mediate the effects of INELOC on PEBs. Given the absence of scales for the mediating constructs, we took a deductive approach to develop relevant items. Over two studies, we examine the validity of our psychographic constructs and their hypothesized relationships. Confirmatory factor analyses verified construct dimensionality, and Hayes’ PROCESS macro tested hypotheses. INELOC levels progressively associate with greater likelihood and frequency of PEBs. Consumers with higher levels of INELOC are more (less) apt to perceive enabling (constraining) factors. Following the hierarchy-of-effects model, the dispositional effects on behavior are partially mediated by situational enablers/constraints: the relationships between abstract attitudes and specific behavioral outcomes are positively enhanced (dampened) by perceptions of situational enablers (constraints). This yields a better understanding of not only why consumers are ecologically responsible but also how their pro-environmental dispositions are abetted or thwarted by situational enablers and constraints, respectively. The challenge is not merely about changing attitudes but also (re)engineering the context to enhance the salience of enablers and minimize the implied presence of hindrances. We must first recognize the presence of such constraints that frustrate consumers from behaving in a pro-environmental manner and implement programs that will shrink the gap between ecological convictions and actions.References Available Upon Request

This special session presents research which explores emerging themes around consumers and their interaction with automated technologies. Automated technology is fundamentally different to other technologies because consumers must delegate control over a behavior to a machine. This delegation presents a range of new benefits to consumers but also comes with its risks. Technologies such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, and smart products have advanced significantly with developments in computing and have become more ubiquitous in everyday life, a trend that is set to continue rapidly. As such there is a need to understand how consumers interact with these technologies and the challenges and opportunities these interactions present to consumers, marketers, and policy makers. How do such technologies influence consumer well-being? What benefits and risks do consumers perceive? How do consumers treat machines? How do segments differ in their evaluations of these technologies? The special session involves a range of presentations on various automated technologies to explore these issues, and others, using qualitative and quantitative methods. The presentations in the special session are below: 1. Delegation of control to driverless cars (Orsolya Sadik-Rozsnyai, Laurent Bertrandias, and Ben Lowe) 2. Beaten tracks? Application of existing innovation acceptance models on automated driving (Anne Köpsel, Sarah Selinka and Marc Kuhn) 3. Slave or life partner? The effect of balance of power on the intention to adopt a companion robot (Laurent Bertrandias and Ngoc-Bich Dang) 4. Quo Vadis smart home? A consumer perspective on smart home acceptance (Marco Hubert, Markus Blut and Christian Brock) 5. Consumer segments and their reactions to risky situations in driverless cars: A cartoon based projective study (Laurent Bertrandias, Orsolya Sadik-Rozsnyai, and Ben Lowe) Topics for discussion were based around the applicability of existing consumer adoption models, delegation of authority, consumer well-being, benefits and risks, and associated ethical issues with automation. This will help to frame a future research agenda in the area and bring together researchers whose interests coalesce around these themes to further strengthen and build an international community of researchers in this area.References Available Upon Request

This study explores the relationship among market-oriented culture, internal market orientation, employee-perceived service climate, and employees’ market-oriented behavior in the Food and Beverage industries in Taiwan, China, and the United States. We examined whether internal market orientation (IMO) would mediate the relationship between market-oriented culture (MOC) and employees’ market-oriented behavior (MOB) and whether employee-perceived service climate (SC) would mediate the relationship between IMO and MOB. The results showed that IMO does mediate the relationship of MOC and MOB, while SC does not mediate the relationship of IMO and MOB. The individual difference in three regions was also examined. Furthermore, we were wondering if national differences play roles in the abovementioned mediation relationship; we explored moderation effect by using Hofstede’s national dimensions, namely, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and long-term orientation. The individual differences in three regions were also examined. This is one of the few studies that bring together the related market orientation constructs with service industries in international context; this study will not only further verify the market orientation theory but also provide insights for service industries with cross border operation.References Available Upon Request

Today, customers have a choice of channels through which they can transact, communicate, interact and complain. This contemporary landscape opens up new opportunities for businesses. At the same time, it brings challenges in the form of channel integration and management and a need to understand new forms of customer behaviour and the changing drivers of customer value. Against this backdrop, this study presents an integrated conceptual framework that provides theoretical and managerial guidance on how service companies can create customer value through multichannel service delivery.The authors synthesize extant knowledge to develop a framework that identifies the drivers, building blocks and moderating variables. Insights are drawn from the multichannel literature and combined with qualitative data from senior managers responsible for the development of the multichannel strategy for major players in the French insurance industry. In so doing this study contrasts markedly with previous studies which have focused on goods and manufactured products, and it addresses the need for greater insight into the service sector.The study arrives at the following conclusions. First, support and further clarification is provided for the drivers of multichannel strategy: company, customer, channel relationships and environment. Second, the building blocks of perceived customer value, customer effort, service quality multichannel integration quality and trust, are identified. Third, the relevance of the building blocks is found to vary according to the modifiers: complexity of the product and type of activity to be performed. Finally, the integral role of big data is acknowledged. This study responds to calls for strategic studies to explore how companies can address the challenges of the new multichannel environment; it also recognizes the difficulties in capturing the diversities in multichannel strategies from within companies, taking a company perspective.References Available Upon Request

This study aims at understanding the effect of the CEO education on firm decision to replace its current CEO in order to determine the potential resource status of human capital trained at a selective, quality institution.

This study investigates the collaboration between brands and high-end retailers that desire to enter the premium market. Since retail channels play a key role in distributing new products, retailers may have a significant impact on the positioning of new products from an extended brand. Drawn from the attitude accessibility theory, the attitudes toward brands or retailers are expected to be more positive or negative based on consumers’ preexisting associations with brands or retailers. Such preexisting attitudes may serve as a filter for consumers when interpreting new information or evaluating new products from extended brands offered by retailers. To examine how a brand collaborating with a high-end retailer can successfully extend its products in a premium market, H&M and Nordstrom were selected based on the pretest results.With a total of 211 responses from American consumers, Mplus was used for analyzing data, and the hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). CFA was performed on the five latent variables described in the conceptual model: image fit, quality fit, attitude toward brand, attitude toward retailer, and brand extension evaluation. The model fit indices for CFA indicated a good model fit: χ2 (160, n = 211) = 343.17, p = 0.001, RMSEA = 0.07 (90% CI = 0.06–0.08), CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, and SRMR = 0.03. The goodness of fit indices for the path analysis of brand extension were as follows: χ2 (161, n = 211) = 350.95, p = 0.001, RMSEA = 0.075 (90% CI = 0.06–0.08), CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, and SRMR = 0.045. The path results revealed that image fit was significantly related to attitude toward brand (β = 0.56, p < 0.001) and quality fit was significantly associated with attitude toward the retailer (β = 0.56, p < 0.001). Also, there were significant paths between attitude toward brand and brand extension evaluation (β = 0.28, p < 0.001) and between attitude toward retailer and brand extension evaluation (β = 0.30, p < 0.001).Supporting theory-based expectations, the current study addresses the issues and key elements behind the brand extensions collaborating with retailers. The findings of this study contribute to brand and retail management by providing empirical evidence on how new products from extended brands can produce positive evaluations in the marketplace through collaboration with retailers.References Available Upon Request

The on-going digital revolution spurs retailers to adopt digitalized enhancements in-store (Helbing 2015; Catlin et al. 2015), which contribute to an improved customer experience and the integration of shopping channels (Rigby 2011; Davis 2014), continually shaping retail business models, as well as consumer behaviors (Verhoef et al. 2015). Fashion retailers in particular are increasingly adopting advanced technologies in their physical stores to enhance the shopping experience and contribute to retail competitive advantage (Pantano 2015; Bonetti and Perry 2017). Moreover, consumer-facing in-store technologies (CFIT), such as digital signage and interactive screens, AR and VR, i-beacons, virtual fitting rooms, etc. (McCormick et al. 2014; Bonetti and Perry 2017), are being implemented across the sector.Although previous studies on consumer-facing technology in retailing have focused on the consumer as the end user of the technology (Olsson et al. 2013; Lee at al. 2012; Dacko 2017), managerial perspectives on strategic objectives, drivers and processes for the adoption, and implementation of CFIT within the sector have been largely ignored. This study seeks to elucidate and critically evaluate the managerial processes involved in the adoption and implementation of CFIT within a fashion-retailing context in order to propose ways in which contributions to retail operations and competitive strategy may be leveraged.While much of the existing research on technology adoption pursues a quantitative design (Ghobakhloo 2012), it is recognized that there is a need for more interpretivist-led studies in order to better establish rapidly evolving managerial concerns in the digital age (Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991; Williams et al. 2009). A qualitative approach was therefore adopted. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 28 technology providers, consultants and strategists, and relevant senior informants from 14 global fashion retailers during 2017 and 2018. Data analysis followed an established inductive process of applied thematic analysis (Guest et al. 2012; Miles et al. 2014). Starting from an initial open and free analysis (Corbin and Strauss 2008), initially identified codes and subcodes were refined as data collection and analysis proceeded iteratively (Spiggle 1994; Corbin and Strauss 2008).Initial findings from 56 h of interviews revealed that CFIT implementation may be related to a short-term initiative to generate “buzz” from a PR and marketing perspective or to strategically transform the in-store shopping experience by providing faster service or a more personalized experience. Here, CFIT is properly integrated to back-end technology and operations to provide a front-end service and advantage to the customer. This implies considerable changes to corporate mind-sets and company structures, leading to potential business model innovation.References Available Upon Request

A rapidly growing trend within fashion retailing is brands collaborating with retailers to offer exclusive partnership collections that vary in duration (i.e., ongoing vs. limited edition) (Ginman et al. 2010; Kim et al. 2014; Rollet et al. 2013). A recent vivid example of this limited edition strategy is Lilly Pulitzer’s collaboration with Target. An additional critical factor for the success of a brand when it collaborates with a retailer is the notion of perceived fit (Wang et al. 2015). Perceived fit, the extent to which consumers accept new products as logical and expected from a brand (Tauber 1988), is vital in the case of collaborations because if the partner is poorly chosen (i.e., low fit exists), it can damage consumers’ brand appraisals, as demonstrated by the failed partnership between Neiman Marcus and Target in 2013 (Thau 2013; White 2013). Such opportunities for growth and publicity may be enticing in brand and retailer collaborations, and pursuing them may change consumers’ evaluation of the brand.Utilizing commodity and categorization theory, three experimental studies (n = 507) test how a brand may successfully approach a retailer collaboration. Specifically, this research tests the effect of collaboration duration (limited edition vs. ongoing) and degree of brand-retailer fit (high vs. low) on changes in consumers’ brand evaluations following a collaboration. Results reveal that consumers’ evaluations of brands become more favorable when (a) brand-retailer collaborations make products available on a limited edition (vs. ongoing) basis (Study 1), (b) consumers perceive a high (vs. low) degree of brand-retailer fit (Study 2), and (c) both conditions are true (Study 3).This empirical investigation contributes to the literature by verifying the effects of a limited edition strategy on changes in consumers’ evaluations of brands following collaborations with retailers and theoretically extends the notion of perceived fit. Results from this study will be also useful to assist brand managers to develop more effective brand-retailer collaboration strategies. Specifically, we recommend that brands engage in limited edition, rather than ongoing collaborations with retailers. Additionally, this study indicates that both high-end and low-end brands need to carefully manage their collaborations and choose retail partners that are perceived by consumers to fit with the brand’s image. We recommend that high-end brands collaborate with high-end retailers and low-end brands collaborate with low-end retailers to enhance consumers’ evaluations of brands.References Available Upon Request

Do university social augmenters have brand equity? To answer this question, the study conceptualizes, develops, and empirically examines a model of university social augmenters brand equity (USABE). We define university social augmenter as any social platform offered by a university in which social interactions between students are facilitated such as volunteering, sporting and cultural activities, student models and clubs, students competitions, and art exhibitions. Survey data from 401 undergraduate students enrolled in private universities in Egypt were used to empirically examine the proposed model.Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the findings indicate that university social augmenters do have brand equity. More specifically, the results show that university social augmenters brand characteristics, namely, social augmenter reputation, coach-to-student interaction, and student-to-student interaction, have an influence on students’ satisfaction with social augmenter which in turn yields brand outcomes, namely, brand identification, willingness to recommend, and willingness to incur additional premium cost. The study provides implications for marketing professionals in higher education institutions (HEIs). University social augmenters are found to have strong brand equity manifestations and may hold potential to differentiate university brands in an industry dominated by experience and credence. University social augmenters offer HEIs a cost-effective tool for their endeavors to both target new students and improve the positioning of their university brand in the minds of current students. Students’ social experiences are always considered as a post-enrollment factor shaping students’ university experiences. This factor could also be approached as a pre-enrollment factor in targeting new students.References Available Upon Request

The purpose of this paper is to develop an exclusively stakeholder-based financial brand valuation approach.A semiotic model is used that recognizes three components in the brand: identity, object, and response. It is noted that the financial valuation purpose is to predict the influence of brand identity signs—the protectable trademarks as property rights—on the economic benefits of their owners. These benefits depend on the response of the stakeholders who are generators of cash-ins and cash-outs. In order to separate the “trademark influence,” stakeholders are confronted with a change scenario to a trademark that is unknown to them and asked if this change alters their behavioral response toward the brand. The affective response is also evaluated to establish the “influence of risk” in realizing the future benefits.This approach makes it possible to transform a rigorous concept from a legal and financial point of view, but one which is incomprehensible to the common stakeholder, to a scenario that the stakeholder can understand and respond to reliably.Grounding the brand’s financial valuation in semiotics is relevant because it distinguishes legal, marketing, and finance perspectives about the same objective, by framing them in common concerns of objectivity and intelligibility.

This session brings together academics, consultants, and government professionals to discuss ways marketing can help address needs in a natural disaster. Extreme weather events have increased the visibility of marketing’s importance in relief and recovery solutions well beyond disaster fundraising. Effective Rapid Response Marketing (RRM) is critical. The dynamic and rapidly increasing developments in technology from apps to social media to machine learning and text mining can help marketers develop better Rapid Response Marketing in any crisis situation.The first presentation, “G2G Marketing from Crisis to Resolution: Marketing for When the Government Must Target the Government” (Linda Golden, Robert Peterson), introduces the concept of government-to-government (G2G) marketing and public policy marketing (PPM). Government agencies can be clients and suppliers to each other at different times, and states may compete for “their share” of federal funds. Marketing approaches and contributions are discussed.The second presentation (Alissa Walsh, Christopher Emrich, Marco Bravo) introduces the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) to marketing and discusses its use in disaster management by facilitating directed marketing toward needs of the most vulnerable groups in disaster situations.The third presentation (Rajiv Garg, Patrick Brockett, Linda Golden, Yuxin Zhang) shows how techniques like machine learning, geospatial information, and social media text mining can assist in rapid assessment of damage and affected areas and populations before or as the disaster unfolds.The fourth presentation (Peter Nance, Pete Phillips) shows how integrated marketing communication (IMC) is critical in disaster response and recovery. Messaging must be strategically developed and delivered before, during, and after a crisis.The final presentation (Colleen Jones, Alexandra Gamble) gives real examples of how the Texas General Land Office, charged with disaster resilience and recovery, implements marketing techniques to accomplish strategic goals and action plans. Recent hurricanes provide examples.References Available Upon Request

In public policy marketing (PPM), government agencies play dual roles as both clients and suppliers to each other at times. Just as with business-to-business (B2B) marketing, government segments must solicit funds from other government agencies and distribute funds to other government agencies. Examples include state interactions with federal agencies (as clients) when requesting competitively distributed disaster funding from the federal government (e.g., for flood mitigation after a hurricane), the US Department of Transportation funding to State Departments of Transportation for highway construction, US Department of Housing and Urban Development funding to state and local governments for housing assistance, or federal government funding to state universities (grants from SBA, NSF, NIH, etc.). States also act as suppliers distributing funds to local governments for housing assistance, health and welfare systems, etc. When a catastrophe spreads across several states, states essentially compete to receive as much as possible of the federal funds pie. Just as with for-profit industries and social profit enterprises, governments are in competition for market share. We denote the process of facilitating this dual solicitation/distribution role involving governmental entity’s exchange is called “Government to Government Marketing” (G2G marketing for short).This presentation addresses techniques useful for G2G marketing when competition among divisions of government is simultaneously competitive and cooperative with goals directed toward a very tangible social goal, such as disaster relief and recovery. Unlike B2B marketing, profit orientation is not a motive but competition for exchange ensues for other rationales (including votes and funding goals). G-to-G marketing stakes can be for billions of dollars and create large economic domino effects for the communities receiving funding. Many disciplines are relevant to G2G marketing as society and public policy makers are central stakeholders in this competition.G2G marketing differs from B2B marketing approaches in that it often operates with more (unpublished/unknown) constraints on permissible competitive marketing techniques. And, disasters themselves create all kinds of markets, even in government relations. G2G marketing is an increasingly important and academically ignored approach to market perspectives, not previously introduced into the marketing literature. While at first glance these situations may appear “political,” there are clear marketing implications from relationship marketing to political (voter) marketing and market share analyses, as well as strategic market planning.Some traditional marketing techniques that apply to the potentially high-stakes G2G marketing are discussed. For example, predictive modeling to estimate future needs before they occur, and relationship marketing between and among agencies being headed by elected officials. The dominoes and halo effects of many systems need to be treated as customers and stakeholders to move societal goals forward. This session will point out differences between G2G marketing, B2B marketing, and B2C marketing that, as government grows, may be important to remember.References Available Upon Request

In disasters there is a need to rapidly assess and predict impact area boundaries (for staging emergency relief and product distribution dynamics), delineate and communicate with the affected public (for coordinated disaster assistance such as evacuation, search and rescue, prioritization of manpower and equipment usage, etc.), and provide cost estimation for potential use in government-to-government (G2G) marketing (Golden and Peterson 2018) soliciting relief and assistance funds from federal and/or state authorities. This rapid assessment needs to occur as the disaster unfolds and immediately after the disaster, even while data is scarce and emerging. Marketing communication techniques and modern information technology methods (machine learning, geospatial information, and social media text mining) can help with these tasks.This paper shows how to use predictive modeling and geospatial interpolation along with machine learning for pre-disaster community planning, for risk management actions during the disaster, and for assisting in creating informed structure regulations to assist in disaster resilience. As disaster response is an ongoing process, the technique provides a framework of spatial level loss estimation using limited evolving data and iteratively improves estimation as more data becomes available.Predictive and probabilistic modeling starts with historical data (compiled before the event) including data such as damage to a specific building type as a function of water depth or wind speed. Topography of the land involved is assessed using satellite and LIDAR data and publically available flood maps created by FEMA for the National Flood Insurance Program and topographic maps produced in the US Topo project of the National Geospatial Program of the US Geological Survey (USGS). These baseline GIS datasets are overlaid with GIS-located data on building type and construction materials and usage scraped from county tax assessor websites. After buildings are GIS mapped, the FEMA’s HAZUS algorithm is used to estimate damages to each building as a function of projected area water depth. The water depth projection is determined by regression using wind speed and recurrence interval (i.e., Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017 was a 1 in 1,000 year event). As data becomes gradually available, we iteratively update estimates for areas using spatial interpolation. This informs communication modes of contact.To better assess impact area and population at risk with limited data, machine learning is applied. In disasters people often are active on mobile phones. GIS located text mining messages reveals who needs what and where, directs rescue, and improve damage estimates when data is sparse, and allow target messaging to vulnerable populations (Lazreg et al. 2016).References Available Upon Request

Major monotheistic religions (Christianity and Islam), comprising of 55% of world religions’ followers (Hackett and Mcclendon 2015), conceptualize God as a supreme power who is in charge of the affairs of the universe and is the planner and an executor of everything that occurs. Religious philosophies of these religions encourage minimalism in personal life aspects, charitable behavior, as well as long-term orientation (belief in afterlife in heaven/hell). Therefore, the reliance of religious people on possessions/wealth is expected to be less as compared to nonreligious people. It may make them less likely to take measures to ensure their financial well-being. Since religious affiliations affect choices of consumptions and life behavior profoundly, it is valuable to assess the effect of religiosity on financial behavior. Statistical trends hint at the low financial well-being of religious people, but the phenomenon remains largely underexplored and calls for more investigation.Religious institutions transmit values, which eventually may affect choice. Also, organized religion fosters or frowns upon particular choice behaviors (Wilkes et al. 1986). More specifically, past research shows that religious beliefs can influence financial decision-making (Hirschman 1983, Essoo and Dibb 2004, Beck and Brown 2011). To explore the phenomenon further, the authors use data from the 2010 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). A multinomial logistic regression analysis of financial and religion variables captured in the survey data reveals that people who think religion is important were more likely to discuss their financial situation with others, had a more positive subjective description of their current financial condition, as well as were more likely to use cash advance on credit cards than the basement group (indifferent to religion). A significant gap occurs between the perceived present financial condition and the financial behavior of religious people as compared to general people. Since a considerable world population is religious, it is valuable to address the issue of lack of financial well-being of religious individuals.References Available Upon Request

Over 65% of US households have at least one person who games 3 or more hours per day (ESA 2017). As usage increases, consumers may come to a critical juncture where they cross into maladaptive consumption (Gao et al. 2014; Martin et al. 2013). We define behavior as maladaptive when consumption levels excessively extend beyond societal norms and are associated with increasing risk of significant harm if undeterred (Herie 2007). Maladaptive behavior has characteristics of compulsive consumption (e.g., urge to engage in behavior, control issues) and overconsumption (e.g., consuming more than intended) but is conceptualized as an ongoing, dynamic process in which personal goals/habits and external mechanisms strongly shape adaptive/maladaptive usage. Our focus is not on the goal of cessation, but understanding the process in which behavior approaches a point of harm in one’s life and how consumers may recognize this threshold in order to begin to reduce consumption to adaptive levels (O’Brien and Klein 2017).This research explores consumption behaviors in the context of online gaming and seeks to understand the behavioral transition between maladaptive and adaptive consumption. Depth interviews with gamers and an online blog of gaming behavior were analyzed. Our evaluation of the blog and interview data finds that based on different motivational structures, the gamer’s desire to increase and the lack of self-control to decrease consumption adversely affect their life through various types of harm. Four consistent themes surrounding the construct of harm and how the realization of these types of harm (financial, physical, emotional, social) provided the impetus needed to reduce consumption to adaptive levels. We also found common themes as to why consumers turn away from maladaptive consumption (e.g., realization of shift from real to online world, hurt to loved ones) and form boundaries around behavior to instill a sense of protection and control (Scott et al. 2015). Given the evidence for maladaptive behavior and harmful consequences from this initial study, future research is needed to further understand consumers’ intense motivations for engaging in maladaptive gaming and marketers strategies for promoting usage at both adaptive and maladaptive levels. Deterring maladaptive consumption at this transitional stage may ultimately prevent harm from behavioral addiction. It may be in a firm’s best interest to increase loyalty among customers who are consuming in an adaptive manner rather than maladaptive, which may negatively affect the brand’s reputation or lead to legal consequences.References Available Upon Request

Consumer financial well-being is one of the important research areas in marketing (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002). Some of the financial products are related to wealth accumulation (Poterba 2000). However, some of the financial products are related to prepare untimely financial risk (Tapiero 2004). Managing mortality risk by purchasing a life insurance policy is important for the consumers in terms of preventing survivors from the financial hardship that eventually erodes family happiness (Dahl and Møller 2006). Previous research has explored the factors that influence the demand for life insurance; however, little effort has focused on the effect of the financial planning time horizon which is crucial to develop an effective strategic plan (Zellweger 2007). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine financial planning time horizon influenced the financial well-being and to investigate the correlations between the amount of life insurance purchased, subjectively reported financial planning time horizon, and numerous financial characteristics that suggests a direction forward in terms of consumer financial well-being as a macro-level goal. As financial counselor and policy maker, it is our mission that longer planning time horizon would be helpful to achieve quality of life for the financial well-being. These findings suggest that individuals perceive liquid assets and credit as an additional safety net rather than a substitute for insurance. Many of financially vulnerable consumers are not purchasing financial products optimal for the purposes. In other words, consumers having a long-term time horizon could both purchase insurance and maintain financial assets or request higher borrowing limits. Consumers with long time planning horizon are likely to have diverse types of financial products as well as higher amount of net worth. The findings indicate that financial education or financial counseling focusing on longer planning time horizon would be helpful for the adequacy of life insurance purchases.References Available Upon Request

This paper explores the extent to which firms market the joint sustainability focus of their supply chain partnerships. We draw upon recent supply chain management research that has extended the “organizational orientation” concept, such as market orientation, into concepts such as supply chain orientation and sustainability orientations. We also draw upon the well-entrenched triple bottom-line definition of sustainability and then connect the two. Specifically, we explore organizations who extend their sustainability orientation to seek like-minded supply chain partners. These partnerships can represent the essence of a firm or its corporate identity, and marketing this sustainability-focused partnership identity may or may not be desired. We use empirical data from firms varying in perspective on these issues in an exploration of their marketing motivations and behaviors. First, we introduce important concepts, then delve more deeply into the literature that led to our research question, describe our data collection and analysis method, and offer insights from these data.

Food waste is believed to be the primary source of biowaste. A recent European Commission project named Fusions estimated the amount of food waste produced along the value chain in the EU-28 countries to be around 87.6 million tonnes. Current treatments constitute a number of valuable disposition strategies, ranging from incineration, composting, and bio-gasification (including use of residual material as fertilizer), to feed for livestock and redistribution for human consumption (Chen et al. 2016).In this vein, a new process and technology approach has been recently developed for the creation of a new raw material called PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), which is generated from urban food waste that this study labels as bio-based plastic. However, there are many barriers to full utilization of bio-based materials as a resource. First, in order to make disposition activities feasible for a company, they have to be profitable and economically sustainable. Second, customers’ perception and acceptance of the new waste-generated PHA material is the key for its success.Despite its relevance, strategies and processes aimed toward increasing sustainability in the supply chain often neglect the consumers’ acceptance and perceptions of the products derived from circular business processes in, and rather disproportionately focus on the chemical and engineering technical aspects, or on supply-side problems, such as for instance analyses on end-of-life, end-of-use, and the organization of efficient Closed Loop Supply Chain (CLSC) systems (Govindan et al. 2015). This is confirmed by the lack of studies from demand side of CLSCs addressing the role of consumers. Thus, it is crucial for the implementation of a circular economy model to understand consumers’ attitude and willingness to buy products from waste and to switch, at least in part, from new products to biowaste-derived products.Based on an extensive review of the literature we have noticed that specific research on such products is missing, so the purpose of the present research is to overcome this gap regarding the consumers’ role in the circular economy and their perception toward such products, exploring such phenomenon under the umbrella of the prospect theory (Tversky and Kahneman 1992; McDermott et al. 2008; Wang and Hazen 2016). Thus, this research contributes to research and practice by identifying and testing factors that might affect consumer attitude and acceptance toward products derived from bio-based plastic. In doing so, an experimental design will be developed, and participants to the survey will be asked to evaluate a series of statements related to their awareness, attitude, and willingness to buy or to switch toward bio-based products. This answers to the call for more research to understand how to fully integrate consumers into a circular economy (Abbey et al. 2015).References Available Upon Request

Past research on how universities integrated sustainability show a large involvement from change agents, which are usually academics themselves; these champions are usually at the forefront of new ideas for EfS. As such, although the literature has explored the role of higher education in sustainability and how to shift to EfS, few studies have paid attention to the role of the individual. It is also only through the experiences of sustainability marketing academics that we can begin to understand what struggles and barriers may exist towards the integration of sustainability within marketing academia and how individuals might address these barriers.References Available Upon Request

This article analyzes how adolescents behave on the Internet. Based on the concept of identity, applied to the digital world, we seek to highlight the existence of digital identity profiles. Our methodology combines a qualitative study (n = 19) and a quantitative study (n = 343). The content analysis reveals the existence of three main profiles (and five sub-profiles). Quantitative analysis reveals, using the dynamic cloud method and the hierarchical ascendant, that five profiles segment our sample. After comparing these studies, we show similarities and differences between the profiles on many points (as, e.g., virtual reputation or relationships). We put in place the profiles on a continuum that shows importance of reality and virtuality for each adolescent.

