Rediscovering the Essentiality of Marketing

Advertisers use incongruent advertising content in order to avoid being ignored due to an overflow of advertising information (Herbig and Kramer 1994) and to bypass processing schemata used by consumers (Brown 2004). The existing literature provides several conceptualizations of incongruity. In our study, we use the degree of how unexpected a stimulus is as main criterion for incongruity (Meyers-Levy and Tybout 1989) and argue that consumers’ perceptions of (in)congruity depend on individual characteristics, experiences, and consumer-specific schemata (Fleck and Maille 2010).

Words constitute a crucial aspect of visual presentation in marketing communication and convey meanings not only through their semantic properties but also through the manner in which they are presented (e.g., typeface and layout). Numerous studies have examined typeface, but few studies have examined Chinese typefaces, particularly the differences between traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese typefaces. In addition, most previous studies have focused on the semantic meaning or affective responses of typefaces; rarely has academic attention been directed toward exploring the persuasive effects of typefaces. The purpose of this research is to propose a conceptual framework showing the influence of typeface shape (circular vs. angular) on the persuasive effects of various types of information (group oriented vs. individual oriented) and to compare the influences of English, traditional Chinese, and simplified Chinese typefaces. We assert that circular (angular) typefaces are more likely to elicit a need to belong (a need to be unique), which in turn positively affects the persuasiveness of group-oriented (individual-oriented) information. In addition, consumers’ self-construal (independent/interdependent) and language (traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and English) play moderating roles in these relationships. We propose that consumers who engage in interdependent self-construal perceive that group-oriented information presented in circular typefaces is more persuasive than do consumers who engage in independent self-construal, whereas consumers who engage in independent self-construal perceive individual-oriented information presented in angular typefaces as more persuasive than consumers who engage in interdependent self-construal do. Furthermore, congruency between typeface shape and information orientation increases processing fluency, thus increasing persuasiveness. We expect that the effects of congruency between typeface shape and information orientation on persuasiveness will be the strongest in traditional Chinese, followed by simplified Chinese, and be the weakest in English.

Marketers frequently employ celebrity spokespersons to promote and build a brand image. Research has shown that ads using celebrities are effective in increasing sales revenues and stock valuations (Elberse and Verleun 2012) as well as raising awareness, gaining higher recall, triggering and maintaining interest, and inducing favorable attitudes. Research has primarily focused on either the information carrier perspective or role model perspective in order to support the compelling reasons that celebrities are effective spokespersons.In this study the dual pathway of ad persuasion model (Johar and Sirgy 1991) is used to test the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in print ads. More specifically the aim of the study is to determine whether a celebrity can enhance advertising effectiveness through functional congruity in the event that the celebrity is an expert information carrier in the product category and self-congruity when the celebrity is viewed as a role model who is similar to the viewer. Information regarding celebrities’ expertise was manipulated and gender and age were considered when testing similarity of the celebrity and viewer of the ad.Findings support the dual pathway of ad persuasion model in the celebrity endorsement context and more specifically suggest that highly expert celebrities are most effective when promoting a utilitarian product (insurance) in print ads. Highly similar celebrity endorsers (similar age and gender) were most effective when promoting a value-expressive product (artwork) and ad appeal. Furthermore, this study provides empirical support for the mediating role of functional congruity in the case that the product is utilitarian and self-congruity in thev case that the product is more hedonic on purchase intention. Results suggest that celebrities that are highly expert are more influential when the product is highly utilitarian and celebrities that are more similar to viewers are more influential than less similar others when promoting a value-expressive product. Using the dual pathway model extends the body of research on celebrity endorsement as it disentangles the various theoretical approaches that have been taken in the past and helps unify the literature by clearly noting the type of product, appeal, and the celebrity as an expert or role model.References available upon request.

A new research report from eMarketer (2014) suggests that firms in the UK were expected to increase their advertising expenditure via mobile phones by 96 %, from £1.03 bn in 2013 to £2.02 bn in 2014. Considering the growth in SMS advertising expenditure in the UK, it is important to understand the underlying factors forming consumers’ attitudes toward text marketing. Founded on Fishbein’s (1967) expectancy value theory, it is suggested that attitude towards SMS advertising is the result of consumers’ beliefs about such practices. Therefore, this research aims to identify beliefs that form consumers’ attitude toward SMS advertising in the UK.A questionnaire research survey was administered. A seven-point Likert survey instrument (ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree) was developed using validated scales from previous studies in mobile marketing and advertising. Some of the measuring items were reverse coded to prevent biased responses. Data was collected from UK based university students (N = 236, Females 103, Males 133) in the form of convenience sampling. The sample frame is justified, as students are heavy users of mobile phone technologies and are knowledgeable about SMS advertisements (Muk and Chung 2014).The results show that five factors directly influence the consumers’ attitude toward SMS advertising in the UK. In order of significance (from most important to least important) they are: entertainment, personalisation, irritativeness, credibility and informativeness. Mediation analysis also found that the more knowledgeable the consumers become about mobile communications, the more likely they are to be entertained by SMS advertising messages, and less likely to find text marketing irritating. Furthermore, incentives can increase the credibility of text marketing messages and reduce the level of their irritativeness. It was also concluded that prior permission is fully mediated via irritativeness in terms of its influence on text marketing attitude. Finally, the study shows that both consumer control and privacy concerns influence SMS advertising attitude via mediating variables of credibility and personalisation.References available upon requests

With the increasing concentration of media planning and buying into large media agencies that provide specialist expertise and economies of scale, the role of creativity has become the core function of most advertising agencies. Indeed, the place of creativity in advertising has long been recognized. While the occurrence of eureka moments has been well documented, for the most part creatives are known to come up with multiple ideas for campaign strategies and executions. These are rarely presented directly to clients. Instead advertising executives are tasked with intervening. Aside from motivating and managing their creative teams, advertising executives have to make the final “call” as to what campaign will be presented to the client often with a “plan B” campaign held in reserve just in case Plan A is rejected or is met with resistance. Agency executives can make their reputations on the basis of selecting the work that best fits the clients’ brief otherwise the relationship will flounder and the account will eventually be lost. To what extent is the decision eclectic or codified? Do agency executives apply set rules or take each case as it comes? This chapter examines the decision-making employed by a global advertising agency to select creative work. The result provides insights about the nature of and factors that influence decision-making amongst managers when choosing between creative work; decisions that are pivotal to the retention of clients; and the longevity of the relationships.

The purpose of this research is to explore brand image and attitude toward the brand and the relationship to classical music in advertising and perceived music brand congruency. Over the past 30 years, many articles have aimed to study the effect of background music in advertising. Most of these studies though focus on contemporary popular music and omit the use of classical music which is often used in global brand advertisements. Various measures have been used to gauge advertising effectiveness when music is used in advertising, including advertising recall, brand recall, and support of brand benefits for example. Additionally, music in advertising has been assessed in relationship to brand image, identity, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intent.

Organizational buying behavior has generally been considered a complex, systematic, and rational behavior, which is not influenced by subjective criteria (Webster and Wind 1972; Sheth 1973). However, more recent research has shown that organizational buying behavior may also be influenced by personal factors (Anderson and Chambers 1985; Ronchetto et al. 1989). Although the decision itself serves organizational goals and may be bound with rational processes, the decision makers are human beings. Therefore, major characteristics of the decision makers or the appraisals they have about their environment in the business to business (B2B) contexts may have a bearing on the decision-making process and the performance of the transactions.

In the past, brands and brand management in the industrial goods sector have rarely been taken into consideration neither within scientific framework nor in practice. The specifics of industrial goods cast doubt on the realisation of brand-strategy concepts. For some years now, there has been an increase in the significance of brand-policy aspects in industrial goods markets. In many industrial goods companies, greater focus is now being placed on the brand concept. But what role do brands actually play in industrial purchasing processes? In our view, a direct primary evaluation to determine the additional price willingness of brand aspects amongst purchasers of industrial goods providers would not, therefore, be useful. Numerous studies indicate that the direct retrieval of purchasing decision factors amongst industrial purchasers leads to a one-sided emphasis on objective performance factors such as quality and the “price” factor. From a methodical perspective, evaluation processes that confront the purchaser with an overall purchasing situation are more meaningful. In order to evaluate the significance of B2B brands in industrial purchasing processes, we will perform an adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis with 32 industrial purchasers.

Revenues from E-commerce for businesses in the B2B sector are rising as part of multichannel marketing, the use of different information, communication, and revenue channels. This trend can also be observed in the market for power tools for professional use. The consumer goods sector has already been subject to far-reaching studies regarding the reasons for the choice between online and offline channels, including research in different phases of the purchasing process. In industrial goods marketing, by contrast, the reasons for this choice are less well known. Power tools belong to those product groups in the industrial goods sector that show clear parallels to B2C business.The present study therefore takes approaches for investigating the determinants of channel selection from the B2C sector and applies them to the B2B sector. The study develops hypotheses on the reasons for the choice of channel based on inherent characteristics of various sales channels, the manifestation of channel-relevant shopping motives among customers and of course the final decision of the B2B customer for a certain channel. These are then tested using a discriminant analysis using customers of the brand Festool as an example.

Contemporary scholars define value creation as the process of extracting value from the use of resources by a customer (Grönroos and Voima 2013). Value co-creation is a unique form of value creation where two or more actors such as a customer and a provider create value in a direct interaction and through a joint process (Grönroos and Voima 2013). Direct interaction refers to the actors’ actions that are merged into a collaborative, dialogical process (Grönroos and Gummerus 2014). In these definitions, value refers to value-in-use signifying that value is perceived by the customer in a specific use situation (Vargo and Lusch 2008) through “an interactive, relativistic preference experience” (Holbrook 1996, p. 138).Existing research on value creation has focused on value in routine service exchanges where the resources are delivered by a provider (or providers) and value is created by the customer in use (Grönroos 2011; Keränen and Jalkala 2013; Salomonson et al. 2012). In this chapter we examine value co-creation in a unique service exchange defined as project exchange, where the resources and processes integrated in use are generated only for that use situation. Project is “a unique endeavour—in the sense of a one-off—undertaken to accomplish a defined objective” (Morris 2002, p. 83). Considering service as the application of resources for the benefit of another party (Vargo and Lusch 2008), we conclude that project is a service with a unique goal and application of resources. In project exchange uniqueness of project inhibits the creation of standardised systems, which prevents any indirect interactions (Grönroos and Gummerus 2014). In fact, indirect interaction is a consequence of routine service exchanges where a standardised resource can be integrated to meet a number of similar objectives. Therefore, in project exchanges (or an exchange of any part of project) value is always co-created through a direct interaction. We define project exchange as the integration of self and others’ resources to achieve a unique goal.A case study method, specifically an inductive approach, was applied (Eisenhardt 1989). In order to represent the complex nature of project exchange, three major international construction contractors and one main infrastructure client were studied via semi-structured interviews. The data collection focused on the interactions between the customer and the provider. The data analysis included identifying the experiential events where an interaction was occurred between the customer and provider. The analysis was verified through an iterative coding and reflection process conducted by two researchers. The results of this research show that value co-creation begins with the emergence of needs (or problem) awareness by the customer. In the value imagination phase, the customer and provider communicate potential value (i.e., “embedded in the resources offered by a service provider”; Grönroos and Gummerus 2014, p. 209) and value proposition respectively and achieve a value alignment where they agree to integrate a set of resources, processes and outcomes in the value actualization phase. Potential value and value proposition are dynamic and tend to move away from the alignment as a result of each actor’s engagement in other service exchanges and contextual changes. Value realignment can facilitate value actualization as the actual events may not be predicted accurately in the value imagination phase. Value co-creation occurs through interrelated joint processes and by different individual actors within the different layers of the customer and provider businesses. Individual actors’ continuous or discontinuous direct interactions in the customer–provider joint processes shape B2B direct interaction and B2B relationship quality. We posit that the notion of co-creation is interwoven with the nature of project exchange. Indeed, the uniqueness of a customer’s goal leads to the need for integrating unique resources and processes. Development of such resources can only be performed in a joint process between the customer and the provider. In other words, the provider is unable to create those unique resources without an engagement with the customer. Therefore, value co-creation that is defined as an opportunity for value facilitation (Grönroos 2011) is in fact a move from routine service exchanges toward project exchange and unique problem-solving.References available upon request

In companies whose main customer is the enterprise, traditional marketing can no longer be applied as before, giving rise to Relationship Marketing, which allows the company to improve its market position and achieve more sustainable relationships with their customers. This study aimed to analyze the determinants of trust and commitment in B2B market of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. The literature review sought to contextualize the relationship model, Key Mediating Variables (KMV), Business to Business characteristics, relationship marketing and constructs: trust, commitment, perceived value, delivery reliability, seller relationship, flexibility, and product quality. It was a descriptive research with quantitative variables, totaling 105 valid interviews, through a self-administered electronic questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares method, allowing the work with a small sample. The software used was Smart PLS 2.0 with application of factor analysis techniques to estimate a series of interrelated relationships simultaneously and Structural Equation Modeling dependence. Furthermore, it was observed that the product quality has greater weight in the explanation of engagement with the trust relationship. And similarly, this construct is more important than the other (flexibility, perceived value, and delivery reliability) in explaining trust.

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) often seek price cuts from their suppliers through an adversarial approach. At the same time, other OEMs have adopted a cooperative approach based on the belief that adversarial tactics will damage the possibility of good supplier–OEM working relationship. While price cuts can obviously improve OEM profitability in certain situations, researchers have also recognized the competitive advantages that can be gained through cooperation with suppliers. This research seeks to find out whether supplier–OEM relationships are adversely affected by OEM demand for price cuts. It seeks to find out whether demands for price concessions can coexist with good supplier–OEM relationships. A research model incorporating relationship constructs as well as a construct representing price pressure and another representing overall relations between the OEM and its supplier is tested using data collected from suppliers in three different industries. Structural equation modeling and analysis lead to the conclusion that price pressure can coexist with good relationships as long as OEMs and their suppliers take the managerial actions required for the maintenance of good working relationships. The general pattern of relationships among the research constructs was found to be substantially similar in the three industries, although cross-industry differences were observed.

Movies, magazines, and popular TV shows such as “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” often highlight the abundance of money and leisure time among the wealthy. Consistent with this portrayal, Veblen’s (1899/2007) theory of the leisure class suggests that the wealthy signal their ability to live idle lives by consuming time unproductively. At the same time though, complaining about being busy and about working all the time is an increasingly widespread phenomenon in modern society. On Twitter, celebrities publicly complain about “having no life” or “being in desperate need for a vacation” (Alford 2012). New York Times social commentator suggests that a common response to the question “How are you?” is “Busy!” (Kreider 2012). An analysis of holiday letters indicates that references to “crazy schedules” have increased since the 1960s (Schulte 2014). Contrary to the prediction that signaling time spent leisurely is associated with high status and wealth, we propose that signaling busyness has also become a status symbol and is regarded as an aspirational lifestyle.We uncover an alternative kind of conspicuous consumption that operates by shifting the focus from the preciousness and scarcity of goods to the preciousness and scarcity of individuals. Our investigation of the underlying mechanisms reveals that positive status inferences in response to busyness are mediated by the perception that a busy person is in high demand and scarce. Six studies test our conceptual model. In study 1, our aim was to establish that a more-busy individual would be perceived to have more status than a less-busy individual, and to demonstrate a proposed mediating process of being in demand and scarce, while controlling for alternative mechanisms. In studies 2 and 3, we show how the public use of time-saving products (e.g., Bluetooth headset) and services (Peapod delivery) can signal status, regardless of how busy one truly is. In studies 4 and 5, we examine cultural values (the work ethic) and differences among cultures (i.e., North America vs. Europe) to demonstrate moderators and boundary conditions of the busyness effect. We find that Americans with values consistent with the protestant work ethic (Mirels and Garrett 1971) are very likely to interpret busyness as a positive signal of status. Moreover, we obtain a reversed effect in Europe, with busyness signaling lower status. Finally, in study 6, rather than measure the inferences an observer makes in regard to a busy person, we show that people aspire to be more like a busy individual, especially for status-conscious people, despite the view that busyness is associated with low levels of happiness.Our work develops a novel and yet unexplored association between time expenditure and status inferences, and contributes to several streams of literature. First, we expand research on the decline of leisure time (Hochschild 1997; Rutherford 2001; Schor 1992) by systematically examining the conditions under which busyness operates as a status symbol. Second, while past research has primarily focused on how the expenditure of money has been a vehicle to signal status (Bellezza and Keinan 2014; Berger and Ward 2010; Griskevicius et al. 2007; Han et al. 2010; Rucker and Galinsky 2008; Wang and Griskevicius 2014; Ward and Dahl 2014), we explore how the expenditure of time can lead to the same end. Finally, our novel predictions contribute to recent research analyzing more subtle and alternative signals of status (Bellezza et al. 2014; Berger and Ward 2010; Dubois et al. 2012; Han et al. 2010).

The Olympic Games (OG) are unique activities that attract a large number of visitors to a country and generate intensive media-coverage and international broadcasting, providing a host country with a powerful tool to communicate desirable country-image messages broadly to the international community. Pairing a mega-event with a destination engenders image transfers between the event and the host, leading countries/regions to compete with each other for the privilege of hosting mega-events with a hope of improving their images, increasing the flow of tourists, and realizing other related benefits. This bilateral transfer of images between a mega-event and a host country can be conceptualized as a co-branding image-transfer exercise with one side being the consolidated image of the country (the people, physical/social aspects of the country, destination) and another side being the image of the mega-event (nature, scale, and uniqueness of the event). The degree to which the images of the mega-event and host country fit together affects the level of effectiveness of the co-branding exercise. Hence, the goal of the current research is to examine and compare the results from the XXII Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games (SOG) vs. XXI Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games (VOG) to identify effects of host-country image on the image of the OG.Study participants (N_VOG = 559; N_SOG = 677) were randomly recruited from the US residents approximately 2 months after each of the 2010 VOG and the 2014 SOG by online market research companies. The study instrument (online questionnaire) contained sections to measure attitudes towards the host-country and people, host-country as a destination, and the OG. Respondents were asked to share their “general impressions” on the measures by selecting the number on a 7-point scale that most closely reflected their opinion on each of the objects of interest. Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine underlying factors as the basis for summary measures development (no substantive concern for collinearity was observed). Summary measures were analyzed using t-test means comparison for the independent samples for each OG. Linear regressions were run to examine the relationships among the evaluative summary measures. The current study adds to the stream of studies on OG and host-country co-branding. The results indicate that while the respondents had overall above average positive attitudes towards both host-countries and the OG, there are significant differences in attitudes towards Canada/VOG vs. Russian/SOG. The results indicate that the OG evaluation is significantly influenced by the host country/people and host-country destination evaluations with the latter one mediating the relationships between the evaluations of the country/people image and the OG. This suggests that IOC’s communication campaigns while usually strongly focusing on the benefits of the host-country destination should nevertheless be carefully designed to tailor to specific host-country. However, the interpretation of the results needs to be handled with great care as major international conflict involving Russia started to escalate approximately at the time of the data collection.