Many designated as “tech savvy” have more than just a cursory understanding of technology. Moreover, there are those who comprehend technology very well. As technology has evolved, so should our understanding of consumers of technology. A focus on tech-savvy individuals can lead to an understanding of a variation of consumers who may not be innovators or early adopters, but have a working knowledge of technology-based products and considered opinion leaders by other consumers. Being tech savvy may or may not lead to an affinity for the products. However, this research will give marketers an understanding of another aspect of consumer behavior. The purpose of this research is to investigate exactly what tech savvy really means in terms of the consumer and how firms can leverage marketing based on insight into this consumer.Tech-savvy individuals are not only ready for technology; tech-savvy individuals seek out knowledge and are ready to prove this knowledge to others. The dimensions of tech savviness will be developed to uncover key characteristics of those who are tech savvy and using this construct empirically. Considering this, the questions to be addressed in this research are as follows: Are tech-savvy consumers, who are more knowledgeable about technology and consider themselves as tech-savvy individuals, more likely to be opinion leaders? What are the characteristics of tech-savvy consumers? How can marketers identify these individuals and understand their roles? Tech savvy goes beyond technology readiness and acceptance of technology to understand those who are very familiar with technology. Having a better understanding of tech savviness will aid in understanding this particular type of consumer. On the other hand, it will also serve in understanding those who do not consider themselves technologically savvy. Understanding the differences in consumers allows specific applications of marketing tools in servicing all consumers.References Available Upon Request

This paper attempts to explore the underlying cognitive structure of online brand choice. Building brand equity is a multistep process that starts with creating brand awareness, developing cues to form strong brand association among consumers, adding value to create better perceived quality, and ultimately making customers loyal to the brand. Building online brand equity follows a similar sequence of steps. In this regard, understanding the consumer behavior and underlying cognitive perceptions is crucial. A consumer may follow different combinations of simple rules while making a purchase or choosing specific brands. In this paper, multidimensional scaling approach is used to determine the underlying cognitive structure of any brand choice. Online retailer brands and travel website brands are taken into consideration. A survey has been conducted to capture the perception of online consumers and analyzed using SPSS. The identified underlying dimensions for online retailers and travel websites are studied and their latent similarities and dissimilarities observed. An overarching consumer cognitive perception framework is then proposed.

Firms around the world confront new pressures with the trade of their branded products in unauthorized distribution channels known as gray markets. Gray markets emerge when firms sell their products in different markets at different prices. Differences in prices may stem from exchange rate fluctuations, promotional costs, brand owners’ multitiered pricing schemes, tax differences, or differing consumer preferences. Unlike counterfeits, gray market products are genuine in that they have been manufactured by or for, or are under license from, the brand owner.Unsurprisingly, gray markets create an array of problems for companies and consumers. Companies invest a considerable amount of time, money, and effort in manufacturing and promoting the goodwill of their products, which reflects in selling prices. Gray marketers take advantage of the market demand and reputation created and maintained by these companies and their authorized channel partners without investing the capital associated with establishing market demand and such reputation. Additionally, gray markets erode consumer goodwill because a product meant for a different market varies from the same product designed for domestic consumption in a variety of ways such as health and safety codes, regional tastes, warranties, and languages. Goodwill is further damaged when brand owners refuse to honor gray market products’ warranties and create a consumer perception of substandard customer service.An online environment has fueled the growth of online gray market activities due to the Internet’s ease of use, accessibility, and ability to connect consumers with product suppliers worldwide. Efforts by brand owners to contain gray market activities have mostly been unsuccessful. Given that online purchase activities have experienced a drastic increase over the years, many nonprofit organizations such as AGMA (Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement) and BBB (Better Business Bureau) and popular press such as Forbes, Fortune, and The Economist are shedding light on gray markets and educating consumers about the pitfalls of gray market purchases and a gray market’s cost to nations’ economies.In this paper, we explore consumer perceptions about the ethicality of gray markets and whether their ethical judgments have an influence on their purchase intention in an online shopping context. We further explore the role of trust in this dynamic relationship. We draw on the Hunt-Vitell (H-V) theory of ethics to explain the hypothesized relationships in our conceptual model (Hunt and Vitell 1986, 2006). We test the hypothesized relationships in an experimental study with 114 subjects and discuss the findings.References Available Upon Request

The current study proposes an empirical test of Wickert et al.’s (2016) model, suggesting that from a cost perspective, it is more advantageous for large firms to engage in CSR “talk” and for small firms to do the CSR “walk.” Instead, we do a more granular test of the relationship between firm size and cheap talk vs. substantive talk. First, if the linear relationship between firm size and CSR talk is true, we should be able to observe it among large companies as well as they exhibit variation in the number of employees. Second, due to the complexity of big enterprises, CSR needs may vary between departments and regions making it impractical and unnecessary to implement all practices throughout all departments and regions. Thus, we focus on degrees of CSR “talk.” We construct a continuum from stand-alone CSR reports (cheap talk) through UN Global Compact engagement to GRI reporting (substantive talk) for top global retailers. Third, we concentrate on one industry in order to understand better the empirical power of the model. The sample consists of the top 250 retailers in 2015 that are traced back to 1999—the year when GRI and UNGC are inaugurated. The results do not quite comply with the logic of Wickert et al. (2016). We observe mostly inverted-U relationships between size and the likelihood of engagement in any kind of CSR talk. Moreover, the employee measure of size exhibits positive (albeit borderline significant) relationship with the likelihood of substantive talk, which goes against the prediction of Wickert et al.’s model. On the other hand, the very big companies do not appear to be more likely to engage in cheap talk either. Thus, the dichotomy of small vs. large companies’ “communication gap” does not seem to be applicable when we zoom in onto types of communications. Our results indicate that the biggest companies even in the same industry display sufficient variation in CSR talk, and it would not be right to put them under the common denominator “large companies.” We still need to get a better understanding of the motivations behind CSR talk and the fact that by the end of our observation period, 57% of the top global retailers did not publish any type of CSR report. Overall, we observe that talk is not just talk, and we need to delve even deeper to see if big companies might be engaging in strategic silence.References Available Upon Request

Conducting CSR activities has been recognized as an effective way for corporations to build positive brand associations, which can lead to sustainable competitive advantage. However, extant CSR research has primarily focused on the consumers’ perspectives and the shareholders’ values; limited research has examined CSR from the employees’ perspectives.Although previous research has examined the influences of CSR on employees, they mainly focused on how organizations’ external CSR activities affect employees’ subjective perceptions and behavioral responses. Exploring the relationship between CSR and employees’ outcomes from an internal marketing perspective has been generally overlooked. Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap by exploring the effect of internal CSR initiatives on employees’ attitude and organization-beneficial behaviors.Drawing on social influence theory, this study develops and empirically tests a theoretical model that examines the impact of internal CSR initiatives (i.e., internal dissemination and management support of CSR) on employees’ identification and attachment toward an organization, which ultimately leads to employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward other employees and the organization. Data collected from 269 employees in companies actively involved in CSR initiatives was examined through structural equation modeling. Results and managerial implications were then discussed.References Available Upon Request

Consumers seek out other consumers’ input to facilitate and remove some of the ambiguity and risk from the purchase decision-making process through online word of mouth (eWOM) (Sparks and Browning 2011). This makes consumer reviews important for anyone seeking to sell products and services both inside and outside the sharing economy. The eWOM literature largely focuses on review authenticity and credibility from the point of view of fake online reviews (i.e., astroturfing), such as reviews created by business owners or generated using artificial intelligence (c.f. Castillo et al. 2013) or the deletion of negative reviews (c.f. Bamman et al. 2012). However, there is scant attention given to customer reviews and ratings that do not reflect customers’ true opinions and feelings of their experience. For example, consider ridesharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, where consumers have little knowledge outside of the numerical evaluation ratings other customers give their drivers. On these platforms, researchers have observed rating inflation where customers give drivers top marks even when things go wrong and expectations are not met (Cook 2015; Etzioni 2017). This pattern of rating inflation exists in other sharing economy contexts as well including, notably, the accommodation sharing industry (Zervas et al. 2015, 2014).This article proposes that customers perceive an organization’s own market label by processing marketing positioning information, such as those found on websites. A market label is a metaphoric word or phrase that expresses an organization’s identity and constructs relationships between the organization and other stakeholders. This paper examines whether the customer reviews and the sentiment within them corresponds to how an organization positions or presents itself in the marketplace. Specifically, we introduce the professional and amateur market labels and analyze the impact of the organization’s sales pitches.References Available Upon Request

The use of social media in promotional campaigns has gained momentum, especially concerning the creation of marketing campaigns involving social media influencers. Influencers have traditionally created their own user-generated content (UGC) like blogs or vlogs. Moreover, marketers identify UGC as effective for brand promotion because consumers perceive it as more credible than marketer-generated content (MGC) and have paid celebrities and social media influencers to create UGC. The lack of research aimed at investigating how influencers (vs. celebrities) persuade consumers with UGC versus MGC motivates this research.Using source effects theory and processing fluency to inform the research, one 2 (content: UGC vs. MGC) × 2 (endorser: celebrity vs. social media influencer) between subjects design was conducted using a snowball sample on social media targeting European women (n = 138; M age = 25) participants on social media. The results revealed a significant two-way interaction on attitudes toward the brand and purchase intentions. Post hoc analysis indicated that UGC leads to higher attitudes toward the brand and intentions to purchase the product featured when using social media influencers. Additionally, when using MGC, a celebrity endorser generates higher attitudes toward the brand and intentions to purchase the product.These findings provide several theoretical and practical implications. First, the results suggest that the effectiveness of marketing communication resides in the interaction of the endorser and the content type, consistent with processing fluency. Second, the results indicate that UGC is most effective when the endorser is an influencer versus a celebrity. Likewise, an influencer is most persuasive with UGC rather than appearing in content the brand has created to feature the endorser. Third, the research illustrates that certain source characteristics (e.g., power vs. trust) may explain why UGC (vs. MGC) is more successful when using influencers (vs. celebrities).References Available Upon Request

Understanding how consumer ethical decision-making is formed and how ethical judgments and behaviors can be promoted is of growing interest in the marketing research agenda. Notwithstanding, there have been calls for additional research focusing on the development of integrated and more comprehensive theoretical backgrounds to improve models’ explanatory and predictive capability. Thus, this research has two main objectives: first, to test the influence of consumer emotions, moral intensity, moral philosophies, personal norms, and intrinsic religiosity on consumer ethical decision-making process and, second, to assess the relative weight of each independent construct on consumer deliberation processes involving ethical issues. Through a valid sample of 413 respondents and using 3 different ethical scenarios, results show that emotions, moral intensity, and personal norms positively influence consumer ethical decision-making. Furthermore, emotion is the dimension that most influences consumers’ ethical choices and actions, providing empirical evidence of their key role in predicting consumer ethics.

Many continue to lament the field’s myopic focus on bottom-line thinking and business skills. Such critiques question how best to prepare and educate our charges, both practitioners and students alike, for the ethical challenges they face. Ethical decision-making has received ongoing attention by marketers (Ferrellet al. 1989). However, this paper responds to a need for clarity in understanding how ethical decisions are framed and formed by examining whether a specific antecedent, worldviews, play a role in moral judgements (Giacalone and Thompson 2006).Worldviews reflect a set of beliefs about the nature of the world around us. Koltko-Rivera (2004) argued these frameworks exert a powerful effect on cognition and behavior in individuals and have the potential to actively cue moral recognition (Jones 1991) and shape judgments of an ethical issue’s acceptability. Systems theory, which incorporates a state-space approach to explain complex phenomena, provided a simplistic overview of worldview beliefs. Classification of worldviews as either closed or open referred primarily to whether adherents in each case believe a capacity for interaction exists between the physical or metaphysical systems. Open system worldviews believe that exchange between physical-metaphysical systems is both possible and probable, whereas closed system beliefs confine reality to the physical domain.To answer whether worldviews influence moral recognition of ethical dilemmas, the current study surveyed 1983 subjects. Five-hundred twenty of the participants were business professionals, and 1463 were students. Respondents recorded how ethically acceptable 25 different business scenarios were and then completed classification questions that denoted whether their worldview operated as either an open or closed systems (Conroy and Emerson 2004).Regression results found a small, significant, negative relationship between an open system worldview and average level of ethical acceptability. Individuals with open systems views were less likely to find certain business practices ethical. Results indicate that worldview beliefs were better predictors of ethical decision-making than race, age, or gender, a finding that was consistent across both the student and practitioner samples reported. While both worldview systems agree that physical harm scenarios are bad, open system adherents were more likely to note other scenarios as more unacceptable. Discussion centers on the nature of worldview beliefs in framing moral recognition and the acceptability of different ethical dilemmas.References Available Upon Request

Overall, present work provides support for the consideration of socially oriented anti-consumption (SOA) as particular manifestation of the wider phenomenon known as anti-consumption. Such concept has not been specifically acknowledged as separate field of research, maybe as a consequence of the existence of similar terms (i.e., ethical, political, sustainable, socially responsible consumption), which however, do have the same meaning. It is possible to infer some key differences between the extant terms and SOA. First, most of them are not exclusively focused on social concerns, but may consider environmental or animal welfare issues as well. Second, from these definitions it is not clear enough whether these consumer manifestations pertain to the consumption, the anti-consumption, or both paths of action (Bekin et al. 2007). This is important, since research suggests that anti-consumption is not the mere opposite of consumption, but may have different and unique antecedents (Chatzidakis and Lee 2013). In addition, these different terms have been used interchangeability rather frequently in the past literature (Szmigin et al. 2009), which makes it difficult to understand the differences between them.The literature review also reveals different ways of understanding SOA behaviors. This is important, since the consideration of SOA in a strict—only the anti-consumption action is considered—vs. broad, considering not only the anti-consumption action but also encompasses each type of action performed to avoid the purchase and consumption of a certain product perceived as pervasive for society as a whole or some groups of individuals, has different implications. Studying SOA from a broad perspective allows a greater understanding of the lifestyles and consumption patterns developed by individuals engaged on such behaviors. On the other hand, specifically focusing on strict SOA behaviors is able to provide the unique antecedents of each analyzed behavior.Current works also provide future venues of research, which comprise several aspects such as the conceptualization and measurement of SOA, the identification of different SOA agents (comparing between different groups of people), the analysis of different antecedents, the identification process of targets, and contexts that enhance or inhibit SOA engagement. Overall, there is room for achieving a more effective comprehension of SOA behaviors by delving into those elements and specially assessing whether its consequences are able to bring about the changes they pursue to the current society.References Available Upon Request

Cheating is both a judgment and an act. Cheaters often recognize they are doing something wrong when they cheat, but they justify their acts as necessary, even good, for their purpose at hand. This multinational research on business student ethics, conducted at various universities in the American continent and in Asia, probes decisions about cheating.Applying the theory of marketing ethics, a quasi-experimental design, and a sample of business students large enough to examine demographic and student-level differences, this research finds that business college students are fundamentally deontological (moral) in forming ethical judgments but they are either deontological or teleological (consequential) when making decisions such as rewarding or punishing acts involving such ethical or unethical behavior as cheating or plagiarizing. Students take one route to form their ethical judgments but two routes to arrive at their intentions to act. The latter means that while some students solve practical ethical problems based on ethical judgment (i.e., determined by deontological evaluations), other students (a meaningful segment of all students) do so on the basis of the consequences of actions like cheating and plagiarizing.The results on students’ ethical orientation have important implications for understanding student ethical conduct and teaching business ethics. College students represent a population with higher levels of education than the rest of the population. The advantage is manifest in the ease with which they think and form correct ethical judgments when necessary. Despite a cognitive advantage, however, they may easily be trapped by the importance of the consequences when intending to act and when lacking the appropriate training to make ethical decisions. Accordingly, students who take the deontological route may just need reinforcement in their education, whereas students who take the teleological route urgently need ethical training in the classroom or elsewhere.No significant differences were observed across samples taken from disparate areas of the world (the USA, Chile, Peru, and Vietnam), a fact that contributes to the strength of the theory used in this study to justify generalization and the understanding that all students are fundamentally similar in the way they form ethical judgments and the intention to act when confronted with ethical problems such as cheating or plagiarizing.References Available Upon Request

The main objective of this study is to understand the impact of crowdfunding platforms used to gain support for social enterprises. Crowdfunding is an emergent and growing practice all over the world. The main use of crowdfunding nowadays is to support cultural and social projects, and this paper has a special interest in understanding the support that social enterprises receive from crowdfunding platforms, namely, through websites. There are several kinds of crowdfunding, but the donation-based orientation is the most popular model to support social projects and the focus of this study. A factorial experiment was conducted to test the traits’ behaviour. Our results show that the use of crowdfunding platforms leads supporters to build more favourable values of social enterprises when compared with nonsocial enterprises on crowdfunding platforms and social projects with traditional funding practices.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the tax regulatory and enforcement agency of the US federal government that grants, reviews, and revokes tax exempt status. In the initial NPO application, the IRS scrutinizes each nonprofit organization’s (NPO) application to determine worthiness for the coveted status. Recently, the service came under pressure for politically biased treatment of certain organizations’ applications, with some applications being delayed for years.This ideological conflict between the public and voluntary sector confounds the already challenging task facing the NPO manager, i.e., balancing the double bottom line of mission and money. Furthermore, within the voluntary sector, there is concern that some organizations may be abusing the tax exempt status which could have a deleterious impact on the entire sector (Checco 2014; Lederman 2016; Molk 2012).What we propose is that NPOs not only place an emphasis on their mission but that they also incorporate that mission into their strategy and operations. Furthermore, we propose that those organizations that do this and develop metrics for measuring how well the organization performs toward achieving the goals of the mission will perform better in other more traditional metrics.Using a survey of 265 NPO managers, we found that those organizations that focused on their missions and used the missions in management and planning and measured and reported their organization’s performance relative to the mission tended to perform better in a number of other traditional performance measures. These included fundraising, employee retention, financial health, and number of services provided.While each NPO must develop its own mission-based metrics, this study indicates that it may be worth the effort. Used in concert with existing accounting measures, these metrics will provide a more accurate representation of the organization’s performance that can be helpful for managers, donors, foundations, and boards.Perhaps if NPOs were to report mission-based metrics along with the traditional accounting measures required on the IRS form 990, the IRS would be able to judge how well each organization is living up to its intended purpose, reducing the potential for political behavior on the front end.References Available Upon Request.

The effects of economic crisis on consumer behavior affect from unplanned to planned purchases (Quelch and Jocz, 2009). Previous research analyzed how consumers are coping with crisis considering aspects such as low-income consumers (Kumar et al., 2017), household consumption and their financial management (Albert and Escardibul, 2017), and the increase of poverty and reduction of well-being during crisis (Gutierrez-Nieto et al., 2017). Taking into account the few studies on impulsiveness consumption during an economic crisis, the present research extends previous literature by showing that the relationship between consumer income and consumption behavior is processed by responsible behavior during crisis and that consumer impulsiveness will vary according to this responsible behavior. In this sense, this research develops and tests a framework of responsible consumption during crisis that explains changes in purchase behavior in an emerging market context. We conceptualize responsible crisis consumption as the changes in regular habits of consumers to a more rational way of buying, such as shifting for less expensive products and less known brands or reducing expenditures on services.The study was developed in two stages: an exploratory qualitative phase of 12 in-depth interviews with consumers and specialists and a confirmatory quantitative phase with 408 consumers during the recent Brazilian economic crisis (2015–2018). The results using partial least squares structural equations modeling (PLS-SEM) indicate that responsible crisis consumption is an important underlying mechanism between consumer impulsiveness, income level, and purchase behavior.Our findings reveal that consumers, when faced with an economic crisis, develop responsible consumption habits that modify their consumption behavior, especially decreasing services consumption compared to products. Consumers change their purchase habits during a recession by looking for a security status, which means that in this period consumers shift from their general habits to a more rational way of buying. In this sense, our results also report that during the economic crisis, consumers tend to reduce impulsiveness and increase behaviors such as replacing the usual purchase with cheaper products, increasing reflexivity about purchases, decreasing purchases without looking at the price, and increasing the repair of products instead of buying new ones. Theoretically, our findings on responsible crisis consumption reveal that consumers are not only economically affected by recession, but it also triggers psychological mechanisms on consumers by changing their level of impulsiveness and changing their purchase behavior. In managerial terms, the findings help companies and public institutions to understand the changes in purchase behavior in emerging markets.References Available Upon Request

This paper describes the development of a 16-item special request scale (SRS) to measure evaluative criteria used by frontline employees when facing customer special requests. Built on a preliminary research, our study provided evidence for the reliability, factor structure, validity, and potential applications of the SRS scale on the basis of analyzing data from 131 employees of an oil exchange company.

This study explores the impact that customer-to-customer interaction has on how customers experience a group service encounter and what firms can do to encourage positive and prevent negative interaction. Group service encounters are common in many service industries, including tourism and leisure, sports and recreation, education, and health care, when multiple customers are intentionally batched and involved in the delivery and consumption of a service. There are economic benefits to grouping customers together, thereby allowing firms to reduce the price to customers. Putting customers in groups can also be vital for the delivery of the service such as a theatre class where participants perform an improvisational scene together.Prior research on customer-to-customer interaction has focused primarily on services that are consumed ‘in the presence of’ other customers such as queues in theme parks and in retail settings. Customer-to-customer interaction in services that are consumed ‘with’ other customers, group service encounters, has so far attracted relatively little attention from researchers.We focus on the tourism and leisure sectors and conduct 3 sets of interviews, with 8 managers, 12 customers, and 10 frontline employees of firms that organize services in which customers are batched together in the delivery of the service. From our interviews, it is clear that positive customer-to-customer interactions in group service encounters can be facilitated by the service firm in specific ways. Likewise, negative customer-to-customer interactions can be prevented or stifled through actions by the service firm.Through our findings we identify four factors of customer-to-customer interaction that can impact the service experience: group size and composition, service design, employee prompting, and the behaviour of the customer group.References Available Upon Request

The use of ambient scents has become an increasingly important trend in business practice to create a distinctive product or service experience (Rimkute et al. 2016; Henshaw et al. 2016). Sensory marketing has started exploring scent effects in a variety of settings and predominantly underlined its positive effects on customers’ mood, memory, attitudes, and other variables (e.g., Krishna et al. 2010; Herrmann et al. 2013; Spangenberg et al. 2005). However, previous studies mainly draw on experiments in highly controlled environments such as lab or university settings, potentially leading to inflated effects of ambient scent in the absence of natural confounds. Likewise, relatively little is known about the long-term olfactory effects of customers’ repeated exposure to ambient scents in a service environment. In addition, previous research did not focus on the effects of ambient scent after a discontinuation of a scent campaign. Our study series closes these three gaps in service research.We present the results of two preliminary studies followed by two large-scale field studies (n = 711 in total) in which we exposed customers of a major railway company to a pleasurable ambient scent and measured their service perceptions. As such, our research occurs in an “olfactory noisy” environment providing many natural confounds in the form of other olfactory cues as well as permanently changing conditions. In a preliminary (field) study, we found that even though only 27% of customers were able to identify the scent stimulus, the ambient scent led to a significant increase in customers’ evaluation of general air quality during the train ride. Results from a cross-sectional field study (n = 204) demonstrate ambient scent’s short-term effects on customers’ service perceptions and their robustness to customers’ service use frequency. Results from a longitudinal, repeated-measures field study (n = 109), which spread over a 4-month period, provide support for ambient scent’s positive long-term effects. Furthermore, we observed no negative consequences of a discontinuation of the scent stimulus on service perceptions 2 weeks after its removal. Our results suggest that ambient scent as a sensory marketing tool is effective in increasing customers’ service perceptions, even in an “olfactory noisy” servicescape. Its positive effects are remarkable and extend from short- to stable long-term effects.References Available Upon Request

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of economic crisis on consumer perceptions of value in purchasing or renting a green building. For the purposes of this study, a survey was conducted with Greek consumers, amidst the recent severe economic crisis. As hypothesized, in times of economic hardship, housing priorities are seconded and consumers focus more on ways to reduce the everyday cost of living and to stabilize the level of disposable income. Thus, consumer’s green behavior becomes a second priority. Perceptions of value about green buildings are not altered during the recession, but the recession’s effect moderates value’s influence on intentions to purchase or rent a green dwelling. Such an effect is mainly temporal in nature and is believed to be lifted once the crisis is over.

Patriotism is a sense of loyalty and emotional attachment to an individual’s country, which can influence purchasing behaviors and attitudes toward foreign-made products. In addition, the characteristics and activities associated with environmentalism may vary across different consumer groups. Moreover, as consumers are trying to expand their organic lifestyle to clothing, opportunities to effectively communicate the value of organic apparel that connects with consumers are needed. However, few studies have focused on the influence of patriotism on attitudes toward organic apparel and environmental awareness. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the relationships between attitudes toward patriotism, environmentalism, and the purchase of organic clothing and the variation they lead to consumers’ behaviors.Environmentalism is a multifaceted construct, which mainly consists of environmental beliefs, environmental concern, and pro-environmental behavior. Based on the concepts of patriotic environmentalism, three hypotheses are proposed: H1: Environmental beliefs will be stronger for high patriotism compared to low patriotism. H2: Environmental concerns will be stronger for high patriotism compared to low patriotism. H3: Pro-environmental beliefs will be stronger for high patriotism compared to low patriotism. Literature links patriotism to environmentalism, and further research links environmentalism to attitudes toward purchasing organic apparel. Patriotism might be related to attitudes toward the purchase of organic apparel, which led to the fourth hypothesis. H4: Attitudes toward purchasing organic apparel will be stronger for high patriotism compared to low patriotism. Data were collected using an online questionnaire composed of preexisting scales. High and low patriotism groups were formed and compared by using the top and bottom quartiles on the patriotism scale. A total of 306 college students were surveyed because they are familiar with the apparel category and because of their buying power when it comes to apparel. The results confirmed that individuals with an elevated level of patriotism possess environmental concerns and pro-environmental beliefs toward the countries they abide in and favor. That is, those who have a sense of loyalty toward one’s country also feel a moral obligation to preserve the countries they are devoted to. These initial findings suggest that marketers that support domestically produced goods should further highlight and emphasize “American made” in their marketing communications. In addition, creating future marketing campaigns that highlight love of country and the environment may lead to impulse purchases.References Available Upon Request

Narcissism, formally defined as a persistent pattern of grandiosity, self-focus, and self-importance (American Psychiatric Association 1994), is on the rise, and individualistic, self-oriented motives and behaviors are norms, rather than exceptions. Simultaneously, the planet’s natural resources may be in greater danger than ever before. Is there a relationship between the two? Using the agency-communion model of narcissism (Gebauer et al. 2012), the present investigation aims to answer this question by systematically examining the role that communal narcissism plays in consumers’ pro-environmental decisions. According to this model, communal narcissism may be understood as an agency-communion characteristic; that is, communal narcissists’ agentic core motives (i.e., grandiosity, esteem, entitlement, and power) are expressed through communal means (e.g., helpfulness and trustworthiness).Two studies suggest that while communal narcissists claim that they are pro-environmental, when it comes to making purchase decisions, their behaviors do not support such claims. Study 1 offers potential explanations for such discrepancies. Specifically, the findings of Study 1 indicate that communal narcissists may see pro-environmental actions as communal means that could potentially serve their agentic, self-directed motives (e.g., feeling special and influential). However, when pro-environmental actions are expected to harm their personal comfort (a direct threat to self-interests), the “me first” aspect of narcissism plays a more dominant role, resulting in lack of inclinations to engage in pro-environmental actions. Study 2 then provides evidence for a boundary condition: product public visibility. More precisely, communal narcissists are willing to purchase publically visible eco-friendly products because such products could deliver social utility and serve as a communal signal. However, this group is not interested in purchasing and using eco-friendly products that are usually used in private as such products are not expected to help them satisfy their agentic core motives.This work finally provides some managerial recommendations to encourage pro-environmental consumption among this group of consumers. Overall green marketers should attempt to customize their promotional strategies by emphasizing social desirability and directing communal narcissists’ attention to this potential benefit of pro-environmental products. This is a critical endeavor given the urgency of increasing sustainable behavior and given unprecedented levels of narcissism and similar self-oriented characteristics in society.References Available Upon Request

Carsharing could be one opportunity to counteract the problem of raising CO2 emissions. Despite its positive environmental effects, Carsharing still has potential for greater usage by the broad public. It can be assumed that advertisement plays an important role by providing Carsharing advantages. By combining an eye tracking analysis with standardized interviews of 39 German consumers, we evaluate if consumers who consider themselves as “sustainable” perceive sustainable communication (slogans and icons) differently from those consumers without a “sustainable attitude.” The Mann-Whitney U test for statistical analysis did not find any significant differences between the two groups of biospheric/altruistic and egoistic/hedonistic persons. Therefore, findings reject the use of adapted communication strategies for specific target groups regarding Carsharing. Furthermore, results indicate the importance of advertisement elements that symbolize biospheric values.

To counter the alarming obesity epidemic, public health authorities have adopted front-of-pack (FOP) nutritional labels to promote healthier food choices (FDA 2017). One important FOP strategy is the use of color-coded labeling systems, such as the traffic light, which summarize food nutritional quality using colors (Thorndike et al. 2012). More recently, Europe public policy makers proposed a wider labeling coloring system, the five-color nutritional label (5CNL) (ANSP 2017). Considering the still underexplored research on the impact of the five-color nutritional label system, this research explores how the 5CNL influences the calorie content of purchases made in a university cafeteria during 3 weeks. Importantly, this research assesses the impact of the 5CNL at two moments: at the first moment of exposition to the label and after some days of exposition to the same. In the first week, we measured sales at baseline (control) without any label. Next, we calculated the nutritional grade for the 45 products available (e.g., sandwiches, salads) and labeled them with 5CNL. We then measured sales in the first (5CNL first contact) and second week of exposition (continued 5CNL). Signage describing the 5CNL was also posted in visible areas of the cafeteria. Products’ calorie content (Kcal) was used as our key dependent variable. The data collection generated 2357 purchase observations (781 = control, 899 = 5CNL first contact, and 677 = 5CNL continued contact). A one-way ANOVA with 5CNL condition (control vs. first contact vs. continued contact) entered as a between-subjects factor predicting calories per product purchased revealed a main effect of condition (F(2,2351) = 11.633, p < .001). Specifically, we found no difference between control and 5CNL first contact (p = .231), but the calories per product decreased in the 5CNL continued contact in comparison with the control (Mcontrol = 457.34 vs. Mcontinued = 415.85, p = .001) and with the 5CNL first contact (Mfirst=470.74 vs. Mcontinued = 415.85, p < .001). We also assessed whether the 5CNL impacted the percentage of healthy products (A/B) and unhealthy products (D/E) sold. While we did not find differences in the distribution of sales among all grades (p > .05), we found an interesting phenomenon on the sales within unhealthy products. In the 5CNL first contact, product D sales increased (7.9% to 21.7%, p < .01) and product E decreased (16.3% to 7.8%, p < .05). Meanwhile, in the 5CNL continued contact, product D sales decreased (9.2%, p < .01) and product E slightly increased (11.7%). We propose that this initial increase in product D sales might be associated to the fact that consumers expected these items (e.g., muffins) to be worst in nutritional quality than their actual grade (D), what increased purchases. Overall, this research shows that the 5CNL decreased the average of calories per product purchased. Importantly, the effect of the 5CNL was not immediate but effective after a continued exposition, what reinforces that the impact of FOP nutritional labels is conditioned to consumers’ awareness and capacity to comprehend them. Future studies will explore how consumers’ initial expectations impact 5CNL effectiveness.References Available Upon Request

Consumers often pay for consumption events up front. For example, consumers may pay an entrance fee for a food festival. However, research has yet to investigate how this prepayment affects consumers’ subsequent consumption decisions. We investigate the effect of prepayment in the form of money or time on escalation of commitment and consumers’ inclination to indulge and spend.We propose that prepayment escalates commitment toward the course of action (Kahneman and Tversky 1979), causing consumers to make unexpected decisions as they attempt to validate their initial investment. Our research differs from traditional investigations of escalation of commitment: rather than investing in a failed project, people who prepay make decisions focused more on justifying the initial prepayment than on making a good decision. Because benefits of hedonic consumption are more salient and immediately gratifying (Homburg et al. 2006), consumers should seek to validate their initial investment (i.e., prepayment) by choosing more indulgent options that offer immediate positive feedback.Our initial field study demonstrates that people who prepay for a buffet are more likely to choose indulgent drinks and desserts than people who pay at the end of the meal. In the first experiment, participants who imagined prepaying for a festival had a higher tendency to choose more indulgent options and were more likely to pay extra than those who were expected to pay after food selection, upon exiting the festival. The second experiment tests anticipation of prepayment (i.e., whether the prepayment was anticipated) and the type of prepayment (i.e., money vs. time) as moderators. Time is more subjective than money, and people typically underestimate anticipated time costs (Neumann and Friedman 1980) but overestimate unanticipated time costs (Antonides et al. 1991). In line with this prior research, when prepayment was anticipated, participants exhibited more indulgent behavior when payment was monetary versus nonmonetary. Conversely, when prepayment was unanticipated, paying with time resulted in more indulgent behavior than did paying with money.Marketers may be wise to advertise online daily coupons (e.g., coupons which require an upfront payment to offer steep discounts on services) with high acquisition costs to target hedonic (indulgent) services. Additionally, the notion that behavioral prepayment (i.e., prepaying in time) induces temptation can be effectively employed in practice. Marketers should avoid alerting their customers of time costs associated with a consumption experience. Doing so may result in consumers spending and indulging more in subsequent consumption decisions.References Available Upon Request

One of the main research areas in business relationship management is relationship quality. In particular, research on business relationship marketing widely identifies the benefits of developing close buyer-supplier relations to gain enhanced trust, commitment, satisfaction, coordination, cooperation as well as long-term orientation to the relationship (Skarmeas et al. 2008). While literature recognizes the importance of these constructs as key measures of relationship quality, there is a lack of consensus in the literature on how these three constructs influence each other in business relationships. Also, the distinction between early stages of business relationships and ongoing ones is often neglected in this context.To contribute to a sound theory development, this study aims therefore at further validating the nomological framework initially tested by Svensson et al. (2010) and that the subsequent studies have been compiled by Padin et al. (2017). Subsequently, the research objective is to validate whether satisfaction is a mediator between trust and commitment on the one side and cooperation, coordination and continuity on the other.The sample for this study comprises a total of 400 SMEs in Puerto Rico from various industrial sectors. A total of 133 usable questionnaires were returned, generating a response rate of 33.2%. A five-point Likert-type scale was used for all items using strongly agree (5) and strongly disagree (1) as the end points. We performed confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling (Jöreskog and Sörbom 1976) to test the measurement model and to assess the structural relationships of the conceptual model between the included constructs in a sample based upon Puerto Rican business relationships. We also performed a confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement model; this consisted of 18 indicator variables.Our testing of the model provided support for satisfactory validation of findings. The goodness-of-fit measures were fair (Hair et al. 2006, pp. 745–749). The variance extracted from all constructs exceeds 50% in each ranging from 64 to 84%, which provides support for convergent validity. The composite trait reliability levels of all included constructs are above 0.7 ranging from 0.86 to 0.94, which provide support for reliability. The hypothesized relationships of the model were all significant, which confirms nomological validity.The findings in this study and previous studies indicate that the model is valid across company sizes, such as from small to medium and large ones. The findings also indicate that the hypothesized relationships between the relationship quality constructs (i.e. trust, commitment, satisfaction, cooperation, coordination and continuity expectance) are valid in the ongoing business relationships.References Available Upon Request

This study aims at gaining a deeper understanding of customer profiling and behaviour in Iberian marketing and cross-border tourism destinations, in specific the case of Galicia-North of Portugal Euroregion. The study is developed under a niche marketing perspective. It is our view that niche marketing is not confined to the limits of national markets. Previous studies suggest that cross-border regions are an attractive notion, yet they require further theoretical and empirical research. There is still a gap in the understanding of destination management in cross-border regions and the customer profile and motivations. Overall this research attempts to produce a deeper understanding of the profile and behaviour of consumers in tourism settings, addressing the predisposition for the destination in specific contexts (i.e. Galicia-North of Portugal Euroregion). The study proposes influencers of customer behaviour and attitudes (e.g. involvement, place attachment and tourist satisfaction) in the context of cross-border tourism destinations. Under an interdisciplinary perspective, this research brings together inputs from marketing, tourism and local economics. A theoretical model is developed specifying antecedents of satisfaction and loyalty in cross-border tourism regions. Implications for future research are also presented.References Available Upon Request

Merck KGaA is a global science and technology company, focusing on the healthcare industry, life science, and performance materials. Merck in Portugal is a relatively small subsidiary with a midsized office employing approximately 114 employees. Merck S.A. Portugal focuses mainly on the healthcare market. As the company went through a major transformation in 2016, it created a need to communicate on a low-cost basis and, in an efficient way, using digital as its main channel. The current paper shows the implementation of an employee advocacy strategic plan as a solution to digital communication. Employee advocacy is a new communications concept derived from employee social media usage and employee word of mouth. It has been noted that employee networks are wider than company’s own and employee word of mouth is more trustworthy. Before the tool could be implemented, a research on what motivates employees to commit to brand citizenship behavior was performed. Findings revealed that in the case of Merck S.A. Portugal employees, individual internal drive and brand knowledge are factors affecting willingness to share on social media. Based on the results, a series of internal strategies were applied on- and offline.

Sustainability has become a movement with tremendous influence in the way organizations and policy makers design their strategies (Griskevicius et al. 2010). Given the detrimental effects of pollution and overuse of nonrenewable resources, it is essential that scholars understand both the nature of and how they can impact pro-environmental behavior (Bamberg and Möser 2007). Despite the wide availability of pro-environmental options, barriers to adopting pro-environmental behaviors are still common (Dietz et al. 2003), and past strategies undertaken by government and nonprofit organizations to encourage such behavior have achieved only limited success. Indeed, individuals are sometimes resistant to change, and few take action beyond the specific encouraged behavior (Whitmarsh 2009). Thus, marketers and policy makers can play an important role by creating messages that are effective both in educating and persuading individuals to take on a more pro-environmental mode of behavior.This research aims to better understand what motivates consumers to express sustainable intentions and what factors interfere in their decisions. Building on the literature, this research evaluates under which conditions certain factors (perceived support H1a, green attitude H1b, self-identity H1c, and perceived control H1d) may have a more significant effect on green behavior. In the literature, perceived behavioral control can be divided into two dimensions: self-efficacy and controllability. In addition, this project explores how the impact of these four factors will vary depending on the perceived degree of difficulty of the behavior (H2). Indeed, the more difficult is the behavior, the more we expect factors other than attitude to influence individuals’ behaviors.The authors conducted a study to understand the different motives for pro-environmental behaviors. The questionnaire was administered during an ATP tennis tournament in France.The results demonstrate that perceived control, perceived support, and self-identity can be used to convince and also expand the different sustainable options for consumers. Indeed, those variables can help consumers realize that they have more options that are sustainable. Different factors influence individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors, and depending on the perceived difficulty of the behavior, different strategies can be used to trigger more sustainable actions. The research findings can benefit the community on two levels: commercial organizations in the design of message-based pro-environmental social responsibility initiatives and governments and nonprofit pro-environmental organizations in the improvement of their education and persuasion strategies.References Available Upon Request

This research focuses on the importance of digital marketing as a skillset for existing marketers and new marketing graduates. George Day (2011) comments that [marketers’] “strategies are not keeping up with the disruptive effects of technology-empowered customers; the proliferation of media, channel, and customer contact points; or the possibilities for microsegmentation. Closing the widening gap between the accelerating complexity of their markets and the limited ability of their organizations to respond demands new thinking about marketing capabilities” (p. 183). Indeed, the dearth of relevant training in digital marketing skills is evidenced by a growing skills gap and value gap between marketers with established knowledge and experience in digital marketing and those who have not had the opportunity or inclination to incorporate digital marketing into their skills base (Royle and Laing 2014). This increasing skills gap begs the question as to the relevance of digital marketing as a necessary skills set for marketers and what can be done by training institutions to close the skills gap presented. To answer this research question, two studies were completed: Firstly, a multi-method approach was employed to establish what skills were deemed necessary by marketers, their employers, and their clients. From here a second study established the exact manner in which marketers looking to upskill would like to learn new skills and practices. Implications for marketing organizations and managers wishing to benefit their client base with digital marketing solutions are provided as well as contributions to our understanding of how best to enable digital marketing skills to be taught to a varied population base looking to upskill.References Available Upon Request

Nowadays, firms have realized the importance of using the Internet-based technology for supporting services to their customers and suppliers. For achieving a higher value in operating activities, firms must emphasize on R&D and technological development to fit with customer needs and develop the capabilities for searching and acquiring information via e-business tools. Thus, it is important for firms to know how to acquire market information to satisfy customers’ needs. In this vein, electronic marketing (e-Marketing) is regarded as a strategic weapon for firms to accomplish it. It not only includes the deployment of marketing activities in the Internet but also includes using technology to support services for customers. Drawing on the concept of fit, this present research tries to explore the effect of fit between market orientation and IT adoption strategy on e-Marketing orientation (the antecedents of e-Marketing orientation). Empirical data for hypothesis testing are collected from top-ranked companies in Taiwan, yielding 140 valid samples. Performance implications of fit are examined using fit as covariation approach. The findings indicated that the fit of market orientation and IT adoption strategy plays an important role in explaining e-Marketing orientation.

The rapid global expansion of marketers from one emerging market to another such as countries in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and the Middle East is dramatically changing the landscape of international business relationships. A leading example is Chinese firms in African countries. The element of trust is highlighted in such emerging market relationships that involve large investments from multiple constituents with diverging and sometimes conflicting objectives. Our study provides a broader, more encompassing macromarketing framework by investigating interfirm trust between two emerging markets from an institutional perspective. Our study develops the interfirm trust concept in the context of Chinese businesses in Africa on the bases of extant literature, field interviews, and observations focused mainly on three African countries (Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa). Drawing from trust theory and institutional theory, our study focuses on how cross-level factors influence or are influenced by the meso-level inter-firm trust between emerging markets and reveals three dimensions for the inter-firm trust concept and both trustor and trustee factors influence the perception of Chinese businesses in Africa. Macromarketing and practical implications for building and managing interfirm trust at a multilevel between emerging markets are also discussed.References Available Upon Request

Whereas several studies have investigated cultural values and entrepreneurship in terms of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions from a Western-world “lens,” we take a slightly different approach in that three of our six Ghanaian cultural values intersect with three of Hofstede’s dimensions (i.e., power distance, collectivism, and masculinity-femininity). Thus, six traditional Ghanaian cultural values (i.e., godliness, belief in paranormal activities, character or moral value, respect for the elderly, a sense of community, and the sanctity of man) are juxtaposed with entrepreneurial features allowing us to put forward potential relationship between culture and entrepreneurial behavior. Zoogah (2013) writes that, unlike American cultures, research in anthropology, sociology, and psychology shows that sub-Saharan African cultures are collectivistic, cooperative, and less autonomous. Ghanaian culture, for instance, is consistent with sub-Saharan African culture in that individuals think of not only themselves and their immediate family but also their extended family members (Zoogah 2013). Ghanaians, like sub-Saharan Africans (see Oppong 2003), depend on and provide support to one another, offering guidance and behavioral modeling for younger members. Our discussion implies and assumes these underlying commonalities and affinities running through sub-Saharan African and, specifically, Ghanaian culture.In Ghana, whether the entrepreneur may be a small retailer, a small business owner, someone engaged in a street venture, or someone engaged in an informal or formal venture or engaged in family-owned or nonfamily-owned enterprises, the influence of culture still prevails. Godliness can have negative or positive influence depending on the circumstances. While belief in paranormal activities is likely to have a negative influence on entrepreneurial activity, doing the right thing and retaining moral character can have a positive influence, whereas doing the wrong things can have a negative influence on entrepreneurial activity. Respect for elderly and authority may restrict value expressiveness and hinder innovativeness. At the same time, the sense of community may help pool resources together for investment and may even get different entrepreneurs to cooperate but can drain resources for entrepreneurial activity. In addition, it may also hinder growth or expansion in order to lower family demand on the fruits of the enterprise. Hence, the sense of community is likely to have a positive or negative impact on entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, sanctity of man is likely to have a positive or negative influence on entrepreneurial activity at least from the Ghanaian perspective.From these inferences and deductions, one concludes that Ghanaian culture, and by extension, African culture, largely, influences entrepreneurship. In light of the fact that Ghanaians live in multidimensional social arenas comprising of their traditional society and immediate community (i.e., extended families), entrepreneurs are compelled to redefine their position and their roles as they confront different situations by exploiting social ties and social settings.References Available Upon Request

The aim of the zou chuqu policy implemented by the Chinese government has been to provide the legal and financial means as well as clear objectives to Chinese companies so that they internationalized their activities rapidly. In this context, Chinese companies have rapidly deployed their business abroad over the past 15 years but must now resolve the issue of the definition of the most appropriate brand policies to reach their goals in a more complex international business context.In this research, we rely on the work of Mathews (2002, 2006) who considers that the accelerated internationalization pace of multinational companies in emerging countries is the result of a triple phenomenon, conceptualized under the linkage-leverage-learning (LLL) model.Although its initial scope is clearly within the field of corporate strategy, we have sought to operationalize Mathew’s paradigm in the area of brand management, in this case brand policies of Chinese companies in their desire to conquer consumers around the world. This migration of the model is justified insofar as the brand policy in the context of the internationalization of business is much more of a strategic choice than a marketing choice.An explanatory model was created which leads to three branding strategy options which may be implemented by Chinese companies in the zou chuqu context. Each of these brand policies illustrates a historical adage characteristic of Chinese culture and defines an attitude to adopt in certain circumstances and power relations.The analysis thus highlights the originality of the Chinese dynamic of brand development in an international context. The strategies of conquest of Chinese groups are marked by the multi-millennial culture of the country, and the research rehabilitates the role of culture in the field of brand strategy while at the same time paving the way for new agendas in the field of international marketing.Also, with a reasonable degree of plausibility, the three strategic branding policies are reinforcing the contingency perspective of international marketing according to which brand policy may depend on company criteria as well as on foreign market specificities.References Available Upon Request

The literature as to what makes marketing communication for hi-tech products more effective is an area of interest for marketers. This study compares story-based reviews with technical reviews and tests narrative paradigm theory (NPT) (Fisher 1984, 1987) and its constituent of narrative believability in the context of smart TVs. The choice of this sector is driven by the hi-tech nature of this industry, its rapid market growth, and an expanding market as customers increasingly switch to smart TVs. Product characteristics (Floyd et al. 2014) and price (Bodur et al. 2015) are known to impact the need and intensity of Internet search behavior conducted by customers before purchase. Given these features, customers purchasing a smart TV undertake considerable Internet search. Various websites exist that host reviews for different smart TVs in the market. This study departs from the idea that a narrative-based review of a durable product has a stronger impact on narrative persuasion and purchase intention than an argumentative-based review that makes use of highly technical language. An experimental format is adopted where subjects, receive as treatment, review with either an argumentative or story-based content. The experiment reveals that narrative believability for a story-based narrative is higher than that for an argumentative review, but the effect of narrative believability on purchase intention exhibits no significant difference for the two types of content. Implications for management are discussed, limitations are noted, and directions for future research are indicated.References Available Upon Request

A key goal for any company dealing with big data today is to reinforce the brand’s opportunities to target users/customers through social networks. On the other hand, concerns about online privacy are being raised more frequently, especially regarding social networks, and perceptions slightly differ between users about the way brands use their big data. Understanding how trust is built, depending on the consumer’s attitude, remains a question of paramount importance for brands using social networks in order to better understand what users apprehend when using them. Some brands therefore attempt to answer this by modifying their privacy policies.This paper aims to provide a framework for understanding where the fears of social network users lie regarding the security of their data on these platforms. To this end, this study adds to the literature in the operationalization of the privacy concerns of social networks with a 15-item scale developed by Smith et al. (1996) and measures the user’s attitude toward privacy concerns thanks to a new scale of 8 items developed by Pelet and Taieb (2017). A quantitative study based on an online survey involving 380 participants has been conducted in order to examine the effects of privacy concerns displayed by social networks themselves on users’ attitudes and trust. Results show significant effects of social networks’ privacy concerns on users’ attitudes. These attitudes in turn have a positive influence on trust and a mediating effect on the link between privacy concerns and users’ trust. The study also adds to the literature by showing how social networks could approach the gathering of data differently, i.e., by being more transparent about their use of the data collected and explaining the reasons for accessing particular data. An interesting example would be apps which ask for answers to short questions before being installed on handheld devices. The results could help brands to manage their relationship with users in order to favor positive attitudes leading to the establishment of trust and, therefore, more engagement from users with the potential to become customers.References Available Upon Request

Social network sites (SNS) have become a major platform for online global communications (Brathwaite and Patterson 2011). People around the world are spending an overwhelming amount of time using SNS. In 2014, the average Chinese usage time for social media was 1.50 h per day with 88% of all social media users being active in at least one social media network ( https://www.statista.com/topics/1170/social-networks-in-china/ ). Time spent on SNS is part of user experience that can potentially enhance trust in the network.SNS are service-oriented systems that emphasize community, communication, conversation, and collaboration (Murugesan 2007). In order for a SNS to thrive, its users must be engaged with the network as well as with other members (Dwyer et al. 2007). The level of engagement of SNS users is often a function of how much they trust the various sites. Therefore, in order for SNS to thrive, trust in SNS is critical. This research explored the role of Chinese user experience on SNS trust. We investigated the influence of user’s experience in terms of social network membership, length of daily usage, and perceived enjoyment.Data was gathered from students enrolled in an e-commerce course in China University of Geosciences, Beijing. Using regression analysis, we found that temporal variables such as longevity in membership and daily usage do not influence trust. However, the perceived enjoyment experienced by college-aged Chinese users had a strong influence on trusting social networks.It was surprising to find out that user experience, in terms of longevity and daily usage, was not impactful. Perhaps, this is because of user expectations in the functions performed by all social media platforms in China. That is, because SNS in China is highly integrated with e-commerce and payment solutions, the expectation of trust is common in all Chinese social media platforms regardless of temporal longevity in usage. We found that perceived enjoyment impacted trust. This finding suggests the importance of developing the appropriate content to entice Chinese users.References Available Upon Request

Organizations that aspire to achieve competitive advantage must be aware of rapid changes in their markets. The relationships between strategic organizational orientations and performance have been investigated. While marketing studies have tested the direct positive effect of customer orientation (CO) on firm performance, most of these studies have ignored the role of dynamic environments as a potential moderator of this effect. Notably, performance depends on strategy but also involves the adjustment of the organization strategy to external environments (Calantone et al. 2003). Here, we define performance as a unidimensional scale, which reflects firms’ performance compared to competitors. Against this background, we developed and tested a model, which examined the impact of CO on performance while accounting for the moderating role of environmental dynamism, captured as market turbulence (MT). Our major purpose is to examine and identify the role of MT as moderator between CO and performance. Following Homburg et al. (2011), we define CO as a two-dimensional construct: functional and relational customer orientation. The MT scale was taken from Jaworski and Kohli (1993), and performance was taken from Shoham and Fiegenbaum (2002). We hypothesize that the greater the MT, the stronger the relationship between CO and firm performance.Data were collected through a professional online panel company. The sample included 198 managers in Israeli organizations, who responded to a questionnaire with 7-point scales (1 = strongly disagree to 7 =strongly agree). All scales were reliable with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient exceeding 0.70 (Nunnally 1978).Before running the model, we accounted for MT as a moderator by defining two subgroups of MT (low and high) where the median of MT was the cutoff point..Using structural equation modeling (SEM) via AMOS software, the results of the measurement model indicate a good fit with χ2 = 636.61, DF = 327, χ2/DF = 1.95, p = .00, IFI = .95, CFI = .95, TLI = .94, and RMSEA = .05.Then we conducted two distinct models. First, we ran a model without the MT moderator. The data indicated a positive and significant impact of CO on firm performance. The second model included the MT moderator, and the results indicate that in high level of MT, the impact of CO on firm performance is greater compared to its impact under low levels of MT.The findings provide several managerial implications. Managers should strive to enhance CO in order to achieve strong firm performance. Only by doing so can they capitalize on opportunities and respond to competitive threats in the marketplace. Managers should devote attention to environmental dynamism. CO is especially crucial when market turbulence is high.References Available Upon Request

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) expand into international markets either with brand names (OBM, original brand manufacturing) or without brand names (OEM, original equipment manufacturing). OEMs and OBMs have different core competitive advantages: OEMs offer low-cost production, while OBMs provide advanced design and branding (Lee et al. 2015). According to the resource-based view (RBV), brand name is an imperfectly imitable asset (e.g., Barney 2001) that enhances SMEs’ competitive advantages. While the international activities associated with OBMs and OEMs differ, the impact of brand names on internationalization is limited in the literature. Built on the RBV, this study examined the differences between OBM and OEM in terms of SMEs’ commitment to marketing and technology, activities (speed, scale, and scope), and performance in international markets. The hypotheses were tested by examining SMEs in South Korea due to the ample existence of OEM and OBM among SMEs as a result of the country’s export-led global growth.A sampling frame of 3,000 manufacturing SMEs in exporting was developed based on a nationwide database taken from the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The final 395 useable questionnaires were completed by the executives contacted. Internationalization speed was operationalized using the elapsed time span between the year of the first international sales and the year of establishment. Scale and scope were operationalized by the number of countries entered and the number of continents entered, respectively. International performance was measured by export volume and the sales ratio in Asia over total sales in the previous year. The hierarchical logistic regression was adopted after firm size, firm age, and product type were controlled.The findings of this study showed that Korean small- and medium-sized OBMs invested more in technology and overseas marketing than did small- and medium-sized OEMs, thus reaping higher sales in Asia despite the smaller number of countries that they entered. However, internationalization speed, scope, and export volume did not differ between OBMs and OEMs. Overall, the results revealed the importance of branding for SME internationalization. As the findings of this study may be context-specific, future studies should therefore test the proposed hypotheses in other countries to clearly understand the implications of SME brand ownership for internationalization.References Available Upon Request