As it is experienced in daily life, people are susceptible to others’ behaviors, choices, and their mere presence in many ways, even when they are non-interactive. Several studies on consumer behavior have reported this phenomenon. These studies, however, focused on how decision-making outcomes are affected by others, whereas none have examined effects on decision-making speed. Therefore, we investigated the effect of non-interactive others on decision-making speed.Two laboratory experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, 96 university students were randomly assigned four conditions which include (1) subject by him/herself, with other person performing task with (2) normal/(3) fast/(4) slow speed. In experiment 2, another fast condition added. Under this condition, subjects performed task with fast speed sound. Stimuli were 18 pairs of images, each member of which was derived from the same category. Both experiments were computer based.The result showed that speed contagion occurred in fast speed condition. But in case of slow it didn’t happen. Interestingly, there were no differences of satisfaction for the decision between four conditions. We also found this speed contagion happened only when there is physical presence of other. That means the only fast speed sound cannot make it happen. Because decision-making during a purchase is most frequently made in others’ presence, our research would contribute to understanding decision-making under realistic social contexts.

Consumers often advise other consumers by providing them with explicit recommendations on how to behave with regard to a wide range of purchasing decisions. Although previous literature (e.g., Goldsmith and Fitch 1997; Liu and Gal 2011) typically construes advice giving as a behavior driven by an empathic concern for others, in this research we propose and show across two experiments that advice giving can sometimes serve a compensatory function and thus be driven by a self-serving motive to restore a lost sense of control.Experiment 1 (n = 82) shows that individuals who experience a need to restore control are more inclined to give advice than individuals without this need, and that this tendency is stronger for individuals chronically higher in desire for control. We measured respondents’ chronic desire for control (Burger and Cooper 1979). Then, we manipulated their sense of control using an episodic recall task (Whitson and Galinsky 2008), in order to either activate or not a transient need to restore it. Finally, respondents recalled a positive consumption experience and wrote a message about it as if they were writing to a friend. Messages were coded based on whether or not they contained an explicit advice or recommendation for the recipient. As predicted, respondents who experienced a need to restore control gave more advice than respondents without this need (55 % vs. 35.7 %), p = .05. Moreover, this tendency was stronger for those with a higher chronic desire for control compared to those lower in desire for control (76 % vs. 32.2 %), p = .008.Experiment 2 (n = 101) demonstrates that the presence of an alternative means to restore control attenuates the effect of a need to restore control on advice giving. We orthogonally manipulated sense of control, by using an anticipatory thinking task (Rutjens et al. 2010), and initial opportunity to restore control, by asking participants to engage in a task about brands that either boosted their sense of control or not (Cutright et al. 2013). Finally, participants wrote about a positive experience they had with a product or service and expressed their intention to advise others to buy it. Consistent with our compensatory account, when no initial opportunity to restore control was provided, participants in need to restore control reported a higher intent to advise (M = 8.29) than participants with no such a need (M = 6.69), p = .001. When an initial opportunity to restore control was provided, intent to advise did not differ as a function of whether or not a need to restore control had previously been activated (p > .70).Our research advances our understanding of the motives that drive advice giving in word-of-mouth conversations by showing that sometimes consumers may offer advice driven by a motive of restoring control. Our research also contributes to personal control literature by showing that, in providing explicit directions as to how others should behave, advice giving may serve a compensatory function as it provides people with a means to reestablish control.References available upon request.

When engaging in word-of-mouth (WOM) communications, consumers generally share either opinions, whereby they merely communicate whether they like or dislike a product (e.g., “I like the product I just bought”), or advice, whereby they offer explicit recommendations as to how others should behave (e.g., “buy or do not buy this product”). Past research has not examined whether and when advice and opinions exert similar or differential influence for WOM recipients’ behavior. We fill this gap by proposing that advice can be more or less influential than opinions based on how diagnostic consumers assess the information to be (e.g., Ahluwalia 2002; Feldman and Lynch 1988).

Past studies explore the effect of purchase intention by reference group in various situations. However, the roles of a reference group (private and public group) on the purchase intention of the distinctive types of shoppers have been overlooked. Drawing from the social influence theory, using experimental research, and analyzing data with t-Test and ANOVA, the findings show that utilitarian shoppers tend to have higher purchase intention when a private group is used for information cues. But, a reference group does not have an impact on the purchase intention of hedonic and social shoppers. This research theoretically contributes to social influence theory by revealing that a reference group has a diverse effect on purchase intention in different stimuli.

The positive role that music and musicians play in developing awareness and raising funds for a wide variety of social, environmental, and philanthropic causes has been well documented by the popular press and media coverage (Robinson 2012). Consequently, the actions of musicians are under greater levels of scrutiny and fans demand more from musicians than “just” music. For example, live music festivals are expected to address the environmental impact of the events including the availability of recycling, using green power, and offering environmentally friendly merchandise (Laing and Frost 2010). Further, a 2012 survey of over 2000 music festival attendees found that the responsibility to minimize the environmental impact of music festivals generally rests with the organizers and the attendees themselves (A Greener Festival 2012). The question remains regarding how the increasing prominence of such activities by musicians influences music consumers and fans of individual bands and artists. The aim of this study is to explore the role that socially responsible consumption plays in the consumption of music. Specifically we explore the role of social responsibility across a variety of consumption activities including individual decision-making (i.e., downloading music legally, recycling at concerts, avoiding socially irresponsible musicians, and supporting local musicians). In addition we examine the levels of awareness, interest and support for individual musicians, artists, record labels, and live music festivals that engage in socially responsible activities.

Although product failures cause marketers and consumers to suffer substantial damages and losses, failures are often beyond control. Building on defensive attribution literature, this study experimentally investigates how locus of causality and outcome severity of product failure interactively shape consumers’ brand evaluations. Findings show that following a product failure experience, consumers respond with the lowest brand evaluation for a brand-caused failure, a higher brand evaluation for a natural disaster-caused failure, and the highest brand evaluation for a consumer-caused failure. Outcome severity moderates the effects; however, when the failure causes severe outcomes, positive brand evaluation deteriorates for the consumer-caused failure but not for the brand- and natural disaster-caused failure. In addition, brand-blame attribution mediates the relationships.

For centuries, countless hours of research have been dedicated to explaining human behavior in decision-making situations. As early as the late nineteenth century, John Wannamaker, who opened America’s first shopping mall in 1876, said the following: “I know that half of my money spent in advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which is such a half”. Every year businesses invest billions of euros in communication activities, whose effectiveness cannot be clearly confirmed. This is because classic research efforts could not clearly answer the central question: “What motivates the customer to buy?” For this reason, a new economic discipline known as neuromarketing has been trying to find the answer since the 1990s by combining economic and scientific findings. With the help of medical devices used to measure brain activity, the discipline aims to explain mostly unexplored processes and procedures within the human brain’s so-called “black box” during economic decision processes. The focus here is on researching processes like perception, attitude, and motivation, which are difficult to record empirically and which can hopefully be used to gain a better understanding of consumers, thus making a contribution to sustainable and efficient use of communication measures.Despite the new opportunities opened up by neuromarketing, it has yet to receive sufficient attention in classical research. For this reason, this elaboration in an exploratory investigation of a correlation between the central determinants of consumer behavior attitude and perception is based on neuroscientific approaches, thus contributing to the implementation of this new branch of research. Neuromarketing methods are employed here to operationalize the little-researched correlation between an attitude and the perception of business advertising within an industry at neuronal level and then test this with an EEG measurement. The present study design draws upon two industries with different attitudinal connotations: the automotive sector as a generally positively seen branch and the insurance industry, generally seen negatively.

Consumers can form intense relationships with products and brands (Fournier 1998), where some may “fall in love” with and become highly passionate, devoted, and deeply committed to their favorite product/brand (Batra et al. 2012; Lastovicka and Sirianni 2011; Ortiz et al. 2013). These highly devoted consumers voluntarily engage in behaviors that are beneficial to the product/brand such as by remaining loyal to its repeat purchases, spreading positive word-of-mouth and/or being protective of the product/brand and its continued pursuit, sometimes despite criticisms from others (Chung et al. 2008). The existing literature, however, also reveals a dark side to some of these highly intense attachments to products/brands, where some consumers can become obsessed, consumed, or addicted to its continued pursuit and acquisition (e.g., Belk 1995; Holbrook 1987; Hill and Robinson 1991; Lehmann 1987).

Recent literature, as well as practice, highlights the growing importance assumed by new forms of access to consumption resources, such as renting, sharing, and swapping (Albinsson and Perera 2009, 2012; Bardhi and Eckhart 2012; Belk 2010). Free and upon payment systems grew and are integrating the consolidated buy and own approach: Zipcar, Airbnb, Couchsurfing, Bookcrossing. These forms differ from traditional market transactions in many respects (Humphreys and Giesler 2007). For example, consumers often access goods, services, and information without purchasing or possessing them. The development of the Internet made access based consumption systems viable and attractive.

This research introduces the concept of “brand addiction” as a new marketing construct. Employing conceptual development, the concept of brand addiction is defined as a psychological state that entails an obsessive relationship between the consumer and a specific brand. To examine the phenomenon of brand addiction, the present research was designed based on partial sequential mixed methods in which a qualitative study was followed by two quantitative studies, a pretest and a main survey. Arguing that research on brand addiction should be built based on an understanding of how consumers experience this phenomenon in reality, the research incorporated a series of four qualitative focus group studies to uncover the possible core features of the brand addiction prototype using discursive psychological perspective.Survey data were subsequently used to generate the brand addiction measurement scale. Based on the qualitative study and critical review of the extant literature, we developed and tested a measurement scale of brand addiction to gauge the consumer’s addictive behavior toward particular brands. As a result from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the brand addiction measurement scale employed 14 items. The results appear to be promising for using this scale for further validation and more complicated research that may involve possible consequences caused by consumers’ brand addictive behavior.Therefore, rather than limiting to the interpersonal-relationship-based and addiction-based theories, this research has gone further in building an understanding of how consumers truly experience brand addiction, thus sheds new lights on this underrepresented phenomenon in the literature.

Research shows that free offers lead to positive affective consumer reactions which result in an irrationally high demand (i.e., zero-price effect). Based on the assumption of constant costs prior research argues that consumers attribute extra benefits to free offers. Yet, so far there is no empirical evidence for this claim. In this research we test this assumption but also challenge the assumption of constant costs. In a first study in the context of free e-services we show that consumers perceive not only the benefits of free offers but also their non-monetary costs. Moreover, we show that consumers actually overemphasize the benefits of a free e-service but also less perceive its non-monetary costs (i.e., advertising intrusiveness). Further we show that the lower perception of non-monetary costs does not occur for critical non-monetary costs like personal data. In a second study we show that both the attribution of extra benefits and the lower perception of non-monetary costs disappear when the offer is mainly utilitarian. Consequently under these conditions also the zero-price effect vanishes. This research extends prior marketing theory by adding a new explanatory aspect to and outlining boundary conditions of the zero-price effect. The results are also relevant for marketing practitioners currently offering free services or products or considering switching to a free business model.

The notion of value co-creation conveys that resource exchange among social and economic actors is the basis for value creation. Service Dominant Logic (S-D logic) develops a holistic view that gives the customer an active role in co-creation, as value is created during the consumption experience (Vargo and Lusch 2008). Theoretical models represent co-creation as a collaborative exchange of resources (service) between the firm and the customer, where the firm is in control (e.g., Lusch and Vargo 2014; Vargo et al. 2008). The firm–customer interactions are at the center of multiple co-creative interactions among different actors, within (eco)systems of value. S-D logic evolved from a dual representation of co-creation to a systemic view, centered on the (eco)systems of value (Vargo et al. 2008), without fully understanding how the customer acts, which resources are exchanged and integrated, and the nature of interactions performed when offers are consumed. Customer’s interactions are diverse and service exchange may occur beyond firm’s intervention or control. In some cases, co-creation is independent or dissonant from the firm (Hollenbeck and Zinkhan 2010). In this research we propose a representation of co-creation as a practice, focused on the centrality of customer’s interactions with the offer and with service (eco)systems. The study integrates theoretical insights from S-D logic (e.g., Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008), practice theory (e.g., Schatzki 1996), and a cultural resource-based theory of the customer (Arnould et al. 2006). Theory is applied in an empirical qualitative study, designed to understand customers’ perspectives and routine practices of using a tangible offer (kitchen appliance), and interacting with service (eco)systems. Studying an infinite experience and a tangible product is innovative, and is consonant with the materialist view of practice theory that considers objects as elements of the practice (Reckwitz 2002). Data collection entailed 45 in-depth interviews, two direct observation sessions, and multiple secondary physical and digital data. Findings suggest that customer’s practices integrate multiple elements that configure and organize the bodily and mental actions, such as know-how, images, materials, operant resources, and life goals. Customers are practitioners, because they carry social practices when executing sequences of actions in the consumption of an offer, which are structured by the social practice. Customers are also imaginative interpreters, integrators of multiple resources, and autonomous, creating unique value. Due to its technological nature, the offer becomes part of the practice as it runs autonomously, being positioned as an “assistant.” Practice is conceived as a co-practice, in the same sense that value creation is a co-creation. Resources are shared in (eco)systems of peers and the firm, in a co-creative process, contributing to reconfiguring the social practice. The firm is one among other service providers, but it is not the main source, or even a direct source for the exchange of service. For the customer, value-in-use represents the true meaning for value. Value includes several functional, hedonic, and procedural aspects, and has a hierarchical, complex, and multifaceted nature. Consumption emerges as a means to reach life goals that are beyond the consumption episodes. Findings contribute to theory, by proposing a renewed representation of co-creation, from the customer’s perspective, as a practice of consumption. It positions the interactions customer-offer and customer-(eco)systems at the center of co-creation. The control over co-creation shifts from the firm to the customer, and from the service exchange arena to the customer’s life space. This study endures the limitations of a qualitative research. Future studies should deepen the analysis of customer’s practices, and systematically classify the most significant elements involved in co-creation.References available upon request.

Although consumers express environmental attitudes, the pro-environmental behaviors are not dominant. Despite the benefits of sustainable technologies in reducing the environmental impacts of consumption, consumer adoption of these technologies is very slow to take off. We propose an integrated approach for investigating the effect of consumer anticipated emotions and moral norms on consumer adoption of a sustainable technology (electric vehicles). 576 Swedish car drivers participated in an online survey during winter of 2013. Our findings suggest that anticipated emotions directly influence consumer adoption intentions and the effect of moral norms on behavioral intentions is mediated by the anticipated emotions. The findings have implications for policymakers and car producers in promoting the zero emission transportation. We suggest communicating the positive emotions related to driving an electric vehicle and use of emotions in cars’ energy labelling.

We investigate one of the factors that might explain behavioral loyalty in face of service failures. Research suggests that individuals with low self-esteem who experience relational transgressions develop an avoidant attachment style, which impairs their interpersonal functioning and their willingness to take further interpersonal risks (Park and Maner 2009), and in particular to engage in other long-term relationships (Walker 2009). Drawing on this research, we propose that low self-esteem (LSE) consumers who experience service failures become unwilling to commit themselves to alternative brands, even when they have the opportunity to do so, thus—paradoxically—they remain trapped in their current brand relationship. High self-esteem (HSE) consumers, instead, are more likely to switch to other available service providers when they experience service failures, as compared to when they do not experience failures. We also predict that LSE consumers who experience service failures tend to avoid new commitments in general, thus favoring transactions relative to long-term contracts, even in consumption domains that are unrelated to the service failure.In study 1a, participants completed a measure of self-esteem (Rosenberg 1989) and reported the quality of their internet connection. Finally, participants indicated how likely they would be to switch to a competitor of their current Internet provider. As the quality of their internet connection decreased, HSE consumers were more likely to switch. However, frequency of failures did not have an effect on LSE consumers’ likelihood to switch. In study 1b, we replicated these findings in an experimental setting: HSE consumers who imagined to use an extremely faulty Internet connection were more likely to switch to an available provider as compared to their counterparts who imagined to use a perfectly functioning Internet connection; LSE consumers did not express different switching intentions between conditions. Since we had hypothesized that the loyalty of LSE consumers in face of service failures is driven by their avoidance of new long-term relationships, in study 2 we manipulated the length of the contract offered by an alternative Internet service provider. When an alternative service provider offered a long-term contract (1 year), HSE consumers were more likely to switch to this alternative service provider as the quality of their internet connection worsened, but LSE consumers were not. Instead, when an alternative service provider offered a short-term contract (1 month, renewable), LSE consumers were as likely as HSE consumers to switch to this provider. In study 3, we demonstrate that the fear of new commitments induced by service failures extends to unrelated domains. LSE consumers who imagined to use an extremely faulty Internet connection expressed a greater preference for buying a magazine at the newsstand relative to subscribing to this magazine, as compared to their counterparts who imagined to use a perfectly functioning Internet connection and participants in a negative mood condition. The preferences of HSE consumers, instead, were not affected by service failures.References available upon request.

This research examines the effect of product involvement on impulse buying behaviour for self-gifts. An experiment based on a factorial design was conducted among 152 females. Product involvement and self-gift giving context were manipulated by using two scenarios. The dependent variable of impulse buying behaviour was measured with a 6-item impulsivity scale. Results indicate that impulse self-gifting is likely to happen when consumers want to reward themselves after a success. Impulse buying tendency is found to be the best predictor for impulse self-gifting. The higher the level of product involvement is the more impulsive the purchase of a self-gift.

The “corporate mantra” (Liedtka 1996, p. 179) of marketing calls for the care of customers. Indeed, meeting or serving the needs of customers has long been regarded as a core aspect of the discipline. However, such customer-centrality is at odds with public views. Amongst other criticisms, marketing has been accused of using manipulative, misleading, and outright dishonest techniques (Heath and Heath 2008) and of lacking ethics (Sheth and Sisodia 2005). Such views may have a negative impact on marketing’s credibility and effectiveness (see Smith 2006). Despite their importance, little effort has been made to explore the origins of these attitudes in depth or to advance insights to address them. This study offers an attempt to address this void by looking at consumers’ criticisms of marketing in the light of the school of moral philosophy known as the ethics of care (Held 2006).Data were collected from consumers in the UK. This comprised 21 in-depth interviews followed by 71 interviews, in which we used a critical incident technique to explore consumers’ lived experiences that have contributed to their perceptions of marketing. Less than one-fifth of our participants were “mostly positive” (16.7 %) about marketing and nearly half were “mostly negative” (46.3 %) while 37 % reported mixed attitudes. Those who held positive views focused on the role of marketing communications as well as technological developments which assist companies to target their offerings in a relevant way to consumers. On the other hand, participants’ discontentment arises, to a great extent, from a perception of a collective “onslaught” of powerful and faceless marketing institutions. While this does not necessarily mean that individual marketers are excessive in their marketing efforts, the cumulative impact of marketing’s actions on consumers builds their perception of marketing being overly pervasive, invasive, and imposing to the extent of “violence.” The use of technology by contemporary marketers, while seen as a positive development by some, is simultaneously viewed as the reason for an increase in unsolicited and intrusive appeals. Such perceptions are worsened by incidents of marketing being manipulative, deceptive, or exploitative of consumers’ vulnerabilities. While participants are generally accepting that this is just the way marketing is, results indicate that they yearn for a less domineering and more caring approach. Drawing on the ethics of care, we propose ways to address consumers’ concerns and inform marketing practice. The relational focus of these ethics and their concern for “the needs of particular others for whom we take responsibility” (Held 2006, p. 10) should encourage marketers to move away from a context-independent and instrumental view of customers as “abstract others” who can easily be replaced (Thompson 1995; Liedtka 1996, p. 186). A shift in this direction was a large part of what our participants called for. Equally we claim that these ethics’ focus on empathy (Noddings 2002) and its respect for the other’s autonomy (e.g. Gilligan 1982) provide useful guidance for augmenting consumers’ autonomy and addressing criticisms of manipulation, especially targeted at vulnerable consumers. We argue how, by “humanizing” their customers, companies may become more empathetic and wary of any negative effect they might have on them and more likely to be responsive to their interests (see also Thompson 1995). This, as our participants suggest, would also be in the companies’ own interests, as consumers would be less resistant to marketing.References available upon request.

Consumer markets are increasingly becoming places where consumers develop specific relationships with products and expectations of psychological benefits. For example, many women seem to treasure large numbers of shoes and bags without necessarily being compulsive. Drawing on consumer behavior theory, this research examines accumulative buying behavior among women so as to better characterize it and understand its dimensions and antecedents from a different perspective. A broad qualitative exploratory study is conducted and combines focus group technique with in-depth semi-structured interviews in order to revisit accumulative buying behavior, identify consumer motivations, and specify the major product categories related to this phenomenon. Results reveal a new approach of accumulative buying distinct from compulsion and collecting behavior.

This chapter illuminates the complexity of dyadic gift-giving by identifying new forms of dyadic gift-giving and their links to givers’ relationship-maintenance goals. For this, we employ Attachment Theory which addresses humans’ need to be close to significant others (Bowlby 1969). Gift-giving is often identified as a mechanism to manage important but insecure relationships (Caplow 1982), which occurs within significant interpersonal relationships (Ruth 1996). Considering this, and that the UK gift market is worth £40 billion (Mintel 2013), it is important to understand how relationships operate as antecedents to gift-giving. Traditionally gift-giving has been assumed to be an aggregate of dyadic exchange rituals, thus leaving many dimensions of gift-giving unexplored (Giesler 2006). Recent research (e.g. Weinberger and Wallendorf 2012) has acknowledged the need to analyse gift-giving structures other than the giver–receiver dyad. The inherent assumption concerning dyadic gifts is that givers give only to maintain their relationship with the receiver, which neglects the link between the dyad and their networks (Parks et al. 1983). This limits the understanding of dyadic gift-giving forms and the relationship-maintenance goals of givers through gift-giving.We collected 28 online diaries, reporting 158 gift-giving experiences, from 28 informants in the UK with diverse gender, age, income and marital status to examine a variety of gift-giving behaviours. Twenty-seven follow-up interviews were conducted to obtain a fuller description from diarists of their experiences. We combined a quantitative content analysis (Kassarjian 1977; Neuendorf 2002) with a subsequent interpretive analysis approach to enable new themes to emerge as used by Ruth et al. (1999).Our findings revealed three dyadic gift-giving forms: direct, mediated and indirect. First, direct dyadic gift-giving acts as a mechanism to maintain the relationship with the receiver, thus supporting the traditional definition of dyadic gifts (Weinberger and Wallendorf 2012). This definition is extended by showing that direct dyadic gifts can help to maintain relationships with the goals of: (1) keeping the receiver’s support as a manifestation of attachment and (2) taking care of the receiver in response to the receiver’s attachment. Second, in mediated dyadic gift-giving, the giver’s aim is to keep close to someone with whom he/she shares an important relationship (mediator) through giving a gift to a receiver who is close to the mediator but not close to him(her)self, thus extending the classic notion of dyadic gifts. Our data demonstrates that the giver’s goals are in this case both to: (1) acknowledge the importance of the receiver to the mediator and (2) maintain the receiver’s support to the mediator. Third, indirect dyadic gift-giving involves giving a gift to a receiver on behalf of another person (a proxy figure) who acts as the giver in the eyes of the receiver. In this case the goals of the giver are to: (1) enhance a receiver’s experience by involving a fictional character (e.g. Santa Claus); (2) alleviate tension between the giver and the receiver by giving gifts through a significant other (e.g. a baby); and (3) to socialise the giving figure by giving a gift to be regifted to another person (e.g. getting a gift for one’s child to give to his/her teacher). This investigation contributes to gift-giving research by proposing a new conceptualization of dyadic gift-giving beyond the traditional definition and suggesting important implications for practitioners. By understanding different gift-giving structures indicating how givers, receivers, mediators and proxy figures interact and how this affects givers’ goals, marketers can design more effective targeting strategies responsive to the relationships in which people are involved.References available upon request.

One-to-one marketing has become increasingly popular in the consumer product and service industry. Customization emerged as a marketing trend and allows consumers to proactively participate in the configuration or production process by choosing one or more elements of the marketing mix (Arora et al. 2008). Today, consumers can customize a wide variety of products and services. For example, Dell Computers allows customers to choose the hardware components (e.g., processor, RAM, hard drive) which best fits their needs when buying a new laptop. By offering consumers the opportunity to tailor products and services to their individual preferences, needs, and budgets, firms aim to differentiate themselves from competitors, increase customer satisfaction, and generate loyalty (Arora et al. 2008). During the customization process of a service bundle (e.g., smartphone plan), consumers typically have to make a series of choices, one for each bundle component (e.g., a choice for minutes, SMS, and data). In this research, we will provide evidence that consumers’ satisfaction with the final bundle configuration, bundle price perceptions, and overall spending amounts are determined by (1) whether the choice options for the bundle components are presented all at the same time and decision are made simultaneously versus sequentially (i.e., only the options of one bundle component are presented and choices for each component are made step-by-step) and (2) the price framing used in the configuration process (aggregate bundle price as a running total vs. aggregate bundle price together with the detailed option prices). The results of two online experiments show that consumers are more satisfied with the outcome of the customization process and less price sensitive if only the aggregate bundle price (i.e., the running total) is advertised in simultaneous (vs. sequential) customization processes. In contrast, when decisions for each bundle component were made step-by-step, consumers are more satisfied and less price sensitive if detailed option prices are provided in addition to the aggregate bundle price. Our two studies also shed some light into the psychological process that underlies consumers’ different reactions. Besides contributing to consumer decision-making and behavioral pricing research, our findings have important implications for service providers on how to design a bundle configuration process that increases both customer satisfaction and spending at the same time.References available upon request.

Social events such as weddings, christenings, and bar mitzvahs are very important to many people. They commemorate noteworthy occasions and enable hosts and guests to rejoice with and honor each other. Recently, a shift has occurred whereby hosts ask guests for money, instead of presents, as gifts at such social events (particularly weddings). Interestingly, hosts report feeling uncomfortable for making this request. In the present research, we ask whether these feelings are justified. We ask whether giving money at social events troubles guests; we explore their cognitions, emotions, and behavior; and if giving money troubles them, we investigate whether these thoughts can somehow be lessened.The present research represents the first study to explore the psychological outcomes of giving a substantial amount of money as a gift in the context of an ongoing social relationship. We believe that the study of monetary gifts is both timely and important. It is timely because monetary gifts are becoming the norm in many societies. It is important because it teaches us new things about the psychological outcomes of mixing money and friendship. Our research extends past findings in several important ways. First, we show that monetary gifts induce a mindset associated with a constellation of self-serving, utility-driven thoughts and behaviors, and a desire to get (consume) what one paid for (what we term an economic motive). Second, we demonstrate that adopting a monetary mindset when giving troubles close friends of the recipient but not acquaintances. Last, utilizing a manipulation that reduces the saliency of the monetary gift, we provide a means to lessen the negative impact of adopting a money-market mindset in the context of an otherwise social market relationship.

The main purpose of this study is to examine how Kuwaitis, as a minority, react to the influx of expatriates living in Kuwait and how such a reaction affects their consumption behavior. We build upon findings from the social psychology literature to build our theoretical model. Research supports that local populations feel threatened by immigrant populations (Stephan et al. 2002). When the local population is threatened, then locals might express concern about the future existence of the group. This concern is referred to as collective angst in the social psychology literature (Whole et al. 2010). We seek to examine how concern about the future affects Kuwaitis’ lifestyle in the present. Data was collected from Kuwait where foreign migrants represent around 60 % of the total population. The results reveal several interesting findings. First, we find that when expatriates are perceived by Kuwaitis as a source of symbolic threat then Kuwaitis are more likely to be concerned about the existence of Kuwaiti culture in the future (i.e., collective angst). Second, we find that this high level of collective angst leads to the preference for a global consumer lifestyle versus a local lifestyle. Finally we find that individualism strengthens the indirect effect of symbolic threat on the preference for a global lifestyle through collective angst. Thus our results are not consistent with previous literature in suggesting that the experience of collective angst results in behaviors that would seek to eliminate the source of threat.References available upon request.

Understanding the relational and network dynamics among newcomer networks is important to devising appropriate strategies that will maximize the productivity of the incoming workforce. Nevertheless, there are limited empirical contributions on newcomer networks with a handful of studies examining newcomer networks in international environments. In this study, we focus on national homophily defined as the “tendency for people to associate with others similar to them in terms of attributes (e.g., race, gender) and values” (Mollica et al. 2003, p. 123). Studies have not examined ethnic or national homophily in newcomer networks. Understanding this issue is important as global companies recruit significant numbers of postgraduate students from countries such as China, India, and Brazil and spend a lot of money in trying to enhance interpersonal relationships among employees to boost effectiveness and efficiency. To better understand national homophily, we use a multicultural student sample drawn from newly formed networks, to examine how identity salience, academic self-efficacy, individualism, and ethnocentrism are associated with the occurrence of national homophily in newcomer networks. A questionnaire was devised based on prior research and distributed to students enrolled in postgraduate management programs in two British universities. The final sample comprises of 182 usable responses which were analyzed using Smart PLS 2.0 (Ringle et al. 2005). The study results show that in a multicultural newcomer context individuals who have strong identity salience tend to forge close ties with others of the same national identity and this manifests in national homophily. The study also shows that individuals high in academic self-efficacy are likely to form ties with individuals from other cultures and show less national homophilic tendencies, compared to those who are low in academic self-efficacy. The findings also reveal that individualism is not conducive to the formation of homophily, while ethnocentrism was found to be significantly but negatively related to homophily. This study provides an incremental contribution in understanding how homophily emerges in newcomer networks. Managers interested in promoting greater collaboration between group members in their companies will need to pay particular attention on individual characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy, identify salience) when forming teams, organizing groups, and allocating projects in the workplace. In this way, the full potential of multicultural relationships could be effectively unfolded. Future researchers can broaden and deepen knowledge on national homophily by investigating other variables as factors influencing homophily (e.g., personality, demographic characteristics), or even explore the consequences of homophily in terms of individual and group performance.References available upon request.

The bunch of information a company sends to its market and stakeholders has to meet their expectations in terms of accuracy, credibility and understandability in order to face the increasing complexity of national and international economic environments. Both literature (e.g. Rogers and Brown 1999) and non-academic journals/press (e.g. Forbes 1996, p. 192) have widely concluded that the annual report is a marketing tool to attract new investors. Firms target various stakeholders not only with financial information but also with messages regarding the corporate image, corporate social responsibility and other communication objectives, providing varied images and encoded messages for their targets. So far research has shown that managers use annual report to provide a self-interested view of the corporate performance. Recently, attention has shifted from the management of the accounting numbers or earnings management (Schipper 1989) to presentation management (Aerts 1994) and/or the presentational format with which the information is displayed (Graves et al. 1996).

Recent research questions the universality of the self-congruity effect on brand perceptions and highlights the need for further clarifying the boundary conditions of self-congruity theory. Current evidence suggests that it is individual characteristics that determine the superiority of branding strategies focused on appealing to a consumers’ actual versus ideal self-congruity. This study extends that research by modelling how four individual characteristics of value for cross-cultural market segmentation purposes (an individual’s level of independence, interdependence, and their cosmopolitan and local orientations) affect which of the four self-congruity types (actual, ideal, social, and social ideal) has the strongest impact on brand perceptions. Empirically, the validity of the conceptual framework is tested using survey data from non-student samples in the USA and India. Findings show that an individual’s level of independence and interdependence, cosmopolitan and local orientation determine which self-congruity type has the strongest effect on brand attitude. Specifically, the results show that for locals and interdependents, actual self-congruity has the strongest effect on brand attitude. In contrast, for cosmopolitans and independents, ideal self-congruity has the strongest effect on brand attitude. Interestingly, overall actual and ideal self-congruity types have the strongest effect on brand attitude for the consumer types tested. Moreover, the findings are partially validated in both countries and suggest that other factors pertaining to the USA and India may influence the self-congruity effect. The study offers practitioners with insights on which self-concept type they should try to match in their brand communications to elicit most positive brand attitude among consumers depending on their individual characteristics.

The Internet can be considered one of the greatest contributors to the globalization of markets (Constatinides et al. 2010). Within this context, it is vital to take into account the cultural differences that exist between different markets (Rey et al. 2013), as well as the particular language that is most advisable for each context. There are currently 7106 living languages in the world, spoken by 6200 million people, with the most widely spoken as first languages (L1) being Chinese (1197 million users), Spanish (414 million users), and English (335 million users) (Lewis et al. 2014). On the Internet, these three languages are also the most widely used but English is in top position with 800 million users, followed by Chinese (649 million), and Spanish (222 million) (Internet World Stats 2014). Some 80 % of those who browse in English use it as their second language (L2) (Internet World Stats 2014). These data are of particular interest to firms operating in international markets as, depending on the language in which users process information, consumer behavior may vary. Language conveys cultural references that shape cognitive processing (Luna et al. 2008).

Materialism, which is the importance placed on the acquisition and possessions of material objects, is often depicted as a self-prioritizing trait rooted in an individualistic value (Belk 1985; Richins and Dawson 1992). Materialistic consumers are seen as self-centered individuals who prefer to build meaningful relationships with possessions rather than people (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002; Kasser and Ryan 1993). However, this theory is incongruent with the reality, as cultural studies routinely find that materialistic consumption manifests strongly among collectivistic Asian consumers (Cleveland and Chang 2009; Ger and Belk 1996). Such contradiction points to an inconsistency between the theories developed primarily in the United States and the realities surrounding non-Western consumers’ attitudes and behavior (Sharma 2010). The present research thus aims to reconcile theory and practice by reassessing the pertinence of self-centeredness as the central domain of materialism among Asian consumers.Extant literatures rarely recognize that individuals may dexterously commit to materialistic and collectivistic values. Rather, materialism is often depicted as opposite of collective values, such as religious commitment, moderation, and self-sacrifice (Bauer et al. 2012; Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002). Hence, individuals who hold materialistic and collectivistic ideals experience value-conflict, defined as psychological tensions resulting from incongruent values that lead to diminished life satisfaction and reduced psychological welfare (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002; Kasser and Ryan 1993). However, cultural studies maintain that collectivist societies are more successful than their individualist counterparts in balancing personal goals and collective interests (Wong and Ahuvia 1998; Ahuvia 2002). Contrary to extant research’s prediction, materialism does not appear to have an adverse effect on well-being among Asian consumers. Instead, these consumers are catching up to those in advanced economies in terms of life satisfaction, which is fuelled largely by their satisfaction towards material well-being (Pew Research 2014). Therefore, consumers from non-Western and less developed countries may not simply emulate the principles of Western-based materialism (de Mooij and Hofstede 2002). As such, our research aims to address the following questions:1.To what extent do consumers from collectivistic cultures experience personal conflict between material and collective values?2.What impacts do the interaction between materialism and collective-oriented values have on Asian consumers’ consumption evaluation?We draw from optimal distinctiveness theory (Brewer 1991) to inform how Asian consumers use material consumption to fulfill social goals. This perspective provides an additional vantage point to the dominant collectivist cultural perspective that confounds Asian consumers’ prosocial attitudes towards consumption. Further, we explain how consumers with incongruent values evaluate the attractiveness of material goods to achieve socially desired goals. Our international research draws from a sample of Asian consumers from China, India, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The research design is twofold. First, we utilized Schwartz’s (1992) circumflex model of human values to examine the perceptual distances between materialism and the larger value system amongst collectivistic Asian consumers. Second, we studied the interaction effect between material and collective-oriented values on Asian consumers’ prepurchase evaluation. Our findings suggest that collectivist Asian consumers are able to balance materialistic and social pressures and as a result, evaluate the social cost of goods more favorably than other competing conspicuous attributes, such as brand and price information.References available upon request.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is now increasingly gaining prominence as a global form of promotion to support an organisation’s corporate social responsibility aims and to increase market share (Barone et al. 2007). While prior research has focused on charitable donations and other methods of helping causes and constituents, less attention has been directed to the perceived distance/closeness of a social cause in driving consumers’ cause-related product (CRP) buying decisions. For example, even though research has often called attention to personal relevance and presentation of cause-related cues in CRM promotion (Pracejus and Olsen 2004), psychological distance has not obtained the attention it deserves. It cannot be denied that psychological distance is a key antecedent to pro-social and inter-temporal decision-making among consumers. Moreover, perceptions of psychological distance may vary widely in different cultural contexts. We contribute to the emerging literature on cause-related shopping by empirically demonstrating the impacts of various psychological distance constructs on cause-related shopping among samples of consumers in the UK (n = 220) and China (n = 225).References available upon request.

Controversial advertising can be defined as advertising that offends or shocks viewers (Dahl et al. 2003). While some research on the ethical issues linked to controversial advertising offline can be found (Drumwright and Murphy 2009; Fam and Waller 2003), more research is needed on controversial advertising online and whether it may lead to ad avoidance on specific platforms, such as social media. This topic is important for marketers and researchers, given that the proliferation of social media advertising is driving brands to produce adverts which attempt to cut through the ad clutter with the use of controversial appeals (Dahl et al. 2003; Drumwright and Murphy 2009; Fam and Waller 2003; Waller 2005). Thus, this study aims to address this research gap and its objective is to examine the impact of controversial ad perception and consumer ethical judgment on ad avoidance, in the specific context of social media.