Givers of luxury gifts face recipients with different levels of expertise and have choices of gifts that can range from experiential to enduring in nature. Inspired by a study undertaken by Belk (1982), the current research seeks to develop a framework that allows the classification of different levels of involvement of the gift giver, based on their conjectures about the expertise of the recipients and the lasting or ephemeral nature of the gift.Following a precedent set by Paschen et al. (2016), we modify Berthon et al.’s (2009) aesthetics and ontology framework. The latter classifies luxury brands based on their aesthetic and ontological modes and is defined by the aesthetic end points of novice and expert and the ontological dichotomy of transience vs. enduring. In our modification, we develop four specific recipient categories based on the perceived expertise of the intended recipient representing the aesthetic mode and the endurance or ephemerality of the gift described in the ontological mode. The resultant typology identifies the “classic collector,” “skillful user,” “neophyte consumer,” and “paying magpie,” assigning different levels of product and task involvement to each category. In doing this, we add detail to the perspective taken in Belk’s original study on the separate aspects of involvement, where product involvement represents an enduring construct, whereas task involvement is situationally oriented and thus temporary rather than ongoing.We also present numerous implications to practice, providing insights into modifications to the marketing mix that luxury goods marketers may consider, depending on the different consumer group they are targeting. Marketing for expert gift recipients is well aligned with classic traits of luxury—emphasizing the exclusivity permeating through the price, the purchase experience, and the product itself. Gifts intended for novices, on the other hand, have to be universally known and widely available without diluting the exclusive premise of luxury. Enduring gifts generally increase the task involvement of the gift giver and therefore require marketing efforts that reduce the perceived risk. We conclude with several suggestions for further validation of the framework and related research that may arise out of this work.References Available Upon Request

Luxury industry and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activates are generally considered as incompatible concepts by consumers. This is because luxury is generally related to hedonism, excess, and ostentation, while CSR is generally based on sobriety, moderation, and ethics. However, nowadays more and more luxury companies seem highly committed toward sustainability. For example, Tiffany started certifying its diamonds as “conflict-free,” Chanel incorporated “earthy materials” in its 2016 collection, and Bulgari has recently funded restoration of Rome’s Spanish Steps. Therefore, it seems plausible the presence of a certain compatibility degree between luxury and CSR activities. However, this issue has received very limited empirical investigation from marketing literature. As a consequence, the present research aims to empirically test whether and under what conditions consumers react to different kinds of luxury companies’ CSR initiatives. Using Carroll’s four-dimension model of internal vs. external CSR, we argue and demonstrated that luxury companies’ internal (versus external) CSR initiatives increase willingness to buy luxury products, but mainly for those customers who buy luxury for internal motivations and not for status ostentation, as, for example, individual style and personal taste.References Available Upon Request

Existing research on use of social media marketing (SMM) by luxury brands reports that despite the contradiction between the luxury appeals of exclusivity, uniqueness, and status and the accessibility of social media (SM) channels to broad masses around the world, SMM enhances consumer trust and intimacy with luxury brands (Kim and Ko 2010), brand and relationship equity (Kim and Ko 2012), as well as consumer-brand engagement and brand evangelism (Dhaoui 2014). Given the increasing interest in and use of SMM by luxury brands, with the correspondingly growing marketing allocations to SM, it is important to understand how and why luxury consumers interact with their favorite brands, and what potential these interactions may have for luxury brand meaning co-creation. In the past decade, marketing scholars have noticeably moved away from conceptualizing brands as “controllable knowledge structures” and consumers as “passive absorbers of brand knowledge” (Gensler et al. 2013, p. 243). Still, research is lacking in the areas investigating specific behaviors that represent consumers’ input into the process of brand meaning co-creation in SM and the drivers of consumer participation in this process (Alexander and Jaakkola 2016).To address these issues, we investigated discrete behaviors that reflect luxury consumers’ SM engagement in conjunction with their underlying motivations by conducting a content analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews with shoppers inside Paris designer stores. Our findings indicate that consumer engagement behaviors have different potentials for luxury brand meaning contribution depending on the following aspects: (1) intended audience (other brand users, personal social network, and/or the brand), (2) intensity of the effort (from “likes,” shares, and hashtags to active content creation), (3) content creation medium utilized (textual, visual, or hybrid), (4) dominant motivational drivers (singular or combined, intrinsic or extrinsic), and (5) degree of creative input (from merely mentioning or reproducing the luxury purchase to modifying or reinterpreting its consumption). Results indicate that luxury marketers should monitor brand mentions and hashtags in all SM and should not ignore consumers who engage with other SM users as their main audience, since these interactions can help or hurt the brand due to their virality and potential for introducing undesired associations. By monitoring SM for brand mentions and hashtags, brands have an opportunity to timely intercept these discourses. By creating premium and aesthetically inspiring digital content, luxury brands will encourage more mindful appreciation on the part of their customers, reducing the triviality of consumer-generated content and avoiding negative and brand irrelevant associations.References Available Upon Request

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward counterfeit fashion goods and their “face-saving,” materialistic, and ethical values. The topic of this study coincides with the conference theme “finding new ways to engage and satisfy global consumers” while also addressing a significant and costly challenge for luxury fashion brands today: counterfeits. Since entering the global marketplace and joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has rapidly become the world’s largest fashion producer, exporter, and marketplace for fashion and luxury goods, including counterfeit goods.An online questionnaire (with a specific URL address) was utilized to collect data related to the purposes of this study. Scales measuring Chinese consumers’ attitudes of counterfeit apparel and participants’ “face-saving,” materialistic, and ethical values were included in the instrument. The sample included Chinese men and women between the ages of 18 and 64 living in four representative cities in China: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Chengdu. These cities have sustained continual economic growth and maintain the largest fashion marketplaces in mainland China. A total of 1,199 Chinese consumers participated in the study.Overall, an analysis of the data showed that participants held strong “face-saving” values, a moderate level of ethical values, and a high level of materialistic values. Regression analyses showed a significant positive relationship between participants’ “face-saving” values and attitudes toward counterfeit fashion goods; a significant positive relationship between the level of materialism among participants and their attitudes toward counterfeit fashion brands was also noted. A significant inverse relationship was discovered between participants’ ethics and attitudes toward counterfeits, meaning, the lower ethical standards held by participants, the greater their attitudes toward counterfeits.Future research should investigate the relationships between additional cultural, social, and individual values as often applied in consumer psychological research. Additional research should also examine if demographic variables, including income level, gender, age, and region of residency, within Mainland China have a significant impact on Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward Western luxury fashion brands. Finally, a more complete understanding of Chinese consumers’ attitudes and values and intended purchasing behavior of counterfeit goods is warranted. This could be valuable in deterring the dominance of counterfeit markets in China.References Available Upon Request

The present study explores the role of the Mexican executive women in using their erotic capital as brand association to build personal branding in the workplace. Using a qualitative method by means of the Delphi technique and consenting participants, the authors conducted the study in three stages with subsequent questionnaires. During the first stage, 50 in-depth interviews were submitted to women as managers in executive positions. The intention of the first questionnaire was to estimate the interquartile space. This approach assists in examining the phenomenon in its natural setting, providing considerable flexibility during interviews and observations. Four variables from erotic capital were considered: beauty, sexual attractiveness, social skills, and social presentation. The intention of the subsequent questionnaires was to reduce the interquartile space, that is, when the expert’s opinion deviates from the group’s opinion, requiring the median of the obtained responses. The second stage provides to each expert their colleagues’ opinions and opens an interdisciplinary discussion to reach a consensus about the results and the conception of knowledge on the subject. The intention of the third consultation was to obtain a closer approximation to a consensus.Results confirm that beauty and social presentation components influence erotic capital as part of the personal branding. Women executives cannot undervalue the weight of the erotic capital—mostly due to cultural reasons and strongly ingrained habits in our society—we tend to highlight logical, rational, and objective thinking aspects above capacities like intuition and emotional intelligence that are close to the perceptions that people have over personal image and erotic capital. From a theoretical perspective, the study provided further understanding of the value to create secondary personal brand associations such as beauty and social presentation, as an element of power and success for women in the workplace.References Available Upon Request

Nowadays, it is crucial for companies to connect more with consumers and to create emotional brand connections (Malär et al. 2011). Brand managers need to understand how people can express themselves and reflect their identities through their product consumption. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals can use brands to identify with a specific reference group (Escalas and Bettman 2005), to differentiate themselves from undesired groups (Berger and Heath 2007), and to boost their self-esteem (Sirgy 1982). This research explores what is the importance of identity-related brand personality in the creation of self-brand connections. For example, does the sincere, wholesome, and truthful brand personality of Dove reach more the actual self of consumers with its endearing aspect, while the glamorous, sexy, and charming aspect of Victoria’s Secret triggers more the ideal self of consumers? Drawing on the literature on personal and social identity, this paper investigates the effects of the self-concept of identity on the self-brand connections for different brand personalities to determine how brands can focalize on the bonding between the brand and the self-concept.The authors propose the congruence between self-concept and brand personality that leads to stronger self-brand connections. Therefore, the influence of the individual actual self on self-brand connections is stronger for sincere brands (H1). The influence of the individual ideal self on self-brand connections is stronger for sophisticated brands (H2). Furthermore, the presence of identity threat leads to stronger self-brand connections for the corresponding brand personality (sincere and sophisticated). Finally, the identity threat moderates the effect of the primed identity (actual self and ideal self) on self-brand connections for the different brand personalities.The authors conducted several studies (surveys and experiments) that supported the influence of congruence between the self-concept and the brand personality on self-brand connections. In addition, the studies demonstrate the moderating effect of different identity threats on these relationships. Indeed, the effect of congruence was positive only when threat-relevant identity had first been primed but was negative when threat-irrelevant identity had first been primed. In conclusion, the present research expands our knowledge about the role of self-concept by demonstrating its effects on self-brand connections for different brand personalities. The present results demonstrate that managers should consider the congruence between consumers’ identity and their brand personality to create stronger connections with the consumers.References Available Upon Request

The myth of “The Underdog” has over centuries inspired the imagination of people across cultures and has become a kind of brain script or archetype of our times (Woodside et al. 2008; Wertime 2002; Jung 2014). An underdog has been defined as someone with disadvantages but passion and determination, and the effect that many of us emotionally support the underdog is called the underdog effect (Paharia et al. 2011).In marketing, it has often been argued that consumers prefer market leaders and famous brands over lesser established competitors (Steenkamp et al. 2003), and therefore the underdog effect has received less attention than in other areas. Despite this, Holt (1998, 2002) and Tian and McKenzie (2001) argue that some consumers prefer underdog brands for moral reasons. Wolburg (2003: 351) uses the example of Double-Cola to show that underdog brands give their customers the feeling that they indeed “own” the brand. Kao (2015), Stock and Gierl (2015), and Paharia et al. (2011) discuss how companies like Apple, Nike, or Diesel use their underdog brand biographies to point out how their founders started from a humble position to overcome obstacles, and Paharia et al. (2011) show that this resonates the strongest with consumers who see themselves as an underdog, too (also see McGinnis and Gentry 2009).Building on a structured literature analysis, our research which is still in progress develops a conceptual model of the underdog effect in the context of brands. The framework is validated by the results of various case studies. We argue that the underdog effect which can be interpreted as the consumers’ reaction to the brand’s activities consists of a positive attitude and attachment toward the underdog brand. It builds on factors that are internal to the brand. Those factors include (a) a company culture that rewards competing proactively; (b) products and services that seem to be manufactured with care and are characterized by a high degree of customization; (c) emotionally connected employees who strive for service excellence and show an appreciative attitude; (d) target groups whose members are low on materialism, show a need for uniqueness, an empathic concern, and embrace nostalgia; and (e) a brand positioning which explicitly emphasizes its distinctiveness, the brand’s history of disadvantage and struggling and the story of how this was overcome, the role and vision of its founders, and the passion of the employees.References Available Upon Request

Recent marketing studies highlight the increasing cultural diversity around the world, whether in terms of consumer demography, brandscapes and product flows, transnational imagined communities, or lived realities in given places (Cayla and Eckhardt 2008; Demangeot et al. 2015). The unprecedented cultural heterogeneity and interconnectedness of global markets point to a need to understand what occurs when cultures meet, sometimes aligning and in other instances colliding with one another. More specifically, how consumers and marketers culturally identify and adapt to or resist cultural “others” and the resulting impacts on meanings, perceptions, choices, and strategies form critical knowledge gaps (Izberk-Bilgin 2012).Consistent with the 2018 AMS World Marketing Congress theme of “Finding New Ways to Engage and Satisfy Customers,” we present a special session to explore cultural identity and adaptation in global marketplaces. The conference recognizes that global forces are bringing divergent cultures together, creating challenges and opportunities to find and reach new customers. We assemble four presentations, followed by discussions, offering critical methodological, conceptual, and empirical insights on cultural identity and adaptation in the global context: “Consumer Multicultural Identity Affiliation: A Framework for Segmentation in Multicultural Markets” by Eva Kipnis, Catherine Demangeot, and Chris Pullig; “Mono-ethnic Marketing Communications: Enhancing Ethnic Congruence or Manipulative Intent?” by Charles Chi Cui and Tana Cristina Licsandru; “The Acculturation of Firms in a Global Setting” by Cheryl Nakata; and “Acculturation, Enculturation, and Belongingness as Predictors of Ethnic Consumption Choices: Conceptualization and Model Testing” by Tana Licsandru and Charles Chi Cui.References Available Upon Request

Relationships of any kind are inherently layered, complex, and dynamic. While building brand loyalty and commitment depends on strengthening emotional bonds and actively engaging customers, consumer-brand relationships can fail for many different reasons: on one hand, customer turnover could be involuntary, e.g., due to a change in needs or the onset of naturally occurring life events, and on the other, consumers willingly terminate relationships with brands when they no longer like the brand. Unfortunately, there is insufficient knowledge about the emotional deterioration of brands in a multi-touch and multichannel marketplace.In this research, we examine the emotional language used in failed customer relationships, i.e., an existing or ongoing consumer-brand relationship where emotional valence shifts from positive to negative. A shift in the emotional valence of consumer-brand relationships is proposed to be different from the emotional responses experienced in discrete marketing transactions. This issue is explored using a qualitative research design to identify basic emotions expressed when consumer-brand relationships have spiraled downward.A review of the marketing and psychology literature suggests fruitful theories for studying what happens when relationships begin to fade emotionally. First, research on affect in personal relationships indicates a decrease in personal affection such as reduced attraction, liking or commitment signals a shift in the emotional valence of a close relationship and offers a warning about the relationship’s future.Second, most service failure and recovery studies covered transactional events that lacked the temporal dimension needed to effectively study emotional states in failed consumer-brand relationships. Inherent to the trajectory of established relationships is the ebb-and-flow of a dynamic and naturally maturing process; therefore, the cumulative rather than transaction-level effects of emotions are critical to understanding authentic customer responses in failed consumer-brand relationships.Third, the service failure literature has identified emotional responses such as anger, discontent, disappointment, self-pity, anxiety, and rage to be primary affective consequences to encounter-level service or described the roles of regret and revenge as emotional influences in service failure and recovery. Findings from these studies have not clearly distinguished the role of self vs other emotions when relationships start to spiral downward.Results from this research reveal the language of failed customer relationships and suggest how emotional bonds might weaken those relationships.References Available Upon Request

Research evidences the importance of entertainment and interaction between shoppers and salespeople. However, the entertainment factor has never been studied with the presence of the shopper’s emotional states as a mediator; also relationship with shoppers in previous studies is assessed as a part of the service quality factor along with other service attributes. Hence, this research evaluates the influence of entertainment and social interaction with salespeople on shopper satisfaction while taking into consideration the mediating role of the emotional states of the shopper.For this purpose, a convenience sample of mall shoppers was investigated. Data has been analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed research model.Our findings indicate, unlike the social factor, entertainment directly influences satisfaction. However, indirectly, social interaction with salespeople influences satisfaction through the emotional states. The current study fills the gap in research by showing that pleasure and dominance mediate the relationship between entertainment and social interaction with salespeople from one side and shoppers’ satisfaction from the other side.References Available Upon Request

Fear of crime is increasing worldwide despite falling crime rates, but little is known about its effects on consumers and consumption. Fear of crime increases stress, reduces health, creates no-go areas, changes consumer patterns of behavior, affects asset values, and reduces conspicuous consumption, among other effects (Becerra and Henriquez-Daza 2011; Mesch 2000; Moore and Shepherd 2006; Pope 2008; Riger and Gordon 1981; Visser et al. 2013). Fear of crime is cognitive and emotional assessment of perceived crime threats; it is a signal informing us of dangerous situations. Crime threats are assessed through perceptions of victimization and fear. Victimization risk relates to probability of becoming a victim of crime, and fear relates to emotional and/or physiological response to crime threats (Warr 2000). Drawing from literature across various disciplines, we postulate a framework to understand phenomenon, and test it using data from two countries to determine if cultural orientation affects influence of fear of crime on behavior. Findings indicate consumers’ behavior is negatively affected by fear of crime, but this effect varies across cultural orientations.References Available Upon Request

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a conceptual development of destination branding (DB) through the development of an integrative conceptual model. A self-administered survey of tourists from Porto and Norte (Portugal) was undertaken and resulted in a sample of 467 respondents. Multivariate statistics were analysed with structural equation modelling (SEM) using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences–Analysis of Moments Structures (SPSS–AMOS) software. We observed that brand associations influence significantly the brand image. We also discovered a positive relationship between perceived quality and brand image and a positive impact of perceived quality on satisfaction. Among other things, the model predicts that the effects of brand image and satisfaction explain tourist loyalty. We concluded that this integrative conceptual model, with more consistent measuring scales, is an original and relevant contribution since, in practical terms, the model and the data collection instrument (questionnaire) represent a new useful tool for the destination management organizations (DMO) to evaluate the DB of the tourist destination (TD).

While previous studies applying the push-pull framework have contributed to improve our understanding of the underlying motivation of visitors and their destination choice, these studies are based on cross-sectional data that offer a limited perspective of how motivation to visit a destination evolves overtime. There is currently no pooled cross-sectional study of either the push or pull factors of a destination. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the pull factors of a destination, New Zealand, over a 19-year period (1997–2015). The research questions for this study are: what types of activity-based tourist profile can be identified among visitors to New Zealand over this period? and are there differences between these profiles on tourist spending, length of stay, travel style (package versus independent), and demographic variables? The data for this study is sourced from the International Visitor Survey (IVS) by New Zealand’s Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which is the primary source of data for international visitors’ travel behavior in New Zealand. We employ a pooled cross-sectional design that uses data spanning the period from 1997 to 2015 to identify segments of tourists that have chosen similar activities during their holidays in New Zealand. The useable sample size for this study consists of 62,288 individuals. Nine typologies of visitors were found such as individuals favoring nature-based activities (Type 1). These individuals also have a propensity for adventure (Type 2), cultural (Type 3), and walking-based activities (Type 6). Other notable combinations include adventure (Type 2)/nightlife-based (Type 8) activities, cultural (Type 3)/high-value rides (Type 4)/museum (Type 5) activities, high-value rides (Type 4)/museum and zoo (Type 5) activities, and a negative relationship between golfing and fishing (Type 7)/nightlife (Type 8) activities. Of interest is also how the visitor typologies have changed over this time frame. The time-dependent changes in rotated factor correlations of most identified typologies reveal remarkable pattern fluctuations over time. The nine typologies were profiled on three travel behavior characteristics (travel style, tourist spending, and length of stay).References Available Upon Request

Tourists tend to shy away from places that appear to be unsafe. Does this mean that the opposite is true? Would tourists choose destinations based on how safe these destinations may be? For first-time travellers, destination advertising and communication help create images of the place and develop expectations on the travel experience. To what extent would communication safety influence travel intentions and how? Our study is based on an experimental design with data collected from an online tourist panel. In total, 100 US tourists aged 60 years and above who had never been to Dubrovnik before were selected to participate in the study. We selected the USA for data collection purposes because the USA has the second highest percentage of senior tourists in international tourism departures in this group, behind Germany (World Tourism Organization 2018). Although Germany ranks first regarding senior tourists, German respondents may be familiar with Dubrovnik due to geographical proximity. To reduce familiarity bias with Dubrovnik, the US sample was more suitable.Drawing on categorization and risk propensity literature, we explore how tourists interpret safety messages in destination communication, for a destination they have never visited before. Destination choices are often made with imperfect information, especially in the case of unfamiliar destinations with no past experience to rely on. Findings suggest that safety messages impact travel intentions. Tourists may view safety messages positively or negatively depending on individual risk propensity, and this influences their destination choice. For tourism policymakers and managers, the study sheds light on the important topic of destination safety for tourists. The growing awareness of terrorism may be making safety more important for tourists. Our study provides insights on how to segment the market in order to design effective advertisements to promote destinations.References Available Upon Request

The country-of-origin (COO) construct represents one of the most important issues in international marketing that was widely examined during the past 50 years. In this light, the literature confirmed a significant effect of COO on consumers’ reactions toward products from different origins (Wang and Lamb 1983; Laroche et al. 2005). Accordingly, the COO effect works through the country image which is a multidimensional construct consisting of several dimensions such as the political structure, the level of economic development, the technological advancement, and the cultural aspect (Wang and Lamb 1980; Han and Terpstra 1988; Heslop and Papadopoulos 1993). In addition, some dimensions related to product-country image such as price, innovation, design, prestige, and workmanship have been considered (Nagashima 1970; Roth and Romeo 1992). However, it is important to observe that this literature excluded dimensions related to environmental and social issues. The country’s ecological image is still an emerging construct even with the effect it could have on consumers’ evaluations (Dekhili and Achabou 2014). In effect, countries vary in their seriousness in treating environmental and social issues and thus project different ecological images (Shrivastava 1995; EPI 2016). Hence, this study aims to explore the country-of-origin ecological image construct by studying its different dimensions.To fill this objective, we conducted a qualitative study with a sample of 15 professionals in the field of sustainability, a focus group of 11 consumers in the French context, and 2 focus groups in the Australian context. Our findings suggest that the COO ecological image construct is composed mainly of seven dimensions: political, technological, economic, climatic, historical, geographical, and people’s characteristics. Consequently, our results offer several recommendations for managers to better promote their eco-products mainly on the international market by mobilizing favorable country-of-origin ecological images and avoiding unfavorable dimensions.References Available Upon Request

Can you imagine eating food leftovers from strangers? For many, the answer is a definite “No!” Yet, this is precisely what a small group of students from the University of Freiburg in Germany did. They justified their behavior as making a contribution to reducing the amount of food waste (Burfeind 2016). From a consumer behavior perspective, this is an interesting phenomenon. Studies have shown that food leftovers are shared, if at all, within the family (Cappellini 2009). Yet, most of the time, food leftovers are avoided and thus constitute food waste (Porpino et al. 2015). In this paper, we are interested in identifying barriers that seem to prevent consumers from choosing food leftovers from strangers in canteen environments and how these barriers can be influenced. Our aim is to gain a better understanding of food waste in general and food leftovers in particular.In an apparel context, Argo et al. (2006) showed that the relationship between consumer contamination, i.e., the perceived contamination of a product caused by the touch of another consumer, and purchase intention is fully mediated by disgust. Argo et al. (2008) were able to show that this negative effect of consumer contamination can be reversed if a highly attractive person of the opposite gender has touched the product. We applied these results to our food leftover context and tested our hypotheses with data from an online experiment based on a 2 (level of contamination: low vs. high) × 3 (level of attractiveness of the first eater: less attractive woman vs. attractive woman vs. no woman visible) between-subject design with a control group (N = 248; 49.6 % women, Mage = 23.3 years). Our results show that consumer contamination leads to greater disgust, which by itself lowers the probability of choosing food leftovers. Even though we did not find a moderating effect of the attractiveness of the first eater on disgust, our findings suggest a direct effect of attractiveness of the first eater on the probability of choosing food leftovers.In this paper, we used the unusual behavior of eating food leftovers from strangers, to gain a better understanding of food waste in general and food leftovers in particular. Even though this phenomenon relates only to a limited aspect of food waste, it demonstrates that food waste begins in the mind of the consumer. Hence, effective ways of reducing food waste at the consumer level should start right there.References Available Upon Request

In the last years, there are growing numbers of troops with machine guns serving around main Western tourist landmarks. These troops are not hidden in the cars or buildings but standing on visible places to attract public attention. As the main purpose of armed soldier’s presence, authorities declare the prevention of terrorist attacks and psychological support for tourists as well as domestic population. The main objective of the following study is to find out whether the deployment of armed soldiers has a calming and reassuring effect on tourists and their presence works as an illusion of control or if the presence of armed soldiers because of priming functions rather as a stress factor. This paper is based on a quantitative public survey, which was carried out in the form of electronic questioning among 667 Czech respondents, who were randomly split into two treatments and asked about their fear. The result of this paper is that the look at armed soldiers has a statistically significant positive effect on male tourists and the presence of armed soldiers in tourist destinations can therefore work as a good marketing tool for providing feeling of safety.