Mobile augmented reality (MAR) has emerged as a prominent and innovative app (Alkhamisi and Monowar 2013; Juniper Research 2013). MAR is a system within mobile app that superimposed virtual graphics on the real environment (Azuma 1997; Langlotz et al. 2014). The consumers nowadays expect beyond the brand and would like to be actively involved (Cascalo et al. 2007; Argyriou and Melewar 2011). It is believed that MAR, with its strong visual graphic, is able to convey rich information in an innovative way and could evoke unconventional experience (Huang and Liu 2014). Thus, MAR could be utilised to convey brand experience (Fogg 2003; Brakus et al. 2009) that may impact on attitude and attachment of the consumers towards brands (Mikulincer and Shaver 2003). Drawing with uses and gratifications theory and media richness theory, this study attempts to find out the impact of MAR on brand experience, brand attitude and brand attachment. Moreover, we propose four dimensions for the purpose of measuring MAR characteristics; integration, object registration, interactivity and narrative.Structural Equation Modeling was performed to test the hypotheses. MAR was confirmed to positively impact on brand experience as well as attitude. However, there was no significant effect of MAR on attachment and brand experience did not positively affect attitude. As predicted, brand experience appeared to positively influence attachment and attitude positively impacted on attachment. Moreover, it was found that MAR gave positive effect on attachment indirectly, through brand experience and attitude. In this regard, despite that the relationship between MAR and attachment appeared to be insignificant, the effect of MAR on attachment was significantly mediated by brand experience and attitude. Additionally, the findings corroborated that media richness theory and uses and gratifications theory can be applied to explain MAR. Consequently, MAR implementation should focus more on strong brand-related visual graphics that are associated with brand experience. Good combination of virtual graphics and real environment should be also considered into the design of MAR. Similarly, more attention should be paid to the relevance with current situation and moment while creating the content for MAR (e.g. the relevance of McDonalds Gol! app with world cup 2014).The results of this study improve the current understanding of experiencing the brand on MAR. Subsequently, this study made a significant contribution to the mobile marketing field, by providing evidence of the effectiveness of MAR, and it shed light on the growing importance of augmented reality (AR) research for consumers’ experience. Due to the small sample size and only one stimulus (MAR application) adopted in the study, the finding of this study may not be generalised.References available upon request.

In this interdisciplinary work we develop the Social Media e-Visibility (SMEV) framework and use it to assess the potential of a set of firms to engage the customer in the global e-business market through the usage of Social Media. The Internet opened a new procurement channel for firms that allows them reaching customers all over the world. The growth of Social Media (SoM) in recent years accelerated this development by enabling fast and even real-time interaction between customers and firms. The usage of SoM for marketing purposes has been an active topic in research and practice in recent years (Hollenbeck and Kaikati 2012; Papasolomou and Melanthiou 2012). SoM allows the company and the customer communicating with each other, but also allows customers communicating with each other about the company and creating an electronic word of mouth (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). For the firms, well-managed SoM provides a potential tool to gain insight about customers’ attitudes, as well as an opportunity to spread commercial information using the customer as an information channel (Parka et al. 2011). Firms in various countries and industries have chosen to use SoM for their customer and product communication (Coelho et al. 2014). For example, Parka et al. (2011) documented how health organizations employ their Facebook accounts for communicating with their customers and for health advertising and promotions. SoM enables people to effortlessly access information, providing increased visibility (Boyd 2010) and therefore potential for further engagement in the e-market.

Mobile Internet (MI) usage intensity has grown substantially over the past years. The number of mobile subscriptions set to surpass seven billion and reach the whole world population in 2014. The explosion of MI business comes together with the development from the old mobile phones into the current smart phones. This is a combination of personal device assistants and mobile phones that use advanced operating systems and permit users to install new applications, be constantly connected to the Internet, and provide multifarious functionalities of both (Norazah Mohd 2013). According to a report from the specialized consultant Analysis Mason, there are 1700 million of smart phones around the world in 2014, which means an annual growth of 32 %. Furthermore, the number of Smartphone connections is set to grow by 136 % in the next 5 years to reach 3.9 billion connections worldwide in 2018 (de Renesse 2014). However, nowadays a small minority of users generates a disproportionate share of the total data volume. These are some of the reasons that justify the huge importance of studying factors, which influence consumer behavior of mobile Internet users (Gerpott and Thomas 2014).

The increased popularity of such social media as Facebook and Twitter among consumers has opened up opportunities for the development of new business models of online branding and social commerce (Zhou et al. 2013). In particular, consumers look increasingly to social media to form opinions about unfamiliar brands (Newman 2011). However, while social media has been becoming an important tool for branding and customer marketing, there remain many questions concerning the best ways for brands to represent themselves or address their customers in this highly interactive and personal environment of conversation. This important gap in knowledge may be due to the lack of adequate social relationship constructs in many traditional models of electronic commerce (Choi et al. 2011; Liang et al. 2011; Pöyry et al. 2013). New social relationship constructs could improve understanding of the consumer responses to marketing stimuli in the social media environment. The present research-in-progress aims to address this issue by analyzing the influence of a yet under explored construct—brand intimacy—on social media. The question that then emerges is: how and when can brand intimacy improve consumer responses on social media?

Nowadays, firms have realized the importance of using electronic facilities for supporting services to their customers and suppliers. For achieving a higher value about operating activities, firms must emphasis on R&D and technological development to integrate customer needs and develop the capabilities for searching and acquiring information via e-Business tools. Furthermore, managers and decision makers may use marketing 4P mix to plan their marketing activities in order to enter into a new market. Thus, it’s the most important thing for firms to know how to acquire market information to satisfy customers’ needs. In this vein, electronic marketing is regarded as a strategic weapon for firms. Given the important issue for electronic marketing orientation (EMO), we try to develop an assessment instrument of EMO according to the empirical data collected from top-ranked companies of manufacturing and service industries in Taiwan. Confirmation Factor Analysis (CFA) is employed to analyze and examine the items. A pool contains 14 items for measuring EMO is generated. The measurement scale contains of three constructs, namely cultural philosophical, initiation, and system development and integration. Finally, meaningful implications and future directions for this topic are also proposed.

The online purchasing process usually follows the same pattern: Search the web; read recommendations and reviews; decide. Thus, reviews and recommendations are central to the online purchasing process, since they contain information about the functionality of the brand and the experiences other consumers made. Consequently, some researchers postulate a development from manager-ruled to customer-ruled brands and an empowerment of consumers.Our research focuses on the impact of consumer-to-consumer interactions in the online environment. Specifically, we use a cross-cultural setting to analyze the influence of different types of online interactions (public vs. private, and active vs. passive) on brand attitudes (cognitive and affective). We also propose that the relationship between these two key constructs is partially mediated by different levels of brand commitment (high vs. low), mainly in interplay with active and passive online interaction. In addition, we expect a number of different contextual factors to moderate this relationship, such as the type of brand (functional vs. emotional), the valence of online interaction (positive vs. negative), and the self-construal (independent self vs. interdependent self).Hypotheses are developed and tested in a 2 (online interaction: public vs. private) × 2 (online interaction: passive vs. active) × 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (brand type: functional vs. emotional) between-subjects design. Experiments are conducted with respondents from collectivistic cultures with predominantly interdependent self-construal, and respondents from individualistic cultures with predominantly independent self-construal.Based on the above research framework, we address the following questions: (1) Do different types of online interaction—depending on their content and intensity—vary in their influence on brand attitudes? (2) And does the influence of different types of online interaction differ over brand categories and cultures with an independent and interdependent self-construal?Our research offers a number of insights to marketing managers, such as how to position brands differently in an online environment according to the ratio of emotional and rational content consumers might share in their interaction about brands, and whether to adapt online positioning based on cultural settings.

The present study aimed to evaluate the influence of viral marketing such as advertising communication strategy in purchase intent and brand visibility from the perspective of the online consumer. The literature review sought to contextualize the internet marketing; aspects of digital marketing, viral marketing and advertising communication strategy, social media in relationships between organizations and consumers, brand awareness, purchase intent, plus an overview of scientific literature on the viral marketing and constructs: consumer perception on advertising campaigns posted on the network, viral marketing, brand awareness and purchase intent. We sought to examine the positive relationship between consumer perception of advertising campaigns posted on the network, viral marketing, brand awareness, and purchase intent. In a descriptive research with quantitative variables, totaling 321 respondents through an electronic survey with the adoption of a structured questionnaire with responses in a Likert scale. The collected data were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares method, allowing the work with a small sample. We found statistically positive values for the relationship between consumer perception of social media advertising, viral marketing, brand awareness, and purchase intent. Statistical data served as the basis for the validation of the model proposed in this work.

In recent years, online advertising has become one of the most influential means of marketing communication. This stems from the rise of the Internet, which has quickly evolved into the fastest growing advertising medium of the decade (Ha 2008). Social media has come to the forefront of the marketing world as a result of this Internet boom and has been identified as a key online area for marketers to target, as it allows consumers and marketers alike to create content, share it, bookmark it and network at a prodigious rate (Asur and Huberman 2010). This allows marketers to create online advertising content and marketing messages which can subsequently be spread by the consumers themselves (Ha 2008). This translates into the message gaining greater credibility, as consumers trust other consumers more than the companies themselves (Brown et al. 2007; Cheung et al. 2007).

In the business-to-business (B2B) domain, the corporate website is an effective platform for communicating to stakeholders the corporate brand (CB) features, such as personality and values. Despite the growing importance of websites as a primary means for corporate communication, research on the dimensions that companies ought to use relevant for online corporate branding is limited. This study examines the representations of CBs on the websites of B2B companies in two emerging markets—Brazil and India. The study provides insights into how B2B companies operating in these markets are managing their corporate branding. In particular the research establishes dimensions used for the representation of the CB in the company’s website (e.g., CB personality, CB values). In addition, the study investigates whether the representations of CB have an impact on the company’s financial performance.We analyzed Brazilian and Indian B2B companies’ websites, focusing on the pages containing corporate information and/or information about the parent company. The data collection and analysis were developed in 2 stages, entailing a pilot study and a main study. The pilot study aimed at developing and refining the description of the ways companies used for representing their CB in the websites. It further allowed for the testing of the coding procedure. The main study incorporated the final description of the CB dimensions and performance measures based on the stock index data from Bloomberg. The analysis included websites from 158 Indian and 158 Brazilian B2B companies. Findings allow the specification of relevant elements that should be used to express the CB in an online setting. The study proposes that the following dimensions should be considered to express the CB: CB values; CB personality; CB heritage, and company demographics. The study’s context of two emerging economies showed the stability of the dimensions when applied to companies from two different emerging countries. The study further showed a positive impact of the level of CB online expressions on business performance. The research allows drawing managerial recommendations and avenues for future research.

In the nanosecond culture of today’s business world, CEOs have been switching from top-down communication platforms to adopting more speedy bottom-up options prevalent in social media. While e-mail is effective for internal stakeholders and press releases sufficient for external ones, these communication channels tend to be slower, as well as, requiring multiple platforms to reach each stakeholder group. Recently, microblogs such as Twitter have become a strategic tool for CEOs to communicate with various stakeholder groups such as employees, the press, investors, and suppliers (Dunn 2010). Because tweets are limited to 140 characters, both their nature and content are important in that they not only deliver information to differing targets but also create cognitive and attitudinal effects in the audience (Hwang 2012). Moreover, these short messages are mostly accessed via our smartphones, which increases the speed to which the message is examined and consumed.The purpose of the present research is to extend theory on what is known about how CEOs communicate with their stakeholders using Twitter. Interestingly, there has been little or no analysis for what those 140 characters tweets contain, their purpose, and the intended audience. More specifically, there are two rich literature streams, metaphoric language and gendered communication, that provide fertile ground to extend what we know about CEO’s use of microblogs.From the list “The Top 50 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) on Twitter” (Huffington Post), ten tweet lists were drawn (five from male CEOs and five from female CEOs). For each CEO to be included, 800 tweet lines had to be available. Each sample of 800 tweets was coded so as to answer the six research questions. A total of 8000 tweets were read and metaphors identified and classified. The coding of tweets included: (a) Sex: male, female, (b) Frequency of metaphor usage in each of nine categories, (c) Internal, External Stakeholders, (d) Managerial effectiveness, and (e) Gendered Communication Style—male or female.The findings of this study suggest that the type of metaphoric language used by CEOs has been consistent with a previously published study predating social media (Coffman and Eblen 1987). That is, metaphors concerning physical activities (e.g., climb the organization) and anatomical references (e.g., giving an arm and a leg) are the most frequently used categories of language. Unique to this study, we found gender differences in the use of metaphoric categories with men using more “game” metaphors than females, but females used more “mechanical” and “other” metaphors than men. What is interesting is that for the top three most frequently used metaphors (physical, anatomical, and architectural), featured no differences between male and female CEOs. Another finding is that both male and female executives equally used male gendered communications while males are less apt to use female gendered communication styles. This study supports the notion that the use of metaphors by CEOs is an important element in communicating through social media channels and that male and female CEOs display some differences in their use of metaphoric language.References available upon request.

Buyers and sellers involved in a transaction have access to different amounts of information related to the quality of a product or service (Spence 1973). This phenomenon is recognized as “asymmetric information”. The uncertainties arising from asymmetric information about a product potentialize the problem recognized as “adverse selection”. To avoid adverse selection organizations must invest in quality signals. Wells, Valacich and Hess (2011) suggest that quality signals to the buyer in internet could be presented through the site conditions on the organization’s website. This research follows a descriptive and causal approach, to establish through an experiment the cause–effect relations between investment in organization’s website and confidence about the service on the internet. Wells, Valacich and Hess (2011) suggest that a potentially credible signal of quality to the buyer on the Internet could provide a very good condition to the consumer believe in the organization’s website content. Schlosser, White and Lloyd (2006) argue that investment in the website of an organization could influence the perceptions of online buyers.H1: The investment of a service organization in the development of website can be recognized by consumers on the internet.Trust is a multidimensional construct. Cummings and Bromiley (1996) define trust in three dimensions: (1) cognitive; (2) affective; and (3) connotative. Gronroos (2000) introduced the idea of trust as an expectation of one party (buyer) to another (seller), to behave in a predictable way. Online business trust becomes even more important.H2: The investment on the website positively influences consumer confidence about the internet service.This study adopted an experimental design 1 × 3: (1) offering a service on the internet and (2) referring to three levels of perceived investment in a website (high, medium and low). Three distinct websites were created for a fictitious company and service provider. The websites were differentiated by their characteristics and volume of investment that was employed in its development. Characterization of service and brand were created by the authors of this study with the aim of achieving greater control of effects on the prior knowledge by the consumer. We adopted metrics of multi-item scales of semantic differential type of nine points. We include confidence about the service based on Harris and Goode (2004, 2010) and investment signal by Wells, Valacich and Hess (2011). The sample of this study is composed of 56 (43.70 %) males and 79 (56.30 %) females. All the participants are young: 122 individuals (90.37 %) 18–25 years, and the others (9.63 %) between 26 and 30. Considering Hair et al. (2005), the number of 30 observations is enough. We have had 45 records in each treatment. That is, 45 individuals (33.3 %) exposed to high, medium and low investment websites. We perform descriptive statistics and ANOVA. To test hypotheses, we accepted a significance level (p < .05), as considered acceptable for applied social sciences (Hair et al. 2005). The result shows significant differences between the three types of websites regarding the consumer’s perception of the service organization’s investment in the website. Perception of investment on the website F (219,117; p <.0010. The results confirm the findings from Wells, Valacich and Hess (2011) and the propositions by Schlosser, White and Lloyd (2006), Mavlanova and Koufaris Benbunan-Fich (2012). The investment in the website can be perceived by consumers on the internet. We found significant differences between the three types of websites, concerning the confidence of the consumer about service. Trust in service F (203,119; p <.0010. So, we confirm also the hypothesis H2. This study represents a first step to better understand the relationship between investment in quality signals and trust in websites.References available upon request.

The development of social media on the Internet poses a challenge for luxury brands, as managers need to walk a fine line to keep the balance between ubiquity and exclusivity in social media (Hennigs et al. 2012). Luxury brands are increasingly using social media to raise brand awareness and build relationships with their customer base and try to enhance brand experiences online (Kim and Ko 2010; Phan et al. 2011). The emergence of Web 2.0 (the development of interactive web pages) and social media thus challenges luxury brands’ marketing strategies on the Internet, if these brands need to embrace mass marketing media and try to highlight the exclusivity dimension of their products at the same time (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010; Okonkwo 2009).

The way people buy things has fundamentally changed. For instance, due to the internet’s growing popularity users can easily interact with each other and share their opinions and experiences about products and services on review websites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp. As a consequence, when making purchase decisions people increasingly rely on online product ratings provided by consumers who previously purchased products as information sources to infer the quality of the available purchase options (e.g., Hu et al. 2008; Li and Hitt 2008; Simonson and Rosen 2014). In addition, consumers’ confidence in these reviews is stunningly growing. In 2012, 70 % of participants in a Nielsen (2012) study indicated that they trusted online reviews, which represents an increase of 15 % within a 4 years period. Accordingly, consumers’ reliance in these reviews posted by unknown consumers seems to outperform their trust in traditional media (Cheung and Thadani 2012).Given the great popularity of online reviews, it is hardly surprising that a broad body of literature has been devoted to acquire insights into the effects of this type of electronic word-of-mouth (see Cheung and Thadani 2012 for an extensive review). Most of this research concentrates on the effect of review valence revealing that average ratings are positively related to sales (e.g., Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Dellarocas et al. 2007; Godes and Mayzlin 2004; Li and Hitt 2008; Liu 2006; Luca 2011). However, these studies implicitly assume that customers solely focus on the scales of review scores (Hu et al. 2008), neglecting other distribution characteristics. Although the simple average might be the most salient distribution attribute, customers may also pay attention to other distribution characteristics reflecting the degree of disagreement between reviewers’ evaluations. Therefore, several researchers focused on the standard deviation of rating distributions which provides a measure for said heterogeneity in customer opinions. However, findings on this distribution characteristic are notably ambiguous, ranging from positive (Clemons et al. 2006; Lu et al. 2014) over non-significant (Chen et al. 2011; Chintagunta et al. 2010) to negative effects (Bao and Chang 2014; Hu et al. 2010; Zhu and Zhang 2010) on sales and related performance figures.Hence, the purpose of this research is to generate a better understanding of the impact of standard deviation in online ratings on customers’ inferences about the product under consideration. Therefore, we incorporate a previously disregarded distribution attribute—namely, skewness—and investigate the extent to which the effects of standard deviation on perceived product quality depend on this distribution characteristic.The findings of three empirical studies (N₁ = 197, N₂ = 214, N₃ = 141) reveal a positive effect of standard deviation on quality perceptions when the distribution of ratings is left skewed which reverts for right skewed distributions.References available upon request.

Today’s consumers rely heavily on the opinion of other consumers when making purchase decisions. Understanding the degree to which a review contributes to a purchase decision, its “helpfulness”, is important to online businesses. Despite the growing number of studies on online reviews, the impact of visual cues on consumer’s evaluation of review helpfulness has remained underexplored. This chapter examines the effect of reviewer image, along with previously examined review attributes, such as review depth, valence, and equivocality, on review helpfulness. With a sample of 1400 reviews from mobile gaming applications, we report that reviewer image can significantly enhance consumers’ evaluation of review helpfulness. We did not find significant differential effects of image types (i.e. self, family, or random images) on review helpfulness. The results call for further research on the impact of visual cues as well as reviewer attributes on review helpfulness.

The role of Higher Education in the social context has been always object of debate within the academic community and not only. Universities have always been responsible for the traditional functions of education and knowledge transfer but, across all the European countries, a “Third Mission” imposes to universities to be also a “partner” that collaborates at the community’s growth. In this sense, social networks can be a tool to create an effective bridge between research, teaching, and public services by means of the possibility of sharing information, opinions, and ideas in real time and in a multimedia way. This research investigates which forms of social media communication are mainly used by the European Universities to engage their own stakeholders by performing a comparative analysis of the posts in Twitter and Facebook. Furthermore, this research deals with the problem of gauging the engagement rate in the University by means of social network advancing the current state-of-the-art about the analysis of the social media use within public engagement strategies.