Relationship quality (RQ) is a broad theme in the relationship marketing studies, and both its antecedents and consequences receive a great deal of interest, because RQ provides the best assessment of the relationship strength (Crosby et al. 1990). In many studies, the widely accepted construct of RQ is reflected through commitment, trust, and relationship satisfaction. This study investigates the interpersonal factors, explicitly similarity, and gender identity, which can be considered as characteristics of the two relationship parties. These antecedents may influence the RQ both direct and via the path of relational selling behavior (RSB).Similarity is a measure of sharing similar personal attributes or characteristics in a dyadic relation (Smith 1998) and also common interests and values (Doney and Cannon 1997). It has a significant effect to interpersonal attraction, social incorporation, and likeability (Baron and Pfeffer 1994). Similarity-attraction paradigm suggests that people like others who are similar, rather than dissimilar, to themselves. Based on the theory, we believe that similarity (in terms of lifestyle, interests, preferences, values, etc.) between buyer and salesperson will contribute toward the RQ directly and has an indirect effect through its influence on the RSB of the subsequent sales person. Gender schema theory (Bem 1981) explains that every person has a different gender identity based on their masculinity and femininity, which shapes their behaviors. Thus, any change in the gender identity influences mainly information processing and judgment process (Bem 1981). Masculinity as a construct measures the value placed on material things, power, and assertive behavior as opposed to the value placed on people and nurturance which is captured by femininity (Barry et al. 2008). For that reason, we believe the increased femininity has a positive bearing on RSB, but increased masculinity has a negative effect on RSB. RSB is a tendency which is an essential characteristic of seller and measures sellers’ positioning toward relationships (Athanasopoulou 2009). Relational selling generates value while building close partnership between buyers and sellers. The relational selling involves getting extensive knowledge about the buyer, in addition to the commitment, trust, and cooperation (Smith and Owens 1995; Wilson 1995). Thus, RSB has direct effect to the RQ components.The measures of this study are based on existing scales in the literature and a convenience sample of B2B buyers via face-to-face data collection process. A structural equation model (SEM) is used to test the proposed relationships among the study constructs. The results of SEM indicate that both RSB and similarity have positive influence on RSB. These results are in parallel with our expectations. On top of this, similar to our expectations, seller’s femininity has a positive effect on the RSB. However, seller’s masculinity also have positive influence on RSB, which is the opposite of our expectations.References Available Upon Request

Innovation is considered to be one of the most important sources of sustainable competitive advantage in a dynamic environment. While innovation capability is widely viewed as competitive advantage, extant literature has also recognized the existence of hurdles in the successful practice and implementation of innovation. In an uncertain and intensely competitive business environment, it is not uncommon for organizations to pass on innovation tasks to supply chain partners. OEMs often pass on innovation introduction activities to their suppliers. This research seeks to determine whether such “Innovation Pressure” is conducive to good supplier-OEM relationships and to also explore the nature of the above relationship. A research model consists of a construct representing overall supplier-OEM relationship, a set of five intermediate relationship constructs, and two initial variables, one representing price pressure and the other representing pressure to innovate are developed. After following a detailed scale development procedure, data were collected from suppliers in the automobile light vehicle industry and the aircraft industry. The use of structural equation analysis and the application of other confirmatory factor analytic techniques show differences in the impact of the two initial variables on the outcome variable. Innovation pressure has several more positive links with the intermediate variables as well as the dependent variable than price pressure has. This may be because OEM pressure to innovate is often viewed more favorably by members of the supply chain than is OEM pressure to lower prices. For both initial variables, the negative paths in the mediation process are not necessarily unsurmountable hurdles. Favorable managerial actions that influence the intermediate variables can offset the possible negative impact of OEM pressure viewed as being adversarial.References Available Upon Request

The study focuses on supplier-customer dyads in a market structure of imbalanced power and investigates how three elements of customer trustworthiness, including interactional courtesy, procedural fairness, and honesty, work together to impact supplier long-term orientation in the relationship. Despite the importance of trustworthiness in shaping supplier-customer social interactions and information exchange, relatively few studies have examined how these three elements of trustworthiness work together to impact relationship continuity in imbalanced power relationships.A marketing channel with multitier suppliers and customers is a social system, where suppliers and customers are linked together by a variety of social relationships that underlie economic linkages (e.g., Ha et al. 2016). A variety of interactions between suppliers and customers in a marketing channel engender the exchange of nonmaterial goods, such as information and symbols of approval or respect (e.g., Wang and Zhang 2017). Among the three elements of trustworthiness that capture social interactions between suppliers and customers (Caldwell 2003), interactional courtesy focuses on the process of communication with politeness and respect at the interpersonal levels (e.g., Dayan et al. 2008). Procedural fairness reflects the judgment of fairness in processes that lead to business outcomes (e.g., Blader and Chen 2011), and customer honesty captures the supplier’s belief that the customer communicates reliable and believable information, stands by its word, and fulfills its obligations (Kumar et al. 1995).The study applies an inductive theory-building approach and examines the data from 205 small supplier-large customer dyads in the food supply industry. The food supply industry is characterized by the imbalanced market power between suppliers and customers where a large number of producers depend on a few food processing companies, such as Bunge, ADM, and Cargill, for survival. The finding through a series of hierarchical linear regression models shows that customer procedural fairness, reflected in fair practices in decision justification and business processes, enhances long-term orientation of suppliers. Interestingly, findings also show that both customer interactional courtesy and honesty have S-shaped relationships with the long-term orientation of vulnerable suppliers. Specifically, supplier long-term orientation is highest when customer interactional courtesy and honesty are at a medium level. Both a high level and a low level of interactional courtesy and honesty dampen supplier long-term orientation. The findings demonstrate that the powerful party needs to be sensitive to socio-emotional needs of the weaker party and reveal the complicatedness of relationship management in a market channel of imbalanced power.References Available Upon Request

The drive among business partners to secure resources is one of the very reasons for establishing relationships between buyers and sellers. Inevitably, the web of interdependencies in which they are caught gives rise to power, whereby one party tries to control the behavior of the other. This pivotal role of power in buyer-seller relationships has attracted the attention of many scholars since the early 1970s. Despite a sizeable amount of research produced on the subject, it has been described as too scattered, fragmented, and non-programmatic to yield a clear picture. As a response, we aim to provide such a holistic picture by identifying, synthesizing, and evaluating the antecedents and outcomes of exercised power in buyer-seller relationships, based on a meta-analysis of extant empirical research.Our conceptual model contains ten key constructs, divided into three groups, namely: (a) drivers (i.e., dependence), (b) exercised power sources (i.e., referent, expert, legalistic, reward, coercive), and (c) consequences (i.e., trust, satisfaction, commitment, cooperation). We hypothesize that higher dependence is positively related to the exercise of referent, reward, and expert power, but negatively related to the exercise of legalistic and coercive power. We also postulate that the exercise of referent, reward, and expert power positively affects trust, satisfaction, commitment, and cooperation (which indicates the quality of the relationship), while the opposite is true with regard to legalistic and coercive power.Our meta-analysis covers all empirical studies published in English in internationally recognized academic journals on marketing, management, and general business, from 1975 to 2017. Pertinent articles were identified through a combination of electronic keyword search in selected databases and a manual search of the references sections of articles. All studies were content-analyzed to find the frequency of appearance of the various constructs, as well as available correlations between them. Information about the associations between the constructs of the model was extracted from 74 independent studies contained in 67 articles, published in 37 journals.Data were analyzed with meta-analysis structural equation modeling. Findings indicate that dependence has indeed a negative relationship with coercive-related strategies of exercised power, but a positive impact on noncoercive exercised power strategies. The exercise of referent, expertise, and reward power, in most cases, increases trust, satisfaction, commitment, and cooperation. In contrast, the exercise of aggressive forms of power (i.e., legalistic and coercive) plays a destructive role because of reducing trust, satisfaction, commitment, and cooperation. Study findings carry significant implications for theory, research, and practice.References Available Upon Request

The goal of the current research is to explore the influence of negative engagement on committing participants in hate online brand communities. To reach this aim, three brands are used to assess this phenomenon (Starbucks, Apple, and McDonald’s), and three related hate online brand communities of such brands are involved. An online questionnaire is developed based on previously validated scales and fulfilled by 300 online members of mentioned communities. Findings reveal the importance of brand influence, helping, and self-expression dimensions on participants to be committed to hating brand communities.

In a pre-social media time, a company’s online reputation was shaped to a large extent by business-to-customer communication via corporate websites. In the wake of Web 2.0 and social media, however, consumers are able to participate in the reputation creation process by writing reviews on online reputation systems (ORS) (King et al. 2014; Serra and Salvi 2014), which are large-scaled Internet platforms that collect, distribute, and aggregate feedback about products, services, or companies (Dellarocas 2003). The vast majority of extant studies focusses on ORS, which provides consumer reviews of products and services (e.g., Pavlou and Dimoka 2006; Gauri et al. 2008). Largely neglected, however, are reviews by and for employees. Employees are an important stakeholder group for reputation management (Helm 2012; Schaarschmidt 2016), and a subcategory of ORS called online company valuation platforms, on which current or former employees can evaluate their employer, is becoming increasingly popular. However, it should be emphasized that reviews on company valuation platforms also reach (other) current employees of the organization. This fact, which is widely neglected by extant research, appears to be crucial, as these reviews often offer opinions and experiences that are withheld in daily work life and could severely influence employees’ perceptions of their job, their coworkers, and the entire organization. We assume that employees’ coping responses and turnover intentions are especially affected. In particular, negative online reviews by colleagues may cause stress among the workforce, which, in the worst case, may lead to employee turnover followed by hiring costs for the company.This study proposes a research model studying the impact of negative company reviews on employees’ coping strategies and turnover intentions. We draw on the transactional model of stress and coping (Folkman 1984) and the moral disengagement theory (Bandura et al. 1996) to develop our hypotheses. The research is based on a survey of 74 software developers. The results revealed that negative company reviews affect employees’ moral disengagement and turnover intentions. In sum, this study makes several contributions. First, as a theoretical contribution, we provide an adoptable framework that combines the transactional model of stress and coping with moral disengagement theory to explain individuals’ coping responses. Second, we provide evidence that negative company reviews affect employees’ coping responses and turnover intentions. Third, we show how companies can constructively handle negative reviews by employees and thus reduce turnover intentions.References Available Upon Request

In the digital era, an increasing number of dissatisfied customers turns to brands’ social media outlets (e.g., Facebook brand pages) to vent their frustration following a service failure. This study investigates the circumstances under which a brand’s response to online complaints (i.e., online complaint handling or “webcare”) is able to intervene consumers’ post-complaint inferences about the failure (i.e., failure attributions).Findings indicate that corporate webcare strategies (e.g., no-responses, defensive responses) vary considerably in their ability to alter complainants’ attributions of locus, controllability, and stability. Results, however, also show that this ability depends for the most part on complainants’ earlier experiences with the involved brand: Complainants who had no or only a few bad brand experiences in the past are more receptive to the different types of marketers-initiated webcare (MIW) than consumers with multiple failures.Most importantly, however, this research demonstrates that comments of other consumers (i.e., “brand advocates”) defending the brand with an online comment (i.e., advocate-initiated webcare; AIW) can improve MIW’s effectiveness to mitigate unfavorable attributions. Nevertheless, this can only be achieved when the responses of the two webcare sources (MIW and AIW) are congruent. If well-meant advocates’ responses are incongruent to marketers’ complaint handling strategy (e.g., an accommodative response), disadvantageous failure attributions occur.Additionally, this research demonstrates that the three kinds of attributions are key mediators which determine post-webcare customer satisfaction and negative word-of-mouth intentions.References Available Upon Request

This paper examines how rural small businesses in Ghana enact market orientations within the context of government policy initiatives on small business growth with the aim of reducing poverty in rural communities. The present study recognizes that a large population of Ghana is reliant on the success of these small businesses in rural areas. We acknowledge that government policy intervention in rural economic development is necessary for small business growth and that market orientation is essential to the success of rural small businesses and subsequently poverty reduction. Therefore, the aims of this research are: (1) to examine the application of market orientation strategies among small businesses in rural Ghana, (2) to assess the impact of market orientation on business performance, and (3) to examine the implications of government rural development policy on poverty reduction through rural small businesses’ pursuit of market orientation strategies. To this end, the study addresses five specific research questions: What market orientation strategies do small businesses in rural Ghana pursue? What is the effect of market orientation strategies on rural small business performance in terms of sales and profits, market share, and consumer perceptions? How has the government of Ghana poverty reduction policies affected rural small businesses’ marketing practices? What are the key policy challenges encountered in the rural small business marketing domain?Following a pilot study, the main study involved twenty-eight out of thirty-eight owner-managers of small businesses originally sampled accepted an invitation to participate in the study. We arranged appointments for the interviews and met in person with the owner-managers. Apart from key contacts known to the researchers, the researchers relied on snowball and foot-in-the-door data collection techniques to increase the number of participants in the research. Interviews were conducted at the respondents’ premises in non-contrived settings. The interviews were conducted over five periods (i.e., 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012). The findings are consistent with other research on small businesses and support customer orientation as instrumental in market orientation strategies. The results yield rare examples of how small business owners nurture customer loyalty by developing friendship with their customers. Additionally, competitor orientation is accomplished through customer-initiated intelligence-gathering efforts. Inter-functional coordination does occur, though on an informal level, ad hoc. Furthermore, owner-managers attribute their business performance to their innovative strategies in surviving a competitive environment. While government policy initiatives are in place, these are not allied to the aspirations of rural small business owners. The study concludes by identifying additional avenues government can take to alleviate poverty in rural areas, such as improving infrastructure.References Available Upon Request

In an export marketing environment that has become more complicated, dynamic, and multidimensional, achieving success can be quite challenging. In the literature, export marketing orientation (EMO) has been consistently considered as one of the key predictors for export success (e.g., Murray et al. 2011; Wheeler et al. 2008). EMO provides firms with the capability to explore emerging opportunities and exploit existing product market competences to enhance export performance (Kuivalainen et al. 2007; Sundqvist et al. 2012). Likewise, marketing capabilities (MC) generate information that is hard for competitors to copy and that is secretly held (Murray et al. 2011). MC are unique because they combine the employees’ knowledge and skills with their past experiences in new product development, sales, and distribution activities.This study examines the effects of export market orientation (EMO) and marketing capabilities (MC) on export performance. Using survey data of 393 export manufacturing firms based in Turkey, we tested the direct relationship of MC and EMO on export performance as well as the interrelationship between MC and EMO. Through structural equation modeling, we found that both EMO and MC positively influenced Turkish firms’ export performance.In general, we can conclude that EMO and MC are statistically significant factors contributing to Turkish firms’ export performance. As a result, it should be emphasized that Turkish firms strengthen their marketing capabilities (distribution, promotion, and sales) and export market orientation levels to enhance success. However, it is noteworthy to mention that it appears that other factors not included in the proposed relationships (such as competitive intensity, HR capabilities, market turbulence, etc.) explain majority of the variation and therefore warrant further investigation. Turkish manufacturers engaged in export activities are well advised to keep this in mind.References Available Upon Request

In his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, Rumelt (2011) argued that managers can reach closure prematurely and thus resist new ideas. Therefore, firms should create high-quality strategic alternatives by using outside experts to provide critiques of the initial alternatives. Interestingly, he described his personal method of constructing a virtual panel of experts for an imaginary internal mental dialogue with figures like Steve Jobs and Alfred Chandler, to criticize his ideas and stimulate new ones. In the same spirit, Shimizu and Hitt (2004, p. 46) noted that “over time managers develop a particular mindset along with a set of decision rules and heuristics based on their experiences.” This, in turn, leads to maladies (e.g., inertia and bounded rationality) whereby managers find it difficult to depart from current trajectories and therefore in “highly uncertain environment, firms need the capacity to enact major strategic changes to resolve problems in a timely fashion” (p. 44). To stimulate decision-making behavior, they recommended to adopt structural practices such as recruiting outside managers and board directors, evaluating a wide range of alternatives, and encouraging a devil’s advocate approach. Surprisingly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior research has empirically examined Shimizu and Hitt’s (2004) prescriptions nor measure their impact on international performance. This is an important gap because managerial decision-making capacity is extremely important for MNEs (Aharoni et al. 2011). Accordingly, the authors found that “stimulating decision making behavior” acts as an infuser of fresh perspectives on new market and new product development capabilities, which then lead to new product advantage and international market performance. Additionally, new product advantage positively impacts international performance.References Available Upon Request

Gray marketing is the importation and distribution of genuine products without the permission of the authorized distributors and manufacturers. The objective of the study is to reveal which personal (price consciousness, price-quality inferences, risk averseness, ethical judgment, consumer innovativeness, and involvement) and social (informative and normative susceptibility) factors affect consumers’ attitude toward gray market goods and intention. In addition, a comparative study (Turkey vs. the USA) was applied to find out whether the effects of these personal and social factors differ across countries. The model was tested through multi-group structural equation modeling. The results indicated that price consciousness, risk averseness, price-quality interference, and ethical judgment of the Turkish consumers affect their attitudes toward gray market goods. It can be stated that only the ethical judgment of gray market activities affects the US consumers’ attitude toward gray market goods. In addition, the effect of ethical judgment on attitude is stronger for the US consumers than the Turkish consumers. Furthermore, attitude has a positive effect on intention both in Turkey and in the USA. This study provides valuable information to the gray marketing literature.

In recent decades, international and export marketing scholars have become more oriented toward theoretically driven perspectives to throw light on the pivotal factors acting a role in superior export performance (Lages et al. 2009). Herein, the resource-based view (RBV) has been recognized as one of the leading theoretical paradigms in export performance research, which has drawn substantial interest (Chen et al. 2016). Nevertheless, in spite of the good fit between exporting and the RBV, the RBV does not deal with the contextual factors, implying a weakness of the theory (Priem and Butler 2001). It has been strongly advocated that the context significantly affects the manner firms obtain and utilize their resources (Meyer and Peng 2005), and accordingly, ownership of strategic resources in a context does not guarantee their value in another context (Oliver 1997). At this point, the institutional theory complements the RBV by touching on context-specific issues (Peng et al. 2009). By reason of the enormous influence of institutions on firms’ resource decisions, the integration of the institutional theory with the RBV has been overwhelmingly suggested (Barney et al. 2001; Oliver 1997). However, notwithstanding this suggestion, the interaction of institutional factors with firm resources and capabilities to comprehend the export performance phenomenon has been relatively mildly investigated. To address this gap, drawing mainly on the institutional theory- and resource-based view, the main objective of this study is to unveil the role of institutional- and resource-based factors in impacting export performance.On the basis of a sample of 221 exporting firms operating in an emerging country, Turkey, the conceptual model was tested through PLS path modeling. The empirical evidence suggests that the regulatory environment of home country contributes to the improvement of production and R&D resources, knowledge-based resources, and managerial resources. Additionally, concerning the relationship between firm resources and export market orientation, production and R&D resources, knowledge-based resources, and managerial resources all give rise to the enhancement of export market orientation. The results also reveal that both production and R&D resources and export market orientation are conducive to superior export performance. The findings of this study offer considerable implications for theory, practice, and public policy makers, which are expected to add value to the existing knowledge on export performance.References Available Upon Request

This paper intends to analyse the importance of the perception of the value of luxury in the three dimensions—social, personal and functional—in the probability of buying a luxury brand. For this, a set of constructs is considered by its nature to have these three dimensions: the brand prestige (social value), the brand distinctiveness and the brand attractiveness (social and individual values) and the brand coherence (functional value). The present study follows a quantitative methodology with data collected through an online survey on perceptions of consumers on Chanel brand. The proposal model was estimated using a logistic regression of the probability of buying Chanel considering a set of variables: socio-demographic variables and brand coherence, brand prestige, brand distinctiveness and brand attractiveness. From the results obtained, it was found that the brand prestige and the brand attractiveness increase the likelihood of purchasing Chanel. The socio-demographic variables considered only how income influences the probability of buying the brand. It was demonstrated the importance of the subject, since consumers respond by a buying behaviour if there is a strong attachment to the brand and recognized its prestige and attractiveness.References Available Upon Request

When H&M, a fast fashion brand, launched their first cobranding collection in 2004, with Karl Lagerfeld (current Chanel’s Chief Designer and Creative Director), there was a slight break in their traditional commercial strategy. Since then, many more partnerships have taken place. The present study aims to examine the way in which consumers evaluate luxury brands’ personality in a partnership context and the moderating effect of psychographic variables such as fashion leadership (Goldsmith et al., Psychology & Marketing 10:399–412, 1993) and the desire for unique consumer products (Lynn and Harris, Psychology & Marketing 14:601–616, 1997). Data was collected from an online questionnaire with a sample of 85 individuals, in which 3 scenarios of cobranding were put to test: (a) H&M + Balmain, (b) H&M + Alexander Wang and (c) H&M + Versace. The main conclusion of this study is that cobranding between a luxury brand and a fast fashion brand influences the way that both brands are perceived by consumers. It was also concluded that there are no significant correlations between attitude towards brand, purchase intention, willingness to pay and word of mouth and the scales of fashion leadership and desire for unique consumer products.

Online mass customization is one of the topics, which has been extremely popular since the turn of the twenty-first century due to the rise of electronic commerce and consumer confidence in co-designing products. Consequently, multiple researchers have focused their attention on the topic of mass customization in a bid to understand antecedents and precedents of consumer behavior, given that consumers are the critics and creators of the products they customize. Based on the consumption value (Sheth et al. 1991) and integrated framework of SOR by Fiore and Kim (2007), researchers examined possible perceptual discrepancies between mass-customized product (MCP) purchasers and non-purchasers. The aim was to understand the personal traits and value perception between purchasers and non-purchasers regarding MCP to better strategize the business directions for the MCP industry, particularly the MCP fashion industry.Among 504 online survey participants, we achieved usable sample of 231 for data analysis. To measure the perceived value of a MCFPs in comparison to an “off-the-rack” product, we adopted four items for monetary, six for performance, five for emotional, four for social (Sweeney and Soutar 2001), and three for epistemic values (Sheth et al. 1991) on a seven-point scale, one being “strongly disagree” and seven being “strongly agree.” Prior MCP purchase experience, familiarity with mass-customized products, and demographic questions were also asked.Independent sample t-tests, comparing the mean score of each value dimensions revealed that MCP purchasers exhibited significantly higher mean score on monetary value, compared to non-purchasers (Meanpurchasers = 4.48 vs. Meannon-purchasers = 4.15). This implies that monetary value might have been the discriminant factor between purchasers and non-purchasers, which is in line with the previous findings. For other dimensions of value perception of MCP, two groups did not differ in means scores statistically (p > .05).References Available Upon Request

Employer brand love originates from two different constructs—employer brand and brand love. When performing a quick search in several databases from mainstream to scientific literature, some attempts to present these two constructs mixed together can be seen but mainly from a relationship standpoint and not as a new concept altogether. The authors’ research purpose is to develop a conceptual model build upon an extensive and systematic literature review. In 2006, Sartain and Schumann defined employer brand as: “how a business builds and packages its identity, from its origins and values, what it promises to deliver to emotionally connect employees so that they in turn deliver what a business promises to customers.” Literature review on brand love has mainly concentrated on its conceptualization. Factors that drive brand love and its outcomes have yet not received the necessary attention (Albert and Merunka 2013; Batra et al. 2012). Nevertheless, literature has shown factors that drive brand love such as hedonic brand, brand image, brand quality, interpersonal antecedents, brand trust, and brand identification (Albert and Merunka 2013; Batra et al. 2012; Carroll and Ahuvia 2006; Ismail and Spinelli 2012; Tolbert and Gammoh 2012).For this study, we apply the systematic literature review protocol, considering the experience of previous studies (Hjalager 2010; Kofinas and Saur-Amaral 2008; Kusluvan et al. 2010; Law et al. 2010; Irina Saur-Amaral 2011, 2012). Firstly, we build the review protocol, based on keywords previously used by other authors. Descriptive statistics is used to identify main authors, dates, and journals’ names and scopes. A more qualitative analysis is performed for content analysis using RefViz and NVivo using as orientation framework the keywords and the previous knowledge on the concept (Charmaz 2006). The literature map is built upon the data obtained from content analysis, and the explanatory descriptions of key themes and topics are supported by citations and references obtained from NVivo and RefViz analysis. Further work to be undertaken includes interviews and focus groups with key players on the field (marketing professors and HR professionals) to explore the conceptual model.References Available Upon Request

There is a need to conceptually link findings from specific experience areas and to generalize from them to overarching principles of experiences. Building on recent syntheses and conceptualizations, we contribute to this discussion and synthesis by proposing a framework that we think answers questions regarding the role of the brand in the customer journey and the customer experience and the measurement of overall brand experiences.Regarding the role of the brand in the customer experience and the customer journey, we follow the conceptualization that brands reflect all customer experiences with a brand along the customer journey. Thus, the experiences that brands evoke within the customer (sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual) represent these overall experiences that customers have with a brand along the customer journey. By linking the brand experience concept to two recent frameworks on static and dynamic experiences and the customer journey and experience, we propose that static experiences, i.e., single touchpoints, reflect the brand-related stimuli that compose the overall, i.e., dynamic, brand experience. This conceptualization allows for the measurement of the overall brand experience across multiple touchpoints and multiple stages, which is an important issue for both marketing theory and practice.

In time of uncertainty, brand authenticity is seen as one of the major factors of brand success. Both academics and practitioners have come to the conclusion that brand authenticity has become an essential trait of the brand in times when consumers are overwhelmed with product offerings.This research examines the impact of emotions on brand attachment by studying the mediating role of perceived brand authenticity. In-store emotions and consumption emotions have been taken into consideration.A multifaceted conceptualization of perceived brand authenticity has been considered with continuity, credibility, integrity, and symbolism dimensions. A study was conducted on 349 consumers of a chocolate brand. Empirical results show the existence of a total mediating effect of perceived brand authenticity in the relationship between consumption emotions and brand attachment.This effect is reached through the mediation of credibility, integrity, and continuity dimensions. For in-store emotions, only the symbolic dimension has a partial mediating effect. The findings of this research are discussed, and implications for marketing theory and for managers are recommended.References Available Upon Request

In the marketing literature, the introduction of the consumer experience perspective or experiential view in the 1980s encouraged a major shift from cognitive frameworks and buying decision process towards the understanding of consumption as a “steady flow of fantasies, feelings and fun” (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982: 132). Popularized in the mid-1990s, the notions of experiential consumption and experiential marketing have since gained an important place in research. In consumer behaviour, an experience refers to a personal and emotionally charged event (Holbrook 1986), resulting from a multidimensional interaction between a subject and an object within a given situation. An experience is meaningful from the subject’s perspective and can occur in commercial and non-merchant environments. In marketing, the term designates an offer orchestrated by a brand, a company or an organization to engage individuals in a memorable way and deliver superior value (Pine and Gilmore 1999). Over the past 30 years, the experiential aspects of consumption and managerial approaches, known as marketing experiences and experiential marketing, have been widely investigated by both academic and professional circles (Lanier and Rader 2015; Lemon and Verhoef 2016). Digitalization and social media have drastically enriched and transformed the experiencescape, yet more than ever the customer experience remains a relevant and fruitful concept to understand what subjects live in physical and virtual contexts (Carlson et al. 2017). This special session on experience presents four contributions whose common goal is to provide a deeper understanding of the customer experience in very different contexts.References Available Upon Request

The difficulty of recalling past consumption experiences of a preferred product has a positive effect on the desire to consume that product (Redden and Galak 2013). It is explained by the fact that the difficulty of recalling past experiences leads individuals to perceive that they have not consumed much of the preferred product in the past. The difficulty of recalling past experiences triggers the use of the difficulty-of-recall inference: “it is difficult to recall, so I have not consumed a lot” (Schwarz 2004; Tversky and Kahneman 1973). Because of this feeling of missing, individuals feel more desire for products (Dai and Fishbash 2014; McSweeny and Swindell 1999). We further investigate the difficulty-of-recall proposition of Redden and Galak (2013) and study a boundary condition. We suggest that the type of information that individuals recall might affect the use of the difficulty-of-recall inference differently, which in turn might influence desire. We distinguish between semantic and episodic information. When consumers process semantic information (i.e., general facts about an entity or experience detached from specific episodes), they are disposed to engage in cognitive processing and might be influenced by the difficulty-of-recall inference. By contrast, when consumers evaluate episodic information (i.e., knowledge stored in memory of past experiences including emotions and sensations tied to these experiences), they might not be influenced by the difficulty-of-recall inference because individuals are principally motivated to process emotionally charged information (Cabanac 1971; Fredrickson 2001). We challenge past research which demonstrates that consumers are influenced by the difficulty-of-recall inference when processing information is difficult (Menon and Raghubir 2003; Novemsky et al. 2007; Pocheptsova et al. 2010). Across two studies, we examine the role of the type of information (semantic or episodic). Study 1 (N = 157; product category: soft drinks) demonstrates that the difficulty of recalling past consumption experiences influences desire positively when consumers recall semantic information. However, Study 2 (N = 198; product categories: leisure activities and hedonic products) shows that this influence is not replicated when consumers recall episodic information. Our results expand current knowledge about the role of processing difficulty-of-recall in consumer experience. Our contribution has the potential to help marketers take action regarding the recall of the past consumption experiences of a preferred product. For instance, online retailers that know what brands were purchased and at what moment at the individual consumer level (e.g., ruelala.com , gilt.com , vente-privee.com ) could remind the consumer that she or he has not purchased this brand for a given period of time. This semantic information showed to the consumer might lead to a sense of deprivation and favor purchase.References Available Upon Request