Although it is well known that travellers look at other travellers’ opinions and recommendations to plan their trips, and the number of people reviewing touristic attractions is increasing, little is known about how people judge them. Numerous studies have examined user behaviour in creating contents and participating in the online community using various methods, but research that investigates how consumers express opinions about hotel attributes is still lacking. In particular, since expressed preferences as well as ratings could be the result of both the uncertainty of consumers in evaluating an item and the liking feeling about the item (D’Elia and Piccolo 2005), the aim of this chapter is to understand the role of these components in the evaluating process, in order to segment the market and to define different users’ profile.

If I am on an island I would not bother even if there is no one as long as there is Facebook is a common sentiment among the school age children using Facebook in India. They are between the age of 13 and 18 years and 40 % of them are online every other day and 53 % are involved in social networking (Economic Times 2013). India ranks number three in Facebook usage in the entire world and Facebook penetration is as high as 73.3 % among online people. Add to this the fact that 75 % of people in this group are below the age of 35 (Times of India 2012). Communication scholars have extensively used the uses and gratification theory to explain internet and social media usage (Charney and Greenberg 2001; LaRose and Eastin 2004; Sheldon 2008; Tewksbury and Althaus 2000). In the Indian context, there are similar researches (Gadekar et al. 2011; Maniar and Deesawala 2011), but none assess the Facebook usage of school going children particularly the impact of brands on them. This particular cohort is important because they would determine the patterns of social media usage in the future.

Consumers can easily combine different channels to search for information and make purchases. Yet, the physical store is the preferred purchase channel. The cross-channel purchase process (i.e., in-store purchase influenced by online research) is the most extended behavior among online users (eMarketer 2014; Forrester Research 2014). The influence of online information on off-line purchases is expected to be especially significant due to the development of mobile technologies (Van Bruggen et al. 2010). In this way, one of the most beneficial innovations that new technologies have incorporated into the consumer’s shopping process is the access to other consumers’ opinions and evaluations anytime and anywhere (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2010). Despite the great body of research analyzing the effects of traditional word of mouth in conventional shopping environments, and of electronic word of mouth (e-wom) in e-commerce, there is a lack of research on how e-wom influences the consumer’s purchase behavior at the physical outlet. This research examines how external recommendations, coming from online users or the company, influence the cross-channel search experience and decision. Specifically, this research analyzes: (1) how online users’ recommendations help the consumer to improve their cross-channel shopping experience and (2) how consumer versus seller recommendations received during the physical interaction affect the initial impression of the product.

Considering the source of social media conversation, we can distinguish content from consumers (user-generated content, i.e., UGC) and firm (firm-created content, i.e., FCC): both have an impact on brand image and purchase expenditures (Goh et al. 2013; Bruhn et al. 2012). Firm‐created social media communication can stimulate user‐generated content, as Godes and Mayzlin (2009) have demonstrated. In fact, firms can actively start UGCs about their brands by “leaving indelible impressions on consumers’ minds” (Mangold and Faulds 2009).

The emergence of Web 2.0 has revolutionized the use of the Internet as a communication channel. The term “Web 2.0” includes a wide range of electronic applications, also called “social media” (e.g., social network sites, recommendation websites, blogs, and photo and video sharing platforms), that facilitate interactions among individuals as well as among users and companies. The impact of social media has been especially important in the industries of tourism and hospitality (Leung et al. 2013). In particular, according to a report by Fundetec (2013), in Spain the social network sites (SNS) are used for marketing activities by 48.0 % of small- and medium-sized hotels 63.0 % of large hotels).

A firm with strong strategic orientations tends to perform better in the market. However, recent research findings suggested differently. Interfirm collaboration is conceived to be one of the intervening variables, which operate between strategic orientations and firm’s market performance. A firm working closely with third parties is likely to achieve a better result because of the synergy effect. Based on this proposition, this study aims to test this synergy effect arising from interfirm collaboration on firm performance in the context of outsourcing the distribution function to third-party logistics (3PLs) providers in Southern China.

With apparently increasing demand from consumers for environmentally sustainable products, several firms have adopted a green positioning strategy and have attempted to develop green products, along with a distinct marketing emphasis to attract “green consumers.” Researchers have long emphasized that environmentally sustainable objectives not only contribute to profits, but also strengthen the firm’s competitive position (Lovins et al. 1999; Menon and Menon 1997; Porter and van der Linde 1995; Schmidheiny 1992). Thus, received wisdom now appears to suggest that it is very much possible for firms to pursue the trifecta of environmental sustainability, profits, and competitive advantage. And, in recent times, the goals of sustainability are stated to be an imperative that organizations simply cannot ignore; as Nidumolu et al. (2009) argue, sustainability is “a mother lode of organizational and technological innovations” that would redefine the competitive landscape with new business models and new practices (p. 57). However, despite scholarly consensus and confidence on the profitability of environmentally sustainable strategies, green marketing practices are still not widely accepted or embraced in all industries. In this chapter, we develop a framework for the examination of the vital role of the supply chain, especially the retail sector, in implementing the sustainability objectives of companies. We argue that environmental sustainability in the value chain, especially through the three tenets of reduce, recycle, and reuse, is quite feasible and economical.References available upon request.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the importance of selected antecedents (i.e., cooperation, coordination, and relationship investments) in a commitment–trust vendor relationship model. Collaboration in organizations often is not effective in relationships between purchasers and vendors because cooperation, coordination, and relationship investment are lacking. Research on these constructs is very limited in interorganizational research, so this study is unique, therefore, in examining antecedents in a trust–commitment relationship model. Following examination of both first- and second-order modeling approaches, findings show the influence of these antecedents on trust and commitment, and ultimately vendor relationship satisfaction. All three antecedents are positively related to the higher order management factors construct, and in turn to both trust and commitment, with the stronger relationship being to commitment. Commitment and trust are both positively related to relationship satisfaction. The direct relationship from trust to satisfaction is the strongest, but there is evidence of partial mediation through the indirect relationship from trust to commitment and then to satisfaction.

Drawing from studies on relational capital value and the importance accorded to the satisfaction, we analyzed the relationship between industrial and commercial customers. A gap in literature is due to the major focus on business-to-consumer relationship and a consequent less importance reserved to the business-to-business sector. The effects of variables related to the supplier’s product offering, marketing actions, and aftersales assistance in determining dealer satisfaction and trust have been relatively neglected.We applied industrial consumer satisfaction model to the context of automotive sector and integrated it with other strategic variables as trust and reputation. We argue that supply chain success is also due to dealer satisfaction and propose causal linkages in which dealer satisfaction is recognized as an antecedent of trust and reputation. Empirical results confirm the importance of dealer satisfaction in the process of building a lasting relationship between buyers and sellers.

Although the number of female entrepreneurs has grown worldwide (Brush and Cooper 2012; Kelley et al. 2013), female self-employment rate in Japan is quite low and there is still a significant gap of entrepreneurship participation between men and women (Welsh et al. 2014). One of the possible reasons why Japanese women are not willing to get self-employed is a Japanese cultural norm, which regards business as the masculine activity and housework as the women’s responsibility (Kimoto 2000; Kondo 2001). This strong gender-role perception still affects females’ behaviours. For instance, they tend to keep a distance from social capital/relationships and prefer kinship (Brush et al. 2009; Marlow 1997).The purpose of this study is to examine factors affecting Japanese female entrepreneurship, specifically to find out the impacts of gender stereotypical perception and online social capital obtained via social media on entrepreneurial intention in Japan. The analysis was based on 426 Japanese entrepreneurs consisting of 243 business owners and 183 nascent entrepreneurs. To test the hypotheses and moderating effects of gender and age on entrepreneurial intention, Structural Equation Modelling and Independent Samples t-test were conducted. Results show that gender stereotypes, which referred to business as males’ activity and housework as females’ responsibility, would still exist in Japan and it decreased women’s intention to start their own business. However, the effectiveness of social media to increase females’ access to online social capital was also identified. Moreover, gender and age were found to be significant moderators for all hypothesized relationships. These findings can help policymakers understand women entrepreneurial intentions in Japan and take measures to extend their business opportunities. Lastly, this study provides the theoretical implications and extends the entrepreneurship literature.References available upon request.

The decision to enter a franchise system and to become a franchisee represents an important change in an individual’s work environment (Kaufmann and Stanworth 1995). Once having signed a franchise contract, franchisees usually give up their current jobs and have to learn how to successfully establish and operate a franchise business. The initial phase of an individual’s engagement as a franchisee is often accompanied by entrepreneurial euphoria, resulting from the fascination and excitement of beginning a new phase in their working life (Frazer 2001). However, recent research on relationship formation between franchisees and franchisors indicates that after some time, this initial fascination decreases due to sobering experiences with the franchise system (Blut et al. 2011). The first phase of “honeymoon” (Black and Mendenhall 1991) is followed by a phase of “disillusionment,” in which franchisees are confronted with the realities of day-to-day business, leading to a decline in franchisee job satisfaction, trust in the franchisor, and commitment towards the franchise system. Blut and colleagues (2011) argue that this typical downturn of relationship properties may lead to a number of negative consequences such as increased opportunism of the franchisees, reduced investments, and lowered operational input (Oxenfeldt and Kelly 1968). In order to reduce the negative effects of the expected and almost inevitable downturn in relationship properties from “honeymoon” to “disillusionment,” we have to investigate the process of what we term “franchisee adjustment.” Therefore, our study examines factors associated with the adjustment after entering a franchise system. Based on expatriate adjustment models and social learning theory, we develop a conceptual model of franchisee adjustment focusing on franchisor support variables. This model is tested against a sample consisting of over a thousand franchisees nested within 32 franchise systems. Results using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) indicate that franchisors can facilitate franchisee adjustment through measures in the area of job design (autonomy, participation), knowledge management (knowledge transfer, prior self-employment), and attractiveness of the franchise (initial investments, royalty rate, reputation of the system).References available upon request.

Networking entrepreneurs stimulate the growth of the group through the reinforcement of the relations among the firms involved. The opportunity to work in clusters is particularly necessary for SMEs, which always have a low power, especially for those who work in a low technological sector. Italy is characterized for a massive presence of small and medium enterprises, organized in districts or networks. Despite the economic crisis, some of these groups are able to survive and score positive performances both locally and abroad.

The growth of many industrialized developed countries relies on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are the basis of a solid industrial sector and contribute to the development of the main macroeconomic variables (Calabrese et al. 2002).

Previous studies on the marketing/entrepreneurship interface have attempted to identify the core elements that constitute the entrepreneurial marketing construct mainly by describing how new ventures implement marketing activities (e.g., Stokes 2000; Coviello et al. 2000; O’Dwyer et al. 2009). Despite the advances the area has known over the last 30 years, Hills et al. (2008) emphasize the fact that there are still few studies of what characterizes entrepreneurial marketing and of its differences when compared to traditional marketing. This chapter proposes developing the understanding of the concept by focusing on the entrepreneur’s marketing decision-making process. Assuming a cognitive perspective, the study is established on the individual level, since how entrepreneurs get, process, and use information affects how they cope with external factors. Bridging entrepreneurial marketing theory and the cognitive approach to entrepreneurship, we suggest a conceptualization of entrepreneurial marketing as a decision-making process shaped by some circumstances, generally characterized by uncertainty.In order to understand the circumstances under which an entrepreneurial or managerial marketing decision-making is more appropriate, 51 entrepreneurs were interviewed in two research phases. The first involved nine in-depth exploratory interviews and the second consisted in 42 interviews using Critical Incident Technique (CIT). CIT interviews resulted in 146 usable marketing decision-making related incidents that were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively regarding: (1) the level of uncertainty involved, measured by the information available to found a given decision and the level of marketing competency, as a proxy of processing capacity, referring to the bounded rationality theory (Simon 1991, 1979); (2) the resulting marketing actions, classified either as entrepreneurial or managerial; and (3) their outcomes, categorized in four types: potential creation; growth; marketing effects; and negative or lower than expected results.The study concludes that entrepreneurial marketing, is more suitable for highly uncertain environments, characterized by low levels of information and when the decision maker has little marketing competency. On the contrary, in the context of abundant information to found marketing decisions and when the decision maker holds marketing competency, managerial marketing practices are more appropriate since they promote expansion; growth; and efficiency gains. New venture’s managers should, therefore, adapt their marketing practices to different contexts in order to maximize marketing decision outputs. The results also show that entrepreneurs with higher marketing competency have a natural tendency to implement managerial marketing even when information is scarce. This is a riskier decision-making style, however, since more resources are committed when managerial marketing is implemented. On the other hand, less proficient decision makers can produce more effective and efficient outputs from their marketing if they acquire marketing competencies to decide in more stable situations, which can occur in different stages of the company development.References available upon request.

Waiting is a major course of service dissatisfaction in most health literature. However, are the effects of waiting all negative? This research aims to explore the dual effects (i.e., both the positive and negative effects) of waiting on health service satisfaction. We expect the relationship between waiting time and satisfaction is “inversed U-shape” and to find that under certain circumstances waiting can positively correlate to satisfaction. We also want to understand the moderating roles of service attributes and patient characteristics. We conduct a survey with 334 patients in three large hospitals and in-depth interviews with 20 participants. The results reveal that the relationship between waiting and satisfaction is “U-shape,” the left arm curve which shows the negative correlation between waiting and satisfaction indicating that the longer the waiting, the lower the satisfaction. However, the decrease rate of satisfaction slows with the increase of waiting and satisfaction reaches the lowest point at 2.6 h waiting. After this point, satisfaction positively correlates with waiting. Sociability plays a moderating role as that waiting has stronger effects on satisfaction among high-sociability patients. Furthermore, waiting has positive contribution to satisfaction through social interaction and signaling service quality, but these effects may occur in the later stage of waiting.

This study addresses the effects of knowledge and fear arousal related to climate change issues on intention to switch to green electricity. Participants of an experimental online study were exposed to a fear appeal based on climate change threats. Fear arousal and knowledge concerning energy generation and climate change were assessed with an online questionnaire. Findings confirmed the hypothesized positive influence of fear arousal on the intention to choose residential green electricity. The effect of knowledge was non-significant, however. Findings contribute to reassessing the relevance of cognitive elaboration and have implications for marketers of green electricity products.

This study investigated the impact of socio-demographic factors, HIV/AIDS level of knowledge, exposure to HIV/AIDS information, ease of obtaining condoms, and types of outlets offering condoms, whether to abstain from sex or not abstain from sex, being faithful or not being faithful, using condoms or not using condoms, discussing the use of condoms with partner(s) or not discussing the use of condoms with partner(s) and taking an HIV test or not taking an HIV test. Data were obtained by means of a face-to-face questionnaire. Data analysis made use of binary logistic regression procedure. Age, gender, marital status and ease of obtaining condoms were predictors of abstinence while gender, occupation, level of knowledge about the modes of HIV transmission and prevention methods contributed to being faithful. By contrast, only gender was predictive of condom use. Occupation and knowledge about the meaning of HIV/AIDS were predictors of partners’ discussions on condom use. Lastly, age, level of education and level of knowledge about the meaning of HIV/AIDS and modes of HIV transmission predicted a decision to take an HIV test. The research ground should be conducted prior to the design of interventions. Consideration of the combined effects of predicting factors would be valuable.

According to estimates, about two billion people consume alcohol annually (WHO 2007). Worldwide pure alcohol consumption per person is estimated to be 6.1 L for people aged 15 years and older (WHO 2011a). The highest overall consumption of alcohol is in Europe and high income countries (WHO 2011a) including Australia. For example, in Australia 81 % of people aged 14 years and over in 2011 consumed alcohol according to the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE 2012) at least once.

The reorientation of the public sector along market lines has led to the paradigm of New Public Management (NPM): the assumption that the public sector can be improved by management principles and techniques traditionally associated with the private sector. However, market orientation has also become associated with a number of problems, particularly in the public sector. Recent literature suggests that brand orientation can serve as an alternative to market orientation. Our chapter reviews the concept of brand orientation in the healthcare sector, the extent to which Dutch hospitals are currently managed as brands and the key issues in implementing brand management principles in Dutch hospitals.

In the 70s the proliferation of popular movies led to increased enrolments into suburban karate schools with their primary stated motive being self-defence. Unstated desires to emulate their screen heroes may have also driven martial arts memberships. Despite being a minority sport in its country of origin, Karate is more popular outside of Japan. In subsequent years with an ageing demographic, self-defence, fitness and well-being have increasingly become major reasons why people sign up for martial arts classes in countries like Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. The purpose of this study is to understand the motives driving membership in Karate through exploring the values, perceptions of risk, participation patterns and specifics of enjoyment of current participants. Results from this exploratory phase will be used to inform the development of an in-depth study of martial arts membership. Preliminary insights into health and social marketing implications are also identified.

The study examines the role of authenticity in corporate social responsibility (CSR) acts through a qualitative and quantitative study. Three hundred and ninety qualitative commentaries are content analyzed to determine antecedents to CSR authenticity. The study finds that impact, perceived motive, reparation, and fit are vital in creating the perception of authentic CSR acts. Impact refers to the amount of resources allocated to assisting a cause and the company’s impact on a cause. Perceived motive is the reason why CSR acts are being implemented. Reparation refers to the degree to which a CSR initiative is perceived to be an attempt to compensate for a misdeed. Fit is defined as the CSR initiatives alignment with the firm’s offering, brand concept, or target market needs. The quantitative study proves that CSR authenticity mediates the influence on consumer outcome. The structural equation model also shows a significant effect of impact, reparation, and fit on CSR authenticity.

The reported lack of research on consumer-to-health department interactions (Andersen et al. 2012) and the audience’s perceptions that many health campaigns greatly exaggerate health risks (Cancer Vic 2012) suggest that increased consumer involvement in the design of health messages and increased message authenticity may enhance the persuasiveness of many, limitedly successful public health campaigns (e.g., Darrow and Biersterker 2008; de Gruchy and Coppel 2008; Kerr et al. 2013). Source effects literature (Wilson and Sherrell 1993) suggests that positive message evaluations may be strengthened when the audience develops a sense of identification with the message source. Similar, audience evaluations may benefit from messages that are perceived to be more authentic, since message authenticity enables self-referencing to the scenarios depicted in the health message (Ertimur and Gilly 2012).

The investigation of health services is a major area of interest within the field of marketing (e.g. Berry and Bendapudi 2007; Crié and Chebat 2013). Research in the area is heterogeneous, covering the range from healthy individuals, people suffering from chronic diseases along with healthcare professionals. In previous studies, there is inherently an assumption that medical applications have the potential to improve the efficiency of healthcare service delivery and thereby deliver value to consumers, hence generate uptake. However, thousands of consumer-oriented applications have close to zero downloads (Campaign 2014), and the acceptance of medical applications is relatively low by professionals in the hospital context (Wu et al. 2011). This suggests a need to inform the service design cycle for medical applications with insights from technology and design disciplines in order to deliver relevant mobile services. In the contemporary ‘electronic’ marketplace, encompassing all aspects of service delivery in design appears daunting. Yet, it is crucial to identify those factors that drive positive service experiences in order to maximize consumer value (Sandström et al. 2008). A large and growing body of services research investigates the role of consumer perceptions of value creation as a driver for acceptance, use and/or purchase. S-D logic suggests that ‘value is defined by and co-created with the consumer rather than embedded in output’ (Vargo and Lusch 2004). When value is perceived as value in use, functional and economic benefits as well as emotional, social, ethical and environmental dimensions are of significance for consumers (Grönroos and Voima 2013). As a result, if the full potential of mobile services is to be realised in medical care, it is necessary to understand the interplay between technology issues, such as usability and the human side of assessments of experience in the creation of value for the user. We posit that optimal mobile service design could be achieved by using human–computer interaction design principles in conjunction with service design theories. The purpose of this chapter is to extend existing studies by investigating consumers’ perception of value in using mobile services in context and explore how medical service design and delivery can be optimised for mobile applications. To address these objectives, we follow an inductive approach aligned with grounded theory techniques and procedures (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1998), and we initially employ an exemplar case study. We report on data concerning a medical mobile application (Mersey Micro) for healthcare professionals intended for use inside the hospital. Data are gathered from in-context, in-depth, interviews with representative users, usability studies as well as an exploratory survey aiming at identifying clinicians’ interaction with the mobile application. The literature suggests that design of effective and efficient healthcare systems would benefit greatly from integrated models and frameworks that combine consumers’ emotions and technical features of service platforms (Ostrom et al. 2010). As a result, this chapter might be seen as an initial attempt towards this direction. Our initial findings are pointing the direction of (medical) mobile service design as a combination of technology issues, such as usability and the human side of assessments of experience in the creation of value for the user.References available upon request.

This project answers a recent call from the Transformative Service Research (TSR) movement (Anderson et al. 2013) to address a lack of research in understanding the well-being of service providers. In addition, this research also addresses a pressing issue to counteract management problems such as increase turnover rate (Bardoel et al. 2014), which is prevalent in certain service industries such as the hospitality and the retail sectors. Service providers, being boundary spanners, often experience emotional stressors due to conflicting job roles and demands from both internal (within the organisation) and external (e.g., customers) environments (e.g., Lings et al. 2010). This leads to burnout, which creates a psychological strain on service providers that can have serious detrimental consequences for the psychological well-being of employees. Positive psychology literature found that positive emotions serve as markers of flourishing, or optimal well-being (Fredrickson 2001). In an ideal scenario, management would want service employees to be happy and well at all times. However, this is unrealistic. To this end, this research proposes a conceptual model that studies the role of psychological resilience in buffering and regulating service employee’s well-being.Psychological resilience is defined as “the capacity for recovery and maintained adaptive behaviour that may follow initial retreat or incapacity upon initiating a stressful event” (Garmezy 1991, p. 459). The Resilience Framework Model (Kumpfer 2011) is used as the theoretical underpinning in identifying individuals’ internal self-resiliency characteristics. Specifically, work locus of control, general health, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and job competence are proposed as drivers of service employees’ resilience at work. Next, the model investigates the links between psychological resilience of service employees and well-being, and work-related outcomes such as retention, job satisfaction, and engagement. As an extension of this study, moderating effects such as gender and work duration are studied. To the best of knowledge, prior research has not proposed a model of service employees’ psychological resilience. This research is timely as it answers a gap in the TSR and Management/Human Resource literature. It can also provide useful insights to service organisations, to develop strategies to improve staff well-being, retention, and also for recruitment purposes.References available upon request.

Food waste is a major problem in industrialized nations. In order to develop efficient mechanisms for minimization, a better understanding of the complexities involved in food waste is necessary. This chapter takes a marketing system perspective to provide a holistic exploration of the edible food waste phenomenon on a retail and wholesale store level. By means of 32 in-depth interviews with store managers, we gain insights into the relevance of food waste occurrence, avoidance, and redistribution. The data reveals various factors influencing the occurrence of food waste along formal, informal, and philosophical antecedent classes. We find that managing edible food waste is closely connected to the triple bottom line: reducing its occurrence and enabling processes to redistribute edible food waste can create economic, ecological, and social benefits. Against this background, we propose a dormant sustainability potential in the management of food waste and advance recommendations for realizing these benefits. We suggest that food waste is a key priority area in the realm of corporate social responsibility for retail and wholesale organization. The chapter draws on a framework for public policy change and provides a discussion about how different processes can help reduce edible food waste among various market actors.

The majority of alcohol education programs in school settings follow a one-size-fits-all approach meaning that they are using the identical program (universal programs) for all participants (Botvin and Griffin 2007; Foxcroft and Tsertsvadze 2012). However, a one-size-fits-all approach may limit program effectiveness as large numbers of the audience may be left dissatisfied, uninterested, or unchallenged (Snyder et al. 2004). This study is part of a larger cluster randomised control design research project that is implementing and evaluating an alcohol social marketing education program named Game On: Know Alcohol (GOKA) that is currently in field.TwoStep cluster analysis was conducted to segment 2114 Year 10 high school students using data from three segmentation bases; demographic, behaviour and psychographic. Three segments were identified: (1) Abstainers, (2) Bingers and (3) Moderate Drinkers. Next differential effects post-GOKA delivery were analysed using a (2) × 2 × 3 repeated measures ANCOVA design. Changes in knowledge, attitudes, behavioural intentions, social norms, expectancies and self-efficacy were investigated post-program delivery.Strongest change effects for GOKA were achieved for the Bingers segment while the Moderate Drinkers and Abstainers had mixed results across the outcome measures. These findings warrant future development of more targeted and differentially delivered programs that meet the needs and wants of each of the identified segments.References available upon request.

This study aims to understand the lived experiences of individuals who have been trafficked both within and outside of Nigeria for the purpose of sexual exploitation and domestic labour. Interview questions were guided by cultural norms discussed in human trafficking literature. Results of the study reject the notion that women trafficked abroad for sex work are victims who are often exploited by their traffickers. While evident in some cases and certainly the view propagated by the media and activist groups, this chapter reveals exploitation is minimal. However, in the case of individuals being trafficked within the country, exploitation is prevalent and individuals are at the mercy of relatives and madams who exploit them for their own gain. Further, contrary to widely held beliefs that individuals trafficked are kidnapped by strangers against their will, this chapter identifies that the trafficked are introduced to the trafficker by someone within their sphere of influence including friends and close relatives. These results can inform future social marketing interventions targeting both individuals at risk and the important others who surround them (midstream) in order to reduce the prevalence of human trafficking. Limitations and future research directions are outlined.

With robots increasingly considered as viable service agents, marketers must explore the nature of value co-creation during service interactions and the consequences for the wider nature of relationships between service providers and customers. This study investigates the nature of the direct interaction between humans and robots and the implications for value co-creation. The aim is to reveal the underlying structures that influence user opinions of robot roles and value-in-use, and so inform the debate on social implications of robot service. Such insights will create awareness for the changing nature of service encounters and help marketers promote positive interactions.

The global obesity epidemic has been increasing for four decades, yet sustained prevention efforts have scarcely begun (Finucane et al. 2011). The rates of overweight and obesity amongst adults have doubled over the past two decades with Australia now being ranked as one of the fattest developed nations (ABS 2006). Obesity is a complex problem, with both poor nutrition and low rates of physical activity contributing to its prevalence. The Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation (12WBT) program seeks to increase participant’s self-efficacy for healthy eating and regular exercising to reduce or maintain their weight by providing a holistic approach using a range of online support tools. Self-efficacy comprises two parts: outcome expectancy which is the belief that a particular behaviour will lead to a certain outcome and self-efficacy expectancy which is the personal conviction that one is able to successfully perform those behaviours to produce the desired outcome (Bandura 1977). In order to test the differences between the 12WBT program participants and a control group who currently had a weight management goal, a sample of 820 Australian participants, of which 516 were currently participating in the 12WBT, completed an online survey at three time points, week 1 (T1), week 12 (T2) and follow-up (T3), 12 weeks after program ceased. Previously validated items were adapted: self-efficacy (Bandura 1977), and eating and exercising behaviour (East et al. 2005). Data were analysed using SPSS software. The mean age for the entire sample (n = 820) was 36.32 (10.35), with the mean age for 12WBT participants (n = 516), 38.30 (10.71) and control participants (n = 304), 32.95 (8.75). The results reveal significant differences between the 12WBT participants and the control participants in terms of self-efficacy and actual behaviour for healthy eating and exercise behaviour across the three time points. Importantly, the results show a significant difference in weight loss across time, with 12WBT participants maintaining their weight loss 3 months after program completion. The results of this research demonstrate using a holistic weight management program, such as 12WBT has the potential to increase participants’ self-efficacy, which in turn increases healthy eating and exercising behaviour. Higher levels of healthy eating and exercise behaviour were associated with higher levels of weight change outcomes during the program and beyond program participation. The findings from this study contribute new empirical evidence to the literature and are consistent with the argument a persons’ self-efficacy is influenced by the support they receive.References available upon request.

For media planners to combine multiple media across platforms to maximize synergy is a critical challenge within integrated marketing communication. For this study, in-depth interviews were conducted with experienced media specialists in leading agencies to explore how they integrate different out-of-home advertising media platforms in IMC strategies. The feedback of these experts was then used to propose a model of strategies to enhance synergy within out-of-home advertising campaigns. This model is a first of its kind for planning out-of-home advertising media across platforms and bridges a gap in the existing literature on media synergy and out-of-home advertising media strategy.

In extant literature, although there are a few studies that have investigated impact of internal marketing orientation (IMO) on nonfinancial performance, most IMO studies have focused on how IMO relates to financial performance. Furthermore, even when customer-based performance (e.g., service quality, customer retention, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty) are included in the model, they are generally grouped together with other constructs such as employee competency and willingness to learn and organizational effectiveness and operationalized as an overall nonfinancial performance measure, rather than as a separate customer-based performance measure. Therefore, in order to fill this gap and to understand the impact of IMO on the firm’s customer-based performance as well as financial performance, we developed and empirically tested an integrated model of IMO by comprising not only the financial performance variable but also a customer-based performance variable (customer acquisition and retention, customer loyalty, perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, improving products and services based on customers’ comments, implementing new ideas, and developing new products and services).The inclusion of a customer-based performance variable in an IMO model is significant because a direct effect of IMO on a firm’s financial performance is rather difficult to demonstrate. This is because the impact of a firm’s IMO adoption is generally reflected in the firm’s customer-based performance through enhancing employees’ behavioral outcomes. The key objective of implementing IMO is to ensure positive employee-related outcomes, rather than to directly affect a firm’s financial performance indicators. The firm’s IMO focus enhances the employees’ customer-focused behavior which results in improved customer-based performance. Moreover, the financial consequence of customer-based performance has been recognized by both academia and practitioners in extant literature. Therefore, we argue that the impact of a firm’s IMO focus on its performance should be investigated through an indirect path comprising customer orientation, employee commitment, employee performance, and customer-based performance rather than a direct path between IMO and performance.In this study, to empirically test the integrated model, data were collected from middle to top managers from selected service industries in the UK, and the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Results provide statistically significant support for the argument that IMO impacts the firm’s customer-based performance through both employee commitment and customer orientation. The study also supported a strong relationship between the firm’s customer-based performance and financial performance. As predicted, the relationship between IMO and employee commitment is partially mediated by customer orientation, whereas both employee commitment and employee performance partially mediate the relationship between customer orientation and customer performance. Employee performance also partially mediates the relationship between employee commitment and customer-based performance.

Academics, professionals, and business strategist agree on the importance of consistency in the act of sponsorship to measure their effectiveness (Woisetschläger and Michaelis 2012). The congruence measures the relationship fit between sponsor–sponsee as perceived by the consumer. Previous studies have linked the ability of neuroimaging to predict the acceptance of advertisements (Vecchiato Kong and Wei 2012). The objective of the research is to measure the effect of congruence on the effectiveness of sponsorship and processing information from a neuroscientific point of view.To measure the variable of attention, the electroencephalogram (EEG) system evaluates the change in the signal of the human brain. In such cases, the effectiveness of various marketing strategies may be evaluated by monitoring brain activity. Neurosky, Inc., develops the device used in this research and comparisons of these instruments by medical professionals have found significant similarity in results (Ekandem et al. 2012). The development of the control variables in the experiment was developed through focus groups and surveys, where four sponsorship messages were created.Consumers were utilized in order to obtain results in the degree of attention, time, and processing method of advertising. Statistical tests confirm a significant difference between levels of attention in messages. The two models, consistent and inconsistent messages indicated that only two had similar results accuracy and attention whereas processing time was significantly higher in inconsistent messages. The degree of attention is showed that it was incremental and less successful to individuals who are exposed to inconsistent message and could produce an emotional rejection of sponsorship. Thus in turn, would then suggest then that a higher level of attention combined with higher negative rejection implies the need for more effective communication campaigns (Tribou 2011). The perception of the viewer in a meaningful incongruence scenario can lead to a rejection of the brand in which the viewer would not assimilate the sponsorship (Lindstrom 2008) which would infer in an opposite result from which it was intended.The importance of the research indicates that it is imperative for companies to know the perception of their messages enabling them to develop more efficient messages, not to mention, the amount of sponsors which are associated to events and sports teams due to the transmission of image and attitude towards brand attributes of the brand sponsored and the sponsoring brand (Gwinner 1997).References available upon request.

Since the appearance of its first definition as Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in the early 1990s, the concept of integration has been increasingly attracting the attention of both academics and professionals (Hackley 2010; Laurie and Mortimer 2011; Kliatchko and Schultz 2014). However, the theoretical background still appears to be fairly disjointed and confused, mainly due to the lack of scholarly consensus over the definition and, especially in the last decade, the terminology to be used to name the concept (Christensen et al. 2008; Smith 2013). This conceptual confusion has hindered the development of valid and reliable measurement scales, preventing scholars from conducting robust empirical research. Based on an extensive literature review, this chapter develops a theoretical framework for “Integrated Corporate Communication” (ICC), opting for a terminology that enables us to explicitly embrace a more holistic approach which holds that the locus of integration is the whole organization. The authors of this chapter define ICC as the stakeholder-centered interactive process of cross-functional planning and alignment of organizational, analytical, and communication processes that allows for the possibility of continuous dialogue by conveying consistent and transparent messages via all media in order to foster long-term profitable relationships that create value. Tactical consistency, interactivity, stakeholder-centered strategic focus, and organizational alignment are identified in the present research as the ICC dimensions. Several driving factors and effects of integrated communication have been examined in previous studies, mostly taking a conceptual approach, while empirical research is still fairly scant. In fact, many scholars (Taylor 2010; Laurie and Mortimer 2011; Kliatchko and Schultz 2014) have called for further and more robust empirical efforts to reveal the factors that foster or hinder integration and to demonstrate the positive effects that can be obtained via ICC in terms of market performance. Thus, the chapter aims to empirically analyze the influence of organizational culture on ICC to determine whether ICC fully mediates the relationship between organizational culture–market performance and to prove the beneficial effects derived from ICC in terms of economic–financial results, brand-related outcomes, and customer satisfaction.

Brands are being increasingly recognized as one of the most valuable assets of a company (Simon and Sullivan 1993; Madden et al. 2006; Merz et al. 2009). As such appreciating their value represents a vital priority for all market actors. Traditionally, brands have been conceptualized as a firm-provided property of goods. However, the recent advent of the Service-Dominant Logic perspective (Vargo and Lusch 2004) encouraged scholars to view brands in terms of collaborative, value co-creation activities of stakeholders and firms (Merz et al. 2009). This shift in the conceptualization of brands advocates for a new understanding of their value. So far value co-creation literature has been devoting much of its attention to explore and frame the primary role of customers as ultimate value co-creators, neglecting to adequately acknowledge the new role of the firm as value enabler. The latest supremacy of customers as empirical focus leaves then open the following question: what is the role of the firm in value co-creation (Grönroos 2008)? In the current society, the role of the firm seems to be regulated mainly by “negative liberties” (Berlin 1969) that represent nonaction imperatives or imposed impediments to do something: “do not control, do not take over, do not over-speak, do not show off, do not intrude, do not annoy,” just to mention some. We argue that in order to better understand the role of the brand in value co-creation, positive actions need to be uncovered beyond negative liberties to recognize the potential of the firm as value facilitator (Veloutsou 2009). More concretely, we contend that the actions performed by the brand in order to enable value co-creation by customers need to be empirically explored and identified in order to advance our understanding of value co-creation process in an actionable way (Grönroos 2011).This chapter interpretively investigates how brand decision-makers conceive and represent through the narratives of their branding practices the role of the brand in facilitating the encounter and the interaction with customers to encourage the process of value co-creation. Our evidence shows that the brand can ultimately act as a silent inspiring promoter of value co-creation by developing empathetic reciprocity with customers as individuals and displaying sociocultural mindfulness and liveliness at the community level. Our findings have detected some seeds that, although requiring further depth investigation, seem to highlight the humanistic approach of the brand, portrayed in its capability to permanently and meaningfully dwell in the life and action sphere of the customer, as the pivotal dimension of its value facilitator role.References available upon request.

The question may seem odd, perhaps facile, but it does need address. Business, everywhere, is challenged in and by the changing market spaces and marketplaces of the twenty-first century. Competitive forces have heightened and accelerated. Customers are demanding and discerning of businesses and brands. Consumers are sophisticated and critical of business practice. Pressure groups scrutinize and criticize corporations online. The tempo of technology has opened horizons for innovation and communication. Social media has gained ground and challenges traditional media. News is transmitted within seconds to different parts of the world. And, the shifting tectonic plates of communication necessitate integration of on/off-line communications. There are no invisible companies. What happens in one geographic market is instantly transmitted via global media to receptive consumer VDU’s—computer, television, and cell phone screens, or is almost immediately accessible. The world of information accessibility and the demise of corporate invisibility is today’s (not tomorrow’s) world.Today, as is well argued just about everywhere now, businesses need integrated communications, not just locally or nationally, but also from a global perspective. Given the speed, span, and reach of electronic communication, there are no purely local or national firms, only global ones. This situation creates and underpins the need for communications which not only needs to be based on a sound and deep understanding of specific marketplace/space needs, but also adopts an integrated approach.The corporation or firm is branded (e.g., P&G, Unilever, Coca Cola, Microsoft, Mars, McDonald’s). Thus, communication decisions are not just about traditional product branding directed by mid-level managers but corporate and organizational brands and communications as well which are under the aegis of senior corporate managers. The important point to note is that both areas of communication are conceptually and practically interactive, synergistic, and generally global.In this context and despite IMC’s inherent attractiveness, its adoption by companies of all types, by agencies that service their needs, in a world constituting a multiplying kaleidoscope of media options, and despite its ready acceptance by marketing and communication academics, in its initial formulations it was not led, spearheaded, or perhaps not even considered by the marketing discipline itself. Thus, the question arises: Is (or was) IMC marketing orientated? To answer or at least explore the question, the origins and development of both disciplines will be evaluated.Marketing itself is checkered by change and adaptation. As environmental conditions changed, marketing underwent a series of orientations—or managerial ways of looking at and responding to changing market circumstances. Earlier orientations were—apparently—replaced by newer more “user friendly” versions. The same is true of IMC. In its first appearance on the academic scene, it was not initially marketing oriented at all. Instead, it was concerned with ensuring communication modalities (i.e., advertising, sales promotion, MPR) spoke with one voice via integrated messages.Thus, via a challenging paper, the antecedents, history, development, and current status of Marketing and IMC will be evaluated. The benefits, interactions, and weaknesses of both will be illustrated. However, and evidently, both must walk hand-in-hand in today’s uncertain and ever-changing markets.