The recent development of Internet communication platforms has caused electronic word of mouth (eWOM) to become an increasingly important source of information for consumers (Cheung et al. 2008). One type of eWOM is of particular consideration—online reviews. Previous research shows that online reviews impact customers throughout their purchasing experience, from attitudes to products (Lee et al. 2008) to the final product choice (Senecal and Nantel 2004). In other words, a customer experience with a product starts with consulting online reviews and ends with leaving feedback online. There are several motivations for publishing online reviews: platform assistance, venting negative feelings, concern for other consumers, extraversion, social benefits, economic incentives, helping the company, and advice seeking (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). Nonetheless, companies still struggle to foster useful and positive online reviews (King et al. 2014).Due to their growing influence, online reviews are becoming increasingly relevant to marketers (Chen and Xie 2008). The empirically confirmed impact of reviews on consumers and the difficulty to obtain them have led companies to exploit malicious practices in online reputation management (Xiao and Benbasat 2011). These corporate practices aiming to manipulate opinions by posting deceptive content are referred to as fake reviews and have become alarmingly widespread (Mayzlin et al. 2014). Therefore, online review platforms have a difficult challenge of paramount importance to control the quality and authenticity of the published reviews.As manual moderation of online reviews is time-consuming and often not effective (Masip et al. 2012), online review platforms turn to a more efficient method of automated filtering of malicious reviews (e.g., Mukherjee et al. 2013). However, every filtering method has an error, and the biggest risk of these filtering systems is to block authentic content and dissuade consumers from sharing real experience.We carry out an online experiment to investigate the impact of customer experience with online reviews’ filtering systems on customers’ emotions and satisfaction with the product and the online platform, as well as their intention to continue publishing online reviews. The 219 respondents were asked to write an authentic review and were equally distributed among three experimental cells: (1) the review is accepted right away; (2) the review is required to be modified to conform to platform’s rules and published after the modification; and (3) the review is rejected.Our results show that reviewer’s motivation defines his/her reaction to the automatic filter. Our contribution is twofold: first, we advance the literature on automated deception detection mechanisms and their use by online reviewing platforms and, second, we propose applicable managerial solutions to avoid losing authentic content and engaged customers.References Available Upon Request

Researches have conceptualized art as an experience, where consumers enjoy art in relation to past experiences (Holbrook 1999) or in relation to multi-sensorial stimuli (Joy and Sherry Jr. 2003). Additionally, aesthetic experiences can be regarded as subjective moments mostly influenced by psychological characteristics. Aesthetic experiences result from “the interplay of emotional value with perceptual and cognitive factors (perception, attention, decision making, and action selection)” (Righi et al. 2017). For example, personality traits such as openness to experience or sensation seeking are considered as valid predictors of attractiveness towards certain forms of paintings (Chamorro-Premuzic et al. 2009). According to evolutionary psychology theory, perceptual and cognitive factors are the result of adaptive solutions to ancestral survival (Saad 2013). In this paper, we examine how aesthetic experiences can derive from adaptative tendencies.According to Appleton (1988), landscapes are naturally assessed as potential places to live in. These places need to offer safety (a place from where you can see all the surroundings without being seen) and sustenance with natural resources (Crouch 2013). Those characteristics offer prospect and refuge opportunities (Kaplan 1987). More precisely, we should be attracted by broad, unobstructed views, vegetation and water. Therefore, Homo sapiens visiting museums should prefer landscape paintings that represent those evolutionary features (Dutton 2009). In two studies with two different samples, we identify a preference towards landscape paintings (impressionist style) evoking prospect and refuge opportunities. Certain emotions explain preferences. Positive emotions (such as optimism) are more strongly felt with paintings displaying evolutionary features while explaining painting appreciation. However, the absence of negative emotions (such as fear) does not explain painting appreciation. After reviewing 3000 auction results for 8 major landscape painters from 2000 to 2015, we observe that paintings with unobstructed views are overvalued by art buyers (auction results compared to estimate prices). Our results offer an insight on how aesthetic experiences are embodied. Besides, this emerging methodology has to be considered as the starting point of “nomological networks of cumulative evidence” that is required to validate EP results (Saad 2017).References Available Upon Request

Collaborative consumption has been defined as “events in which one or more persons consume economic goods or services in the process of engaging in joint activities with one or more others” (Felson and Spaeth 1978, 614). Collaborative consumption has generated a lot of academic interest and is seen by some observers as a new paradigm “where access to goods predominates over exclusive ownership and use” (Huber 2017, 54).Collaborative consumption spawns individual and collective experiences. Beyond economical and social benefits that are often put forward, little is known about the way individuals organize themselves to collaborate.Our research explores an offline form of collaborative consumption: the experience of sharing a flat with roommates. Its goal is to understand how the interaction between the subjects and the object (a flat with various spaces) within a situation (living with roommates) unfolds and to characterize the resulting experience.This research combines two qualitative studies. In study 1, we interviewed 30 young adults, aged between 19 and 23, about their flat-sharing experiences. The data were collected through semi-structured place-based interviews. The demographic breakdown of the sample was balanced by genres. In study 2, we used mobile ethnography and gathered a corpus of 248 photographs of specific zones in the shared flats taken by 30 informants aged between 23 and 38 through Clic & Walk platform. The pictures were commented by our informants who linked them to positive and negative episodes of their flat-sharing experience. The experience of sharing a flat emerges from the analysis as an organized practice with its rules and duties. Rules regulate privacy issues, whereas duties and chores help maintain a clean place.The flat appropriation process reveals specific emotional geographies (Davidson and Milligan 2004) that create what we refer to as a spatial ambivalence between privacy and togetherness. We suggest that the flat-sharing experience creates control and can be in some cases assimilated to a panopticon experience (Foucault 1977).References Available Upon Request

Do negative emotions always have negative outcomes for brands? May feeling of being fooled turn into a sympathy toward the brand? This study aims to investigate the relationship between consumers’ feelings of being fooled and their tendency to get revenge by cheating the brand (dishonest consumer behavior). It further argues that in order to compensate for the negative emotional consequence (feeling of guilt) of their own wrong act, consumers tend to form stronger relationships with the brands that were initially wrong to them. It also examines how situational ambiguity regulates the relationship between feeling befooled and behaving dishonestly.

Previous research has focused on place attachment in regular structural contexts and conditions. However, little attention has been paid to exploring place attachment and post-disaster scenarios. In particular, whether place attachment is maintained in the aftermath of an environmental jolt which destroys or damages the built and natural environment that individuals might have developed an attachment to is an understudied area. The city of Christchurch in New Zealand suffered two major earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011 causing significant damage to large parts of the city’s retail, commercial and residential precincts as well as to residents’ dwellings. This post-earthquake scenario provides a suitable environment to study the research question whether citizen-consumers show signs of place attachment whilst or despite the fact that they have been dealing with a natural disaster. Analysis of a random sample of post-earthquake video interviews from the years 2011 and 2012 with citizen-consumers was undertaken. Preliminary results indicate that despite the fact that the impact of the earthquakes is at the forefront of citizen-consumers’ narrative, interwoven with this, an attachment to place is visible in respondents’ stories. Relating to six place attachment dimensions put forward in literature, citizen-consumers’ stories resonate with all six of them. The findings have implications for city councils, city managers and business owners in regard to maintaining attraction to the city as well as attracting new residents.References Available Upon Request

Work attire is often advertised as being professional, appropriate, and smart, while fashion-forwardness takes a back seat; but is this the best way to appeal to consumers? The purpose of this study was to determine what aspect of work attire matters most to working professionals, fashion-forwardness or appropriateness.There is limited fashion marketing literature available on the marketing of work or business attire. The fashion marketing literature often emphasizes that the nature of fashion is change and creativity, so the fashion-forwardness of a brand should be heavily communicated to the consumer (McCormick et al., 2014), but work attire marketing seems to be underutilizing this principle. This study focused on consumer preferences for different attributes of work attire and how those attributes make them feel, providing insight into working professionals’ minds along with how to market to them. The hypothesis was that fashion-forwardness would be the most significant attribute affecting self-perceptions of emotion and competence at work.The methodology consisted of a full profile full factorial conjoint design. There were eight outfits rated by the participants, using a seven-point Likert scale. The eight outfits were the combination of the levels of fashionableness (stylish, classic, out of style) and appropriateness (casual, leisure wear, business wear). Rating-based conjoint was used because the statistical models are linear in the parameters and statistically information efficient. The data were analyzed using a mixed model with the Kenward-Roger adjustment and Tukey’s HSD for all multiple comparison tests.The results of this study showed that for all elements of emotion and work competency, both fashionableness and appropriateness significantly influenced the participants’ self-perceptions, but fashionableness had the greatest impact. The findings of this study suggest that clothing brands should market work attire as fashion items that will make a statement in the office as opposed to current methods of marketing the appropriateness as the main feature of the garments. As the standards of office professionalism change, it is essential for work attire brands to understand the wants and needs of their consumers to keep market share. A limitation was the use of only two attributes. Future research could examine more attributes as peoples’ preferences may be more complex.References Available Upon Request

Music, as marketing strategy, has played a key role for several companies. Related to this situation and given the constant evolution of preferences by increasingly demanding consumers, we intend to study the relationship between ambient music and live music on consumer behaviors. More specifically, our study aims to understand the influence of live music consumer behavior in relation to ambient music, as well as the aspects that consumers consider to be most relevant to their use in night spaces. In a field experiment, in a bar in Viseu (Portugal), a quantitative survey was conducted through a questionnaire survey, and a nonrandom sample was obtained. The research was conducted in two phases: the first with ambient music and the second with live music, in which the playlist of songs was the same. We obtained a total of 99 respondents. To analyze consumption perceptions, a cocktail was offered to consumers in order to understand if the classification given to the drink was higher when there was live music. The results of the live music condition expose positive effects on the taste of the drink. Moreover, consumers attribute a better quotation to the ambient and to the service of the bar in the live music condition than in ambient music condition. Otherwise, 61% of respondents fully agree with the statement “I can’t live without music” when they were in live music condition against only 26% in ambient music condition. This may be explained by the fact that consumers are more sensitive to auditory stimuli when they are in the presence of live music.References Available Upon Request

The competitive advantage of a tourist product or service, in the global market, is based on the seller’s ability to offer a successful experiential offering system. Recent literature (Voss 2004; Quan and Wang 2004) shows that the demand for experience is the major trend in the global tourist industry and destinations more and more compete by emphasizing their experiential content (Buhalis 2000). According to Pizam (2010), the creation of experiences is the essence and the raison d'etre of the tourism sector. The expectation of a gratifying and memorable experience motivates tourists to buy products and services (Tsaur et al. 2006).Accordingly, an evaluation of the type of tourism experiences is critical for the success of hospitality and tourism products and services. With the stated aim of evaluating the experiential value perception and positioning, our analysis was conducted by processing tourist reviews, which consumers left on TripAdvisor, through a content analysis. The purpose of the research was to evaluate consumer perceptions regarding different operators of a particular touristic service format. The choice of platform from which to draw the opinions of visitors took place on the basis of indications provided by the literature. The ethnographical analysis dictates that we need a particular data source. Online consumer reviews have the potential to offer a wealth of information about consumers’ perception and how they prioritize different elements of the tourist experience, which then can be assessed to compare different tourist service formats.The content analysis was performed with an automated tool, to process a large amount of reviews, and, thus, allowed us to generalize the results to a specific tourist-services format. Furthermore, a semiautomated content analysis was implemented, in order to explore different experience types, in relation to the emotional variables identified by netnographic studies (Rageh et al. 2013): comfort, education, pleasure, novelty, recognition, relationships, safety, and beauty. The content analysis results, at this point, can also be read in the light of the Pine and Gilmore (2002) taxonomy of tourist experiences. This theory states that experiences can be positioned on a vertical axis where one end point is active participation and the other is passive participation and on a horizontal axis with absorption at one end and immersion at the other one (Oh et al. 2007). We can then say that the experience concepts, found throughout the content analysis and derived from eight variables identified by netnographic studies, can be inserted along the horizontal continuum.This method offers researchers and hotel managers a useful new tool, which can guide improvements and help focus marketing communication. In order to meet the expectations of postmodern tourists, seeking memorable experiences (Knutson et al. 2006), global tourism players must redesign and reposition their services. A deeper analysis of the type of perceived tourism experiences is necessary for us to redesign tourism successfully.References Available Upon Request

Product knowledge is a key, but often overlooked, aspect in the consumer evaluation of alternatives (Dodd et al. 2005). The presence or absence of knowledge structures should affect the types of information processed and the processing heuristics used by consumers (Bettman and Park 1980). This is especially true in the brand diverse and complex product category of wine (Allen and Germov 2010; Charters and Pettigrew 2007; Chocarro and Cortiñas 2013; Plassmann et al. 2008), where consumer evaluations of wine can differ substantially based on varying levels of product knowledge (Vigar-Ellis et al. 2015a).A better understanding of a wine consumer’s subjective product knowledge, how much a consumer thinks they know about wine, as well as their objective product knowledge, how much a consumer objectively knows about wine, may considerably impact the effectiveness of strategic market segmentation (Dodd et al. 2005; Robson et al. 2014; Vigar-Ellis et al. 2015b).The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of product knowledge, both subjective and objective, on the relative importance of four extrinsic product attributes of wine, namely, price, age, brand and region of origin, in the absence of tasting the actual wine. The relative importance of these attributes is evaluated in comparison to consumers’ self-reported and objectively measured knowledge of wine, using the conjoint analysis technique.The results suggest that product knowledge does influence the relative importance of extrinsic wine attributes in product evaluation, with the price of wine shown to be the dominant attribute regardless of the level of product knowledge expertise. Across all four levels of product knowledge, consumers navigate their evaluative product decisions according to the midpoint between the most and least expensive wines in their consideration set. Price sensitivity appears to heavily impact consumer evaluation strategies, which serves to inform wine pricing strategies when scoping price elasticity across the various consumer segments based on wine knowledge.References Available Upon Request

The question of how to design service environments to attract customers and to sell products has been of long interest to managers and scholars alike (Bitner 1992). This interest spilled over to virtual servicescapes when technological advances facilitated designing carefully staged sets of physical cues in online environments (Mummalaneni 2005; Vilnai-Yavetz and Rafaeli 2006). Research on consumer processing of virtual environmental cues supports the view that visitors form attitudes and intentions through both central and peripheral routes (Liu and Shrum 2009). Nonetheless, only a few studies exist that adopt a dual-process perspective in virtual service environments (e.g., Kim and Lennon 2008; Kim and Moon 2009; Ponnam and Sreejesh 2017; Sierra and Hyman 2011). While empirical studies on virtual servicescapes substantiate the peripheral path via aesthetics and pleasure (e.g., Vilani-Yavetz and Rafaeli 2006; Wang et al. 2011), parallel studies also substantiate the central path via telepresence (e.g., Eroglu et al. 2001; Mollen and Wilson 2010; Novak et al. 2000) and interactivity (Spielmann and Mantonakis 2018).Building on the theoretical framework of the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo 1986), we propose and test the notion that people react to informational variables present in a virtual reality servicescape in divergent ways. Specifically, we propose a dual-process model of effects in which components of the online environment (coherence, complexity, legibility, and mystery, as per Kaplan (1989)) work in distinct ways with consumers.The findings extend understanding relative to the effects of visual interior design on consumer response to service environments. Our findings should aid service managers in designing more effective virtual servicescapes that support their efforts to sell and to attract customers. In summary, this study provides insights into how four types of visual information present in virtual service environments influence consumer response.References Available Upon Request

Fit is widely regarded as a relevant factor for the success of cause-related marketing (CRM). Extensive research has recognized the importance of fit and generally agrees on viewing fit as some form of link between company and charity or cause. However, the literature on CRM fit shows that understanding of the fit concept is still limited and reveals its complex and nebulous character. Therefore, the present research illuminates the fit concept and develops a unifying, valence model of fit for cause-related marketing.Initially, a comprehensive review of the CRM fit literature with focus on the dimensionality of fit is undertaken. Furthermore, the theoretical frameworks of associative network theory and balance theory are reviewed and their conceptual similarities integrated to explain commonality and valence. Commonality and valence represent the suggested dimensions along which key fit classifications are identified.As a result of this analysis, it is proposed that fit can be understood in terms of the general valence categories positive, neutral, and negative fit. Valence is defined as the degree to which the company contributes to the fulfillment of the alliance mission and therefore relates to whether or not company and charity have a similar purpose. Commonality is defined as the degree to which a CRM alliance represents strong or weak associations between company and charity. Positive fit (e.g., alliance between running shoe company and heart health charity) and negative fit (e.g., alliance between tobacco company and lung cancer charity) are suggested to be high in commonality, whereas neutral fit (e.g., alliance between running shoe company and literacy charity) is suggested to be low in commonality.Moreover, CRM fit literature suggests numerous sub-types of fit. Common themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and similar concepts combined to generate nine key sub-types of fit. Each of these fit sub-types represents a degree of commonality between the company and cause, as well as a valence for the relationship. Concrete definitions are provided for the three general fit types as well as the nine fit sub-types. The form of the model is presented, and propositions for future research are put forward.References Available Upon Request

Our study focuses on a specific strategy for firms and consumers to do good, known as cause marketing (CM). CM consists of “marketing activities that are characterized by an offer from the firm to contribute a specified amount to a designated philanthropic cause” (Varadarajan and Menon 1988, p. 60). CM seems a promising marketing strategy (Nielsen 2015). But is it effective irrespective of firm size? And what roles do perceived sincerity and feelings of gratitude play? The current research addresses both issues.We hypothesize that small firms, disadvantaged compared to big firms in terms of financial and human resources necessary to engage in charitable donations, are perceived as doing a bigger effort and hence are perceived as more sincere once they do contribute to a worthy cause. More specifically, we posit that consumers will infer from the company’s perceived effort put into contributing to a cause, the perceived sincerity of the company’s motives (Morales 2005). With higher levels of effort perceived as more sincere and trustworthy, signaling a real societal concern and genuine intention to support the cause,we further argue that the perceived sincerity of a firm’s motives to engage in CM is particularly relevant for CM effectiveness as consumers who are skeptical about the company’s underlying motives to engage in the charitable behavior will not experience feelings of gratitude and so will not feel motivated to reciprocate the company for its efforts (McCullough et al. 2001; Morales 2005).Our reasoning implies that, if we are right that smaller firms engaging in CM are perceived as doing a bigger effort than larger firms and hence are perceived as more sincere, consumers will experience stronger feelings of gratitude toward small firms engaging in CM and hence are more likely to reciprocate by purchasing the CM-promoted product, translating into greater CM effectiveness for small compared to larger firms.Two studies, a field study and a lab study, confirmed our hypotheses. Compared to big firms, small firms engaging in CM are perceived as doing a bigger effort and hence score higher on perceived sincerity. As a result of these sincerity perceptions, consumers experience stronger feelings of gratitude toward small firms engaging in CM, translating into greater purchase intentions of CM-promoted products of small compared to big firms.References Available Upon Request

Academic literature, as well as countless companies, have found cause-related marketing (CRM) to be a powerful sales promotion tool. CRM campaigns are complex promotional tools that present managers with a myriad of decisions to make, and they have been termed “profit-motivated giving” because of the link created between company sales and charitable donations. Campaign duration is an important consideration for any sales promotion, and it has been well studied in traditional settings. However, little research addresses how consumers respond to different campaign durations in a CRM setting. This research seeks to address how firms can maximize the goodwill benefits and the short-term sales gain associated with CRM promotions. A key element needed for CRM success is for the company to be perceived as altruistic and avoid consumer skepticism. Considering this, traditional sales promotion research may not be applicable to this style of sales promotion. Short sales promotion windows are often favored because they create a sense of urgency. However, in a CRM setting, a short window may signal to consumers a tokenistic approach in the company’s support of a social cause. Thus, this approach may undermine the company’s ability to generate goodwill or increase short-term sales. This research is built on the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM). This model provides valuable insight into how consumers view and experience marketing tactics. Consumers are frequently prompted with persuasion attempts from marketers and over time acquire knowledge regarding these tactics. If consumers assess a marketers’ persuasion attempt as inappropriate, they will likely refrain from purchasing from company. We propose that short campaign durations may activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge, ultimately decreasing the effectiveness of the CRM promotion.The present research addresses how consumers’ respond to different promotion lengths in terms of perceptions of social responsibility and purchase intentions. It is proposed that campaign duration affects purchase intentions indirectly through consumers’ perception of the company’s CSR. It is also examined if responses differ based on the companies’ historical involvement with nonprofits. Experimental results found that as duration increased, the company was seen as more caring and altruistic, which ultimately led to more favorable purchase intentions. Support was found for a negative response to short campaigns, but this result was only significant when the company had no CSR history. Companies with a long history of CSR were able to run a short campaign without detriment. These results have valuable implications for theory and practice. This study finds that traditional sales promotion theory does not translate cleanly to a CRM context. Although short campaigns traditionally generate consumer urgency and action, they also signal that a company is less altruistic in their nonprofit support. The findings indicate that CRM promotions do not have a one-size-fits-all strategy for companies. New companies, or companies new to partnering with causes, should strategize for long-term partnerships. Companies with existing partnerships should communicate these long-term commitments.References Available Upon Request

In hi-tech industries such as Pharma-Biotech, firms are becoming more and more specialized in their innovation capabilities such that it is becoming less and less likely that any one firm is able to independently develop a truly innovative new product. The current research will employ qualitative research methods to investigate two questions: (a) Is the path for the development of radically innovative qualitative different from the development of incrementally innovative products in industries with high technological turbulence such as the Pharma-Biotech industry? (b) Are there any systematic differences in the governance structures employed in the management of interfirm relationships in the development of radical innovations and incremental innovations?This research uses Thomson Reuters’s product Cortellis Competitive Intelligence as its primary data source. This resource is the industry standard for all drug development and pipeline activity information in the Pharma-Biotech industry. After securing the rights to use the database, we narrowed our search using the following process: We designated the innovativeness of the products based on the type of FDA review these drugs received (c.f. Sorescu et al. 2003; Aboulnasr et al. 2008). New-to-the-world molecules or biological entities that received a priority review (this included statuses such as Accelerated Approval and Fast Track statuses) were classified as radical innovations. Already existing molecules or biological entities that were repurposed and received a standard review were classified as incremental innovations. This resulted in the classification of 139 products as radical innovations, 390 as technological breakthroughs, 10 as market breakthroughs, and 113 as incremental innovations. Next, all the development histories (qualitative) data on the development of radical and incremental innovations were gleaned. Given the exploratory goals of this research and the thinly developed state of knowledge in exploring the path dependencies in product development and innovation outcomes, a grounded theory approach seemed appropriate to analyze the data.One theme in path dependency that has emerged early is the involvement of universities in the discovery of radically innovative (as opposed to incrementally innovative) products. Universities were involved in 40 discoveries as opposed to the 9 for incrementally innovative products. There also appear to be more firms involved in the discovery and development of radical innovations. For instance, quantitatively speaking, the average number of entities involved in the development of incremental products was 3.3 and 12.8 for radical products. There also appear to be more complex deal structures and more milestones and payments in the development of radical innovations as opposed to incremental products. For instance, radical drugs appear to be first licensed and then acquired more often than incremental innovations which are most often licensed. In other words, radical (incremental) innovations appear to be the product of more (fewer) interfirm partnerships that combine market rules and hierarchical governance in that order.References Available Upon Request

We investigated how individuals with growth or fixed mind-sets react to the experiences of malicious and benign envy and what kind of influence these interactions have on consumers’ unique product choice behaviors. By doing so, we tried to provide better understanding and the full connection between two different envy types and unique product choice. In this work, we are putting a small addition to the theory (and practical implication) of envy by considering an important role of belief on our personality, that is, the implicit self-theories.Results of the first study showed that people tend to choose a unique product in the malicious envy condition, while a person primed with benign envy is more likely to choose a standard product. The results of the second study showed that implicit self-theories moderate the observed effect. When a person experiences malicious envy and has an entity mind-set, his or her desire for a unique product or distinction from the envied person increases.The final study sheds light on multiple serial mediation roles of entity mind-set and desire for uniqueness for the effect of malicious envy on unique product choice (i.e., selection of a product that the envied other does not have) and incremental mind-set and desire for self-improvement for the effect of benign envy on standard or similar product choice (i.e., selection of a product that the envied other has).References Available Upon Request

The importance of fostering the creative use of resources, especially as environments become more turbulent, competitive, and resource limited, is increasing. There are several arguments from the management literature on how the amount of resources is linked to innovation performance. One research stream, the slack resources literature, emphasizes the idea that limited resources (what we conceptualize as negative relative slack) inhibit the innovation process and have a negative impact on performance. Researchers in this school of thought argue that firms involved in innovation practices must mobilize excess amounts of resources to incorporate new technologies, invent new processes, and develop new capabilities to create new markets.A second view, though it is not as extensive as the first, has emphasized that the very presence of limited resources makes firms more focused, requiring them to seek diverse information in both close and distant proximity networks and be more creative. This literature also discusses how the abundance of resources can detract from an organization’s innovation capabilities.The current study explores how firms in this second view can achieve high innovation performance with limited resources. Our qualitative inquiry with ten startup companies and an extensive literature review on resource limitation led us to a concept called lean innovation capability (LIC). We conceptualize LIC as a higher-order distinct firm capability. Further, we aim to develop a new LIC scale and test its moderating role in a resource-limited innovation model in a multi-industry context. To do so, we follow established scale development process. Case studies with startups and extensive literature review generated 73 items for a total of four dimensions. Because a scale with 73 items is too lengthy to be usable in practice, we had to reduce the initial item pool. Reducing a scale to an acceptable number of items first relies on the use of expert judgments and then the statistical purification process with a larger sample size. Expert judgment process with 12 lean innovation consultants in an expert panel reduced the item pool to 37 items. The final stage had the survey with 340 marketing and technology managers. EFA and CFA statistical procedures reduced the item pool to 13 items. The final construct had three dimensions: focus on product-market fit, networking capability, and mission-oriented leadership.References Available Upon Request

Previous studies have investigated long-term buyer-supplier relationships including relational constructs such as noneconomic/economic satisfaction, opportunism, and conflict. However, opportunism is rarely examined in a business marketing setting and rarely studied along with relational constructs such as noneconomic/economic satisfaction. The construct of conflict also is rarely examined with noneconomic and economic satisfaction. This study examined manufacturer-supplier relationships between Spanish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results of this study show that negative sentiments (opportunism and conflict) in business relationships have a direct negative association with noneconomic satisfaction but only indirectly to economic satisfaction. If opportunism and conflict are not resolved and managed adequately, they will have a negative effect on noneconomic satisfaction and an indirect negative effect on economic satisfaction. It is dangerous to have negative effects (whether directly or indirectly) on both noneconomic and economic satisfaction due to their critical impact on the success of a business relationship.References Available Upon Request

Trade fairs are recognized as important platforms for product promotion and new sales or lead generation (Kerin and Cron 1987) and stimulation of reflexive practices within firms (Bathelt and Schuldt 2008). Trade fairs may use physical platforms, where participants interact face-to-face, or virtual platforms, where participants interact through computer-mediated forms. This study constitutes a preliminary attempt to understand the association between physical and virtual trade fairs. The fieldwork combines qualitative interviews with trade fair organizers, exhibitors, and visitors and a survey comprised of open-ended questions administrated to visitors of an international trade fair. The main conclusion is that trade fairs are instrumental and relevant platforms for interaction and customer engagement processes. The physical trade fair is core to raise the proximity among participants and allows the direct interaction with the product or service. The virtual trade fair emerges as a platform for communication, global market reach, and cost/time savings. Findings further support that physical and virtual platforms should be combined in an integrated and complementary way. This complementary effect brings the opportunity to capitalize on the strengths of both platforms. Ultimately, an optimal combination of the physical and virtual platforms may be pivotal in fostering learning and knowledge dissemination and exchange on a continuous basis, favoring practices for relationship marketing and customer engagement. Research implications and avenues for future studies are presented.References Available Upon Request