Who are the innovative customers for new products? Despite considerable research in this area, a striking characteristic of innovators was identified over 35 years ago. In work since often overlooked, Taylor found innovators tended to be heavy buyers of the parent category. This controversial result has major implications for both theory and practice yet has not, to our knowledge, been replicated. We therefore examine the extent to which heavy buyers dominate the innovator segment, adopting a research design that overcomes some of the limitations of Taylor’s original study, and we also extend Taylor’s work by examining heavy buyers in general rather than in a ‘category specific way’. Using a unique database, we examine the behaviour of British General Practitioners in prescribing radically new drugs and me-too later entrants over an 18-year period. We find regular replicable patterns of innovation among heavy category buyers.

The link between customer interaction and innovation has been investigated intensely in relation to different customer–firm interactions (Bartl et al. 2012; Lau et al. 2010), various degrees of innovation (e.g., incremental and radical; Coviello and Joseph 2012), distinct organizational practices and capabilities (Foss et al. 2011), and new services or products (Carbonell et al. 2009; Chen et al. 2011). However, little research addresses customer interactions and their implications for hybrid offerings. Hybrid offerings combine physical products, or goods, and services into innovative solutions, such that they differ from both pure services (e.g., financial, health) and pure manufacturing offerings (e.g., machinery; Gebauer et al. 2011). Hybrid offerings allow goods-oriented firms to capture additional value from the knowledge they possess; understanding the process that leads to innovation in either goods or service components of a hybrid offering thus can help managers recognize when they should stimulate customer interactions. Because extant research has focused on goods or service innovation, not the impact of customer interactions for goods and related service innovations simultaneously, an isolated view has emerged. Yet a firm’s integrated ability to offer hybrid offerings often represents a competitive advantage (Ulaga and Reinartz 2011). Therefore, we seek to clarify (1) whether paths that exist in isolation between customer interaction and goods innovation and customer interaction and services innovation remain stable for hybrid offerings and (2) if customer interaction affects one type of innovation, to the detriment of the other. We use primary data from 146 firms and find that customer interaction both benefits goods and service innovation performance in hybrid offerings.References available upon request.

One of the key elements being used today to support/reject/enhance marketing/advertising theory is Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory (1979). Interest has been growing on how that concept might support/explain how advertising “works” based on Kahneman’s later concepts as found in his text “Thinking Fast and Slow” (2011). All have spawned and supported the field of behavioral economics (Kahneman, American Economic Review, 93: 1449–1475, 2003). Literally thousands of discussions, speculations, hypotheses, and applications of these concepts can now be found in the advertising literature. Yet, in spite of its broad industry and practitioner acceptance, the basic fundamentals of prospect theory, as Kahneman and Tversky outlined them in their original paper, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk” (1979), and their follow-on book, “Choices, Values and Frames” (2000) still rely mostly on support from small scale, academic, laboratory experiments based on questionnaires and researcher interpretations. We employ the new tools of fMRI in an age-related experiment. Loss Aversion has a long history in marketing and communication theory and the ability to connect or refute that concept to aging in marketing theory would seem a major aid to marketers going forward.

Consumers encounter incremental innovations that aim to improve currently owned products on a daily basis. This type of innovation, which we term upgrade innovation, can improve user experience, product security, and the overall performance of the owned product. Yet, upgrade innovation is not always appreciated by customers, at times leading customers to reject it or ignore its availability. In an extreme non-adoption condition, customers may actively seek strategies in order not to be notified the availability of upgrade innovations.Drawing on extant innovation literature (e.g., Calantone et al. 2006; Davis 1980; Sorescue and Spanjol 2008), we explore the influence of upgrade innovation characteristics on upgrade intention, and investigate two alternative mechanisms: annoyance and anticipated regret that explain why upgrade innovation is sometimes unwanted by product owners. Customers are annoyed at upgrade innovation in that it changes the owned products. Alternatively, they could feel regretful if adopting upgrade innovation that does not bring anticipated benefit, and/or if missing the upgrade innovations that improve owned product. This research is the first to call attention to the impact of annoyance and anticipated regret in upgrade innovation adoption. When customers have strong psychological ownership on owned products, the effect of upgrade innovation on upgrade innovation adoption is expected to be enlarged.This study contributes to marketing and innovation research in several ways. First, it raises the definition of upgrade innovation on already owned products. Second, it investigates the influence of annoyance, a frequently happening but rarely examined consumption emotion, on product decisions. Last but not least, it explores the role of anticipated regret of adopting and not adopting in innovation adoption.References available upon request.

Literature and research studies on country of origin (COO) have mainly focused on its effect in business to consumer (B2C) markets. Among the few scholars who have analysed industrial sectors (B2B), some believe that COO has similar importance and the same function in B2B markets as in B2C markets. In contrast, others argue that industrial customers are less influenced by this phenomenon. To contribute to this debate, we selected a group of Italian companies in different industries operating in at least one foreign market. We administered electronic questionnaires, collecting data and information on the internationalization of these enterprises, the COO effect and its relevance, namely, the elements that most influence the COO effect. The data also enabled us to examine the importance of company and brand reputation in the internationalization of B2B industries.

Scholars agree that the longstanding standardization–adaptation debate, which is around for more than 40 years, is not solved yet. More than that, a recent systematic review by Schmid and Kotulla (2011) found that only four papers out of 330 aimed to theoretically explain why firms actually chose to standardize or adapt their marketing across nations in a certain way. Hence, the research on standardization/adaptation is characterized by nonsignificant, contradictory, and even confusing. Against this background, the authors reveal a new potential driver for the decision to adapt, namely, international marketing capabilities. In general, the authors propose that different degrees of marketing capabilities impact the strategic decision regarding whether to adapt or standardize. More specifically, the detailed knowledge acquired for a new territory (via the marketing capabilities) is posit to push toward over-adaptation of the marketing mix elements, which accounts for differences between home and host countries. This notion is in the spirit of Homburg et al. (2011) findings that there is an optimum level with regard to customer-oriented behaviors… “Thus, there are times when the customer should not be king” (p. 68). Recently, Deresiewicz (2014) noted that “The force that drives the salmon run is fear” (p. 21). The authors argue that similar phenomenon occurs in the export-marketing arena when firms are afraid to be too different from their international competitors or international customer expectations and adopt an over-adaptation strategy.In sum, the core belief of this research is that a tradeoff approach, which seeks an either/or decision regarding standardization or adaptation, is not appropriate and firms should consider developing both/and approach (adapting some elements and standardize other elements), and avoid the “salmons run” toward the adaptation direction that might lead to inferior performance. This research contributes to the adaptation/standardization stream of research by showing that firms’ marketing capabilities may serve as driver for adaptation that ultimately affect the international marketing strategy and firm’s international performance.References available upon request.

The complementary literatures on perceived brand globalness and brand origin posit that consumers in emerging markets prefer nonlocal over local brands because they perceive such brands as being global and foreign, respectively. This study bridges these two literatures by disentangling the effects that perceptions of brand globalness and foreignness have on brand preference with consumers in emerging markets, i.e., consumers for whom most global brands are also foreign. Specifically, we present two alternative models of how perceived brand globalness and perceived brand foreignness interact to impact purchase likelihood. In model 1, perceived brand foreignness mediates the impact of perceived brand globalness on purchase likelihood. In model 2, perceived brand globalness and perceived brand foreignness impact purchase likelihood independently but through shared mediators. We use categorization theory to justify the expectation that consumers in emerging markets will prefer global brands because of their foreignness rather than their globalness.

The majority of studies of the effectiveness of comparative advertising (CA) have been primarily focused on America and Asia than on European countries. The transferability of comparative advertising practices across markets is still largely unexplored notwithstanding that the effects of CA may vary according to the degree of novelty of comparative advertisements in the country (Nye et al. 2008). This observation is particularly interesting in Europe where countries such as the United Kingdom and Sweden have used CA for a longer period than France (Diannoux and Herrmann 2000). This study examines for the first time the role of opportunity, ability, and motivation to process the message on perceived manipulative intent and consumer evaluations of advertising by proposing a model of effectiveness of direct and indirect comparative advertising.Analyses of responses from participants in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States indicate that direct comparative attacks are not equally embraced by consumers across countries. Furthermore, they tend to generate greater suspicion regarding the manipulative intent than indirect formats. The study provides for the first time evidence that perceived manipulative intent varies according to CA format and evidence of moderating effects in the relationship between motivation to process the message and perceived manipulative intent of Direct Comparative Advertising (DCA). The motivation to process the message reduces perceived manipulative intent only in countries with low familiarity with DCA. The ability to process the message moderates the relationship between processing motivation and perceived manipulative intent.References available upon request.

Within most developed economies, population growth comes primarily through immigration from emerging economies, rather than through natural increase. The market potential of consumers emigrating from emerging markets is obviously enormous. What is less obvious is whether well-known (primarily Western) brands will continue to reap the lion’s share of their respective product-markets, given the relative ease of technology transfer, the increasingly sophisticated marketing know-how of emerging market competitors, and the proclivity for many immigrant consumers to champion their home-grown brands over host-country or foreign alternatives, a phenomenon that may be on the rise as groups reassert their identities in the face of rampant globalization. Whereas ethnic minorities have attracted much research attention, studies on how they may disseminate global brands is scarce. Immigrant consumers may fulfill a vital role as brand ambassadors, by encouraging a two-way interchange of information about brands from their home and host countries. This dynamic interchange has not yet been studied before. Brands play an important role in human life where they help consumers to express themselves or manifest their identity and place within social networks. Matters of identity may be especially salient for those consumers that migrate across international borders, as they are liable to be more conscious of their ethnic and cultural differences. This research focuses on migrant Chinese living in two countries (Canada and France), and in particular how their cultural dispositions—in terms of how Chinese ethnic identity, cosmopolitanism, and host acculturation—drive brand advocacy behaviors of Chinese home- and Canadian/French host-country brands. Global brands are defined as those brands within a given product category that are recognized as global, but also clearly associated with being from a particular nation (e.g., Apple, L’Oréal, Lenovo). We propose a research model regarding the direct and indirect roles played by cultural dispositions in promoting and adopting home and host-country brands, respectively. We first validate the presupposition that ethnic identity directly drives the advocacy of global brands that originate from the home-country. Scrutinizing the connection between cosmopolitanism and brand advocacy towards host-country brands, we demonstrate that this linkage is mediated by the degree of acculturation to the host culture. These relationships are contrasted for the two host countries, which differ in terms of their immigration policies on the one hand and on the relative density of fellow ethnic-group members on the other. We also considered that the duration of immigrants’ stay in the host country may shape the aforementioned relationships. Hypotheses were tested with data drawn from short-term Chinese sojourners living in France/Canada, as well as from Chinese that are more permanently settled. The results reveal asymmetries in the functioning of the antecedents of brand advocacy behavior between short-term sojourners and long-term immigrants. Lastly, we explored category differences for Chinese and Canadian/French global brands from eight product categories.

Empirical evidence shows that ethnocentric bias varies in its intensity from country to country (Cleveland et al. 2009) and also from product to product category (Balabanis and Diamantopoulos 2004; Cleveland et al. 2009; Verlegh 2007).

Firms face difficult strategic dilemmas when expanding internationally to compete in today’s global economy. Whether preparing to “go international” for the first time or for a subsequent expansion, a firm needs to make the international market selection (IMS) and mode of entry or expansion (MOE) decisions, determine the amount and type of resources and knowledge needed for expansion, and develop strategies to address changes in their environment. This study critically reviews and compares the seminal literature on two competing approaches to internationalization, the Uppsala and Born Global models. The study aims to contribute to our understanding of the internationalization process by integrating the theory of knowledge and learning of the firm so as to bridge the debate on rapid versus staged models of expansion.Studies for the review were identified through a multistage iterative process, which began by identifying relevant articles between the 1970s and today through standard online databases; continued with a review of those articles’ references to identify further sources that might have been missed in the previous step; considered citations to the main sources; and concluded by generating a list of the most influential sources which then formed the basis for the review.A key finding is that proponents of the Born Global approach have mostly used Johanson and Vehlne’s 1977 and 1990 models as a basis of comparison, while largely ignoring the authors’ 2003 and 2006 revisions to their earlier models. More broadly, despite continued claims that born globals internationalize differently than the Uppsala model posits (Chetty and Campbell-Hunt 2004; Knight and Gavusgil 2004; Oviatt and McDougall 1994; Rennie 1993), the evidence in the literature continues to be inconclusive. In fact, many studies identify different types of born-global new international ventures following a range of incremental to rapid paths to internationalization (e.g., Barkema and Drogendijk 2007; Melén and Nordman 2009; Nordman and Melén 2008). The research reviewed provides support for continued relevance of the Uppsala model as many born globals, while taking their first steps abroad more quickly, continue to internationalize incrementally. Importantly, both the Uppsala and Born Global theories, albeit separately from each other, increasingly emphasize the role of knowledge and learning in the internationalization process (e.g., Casillas et al. 2009; Johanson and Vahlne 2009, 2013).Our review suggests that the Uppsala model is still well positioned to explain internationalization and that it may be more fruitful to view the two models as complementary instead of mutually exclusive. Future research should focus on further examination and integration of new influential constructs (e.g., trust, dynamic capabilities, learning, absorptive capacity). The study d etermines that it is also critical to integrate knowledge and learning theories and to investigate more efficient ways to manage tacit knowledge and other knowledge resources.References available upon request.

Country-of-origin (COO) effects, defined as the influence of foreignness of products/services on consumer choice behavior (Samiee 2011), has been one of the most frequently investigated topics in the field of international marketing. Although a significant amount of scholarly work has been published on the subject over the last five decades, there is little consensus over its nature and conceptualization, internal validity, importance to consumers, and relevance to managers, given the globalization of markets, uncertainties regarding the accuracy of consumers’ knowledge of the true COO, and different regulations among countries regarding the disclosure of COO information (e.g., Harzing and Josiassen 2008; Magnusson et al. 2011; Roth and Diamantopoulos 2009; Samiee 2010, 2011; Samiee and Leonidou 2011; Samiee et al. 2005; Usunier 2006). This body of research has also been criticized as being too fragmented, inconsistent, and non-programmatic to yield a clear picture on the subject (Samiee 1994).

The role of relationship marketing (RM), referring to all marketing activities directed toward establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges, as a potential driver of firm performance has been a topic of research for scholars over several decades. Successful interorganizational relationships are critical to firm performance because most firms must combine internal organizational capabilities and resources with services provided by external organizations to compete effectively. While much is known about these relationships, less is known about the roles of international distribution channels and their influence on export performance. This point will be discussed further below.The literature has mostly neglected to consider the roles of inertia, stability, and multinational flexibility as anteceding constructs of international relationship quality. This chapter introduces a new integrative model, which includes inertia, stability, and multinational flexibility as drivers of relationship quality and, indirectly, international performance.Second, the extant literature has focused on relationship quality using differing combinations of behavioral components. However, it has mostly neglected other potential mediators of the relationships between inertia, stability, and multinational flexibility and performance, most notably strategy-related mediators. This chapter is focused on the role of standardizations versus adaptation of the international marketing mix as a mediator. Moreover, the relationship quality literature has evolved independently of that on strategy and research integrating these theoretical domains has not emerged. This chapter includes relationship quality and international strategic thrust in an integrative model as drivers of international performance.The model is made of 11 constructs: inertia, stability, multinational flexibility, trust, commitment, communication, conflict, standardization/adaptation, cooperation, channel flexibility, and export/international performance. It is based on the RM approach, which has recognized the roles of behavioral aspects commonly referred to in the literature as relationship quality (RQ hereunder). The model includes two levels of intermediary constructs. The first includes RQ indicators namely trust, commitment, communication, and conflict as well as four components of the standardization/adaptation construct. A second level of intermediary variables consists of channel cooperation and channel flexibility. The final component of the model is export/international performance.Insights from several theories and frameworks are combined in this model. These include commitment-trust theory, the resource-based view of the firm—RBV, and the knowledge-based view of the firm—KBV. The innovative combination of these theory and views has great explanatory potential, which allow to test the relative roles of behavioral RQ and international strategies in the same study.In sum, currently, a framework for determining export/international performance is introduced. While the proposed framework is a self-contained contribution to new marketing theories, initial results from a quantitative study being conducted are presented.

Recently, fashion marketers have implemented marketing strategies like fast fashion and luxury democratization. These strategies make the global fashion market more dynamic and uncertain. In order to predict a consumer’s purchase decision on fashion products, prior research has proposed a number of fashion-related concepts. However, most concepts focus only on the cognitive aspect of consumers’ fashion responses, and existing scales for measuring these concepts are not multidimensional. To address these issues, this study attempts to (1) propose a concept of fashion readiness which captures a consumer’s propensity to embrace new fashion and (2) develop a multidimensional scale for assessing fashion readiness. After collecting data from 262 consumers, we perform a confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate scale reliability and construct validity for the fashion readiness scale. Nomological validity for our scale is also verified. Therefore, the fashion readiness scale developed in this study is psychometrically sound, and it contains 12 items belonging to four subfactors, including fashion efficacy, fashion anxiety, fashion involvement, and fashion innovativeness. We believe that the fashion readiness scale will contribute greatly to current fashion research and practice.

This study aims to understand the terroir effect in influencing consumer’s choice and measure the utility given by the terroir attributes conveyed on a wine label, verifying the heterogeneity of consumer’s evaluation process. It analyzes young consumers belonging to Generation Y, from Italy, applying a Discrete Choice Experiment. An online survey was carried out by a sample of 982 respondents. Latent Class Choice Models were applied and seven latent classes were identified. Findings reveal that while terroir remains important for most of the young consumers, how it is construed and the cues which denote it vary substantially. Managerial implications emerge in terms of search for luxury and fashion cues, traditional representations of terroir and reassurance attributes, and of different price sensitivity.

Sustainable consumption—i.e., the use of products that minimize the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as emissions of waste and pollutants so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations (Oslo Roundtable 1994)—has emerged in marketing scholarship as a pressing matter. Indeed, sustainability is a key determinant of future economic growth and development. Both scientific research (e.g., Nidumolu et al. 2009) and business reports (e.g., Deloitte 2011) agree that sustainability has become a crucial driver of innovation, thus serving as a key as a critical success factor for firms. However, in some consumption contexts, such as in the luxury market, consumers are typically more reticent to consume sustainable products (Davies et al. 2011; Davies and Streit 2013). At the same time, the luxury market is also very interesting because of the influence of luxury consumption on socially valued behavior (Wilcox et al. 2014) and because of its relevance for the global economy (Bain & C. 2013). Nevertheless, despite the relevance of the relationship between sustainability and luxury, scientific research has overlooked the study of factors that might determine the effectiveness of communication strategies (e.g., advertisement scenarios or messages conveyed by salespersons) typically employed to promote sustainable luxury products. Indeed, according to Kapferer (2010), real luxury brands have already responded to the demand for sustainability, but have not adequately engaged in communicating their sustainable values. In particular, studies both from Bonini and Oppenheim (2008) and Davies et al. (2011) have underlined how one of the major barriers for sustainable luxury consumers is the lack of awareness and information. Therefore, researchers must investigate what drives conditions consumers to become more willing to buy sustainable products.