E-consultation is defined as the communication between a physician and a patient for non-emergency medical issues via telecommunication devices (e.g., mobile phone) from anywhere in the world. Extant research on telemedicine has studied mainly either monitoring of severe and chronic diseases or when telemedicine is specifically targeted to geographically isolated areas. Additionally, most of the literature on telemedicine has investigated the healthcare professionals’ adoption rather than the patient’s. We build on the modified technology acceptance model (TAM) (Davis 1986) to understand adoption of e-consultations by patients in Paris, France. Not only do we focus on patients but specifically those in a large metropolis, both novel, vis-a-vis prior literature.The study proposes that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use affect patient’s attitude toward e-consultation and intention to use (adopt). Risk aversion and three trusts, interpersonal, technological, and in the healthcare system, will moderate the relationship between attitude and adoption. Two focus groups and an online survey were conducted. The target population is any French resident over 18 years with health insurance. Two separate focus groups were used to compare patients who did not grow up surrounded by technology (Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964)) and those who did (Generation Y (born 1977–1994)). The online survey, via Qualtrics, used convenience and snowball sampling resulting in 132 completed surveys.A major finding suggests that both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are significant predictors of attitude toward innovation and intention to use. Interestingly, the moderation effect of interpersonal trust between physician and patients indicates that higher trust indeed improves intention to use. This research is, possibly, one of the first to apply the technology adoption model to understand consumers’ (patients’) adoption of a novel innovation (medical), in an industry where trust is paramount (healthcare), to a population not studied before (not suffering from chronic or severe disease nor in isolated areas). We believe, the research makes a further contribution through studying the moderating effect of the healthcare system and interpersonal trust on the relationship between attitude and the innovation and intention to use. The results support that “patient-centered communication” (Ommen et al. 2008) between physicians and patients is extremely important and using facilitators to increase trust may enhance adoption. Indeed, it is important for e-consultation providers to showcase increased overall efficiency and effectiveness in diagnoses and prognoses of diseases. Finally, our research could potentially encourage governments and policy-makers investing in telemedicine to actually improve patients’ trust in the system to enable the greatest benefits to accrue to the population at large.References Available Upon Request

Emerging research into the concept of FOMO (fear of missing out) suggests that higher levels of social media usage increase users’ feelings of anxiety about missing out on opportunities for socialization or novel experiences. Empirical support for this notion is scarce, so further reinforcement is provided. Furthermore, previous studies indicate a strong influence of negative emotions such as envy in motivating social media users to engage in the conspicuous consumption of positional goods and services. Thus, it is proposed that FOMO will motivate social media users to engage in conspicuous consumption of goods and experiences (i.e., posting photos on social media of themselves with prestigious brands and products, as well as engaging in status-enhancing activities such as luxury vacations or exclusive experiences).A conceptual model is proposed and tested via a pilot survey. Based upon the literature pertaining to social media usage, FOMO, and conspicuous consumption, four hypotheses were developed: H1: Active social media usage is positively related to FOMO. H2: Passive social media usage is positively related to FOMO. H3: Active social media usage (a) and passive social media usage (b) are positively related to FOMO. H4: FOMO is positively related to the conspicuous consumption of (a) products and (b) experiences. A pilot study was administered to undergraduate students at a small liberal arts university in the Northeast. Counter to expectations, H1 was not supported, nor were H3a and H3b were not supported. On the other hand, the relationship between passive social media use and FOMO was strong and positive, approaching significance. As hypothesized, the relationship between FOMO and conspicuous consumption of products and FOMO and conspicuous consumption of experiences were both significant, lending support to H4a and H4b.The results of this study provide tantalizing directions for further examination. First, consistent with predictions, there appears to be a relationship between the level of passive social media usage and FOMO. Second, active social media usage does not appear to be related to FOMO, nor does the level of active social media use influence the likelihood of posting photos of oneself engaging in the conspicuous consumption of products or experiences. Third, and most interestingly, FOMO appears to be a strong motivation for engaging in conspicuous consumption through social media.References Available Upon Request

A large body of literature exists on understanding various consumer resistance movements. However, the question of why everyday consumers engage in consumption restraint has received little attention in the scholarly discourse to date. In this study, we investigate the motivations of people who participate in “Buy Nothing Day,” the annual day of consumption restraint that corresponds with Black Friday. To do this, we examine 1813 consumer tweets referring to this event. Consumer motivations were categorized as relating to consumerism, spiritual welfare, wastefulness, environment, inequality, anti-capitalism, financial responsibility, and financial necessity. Of these, consumerism and spiritual welfare were the most common motivators. In addition, most consumers conveyed positive sentiments toward this event.Our findings shed light on motivations that average consumers may have to restrain their consumption and provide insight for firms wishing to better understand and respond to this type of individual.References Available Upon Request

Hispanics, a highly diverse population in terms of geographical origin, education level, and language usage, are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the United States. As a result, their buying power is increasing. US Hispanics over-index in digital media usage, yet are largely underserved and ineffectively targeted. Utilizing both secondary data and interviews with Hispanic advertising/marketing industry experts, in this paper, we present an application of a strategic marketing process that takes into account the multiplicity of cultural factors that impact the success of a targeted marketing campaign.Upon completion of interviews with industry professionals in multicultural advertising campaigns, we elaborate on the strategic marketing process by incorporating segmentation bases specific to subcultures and suggesting specific tactical tools to position offerings toward these populations effectively. We propose that successful campaigns with a multicultural focus would take into account several determinants of cultural segmentation to choose the appropriate micro-targets for the message and position products specifically toward these sub-segments. While the focus of this paper is the Hispanic population to illustrate these determinants and tactics due to the impactful growth of this market on the US economy, and the cultural variety within this ethnic group, the tactical implementation of transcreation is applicable to any subculture in today’s digital media environment.The contributions of this paper are twofold. Theoretically we itemize the relevant, and often overlooked, segmentation considerations for ethnic minorities in a targeted marketing strategy. While separate streams of literature in consumer behavior and advertising strategy study these elements, their place in the larger strategic plan is not examined with an interrelated approach. Here we bring them together and put them into context to create a cohesive theoretical basis for practice. Second, we provide concrete recommendations for marketing managers, advertising professionals, and practitioners at the tactical level. Through our interviews with practitioners in this area, we have come to understand what is lacking is customer insight (caused by the monolithic view) and attention to how marketing messages are delivered (through transliteration). Therefore, we illustrate how a varied view instead of monolithic and attentive positioning through transcreation with authentic messages enabled by the contextualization capabilities of digital and mobile platforms leads to better communication of offerings.References Available Upon Request

This paper presents the findings of a study aiming to assess how service customers from different cultures experience value (co)destruction. VCD results from the “misuse” (intentional or accidental) of one system’s resources by another system (Plé and Chumpitaz Cáceres 2010) involving concepts of resource loss, goal denial, and loss of subjective well-being. The critical incident technique (CIT) was adopted. Interpretive analysis of the narratives of 100 Chinese and 100 UK service customers suggested four thematic clusters or meta-themes.Findings were grouped in four meta-themes. Rejected: PRC (39); UK (35). The main theme was that of “rejection” by service organizations and their employees. “Rejection, exclusion and disapproval” result in loss of status and self-esteem and are antecedents to both sadness and anger. Cheated: PRC (25); UK (18). The angriest customers were those who felt cheated by service organizations. For these a main underlying theme was financial loss where respondents had either paid for a service they had not received/did not want or where the service provider failed to deliver the required service once payment had been made. Burdened: PRC (20); UK (26). Others described negative encounters where they were required to expend a significant amount of their time and/or effort typically involving a sense of helplessness or powerlessness. Customers were unhappy or dissatisfied. Defeated: PRC (16; UK (21). These focussed on the service organization’s mistakes and ultimate failure to deliver the required service. Reality fell short of expectations (antecedents of sadness) resulting in “frustration or interruption of a goal directed activity” (antecedent of anger).This study addresses an under-researched area by exploring the process of value (co)destruction within cultural context. Each of the four profiles – rejected, cheated, burdened, and defeated – reflects different emphasis by customers in their interpretation of the service exchange process and on two major underlying themes which transcend cultures. First is the customer’s need to be valued and respected as a social interactant. When this does not occur, an aversive loss of self-esteem (personal resource) will result (Leary 2007). Few tools exist to help service managers focus on the process of value (co)destruction. The profiling approach discussed here creates parsimonious templates reflecting the main issues of concern to customers, how these are common to or differ between cultures and a means of classifying service failure.References Available Upon Request

This paper proposes an integrative conceptual framework to analyze the role and impact of protectionist rhetorical discourse as well as social identification variables on buying patterns of domestic and foreign products on both countries (Mexico and USA). The framework draws on three well-established theories: attribution theory (variables: protectionist rhetorical discourse influences domestic/foreign product judgments), social identity theory (country of origin, consumer ethnocentrism, and cosmopolitanism influence domestic/foreign product judgments), and theory of reasoned action (product judgments influence willingness to buy domestic/foreign products). First, attribution theory allows the individual to find explanations for unsatisfactory or negative outcomes: We normally ask “Why the flight got delayed?”, but we seldom ask “Why the flight arrived on time?”. Second, social identification theory maintains that individuals develop a sense of belonging to different social groups. Third, theory of reasoned action maintains that individuals develop favorable or unfavorable intentions to behave in specific manners based on polar attitudes. Prospects to test the conceptual model and managerial implications are discussed.The results of empirically testing the proposed model have implications for marketers. Marketers of Mexican brands prone to diminishing consumption can strengthen business strategies focused on internal markets rather than keeping high exports. They can also foster exports if they find that their products are more heavily consumed under the new protectionist landscape. Commerce policy makers can assess which Mexican products have better acceptability in the USA so they can pursue more favorable rules of origin in NAFTA renegotiations. They can also understand whether rhetorical protectionist discourse influences Mexican products and which categories are mostly affected to implement defensive commerce strategies. A limitation of the proposed framework is ambiguity in the country of origin of products. For example, a car may have a European brand, whereas its parts come from China; it is manufactured in Mexico and sold in the USA. For sake of parsimony, this paper only considers COO. Other studies have analyzed rejection buying, price sensitivity, and xenocentrism. Researchers in other countries would be interested to further address these topics.References Available Upon Request

With the rise of globalization and trade in the late twentieth century, global mobility is a growing phenomenon. During the last 50 years, it is believed that around 214 million people have moved internationally, leaving their country of origin (Human Mobility and Development Report, Klugman 2009). Globalization, technological advances, and transport development have not only largely contributed to the increase in the flow of goods and services but also of people (Appadurai 1990). This leads to the inevitable consequence that millions of consumers are exposed to multiple cultural environments and contacts.When people of different cultures come into contact, we observe the phenomenon of “acculturation.” This latter affects all aspects of the individual’s life intertwined with another culture. When acculturation impacts the consumption and purchase behavior of a migrant in a new cultural environment, this is called “consumer acculturation,” which is a subset of acculturation (O’Guinn et al. 1986).The aim of this study is to explore the different modes of food acculturation which develop among professional expatriates. Firstly, we will examine how food consumption behavior is influenced by the consumers’ culture of origin and that of the host (sub)culture(s). Secondly, we will assess how expatriate food consumption is altered by the accumulative effects of previous acculturation experiences and diverse cultural contacts.We used a qualitative approach based on the life-story method. We interviewed in depth 25 American, British, and German professional expatriates who came to the Alsace area (France) in the framework of an international assignment or as self-initiated expatriates. Our sample meets the different characteristics we targeted (age, gender, family situation, culture of origin, previous experiences of acculturation, and cultural contacts). A first thematic analysis was carried out manually to identify the most recurring and common themes on food consumption behavior and the different acculturation modes of expatriates settled in Alsace.Our study shows flexible modes of food acculturation for expatriates who do not adopt a single and unique acculturation mode, but rather different mixed modes such as maintaining specific habits from the homeland, adopting host culture eating habits, and being open to international food. Finally, local Alsatian food is viewed as one option among the whole variety of foods that the host country could offer to the expatriates.References Available Upon Request

One implication of technology has been the development of innovation products and services, resulting in the sharing of assets and collaborative consumption (CC) which continues to increase in use by consumers in various countries, yet reasons for these are currently unknown. The purpose of this research was to investigate the intention to use Uber, requiring the use of both technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behaviour (TPB). TAM identifies the importance of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) in the adoption of technology services, and this model has been used in many studies, being the most frequently cited, and is described as suitable for predicting the adoption of technology. TPB seeks to investigate intention and the beliefs associated with them including the attitude towards the behaviour (ATT), the subjective norm (SN) and the perceived behavioural control (PBC). A model integrating both TAM and TPB was used to achieve the research purpose.A three-country quantitative study was conducted among a convenience sample of South Africans, Swedes and American using items having established empirical value. The questionnaire comprised a section containing demographic questions and a section containing 38 items associated with the research model. The survey was distributed electronically, resulting in 920 usable responses.The findings indicate the relevance of these models in both the various country contexts and their applicability in collaborative consumption. The study also found the impact of trust within the context of the subjective norm, the importance of which can be understood in online context and associated with the nature of the service offered by Uber. Though attitudes towards Uber are relatively high, intentions are lower for differing reasons in the various countries. Results show that metric invariance is achieved among these three countries, indicating that the TAM and TPB measures hold very similar meaning across the three cultures. Trust was found to reduce the influence of subjective norms as consumers with high trust in the brand or application required less affirmation from friends and significant others to influence their behavioural intentions. From a managerial perspective, the importance of the app and its design within the context of collaborative consumption is illustrated.References Available Upon Request

This study investigates the impact of female sex hormones (i.e., luteinizing hormone (LH), estrogen, and progesterone) on women’s consumption behaviors on fashion products. Female sex hormones reach peak level when women are near ovulation, and this research examines how these hormones, when at peak level, influence women’s attitudes and purchase intention toward sexy and revealing fashion products. The research is based on two theoretical frameworks: ovulatory shift hypothesis (OSH) and theory of reasoned action (TRA). Moreover, moderating effects of sexy fashion consciousness and self-control are investigated. A within-subject survey design was used to examine the proposed phenomenon. Vietnamese women were recruited for this specific study.In line with OSH, the findings suggest that when near ovulation, women show more favorable attitudes and stronger purchase intentions toward sexy and revealing fashion products. Further, as predicted by TRA, attitudes toward sexy and revealing fashion products mediate the relationship between ovulation and purchase intentions. However, the hypothesized moderating effects of sexy fashion consciousness and self-control were not supported. The results of this study add to related streams of research which suggest that hormonal fluctuations influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. For managers, the results provide suggestions on how to target female consumers for sexy fashion products more effectively.References Available Upon Request

The aesthetic property of typicality has received much attention in recent literature as well as being empirically employed by the fashion industry in order to better appeal to consumers. Yet, despite the academic and managerial interest in typicality, there is little research on the topic as it relates to apparel products. One exception is a study by DeLong et al. (1986) which found that consumer response is influenced by product property configurations in apparel that have been previously experienced. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of how consumers perceive the property of typicality when applied to apparel products. Based on a multilevel measure of typicality (Tyagi and Whitfield 2014), the focus of the investigation was on the silhouette, which includes the basic parts or elements of the apparel product. To this end, this research is grounded in categorization (Rosch et al. 1976) and preference-for-prototype theory (Whitfield and Slatter 1979), in order to explore and identify the prototypes that consumers have in their minds regarding three categories of apparel products: pants, jackets, and shirts.The research method was divided into two steps. In the first step, drawings of the different prototypes that consumers have in their minds for pants, jackets, and shirts were generated. Based on these drawings, the second step involved selection of the prototype for each apparel category of pants, jackets, and shirts. In summary, drawings were generated, elements of silhouette identified, and then prototypes were selected for pants, jackets, and shirts. It is interesting to note that respondents selected t-shirts instead of button-down shirts as the shirt prototype and jeans instead of slacks as the pants prototype. Because respondents were students, and they are usually more exposed to jeans and t-shirts, instead of slacks and button-down shirts, it may be that their minds associate the categories of pants and shirts with those products that they are most familiar with. Hence, the following empirical question is raised: Would a nonstudent sample select different prototypes? This question is worth exploring as the next step, because results may imply that prototypes cannot be assumed and should be enquired directly from the consumer. This study contributes to the literature in a general sense by expanding understanding of the aesthetic property of typicality while offering specific implications for understanding the property relative to apparel products. Findings offer insight for apparel/fashion brands that are considering incorporating typicality in product design.References Available Upon Request

Researchers prescribe that the combined influence of personal characteristics and work conditions should be examined to provide a clearer understanding of performance at work. Here we explore the combined impact of ethical climate and salespeople’s external WLOC on job meaningfulness. This study suggests that when salespeople perceive that their sales organization has a strong ethical climate, the negative impact of external WLOC is mitigated on key predictors of sales performance and turnover intentions. The following hypotheses were tested with a sample of 143 B2B salespeople from a sales organization based in the Southeastern USA: H1: External WLOC is negatively related to job meaningfulness. H2: Ethical climate is positively related to job meaningfulness. H3: Job meaningfulness is positively related to job performance. H4: Job meaningfulness is negatively related to turnover intentions. H5: Job performance is negatively related to turnover intentions. H6: Ethical climate moderates the impact of external WLOC on job meaningfulness. Results show an acceptable fit with the data and supported all hypotheses except for H5. The moderating hypothesis showed that ethical climate dampened the negative relationship between external WLOC and job meaningfulness. The study results contribute to the knowledge about ethical climate and external WLOC in important ways showing a negative relationship to job meaningfulness. The beneficial role played by firm’s ethical climate in shaping salesperson’s attitudes and behaviors is another contribution. The study highlights the need for sales managers to be aware of the potential negative impact of external WLOC during hiring and utilize the competitive advantage facilitated by firm’s ethical climate during training programs.References Available Upon Request

As virtual sales teams grow and as salespeople continue to work remote, the notion of workplace isolation, or the extent of separation from others, will prevail. As organizations continue to locate their salespeople closer to their customers, perceptions of being disconnected from others in the organization and feelings of loneliness will inadvertently be created. This also results in a loss of informal learning, emotional support, camaraderie, and direct social interactions with other coworkers. Extant literature has shown that workplace isolation is indeed a major concern with dire consequences on employees. Despite the pervasiveness of isolation, existing research provides little empirical theoretical insight about how isolation influences performance. In the sales literature, scant research has examined the existence and consequences of workplace isolation, and little is known about the effects on individual sales performance as well as any underlying processes. If the ultimate goal of sales managers is to achieve higher sales performance, then an understanding of how and the process by which isolation impedes performance is imperative. As such, we use social learning theory (SLT) to identify and empirically explore the mechanisms in which workplace isolation impacts salesperson performance. In accordance with SLT, our results show that workplace isolation indirectly impacts salesperson performance via knowledge, informal communications, and commitment. This suggests that when salespeople work remote and are not around others in their organizations, they miss out on valuable interacting and learning opportunities. Managers can take steps to offset workplace isolation by increasing the frequency of informal communication between employees, bolstering commitment, and promoting knowledge sharing.References Available Upon Request

Performance is especially relevant among sales staff. However, knowledge of the variables that encourage salespeople’s performance is still limited.The purpose of this paper is to contribute to partially fill this gap by analyzing the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), salespeople’s organizational commitment, organizational pride, and salespeople’s performance. This study’s empirical analysis is based on the information provided by 176 supervisor-salesperson dyads from 96 companies. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the psychometric proprieties of the measurement scales and to test the proposed direct hypotheses, while conditional process analysis was used to test the proposed mediation and moderation hypothesis. The results confirm that CSR perception is positively related to the salespeople’s performance indirectly, through organizational pride and commitment. Furthermore, the findings show that the relation between organizational pride and commitment improves when there is a responsible leader on the organization. In addition, the paper identifies the main implications of these results for the management, and it makes some suggestions for future studies.References Available Upon Request

Sensory branding is an emergent topic in the field of branding and has gained growing interest among researchers and practitioners especially in the last decade. The growing interest in this field is visible in the growing number of articles published in scientific journals and conference papers presented worldwide. Practitioners seem to be interested in the area and see it as part of their reality and find information on sensory branding very relevant to their everyday work. In an attempt to educate practitioners in sensory branding, the business press is increasingly stressing the significance of human senses in building strong brands and engaging consumers in multiple encounters. The nature of the academic research in sensory branding is evolving and extending its interest. The first empirical studies that have been conducted in the field of sensory marketing focused on consumer psychology and sensory perception. More recently a growing number of researchers are moving toward a more holistic perspective, by investigating how the five senses impact on brand building and how they can elicit strong and passionate feelings toward brands. Recent research appreciates that sensory branding is relevant to a number of different sectors and marketing practices and cannot be overlooked. Building on this growing interest both from a theoretical and a managerial perspective, the proposed session in sensory branding intends to (a) promote a broad discussion within the topic, (b) present new studies in the field of sensory branding, and (c) identify future research avenues aiming at stimulating more conceptual and empirical studies within the field. The special session is comprised of four relevant topics in the field of sensory branding, namely, (1) sensory place branding, (2) store atmospherics, (3) sensory luxury branding, and (4) sensory communication. The first paper is entitled “Branding Places: developing a sensorial brand identity model” and will be presented by TC Melewar, Clarinda Rodrigues, and Charles Dennis. The second paper is entitled “Store atmospherics” and will be presented by Charles Spence. The third paper is entitled “Enhancing sensory branding in luxury through visual design” and will be presented by Aurélie Hemonnet and Pierre Valette-Florence. Finally, the fourth paper is entitled “Challenges of exploring the perception and impact of sensory communication” and will be presented by Klaus-Peter Wiedmann, Janina Haase, and Jannick Bettels.References Available Upon Request

Ambiances are created and experienced as a product of different and unique blends of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures and thermal conditions that resonate with our individual and collective memory (Thibaud 2011). Therefore, it is interesting to stress that sensory aspects of destinations have been pointed out as significant dimensions to create positive tourist experiences (Agapito et al. 2014; Ghosh and Sarkar 2015) and thus impact on how tourists perceive places as unique and appealing on craving new and enjoyable experiences. Moreover, if a place is successful in making itself distinct and discernible, the sum of brand experiences will influence positively tourists’ impressions towards the place and their intention to revisit it (Cardinale et al. 2014). Assuming that tourists are deeply attracted towards places that stimulate their senses, the question is raised on how destination brand managers should build a strong sensorial place brand identity and then brand it. Drawing on sensory marketing and brand identity theories, this paper proposes an integrative model to develop sensorial place brand identity. This novel approach to place brand identity follows a holistic approach by considering different key influencers, enactment stakeholders and residents as co-creators in the process of delivering sensory appealing place branding messages based on a strong and unique place brand identity.References Available Upon Request

In a multisensory perspective, there can be little doubting that the multisensory atmospherics in stores and other commercial spaces affect the behavior of consumers in systematic ways (see Spence 2018a; Spence et al. 2014, for reviews). This message has created a revolution in sensory marketing, such that across virtually every product category, retailers (and manufacturers) are now increasingly seeking to influence the “sensory experience” of their consumers. One of the key questions then becomes how should a company design its multisensory atmospherics in store to ensure that the return on investment is worthwhile? And what is the relevant metric, anyway? Increased sales, or column inches in the press? But lurking in the background is also an ethical question around whether the effective design of multisensory atmospherics may be pushing more of us into consuming more than we otherwise might (see Spence 2015, 2018b, for reviews). In this talk, I will review the consumer scientific evidence related to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and even gustatory aspects of the store environment and their influence on the consumer’s behavior. I will highlight a number of areas where further research is needed in order to better understand how the multisensory retail environment shapes customer experience and shopping behavior. I will also discuss the latest findings in terms of the currently accepted cognitive neuroscience models of multisensory perception. Should there be time, I would also like to briefly address the question of whether there are meaningful individual/cultural differences in the desire for/avoidance of overly stimulating environments among consumers. Finally, I will take a look at how new technologies are changing the multisensory landscape for consumers.References Available Upon Request

The ever-growing number of products with similar qualities in combination with decreasing impacts of conventional marketing techniques has led to increasing difficulties for marketing practitioners to appeal to the consumer effectively. As a consequence, sensory marketing has recently gained growing popularity with respect to the ongoing search for new ways to differentiate products and brands from competitors. Several research results have already provided evidence for the great potential of sensory communication in marketing by investigating the effects of for instance the salience of touch, store scents, and background music on consumer behavior. However, there are still numerous unexplored topics in this broad research field. Therefore, we contribute to this promising stream of research by discussing our results of three recent studies investigating several new aspects of sensory communication in marketing.References Available Upon Request

Ferrari was inspired by the designer Pininfarina. Louis Vuitton relies on the know-how of designer Nicolas Ghesquière. Apple has become inseparable from Jonathan Ive. Through its “Mastery of Art” exhibition, the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto draws a parallel between Van Cleef and Arpels products and masterpieces of Japanese design. Design and shape are nowadays at the core point when launching new luxury products. Appealing to consumers’ senses, and especially vision, product design triggers strong desirability. While product design is intrinsically linked to brand building and to the definition of luxury, consumers’ sensitivity to luxury products and the product design, especially through its visual dimension, is usually addressed separately. Yet, for optimal marketing-oriented decisions, they need to be brought together. Furthermore, while design is intrinsically linked to luxury, little research focused on the influence of its visual and sensory dimensions on the symbolic and the economic value of brands. This research specifically delves into the mechanisms behind how brand-level attitudes can be influenced by product-level sensitivity to product design. Building on the value theory, this research investigates to what extent the visual and sensory dimension of product design enhances luxury brands’ value. Based on a data set collected on 125 individuals, a partial least square analysis was used. In particular, it measures the influence of product design (aesthetic, functional, and symbolic dimensions), customers’ sensitivity to design (design acumen), as well as influence of social and individual drivers, in the consumers’ luxury brand love and on their willingness to pay a premium price. It contributes and extends literature on branding, design, and luxury in three distinct ways. Firstly, this research distinguishes two antecedents of the product design that are the social and the individual drivers. Secondly, it reveals the mediating role of the product design between social and individual drivers, on one hand, and luxury brands’ symbolic value (through brand love and brand equity), on the other hand. Thirdly, it confirms the creation of economic value through the positive influence on willingness to pay a premium price. In terms of managerial implications, this study reveals the importance for luxury brands to develop sensory branding through product design. It especially points out the added value of design for luxury brands’ equity, its role in fostering brand love and in increasing luxury brands’ turnover.References Available Upon Request

Smartphone appears as a “traveling companion” of the tourist to serve his experience. The purpose of this research is to understand how tourists use their smartphone to discover a tourist destination. We develop and test a model of use diffusion of smartphone. Our research is based on use-diffusion (U-D) theory. This theory identifies perceived effects of mobile service uses only on utilitarian dimension. In the field of tourism, research show that perceived effects of uses are not limited to the utilitarian dimension but also to the other dimensions of the tourism experience.Therefore, we make the following assumption: mobile services uses during a tourist stay positively influence dimensions of tourism experience (H1). Perceived effects of mobile services uses on tourism experience positively influence satisfaction with mobiles services (H2).Our research has mobilized two types of methodologies. First, a qualitative study was conducted with 21 smartphone owners aged 15–60 years in order to identify smartphone uses for tourist purposes. A method by semi-directive interview has been adopted. Results of the qualitative study show three categories of mobile services uses, orientation, organization, and search for information located. We called these mobile services mobile service uses to discover a destination (MSUDD). These different uses influence tourism experience and satisfaction with these mobile services.Second, a quantitative study allowed us to test our conceptual model. Our sample consisted of 486 French tourists who went on vacation in the last 6 months. The relationships between variables were examined using a structural equation modeling. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have led to identify two dimensions related to perceived effects on the discovery of the tourist area and another dimension related to the perceived effects on the social dimension of the stay.The analysis of the structural coefficients of the model allows us to validate the hypothesis H1; MSUDD uses have a positive effect on tourism experience for the two dimensions, discovery and social dimensions. On the other hand, hypothesis 2 is partially validated. Perceived effect on discovered dimension has a positive effect on user’s satisfaction, but perceived effect on social dimension has negative effect. Through the uses of its smartphone, the tourist can facilitate the discovery of its destination. Therefore, if smartphone uses can mediate positively tourism experience, this device can also “de-exotised” the tourism stay and make it lose its “extraordinary character.”References Available Upon Request

The customer-based online reputation is an invaluable asset for the success of firms online. Reputation increases the customer’s perceptions of the product quality, encourages customers to share a positive WOM (Hong and Yang 2009), and retain those customers (Fombrun and van Riel 1997). The customer-based online reputation is defined as the assessment done by the online customers of a company based on their general online experience with it (Youness and Valette-Florence 2016).This paper investigates the effects of customer-based online reputation on two important customer behavior outcomes that are word of mouth and willingness to pay a premium. Brand relationship quality (BRQ), used as a mediator, indicated the strength and depth of the relationship between brands and consumers. It reflects a set of factors that serve in creating and maintaining a long-standing relationship between the two parties. Based on the work of Fournier (1998), brand relationship quality has six facets, i.e., love and passion, self-connection, commitment, interdependence, intimacy, and brand partner quality.The research was conducted in France using an online survey with 306 customers. For statistical reasons, we decided to choose ten of the top French websites which are Amazon, Cdiscount, Fnac, eBay, Leroy Merlin, PriceMinister, Vente Privée, Boulanger, Darty, and La Redoute. Three-hundred six customers filled out the questionnaire. A SEM-PLS analysis was relied on in order to test the causal research model with consistent reliability measures, all path coefficients being estimated, thanks to a systematic bootstrapped procedure with 5000 replications.The findings of this research contribute to the literature on online brand management by showing the impact of customer-based online reputation on WTP a premium price and WOM and how these relationships are mediated by cold and hot brand relationship quality.From a managerial perspective, the findings invite companies to monitor and manage their customer-based online reputation. More specifically, online reputation has positive effects on both cold and hot BRQ, higher on cold than hot BRQ. Contrary to Nyffenegger et al. (2015) results, only hot BRQ has a significant impact on WTP, a result that probably needs further investigations.Another point worth to be investigated is to distinguish the effects of the online reputation’s two facets (cognitive and affective) on hot and cold BRQ.Finally, further studies should probably try to deepen the definition and understanding of customer-based online reputation dimensions as well as its relationships with other related reputation constructs (for instance, the general company’s reputation).

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of children’s word-of-mouth communication: how it is processed, its dimensions and its relation to other sources of information and to young consumers’ use of the Internet. Theoretical contributions from consumer socialization, new media and word-of-mouth communication studies are assembled, and an exploratory qualitative analysis in the form of focus group interviews with 7–11-year-old children is reported. We provide empirical evidence for word-of-mouth communication being a common activity among children. Observation and marketing exposure both complement and trigger word-of-mouth activity. Electronic word-of-mouth communication is less frequent, but the Internet is a relevant source of information and marketing exposure; it assists children’s learning about products and brands and furthers their purchase decision processes. This study suggests that word-of-mouth communication received by children is more complex and dynamic as compared to extant literature, suggesting that future research further explores its sought and unsought components, as well as its relationship with non-verbal peer influence that results from observation.

Early adopters (EAs) represent a crucial group of consumers in the diffusion of innovations. They are not only the first to adopt new products and technologies but also the ones who accelerate the diffusion process through electronic word-of-mouth communication. Therefore, identifying and reaching potential EAs for up-and-coming innovations are of vital importance.In the digital age, the Internet serves as a primary platform for information research as well as communication and consequently the diffusion of new technologies. However, there is surprisingly little knowledge as to how EAs currently use the Internet, which is no longer considered as a novel technology. Existing theories about the diffusion of innovations stay quiet when it comes to the subsequent usage of adopted technologies. Thus, we identified a research gap of investigating the current usage of EAs’ Internet usage behavior.Therefore, our study empirically examines the Internet usage of potential technological EAs in comparison to the general public and gives an overview of 15 different Internet channels. For this purpose, we firstly classified EAs by considering their personal traits with a new approach. We combined their level of technological innovativeness, independent decision-making, and opinion leadership to classify them. Secondly, we analyzed a vast set of data containing 119,829 subjects to examine Internet usage differences.The results demonstrate a significant difference between EAs and the remaining population. EAs use the Internet more frequently to gather information, to communicate, and to practice specific services, such as online banking or shopping. Additionally, they use their smartphones more frequently for mobile Internet access than non-EAs. Regarding gender differences among EAs, we also illustrated female EAs communicating more frequently on the Internet than male EAs.These findings offer marketers new insights into EAs’ Internet usage behavior and enable them to reach customers more effectively. Although the Internet is widely adapted in Germany, EAs still use information channels, specific services, and communication platforms more frequently than the majority of the population. Marketers can reach potential EAs for novel products and technology more effectively by using Internet advertising, particularly through social network sites and communication platforms.References Available Upon Request

The role of price in consumers’ product evaluations has attracted considerable research attention in the consumer behavior literature (e.g., Bornemann and Homburg 2011). Research has identified two opposing effects of price: information and sacrifice (Rao and Sattler 2003). One the one hand, consumers rely on price to infer quality information of products and services. In this case, a higher price indicates higher quality and thus positively affects purchase probability (Rao and Monroe 1988). On the other hand, price is a measure of sacrifice. The sacrifice effect of price, which stems from classic economic theory, represents the consumer’s evaluation of the amount of money he or she must sacrifice to satisfy his or her consumption needs (Völckner 2008). From a management perspective, it is critical to understand the dual role of price in consumers’ evaluations of product alternatives in order to derive effective pricing strategies.Despite an abundance of research, current academic literature remains inconsistent regarding the effects of prices. In addition, only a few studies (Chapman 1993; Chapman and Wahlers 1999) consider the simultaneous effects of signaling and sacrifice on behavioral outcomes such as purchase intentions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of price changes on purchase intensions, in particular, if price increases can lead to higher revenue as opposed to a decrease based on economic theory.We conduct a field experiment to investigate the informational and sacrifice effects of price for two products: wine (hedonistic) versus laptop cases (utilitarian). Our results indicate that price effects vary depending on the product category. Specifically, the influence of price increases for hedonic products is opposite to utilitarian products. The signaling effect for wine (hedonic product) is strongly positive, whereas the sacrifice effect is stronger for laptop cases (utilitarian product).The results suggest several key implications for managers. Our study shows that signaling and sacrifice effects of price changes differ between hedonic and utilitarian products. If managers understand the price response drivers and the underlying consumer characteristics, they can develop targeted communication campaigns and influence, at least to a certain extent, consumers’ willingness to buy (Völckner 2008).References Available Upon Request

This research investigates the relationship between price and demand of multi-attribute products positioned for different market segments. In light of the third law of demand theory and Lancaster’s and Rosen’s approach to consumer theory based on a product’s multiple characteristics (Lancaster 1966, 1971; Rosen 1974), we propose a new approach that can be used to evaluate product positioning and pricing strategies, one that integrates both economic and marketing theoretical underpinnings. Specifically, we posit that the change in relative price of a multi-attribute product, in comparison to another similar product positioned as a lower-end equivalent, will play a vital role in determining the overall demand of that product among its appropriate market segments. Based on hedonic pricing analyses using pricing data collected from Taiwan, we find that despite an increase in overall prices of high-end glasses (e.g., glasses lens positioned in the high-end category paired with glasses frames that are also positioned in the same category) relative to low-end glasses products (e.g., glasses lens positioned in the low-end category paired with glasses frames that are also positioned in the same category), effective lens and framing pairing combinations may lead to a decrease in relative prices of the high-end glasses. Consequently, the overall demand of high-end glasses among high-end consumers can increase significantly. The findings support our proposition regarding the role of relative price in relation to consumer demand for multi-attribute products. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.References Available Upon Request

The price of products and services is a critical aspect of marketing communications and can affect consumer inferences regarding product quality, as well as seller motives and credibility (Cheema 2008; Xu and Wyer 2010; Zhang and Schwarz 2012). The price of product or service, however, is often just a starting point or “anchor” for the eventual cost of acquiring a product or service. From this initial anchor, price factors such as discounts and shipping costs often affect the final cost to consumers. Building on previous research on anchor adjustment theory (e.g., Janiszewski and Uy 2008), the present research investigates how both positive and negative adjustments from an initial anchor price affect consumer perception. In the marketplace, a positive adjustment from an anchor price is a gain to the consumer, whereas a negative adjustment is loss. An example of such a gain to the consumer could be a price discount, whereas an example of such a loss to the consumer could be shipping and handling fees.The present research argues that the extent that consumer perceptions of a product shift in relation to such gains and losses is dependent on the precision and the range of the gain or loss. Previous research finds that anchor adjustment is less when the initial monetary amount is presented as a precise amount rather than a rounded amount. Janiszewski and Uy (2008) suggest this is the result of a precise anchor eliciting a more granular adjustment scale that, in turn, results in less adjustment from the initial anchor. The present research, however, suggests another explanation involving seller credibility. Previous research finds that anchor adjustment is less when the anchor is provided by a credible source as they infer that the anchor is a more accurate indication of the product’s value (Zhang and Schwartz 2012; Wegener et al. 2010).We argue that the extent that consumer perceptions of a product shift in relation to such gains and losses depends on the precision and the range of the gain or loss. When confronted with a possible gain, as in the case of price discounts, precise amounts result in less favorable buyer perceptions than do rounded amounts. On the other hand, when confronted with a possible loss, as in the case of shipping and handling fees, precise amounts result in more favorable buyer perceptions than do rounded amounts. Initial studies support some of our hypotheses.References Available Upon Request

Consumer behavior strongly depends on the cultural context in which an individual is embedded (De Mooij 2011; Kumar and Pansari 2016). This might also hold for price increase communication by firms. While culture is a multidimensional phenomenon, in particular individualism seems interesting in the context of price increases and fairness perception. Studies showed that individualism was even the only cultural dimension which explained consumer behavior (Moon et al. 2008), and meta-analyses indicated that individualism moderates the relationships of several variables with switching costs (Pick and Eisend 2014, 2016). Despite these studies on the role of individualism, its influence on price perception is less researched. Our study addresses several research gaps: First, it considers individualism as an antecedent of price fairness perception. Second, as prior research suggests that customers prefer different types of price increase justifications (Homburg et al. 2005), we focus on three types of price increase justifications: better payment of suppliers, better payment for employees, and more environment-friendly production. These socially oriented price increase justifications are insofar important because many companies communicate their CSR activities such as helping the environment and they hope to motivate positive responses of their customers.We conducted a paper-and-pencil survey across consumers in Germany using established 7-point Likert scales. The sample consists of more than 400 respondents (mean age = 24.08 years, 45.9% females). After an exploratory factor analysis, we run several regression analyses. Our analyses showed that individualism traits differently influence fairness perceptions of price increases. In detail, independence has no impact on fairness perception of price increases caused by (a) higher payments for suppliers and (b) environment-friendly production. However, for independent-feeling consumers, price increases are perceived as fairer if the firm communicates paying their employees better. More, consumer competition decreases price fairness perception for all three price increase reasons. Perceived uniqueness has no influence on fairness perceptions of price increases caused by (a) higher payment for suppliers and (b) better payment for employees but increases fairness perception of price increases caused by environment-friendly production.Our work contributes to marketing research by showing that differences in cultural orientations within a country can explain fairness perceptions of socially justified price increases. Further, consumer competition has a negative impact on price fairness for all price increase justifications, while independence has mostly neutral and uniqueness partly positive effects. The results show that fairness perceptions differ across social price increase justifications and are affected by different cultural orientations.References Available Upon Request

Within social sciences, there has been a revival of interest in religion and spirituality (Jafri et al. 2015), especially in the context of consumer identity and its impact on consumption. Past studies reveal that the relationship between consumer identity and product consumption has yet to be fully explored, particularly in a service context (McKeage and Gulas 2013) and in countries with strong religious and cultural values. The aim of this study is to investigate the role religion plays in forming consumer identities and to identify to what extent religion has an impact on the salience of one identity over another in terms of consumers’ bank choice (i.e. a traditional or Islamic) in Pakistan. The banking sector of Pakistan is an illuminating context for the study owing to the variety it offers in terms of its banking operations through conventional or non-religious and Islamic banks.Despite having a strong religious identity on the basis of religious affiliations and religious commitment (Worthington et al. 2003; Wilkes et al. 1986), the respondents in this study preferred to use the bank of their fathers’ choice even when this was a traditional bank, although traditional banks do not follow Islamic practices, which work on the principle of profit/loss sharing and prohibit any activities that deal with ‘interest’. Analysis of the data also revealed that owing to the lack of trust in religious compliance and adherence to Islamic principles (Ashraf et al. 2015), the respondents preferred to use the banks which were recommended or used by their fathers. This finding indicates an area of potential conflict between religious and role identities.This study contributes to the consumer behaviour literature from the perspective of consumer identity by investigating the role of religion in the salience of consumers’ religious and role identities in relation to their consumption—here bank choice. The results suggest a need to further explore the interplay between culture and religion in ‘religious’ countries, the precedence of religion and role and the potential for identity conflict on the basis of strong cultural and religious values and could impact consumer behaviour.References Available Upon Request

Grounded in corporate personhood recognized by US law (Dubbink 2014), a recent theory, the moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability (MRCS), argues that a corporation has moral responsibilities toward the society and the environment, which can determine its commitment level toward meeting its sustainability goals. If a corporation regards sustainability as a perfect duty, its related activities would be strictly regulated and enforced under any circumstances. If it views sustainability as an imperfect duty, its activities may result in inconsistent sustainability outcomes.To understand cross-cultural consumers’ perceptions toward corporate moral responsibility for sustainability from perfect duty to imperfect duty, we selected Norway, Canada, the USA, Hong Kong, and China which were in different tiers of the ranks in the “Country Sustainability Ranking (2016).” We posited that consumers in countries with a higher sustainability ranking may have higher moral standards than those at a lower rank, which in turn could influence inconsistent moral spectrum of corporate sustainability.By online survey, we collected 1,508 usable responses (303 Norwegians, 299 Canadians, 302 Americans, 298 Hong Kong Chinese, and 206 Mainland Chinese). Due to nonequivalence between Hong Kong and China samples, they were not analyzed, and Norway, Canada, and USA responses were further tested.The findings suggested that the moral spectrum from perfect to imperfect duty of corporate sustainability in consumers’ minds was consistent across three countries; working condition support is considered a universal duty of corporations to fulfill, while transparency support was considered relatively a meritorious duty. This proved the potential for the universal moral spectrum of corporate sustainability across countries. We also found that overall consumers’ expectations of MRCS were not influenced by country, but social norms, consumer knowledge, and consumer belief were related to different levels of expectations. Thus, it was concluded that consumers’ different levels of expectation of MRCS are led by individual factors, rather than country per se. With empirical support, this study can help corporations better set their sustainability goals and implement strategies based on greater understanding of cross-cultural consumers.References Available Upon Request

Trust is an essential dimension in transactions that involve performance ambiguity, important consequences, and great interdependence between partners, i.e., there is some kind of risk involved. In personal sales, building lasting relationships should be encouraged, especially in insurance market, in which trust and commitment between broker and insured are put to test year after year. The present research intends to investigate the importance of trustworthiness of frontline employees and managerial policies and practices of insurance companies on customer satisfaction and loyalty. To the model testing, data were collected with Brazilian insurance brokers. PLS was used for the data analysis. The results indicate the influence of trustworthiness of employees on satisfaction and loyalty and the influence of managerial policies and practices on satisfaction.

Sustainability initiatives are those which are dedicated to improving performance along the triple bottom line (environmental, social, and economic). However, it is argued that sustainability initiatives are easier to formulate than to implement (Gimenez and Tachizawa 2012).This study provides a foundation for understanding the organizational logics and key differentiators between private and public hospitals. In doing so, the study seeks to provide a conceptual foundation for the organizational positioning and planning of sustainability initiatives, highlighting differences between private and public sectors.This case study was carried out in the healthcare industry of Spain. The selection of only one industry avoided the occurrence of contextual bias between the studied organizations (Hartline and Jones 1996). The approach used was based on Yin (1994, p.1), who indicates that this was the appropriate way forward to accomplish the research objective. This study is also based on an inductive approach (Thomas 2006).The findings indicate that the sustainability initiatives which apply to public hospitals are based on a top-down logic, while the private ones are based on a bottom-up logic. This opposing logic between private and public can be explained mainly by the fact that public hospitals are fully integrated into the public healthcare system, while the private ones are not integrated with others. The latter also receive funds from the health ministry as well as from entities of central and local governments, while the private ones receive their funding mostly from private insurance or direct private funds.The positioning of sustainability initiatives in public hospitals may be characterized as mandatory to the organization. Initiatives are driven by a top-down logic based on a long-term vision and that the organization is fully integrated into the public healthcare system. The positioning of sustainability initiatives in private hospitals may be characterized as optional to the organization. The positioning is driven by a bottom-up logic based on a short-term vision which is marginally integrated into the public healthcare system. The planning of sustainability initiatives in public hospitals can be characterized as entailing structured and continuous actions, while rather improvised and transient in the private ones.There appear to be three main reasons for the positioning and planning of sustainability initiatives, namely, public or private funding, system integrated or not, and societal requirements.References Available Upon Request

Are consumers likely to forgive a brand during crises, such as Toyota almost a decade ago and recently Wells Fargo? Does nostalgia associated with the brand help alleviate the negativity? What is the role of the consumer’s moral makeup? This research addresses the role of managerial response and time in postcrisis recovery. Looking at brand responses to a crisis, it posits that brand nostalgia enhances consumers’ forgiveness, assuaging the negative effects of the crises. We argue that brand nostalgia primes long-term orientation and empathy, therefore encouraging consumers to evaluate the crisis from a more distant perspective. We also argue that consumer’s moral identity facilitates this process.References Available Upon Request

In recent years, the nature of corporate giving has begun to change. Corporate philanthropy, whereby a corporation donates a portion of its resources to a societal cause, has become more focused and strategic in its execution (Gautier and Pache 2013). To that end, there remains the need for a deeper understanding of the underlying processes that drive returns from CSR-related activities. Prior research has demonstrated that for CSR initiatives to be successful, consumers must believe the company is support a cause for the right reasons.In this research, we submit that perceived effort plays an instrumental and previously undelineated role in the formation of consumers’ motive attributions. Guided by attribution theory and the augmentation principle, three studies are put forth to demonstrate how the type, nature, and source of giving influence consumers’ perception of effort and, ultimately, their evaluation of the firm.Using data collected from online survey panels, we find that donations of time and money differentially influence consumers’ attitude toward the firm via serial mediation. Specifically, corporate donations of time (compared to money) lead to higher levels of perceived effort, which in turn induces more altruistic motive attributions and, ultimately, a more positive attitude toward the firm. We also find that the effect of donation type on perceived effort is moderated by consumers’ perception of the relative cost of the donation to the firm, whereby donations of equivalent value from a firm with fewer resources are perceived to be more effortful. Collectively, our model depicting moderated serial mediation provides insights into the process through which consumers form motive attributions in the context of corporate giving.References Available Upon Request

This study explores customer engagement (CE) from the perspective of a Facebook brand fan community. CE is often viewed as the initial ‘liking’ of a Facebook brand page; however, this study includes a multi-item measure to operationalise CE.Habibi et al. (2014) found that Facebook brand fans have a strong sense of community and thus feel obligated to contribute to the welfare of the community. Dessart, Veloutsou and Morgan-Thomas (2015) contend that social contexts beyond purchase—such as online brand communities—are the best contexts to study CE. Higher levels of CE with brands are expected in brand communities, and the connection between members within these communities collaborates with the aim to add value to the brand experience (Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek 2011).Although various opinions regarding CE exist, there seems to be some agreement that it is a multidimensional construct. This study used a CE measurement operationalised by So, King and Sparks (2014), who defined CE as the interactive process of a personal connection to a brand. The scale consists of 25 items which originally resulted in a five-factor solution.Understanding and classifying brand fans on social network sites have been attempted by Wallace et al. (2014:92). They developed an exploratory typology of Irish student brand fans on Facebook. Our study aimed to explore if a similar fan classification would be found among adult South African Facebook brand fans and further explored if these groups differ with regard to CE.A two-step cluster analysis was conducted after validation of the constructs, to determine if the same clusters arose as was the case with Wallace et al. (2014). The analysis included a total 493 respondents. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess whether the four clusters differed significantly on the dimensions of CE. A two-factor solution for CE was found and labelled Captivation and Gratification. Our study found a similar fan classification as Wallace et al. (2014), namely, Fan-atics, Self-expressives, Utilitarians and Authentics.The results aim to shed light for marketers within a community setting by proposing preliminary recommendations for effectively engaging with individuals through a Facebook brand fan page. Whilst still in the early stages of investigation, the results of this work in progress provide interesting insights with regard to various groups within a Facebook brand page as well as how these groups differ in terms of CE.References Available Upon Request

Brand pages on social networking sites (SNS) enable companies to communicate and interact with their target groups and to build substantial bonds with actual and potential customers. Therefore, brand managers are interested in the motivational antecedents and brand-related consequences of consumers’ online brand-related activities (COBRAs) on SNS brand pages. Based on the level of brand-related activeness, COBRAs can be categorized into consuming behavior (e.g., reading posts and comments, watching videos), contributing behavior (e.g., liking, commenting, and sharing), and creating behavior (e.g., actively producing and publishing content). Unfortunately, previous research mainly focuses on contributing behavior. Therefore, this study investigates motivational antecedents (i.e., social interaction, remuneration, entertainment, and information) and a brand-related consequence (i.e., word of mouth) of COBRAs. Using a sample of 359 German Facebook users, the results of structural equation modeling reveal that consuming behavior positively affects word of mouth, while contributing and creating behaviors have no significant effect. Regarding the motivational antecedents, social interaction positively affects all COBRAs. Remuneration motivations are positively related to contributing and creating behaviors. Entertainment motivations only have a positive effect on consuming behavior. Finally, information motivations do not significantly affect any COBRA type. This article concludes with theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for further research.References Available Upon Request

Social networking site (SNS) group provides a new cyberspace for users to share knowledge. As competition intensifies and recruiting new members becomes more difficult, SNS groups need to devote their strategic efforts to encouraging members’ contributions. However, prior research has seldom touched this issue from the “online switching barrier” perspective. We develop and test a structural equation model incorporating pull-in (group-member and member-member relationship quality), push-back (alternative unattractiveness), and mooring (switching cost) effects, which subsequently affect members’ knowledge contribution behavior (knowledge sharing and knowledge co-creating) through the mediating role of self-development and pro-social motivation for engagement. Results based on 382-respondent survey data show that pull-in and push-back factors facilitate members’ contributing motivations, which in turn lead to contribution behavior. The mooring effect which is reflective of different levels of switching costs moderates the effects of pull-in/push-back on self-development and pro-social motivation. The findings provide academic insights for scholars and marketing implications for practitioners in leveraging lock-in effect in SNS groups.References Available Upon Request

Mobile shopping apps are becoming a major, if not dominant, marketing tool in twenty-first-century shopping experiences. This technology is used, not just to finalize purchases but to access the information needed to compare prices, assess product and service quality, and determine product availability. Apps are driving the strategy of Amazon, as well as retail giants such as COSCO, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sam’s Club, Sears, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart, as they replace in-store employees and offer at-home delivery or convenient store pickups (Nassauer and Safdar 2016).While consumers increasingly use smartphone apps to access the information needed to successfully engage in digital transaction, their ability to successfully navigate this process is not uniformly distributed. Thus, it is important for firms that are increasing their engagement with consumers through digital apps to understand the potential consequences if the information provided is inadequate, inaccurate, or misleading. Given that not all of the information typically accessed by consumers is controlled by the organization, firms using digital apps need strategies to protect themselves from possible negative attributions. One means of buffering suggested by Ariely (2000) is to empower consumers by giving them full control of the information search process. That is, if the consumer can freely search for information, it is suggested that there is less potential of negative attributions.Thus, the research undertaken has two primary objectives: (1) to establish that the quality (i.e., accuracy) of the information accessed through a digital app has a direct effect on purchase behavior relative to the product that is the object of the information search and (2) to investigate whether control of the information search process moderates the relationship between the information quality and a consumer’s purchase behavior.The current study confirms the importance of information control by demonstrating that though retailers might see higher levels of repurchase intent when they provide consumers with accurate information (vs. inaccurate), retailers are also susceptible to lower levels of repurchase intent when the information is deemed inaccurate. Given the subjectivity of information, this study provides evidence that by allowing consumers to control the search for information from sources they choose, retailers can reduce the negative effects that inaccurate information has on repurchase intentions.References Available Upon Request

The virtual reality topic spiked a lot of attention in different fields and research areas, and marketing is no different. Amongst marketing practitioners, scholars and their consumers, the technology has gained and maintained momentum over the past few years. This research advocates for the implementation of multi-user virtual reality to reach and engage global customers. Various researchers (e.g. Greenberg 2010) have pointed out that online social platforms seem to be especially relevant for the encouragement of consumer (brand) engagement. In line with Kaplan and Haenlein (2009), this research adopts the stance that virtual reality can be seen as this next generation of online social platforms and arguably will take consumer (brand) engagement to the next level. Virtual characters are a key element of all virtual environments, and it can be argued that with the rise and global acceptance of chatbots, the role of a brand’s physical presence (e.g. Jin and Bolebruch 2009), as propagated by brand representatives (i.e. embodied brand characters), becomes increasingly important. This preliminary study therefore explores the expectations virtual reality users have regarding brand presence—focussing specifically on (interaction patterns with) embodied brand representatives in virtual reality.This research consists of two data collection phases. In the first part of the study, focus group data was collected from a purposeful sample of English-speaking virtual reality users (n = 27). Since the focus of the research is geared towards fully immersive virtual reality, only people who experienced virtual reality making use of head-mounted displays (i.e. virtual reality goggles) were recruited. A semi-structured, open-ended interview framework was implemented within the focus group interviews. Results from the focus group data will be presented. The next research phase will include analysis of online virtual reality user communication data (i.e. public in-world user-generated content). Guided by input from the focus groups, a virtual reality domain will be designed in “high fidelity”, a multi-user virtual reality world that allows for comments addressing brand-related virtual reality content and brand presence (specifically geared towards embodied brand advocates). The focus group and virtual reality log dataset will be analysed separately.References Available Upon Request

Social networking sites (SNS) have become an ideal tool to develop customer engagement (CE) with brands, leading companies to invest increasingly on virtual communities and CE, using the number of likes and comments as a proxy to measure it. Yet, organizations do not fully understand whether members are really engaged with and loyal to the brand. Moreover, previous studies are not clear on the motivations underlying CE behaviours and on its role in shaping brand loyalty. As such, the aim of this research is to understand what drives customers to engage with SNS brand communities, to relate it with different CE behaviours and to study its impact on brand loyalty. The study concludes that the drivers for passive (lurking) and active (posting) behaviours differ and that these were, mainly and respectively, information and economic motivations. Moreover, Facebook users tend to exhibit more lurking than posting behaviours, with the latter contributing more to brand loyalty than the former. Theoretically, this study contributes to bridge a gap in the literature, since research on CE, its drivers and outcomes is still lacking and is largely conceptual. Managerially, this study presents insights to brands holding virtual communities, helping them to define customer-oriented strategies.