Competition among companies to attract and retain customers is increasing exponentially, thanks to the power of internet. This exacerbated competition has forced companies to find innovative ways to differentiate their marketing argumentation from those of competitors and put aside the classical tools. A company’s objective of a higher profit margin and simultaneously diversified customer preferences, resulted in the decomposition of traditional mass markets into smaller niches and the emergence of a new type of production, called Mass Customization. Mass customization is discussed in literature as the ultimate solution to address challenges faced by companies to provide products highly adapted to individual customers’ aesthetic and functional preferences (Dellaert and Stremersch 2005; Franke and Piller 2004; Ghosh et al. 2006; Randall et al. 2007).Previous research illustrates customers’ preferences for customized products from different points of view. They also mention that customization is correlated (associated) with added value (Piller et al. 2004). Uniqueness as one of the most important advantages of mass customization has been brought up in most of the previous studies. However, some questions still remain unanswered: is the estimation of uniqueness correct? Do others perceive their choice as unique as initially perceived? What is their internal motivation to pay more for customized products? Has mass customization the same effect on different product types (luxury vs. non-luxury)? Does customizing different product features (hedonic vs. utilitarian) have the same effect on a customer’s internal motivation?This research makes three contributions. First, it examines how people’s beliefs about the degree to which they are noticed by others can affect the mass customization value. Second, the findings of this research illustrate how the product type (luxury vs. non-luxury) has a moderating role on the relation between mass customization and the spotlight effect. Third, it explains what kind of values originating from mass customization features has the greater impact on customer’s overestimation. To test the research propositions, three experiments were designed with a total of 207 samples.In the first experiment, we tested how spotlight effect varies with customization’s possibility, and how it affects customer’s willingness to pay. Consistent with our predictions, results reveal that increasing customers feeling of uniqueness through mass customization impacts their overestimation of others’ attention to their possession and consequently on their willingness to pay.In the second experiment, we studied how the product type (luxury vs. non-luxury) can impact on customer’s feeling of uniqueness. To do so, the moderating role of the product type (luxury vs. non-luxury) was manipulated in interaction with product self-design possibility (mass customization vs. non-mass customization). Consistent with our theorizing, the luxurious type of the product and mass customization activity had a separate and positive effect on consumer overestimation of how people perceive their own possession.In the third experiment, we studied the moderation effect of customizing different features (hedonic vs. utilitarian) of different product types (luxury vs. non-luxury) on spotlight effect. The results of study 3 provide evidence which proved our prediction that customizing features (hedonic vs. utilitarian) had a moderating spotlight effect.The present research examines the interesting but largely unexamined impact of the spotlight effect on people’s overestimation of others’ attention to their possession. In particular, we explore how the feeling of uniqueness through mass customization impacts customer’s overestimation. In other words, it demonstrates how product value can be affected by people’s overestimation of their possessions’ uniqueness.Applying the results of this research would be helpful for companies to profit more from customization strategy. From a managerial point of view, customization would be effective for both luxury and non-luxury producers, although its impact would be greater for luxury companies.References available upon request.

Strategic orientations have attracted scholars’ attention across disciplines, and their pros and cons have been studied extensively. However, research has focused more on market orientation than on other strategic orientations and has addressed outcomes of these orientations more than their antecedents. Our study aims to advance the literature on orientations by identifying drivers of customer and competitor orientations. We developed and tested a model of several antecedents of customer and competitor orientations. Based on Jaworski and Kohli (1993), the antecedents include three multifaceted sets of factors: management, departments, and the organization with five facets, namely risk taking, conflicts, connectedness, formalization, and centralization. We examined several hypotheses regarding the relationships between these antecedents and customer and competitor orientations.Data were collected through a professional online panel company. The sample included 185 individuals who responded to a questionnaire which contained items in 5-point scales (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) and developed in previous research. All scales were reliable with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient exceeding 0.70 (Nunnally 1978).The findings show that four factors affected customer orientation, namely risk-taking, conflicts, connectedness, and centralization while two factors affected competitor orientation, namely risk-taking and conflicts. Accordingly, these findings provide several insights that contribute to the marketing strategy literature and have implications for practicing managers. Among the two orientations, the most influential antecedent is Risk-Taking. Therefore, in order to be successful in improving their company on all levels, managers must be willing to take risks. Only by doing so they can capitalize on opportunities and respond to competitive threats in the marketplace.References available upon request.

We study optimal customer acquisition and retention strategies in an infinite-horizon model of dynamic competition. We find that acquisition expenditures constitute the larger share of the marketing budget, when the customer profit margin is either low or large, but for intermediate profit margin values, firms spend more resources for customer retention. If customer profit margins rise for exogenous reasons, we find that the share of customer acquisition expenditures in the marketing budget increases in markets with high profit margins, whereas it decreases in markets with low profit margins. The impact of entry of new firms in the market on the optimal strategy depends on the effect of the entry on profit margins and absolute levels of profit margins. A similar phenomenon may also appear in a single segmented market: the impact of higher competition on the luxury and mass-consumption segments of a market would be different.

Firms invest significant budgets in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Donations to nonprofit organizations that fight poverty or protect the environment demonstrate support of a firm’s external stakeholders. Customers are increasingly interested in how firms support their internal stakeholders (i.e., employees), yet many firms are lagging on such CSR activities.Understanding employees as internal customer of firms’ CSR investments is critical as they play a decisive role in extracting value from a firm’s CSR activities (Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain 2014; Rupp et al. 2013; Vlachos, Theotokis and Panagopoulos 2010) and represent an essential mediator between CSR and financial performance (Peloza 2009; Surroca, Tribo and Waddock 2010). Dissatisfied employees might negatively impact other stakeholder groups such as customers (e.g., Lings and Greenley 2005), for whom they are a highly credible source of CSR information (Dawkins 2004; Morsing, Schultz and Nielsen 2008). In other words, employees’ hypocrisy perceptions evoked by an imbalanced CSR portfolio might make or break a CSR strategy.Taking a portfolio perspective informed by stakeholder theory, our research is the first to explore the impact of CSR portfolio imbalances, i.e., larger company-external than internal CSR efforts. Two studies demonstrate the detrimental effects of such imbalances on company-internal stakeholders, i.e., employees. Study 1 utilizes a multisource secondary dataset (n = 1902) and shows that imbalanced CSR portfolios significantly increase objective employee turnover at the organizational level. Study 2 employs a cross-industry employee survey (n = 3110) to demonstrate that imbalanced CSR portfolios evoke employees’ corporate hypocrisy perceptions and thereby promote emotional exhaustion and intention-to-quit. Both studies point to the crucial importance of taking a holistic approach to manage CSR portfolios, taking into account and balancing external and internal CSR customers.References available upon request.

Price-related advertising aims to create positive consumer responses such as higher purchase intentions (Ailawadi and Neslin 1998). However, consumers faced with price promotions perceive a discrepancy between their reference price (RP) and the new (lower) price information, and they tend to adjust their price beliefs (Biswas and Blair 1991) by reducing their RP related to the promoted product (Folkes and Wheat 1995; Grewal et al. 1998). This mechanism leads to higher price sensitivity (Mela et al. 1997) and lower willingness to pay (Ranyard et al. 2001). Starting from the notion that consumers’ RP decrease after contact with price-related advertising, the objective of this study is to propose a regression model in order to examine the weights consumers assign to different price claims (consumers’ initial RP and the reduced price displayed in the price promotion) in the context of RP adaptation after contact with a price promotion displaying the reduced price and the saving. The regression model additionally includes specific conditions: the saving format that is used to present the discount (percentage-off vs. amount-off) and the number of ad contacts consumers have. Thus, we simultaneously analyze direct and interaction effects of price claims and marketer-controlled factors that play a role in the context of consumers’ RP adaptation through price promotions. There is evidence that the saving format plays a role in the context of effects of price promotions (Hardesty and Bearden 2003) because price information is processed differently depending on which saving format is displayed (DelVecchio 2005). Findings on effects on consumers’ RP are inconsistent across studies (Chandrashekaran and Grewal 2006; DelVecchio et al. 2007), but there is evidence that the saving format interacts with other variables. Moreover, while previous studies were based on one ad contact, consumers have more contacts with advertising in reality. Previous research provides the notion that repeated contacts with price discounts have effects on expected product prices (Chen 2011; Kalwani and Yim 1992; Lattin and Bucklin 1989), but the mechanism of consumers’ RP adaptation has not been analyzed in much detail in previous studies. Given that the major goal of price-related advertising is to trigger positive consumer responses, the results of such an analysis are interesting for marketers because they get new insights into the complex mechanisms that underlie consumers’ RP adaptation after contact with price-related advertising. As consumers’ RP influence response variables such as willingness to pay, it is important to understand RP adaptation in order to be able to anticipate possible negative effects of price promotions. As a consequence, marketers can make appropriate strategic decisions such as choosing the most beneficial saving format.

Marketing literature suggests that price endings can have an impact on consumers’ evaluations of the product as well as his/her intention to buy. Retailers often use odd prices, e.g. prices ending in ‘9’. While also bundles of products are regularly offered with odd prices, literature on the application of odd and even prices in bundles is nearly non-existent. In this research, we investigate the impact of odd and even priced bundle components as well as odd and even total prices on consumer preferences.Choice-based conjoint analysis is applied to investigate preferences. Using a hierarchical Bayesian approach, we allow for consumer heterogeneity. Individual-specific variables (price- and quality consciousness) are included as concomitant variables. Members of a national online panel completed an online questionnaire, including 11 choice sets. In each choice set, the respondents chose between purchasing a desk chair, a trolley, a bundle of these products or none of these options. The products and the bundle were presented with varying prices ending in odd or even numbers.We find only weak indication for direct effects of an odd component price on the choice probability of the respective component. The preference for the bundle increases if both components are labelled with even prices instead of using odd component prices. This result suggests that consumers use even prices as an indicator of quality and therefore prefer bundles consisting of even priced components. The preference for the bundle does not only depend on the price ending of the components, but also on the last digit of the bundle price. The bundle choice probability increases with an odd bundle price as compared to an even bundle price. This outcome appears plausible because we do not expect a quality image effect for the bundle price. Therefore, the odd total price causes level effects or price image effects. As a consequence, the probability of buying the bundle is highest if both components are labelled with even prices, whereas the total bundle price has an odd price ending. We did not find evidence for moderating effects of price- or quality consciousness.

Product service systems have received a lot of attention in the last decade from practitioners, politics and academia. Yet, many product service providers struggle with successfully implementing such business models. One key issue from a practitioner’s standpoint is the question how to generate sustainable revenues. To date, only little research on this topic exists. The objective of this chapter is to contribute to the discussion by trying to shed light, first, on the question which types of product service systems exist. In a second step, we derive adequate revenue models for the identified types of product service systems.

As a result of increasing costs, consumer packaged goods companies (i.e., fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies) are facing significant pressure on operating margins. For example, the increasing cost of raw material resulted in a steep decline of almost 50 % in operating profit margins in the second quarter of 2010 for Britannia (Economic Times 2010). Firms have been using innovative strategies to adapt to increasing costs in materials. One such strategy has been to decrease the quantity (weight) of a product packet while keeping the price constant. For instance, Frito Lay has reduced the weight per pack by 10–20 %; Cadbury has reduced the pack size of Bournville chocolate by 17–18 % (DNA Syndication 2011), and ITC has substituted raw material edible oil with butter, reduced the quantity per pack, and also hiked the price of high-margin biscuit packs (Economic Times 2010).

Brand management literature has lately started focusing on the management of intangible sources of brand performance. This transition has also become obvious from explicit to implicit brand management practices. Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) is one of the areas that are of high concern to marketers and it deals mostly with subjective perceptions about the brand. A brand knowledge management lens is proposed to effectively manage the CBBE performance of the brand. Conceptual research models are proposed to further advance the study of brand knowledge management and its link with CBBE performance.

Recently, some celebrities have created their own perfume brands. This study proposes a conceptual model for the celebrity branding advertising processing which acknowledges the influence of celebrity-related factors, sociocultural trends, and the advertising copy strategy. Using a sample of 100 subjects, this study analyzes the branding advertising processing of Beyoncé/Heat and the simulation of the branding of a new celebrity brand—Lana del Rey. Focusing at the catalyst role of congruence between the celebrity brand personality and consumer self-concept, we analyze the implications of self-sexualization, scopophilia, and glamour as predictors of the willingness to pay for a bottle of perfume.

The origin of a product is a critical factor in a purchasing decision. Origin can be used as a guarantee of quality, as a symbol of prestige or as a benchmark for social acceptability. The goal of this study was to determine the importance of origin for consumers of wood products in the province of Québec. An online survey of 983 consumers in Québec was carried out in 2012. The survey included two full-profile conjoint analyses dealing, respectively, with hardwood flooring (a value-added product) and softwood lumber (a commodity product). Each product was defined on the basis of four attributes: price, quality, origin and the presence or absence of an environmental certification. With respect to hardwood flooring, the most highly valued attribute was origin. In this connection, respondents expressed a strong preference for Québec products. With respect to softwood lumber, product appearance turned out to be the most important attribute whilst origin came in second on the preference scale. Product origin is therefore an important attribute for Québec consumers of wood products. It can be concluded that it would be appropriate for wood products manufacturers facing strong international competition to promote the local origin of their products, especially for value-added products.

Little doubt exists about virtual brand communities (VBCs) strong impact on branding (e.g. Schau and Muniz 2002; Fournier and Lee 2009). Specifically, brand community identification, participation, and community commitment all empirically lead to brand loyalty and positive behavioural outcomes. However, the impact of VBC participation on customers’ brand trust, which is essential to relational marketing (Albert et al. 2013), remains unclear. The mechanisms mediating and/or moderating VBC effects on customers’ brand trust remain uncharted. Specifically, scholars and practitioners should understand customer pathways to brand trust through VBC participation. Furthermore, although lurkers (non-active members) make up the highest proportion of participants in virtual communities (Walker et al. 2013), little research has yet examined them (Thompson et al. 2014). Since lurkers are the majority of virtual community members, understanding how ‘lurkers’ build brand trust and whether this differs from ‘poster’ (active members) pathways in direction and/or strength would equip VBC managers in building successful communities that would lead to brand trust for all users.This study intends to uncover such issues and proposes a model of building brand trust in VBCs by integrating elements of social identity theory with the current literature on customer–brand relationship and virtual communities. We empirically investigate the mechanism that translates VBCs into members (both posters and lurkers) brand trust. Using a sample of 734 virtual brand communities’ members, the study finds that the more valuable support customers receive from a brand in its virtual community (i.e. the three constructs of recognition for contributions, encouraging interaction, and content enhancement), the stronger will be their social identity in the community which leads to their trust towards the brand. In addition, a brand can increase its customers’ trust in its virtual community by encouraging those members to share information within the community, facilitating interaction among members, and providing accurate, complete, up-to-date information. Brand knowledge serves as such a full mediator connecting lurkers’ social identity with their brand trust. Lurkers’ sense of social identity in a VBC does not automatically translate into their brand trust. Without cultivating their brand knowledge, lurkers in a VBC may not necessarily trust the brand.The study contributes to the growing research on VBCs and branding literature by articulating the key determinants of members’ brand trust, as it relates to different types of participation in VBCs. Implications of this research will allow managers to know how both posters’ and lurkers’ participation in a VBC promote pathways to brand trust and so how to utilize a virtual community as a channel to develop and maintain strong relationships with their customers.References available upon request.

Enhancing consumers’ purchase intentions is one of the key objectives of strategic marketing (Lukas et al. 2005). However, few studies have investigated purchase intentions within concurrent sponsorship settings. Concurrent sponsorships involve a minimum of two brands (a collective of sponsors) sponsoring the same property at the same time (Carrillat et al. 2010). In turn, social psychology tells us that collectives are characterized by the degree to which the separate entities that compose them are perceived as being groups (i.e., entitativity) (Campbell 1958; Hamilton et al. 2002). Despite not having been examined within a sponsorship context, entitativity is likely to be relevant to sponsees and associated concurrent sponsors; for example, in an entitative group, perceptions of the group as a whole are applied to the individual group members (Crawford et al. 2002), and consequently, purchase intentions towards any given sponsor will be affected by perceptions of the group as a whole. The objective of this chapter is therefore to examine the relationship between the perceived entitativity of concurrent sponsor groups and purchase intentions.

Developing a distinctive image in the marketplace is increasingly recognized as a key part of a company’s marketing strategy and a route for achieving competitive advantage. Strong corporate brands (CB) can lead to a wide customer base and a distinctive image. As product and service offers become similar, companies tend to emphasize the communication of CBs to stakeholders as a way to convey distinctiveness and uniqueness. Nonetheless, although CB focuses primarily in reaching all the company’s stakeholders, consumers are increasingly becoming a core target for corporate branding. Consumers are exposed to the image portrayed by a company online. The website, therefore, can be a reflection of the company’s CB’s characteristics and personality and a company’s online atmospherics and its online stores may have an impact on consumer behaviour. In the online context, the CB dimensions of visual appeal, the way the information is communicated, and social responsibility are crucial. A well-liked corporate website could lead to favourable behavioural outcomes, such as positive word of mouth, and repatronage intentions. Despite the obvious commercial benefits and the recent research attention on online corporate branding, the impact of online dimensions of CB in consumer perceptions is overlooked. Our study investigates the impact of three online CB dimensions (visual appeal, communications, CSR) on consumer-company identification (CCI), and the behavioural outcomes (word of mouth, repatronage intention) in retail sector. We employed a scenario-based quasi-experiment in two retail settings—grocery and clothing—using two fictitiously created brands and their websites. Three scenarios for each brand were created representing high, medium, and low levels of descriptions of dimensions of CB on the websites. A questionnaire was created and the scales operationalization relied on adaptations from previous research. Following a pilot, the data were collected via web-based survey software, using a convenience sample of cross-section demographics of UK consumers, resulting in 244 valid responses. We tested the hypothesized relationships using partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS SEM). The results show that the way in which a company communicates its CB online, as well as its socially responsible activities, positively influences consumers’ identification with the company. Such identification also leads to the generation of positive word of mouth and repatronage intentions. The results also reveal that high degree of information placed on a website is not the most optimal tool for generating positive CCI. Further, stronger the firm’s portrayed engagement in corporate giving, the more a consumer identifies with the firm. Overall, the study makes novel contributions to the domain of CB and its impact on consumer perceptions, and leads to several managerial implications and avenues for further research.

Several empirical studies report that the brand is one of the major factors that attract franchisees to join a network and continue in the franchise relationship. Yet little research has investigated the mechanisms through which the brand affects franchisees’ intentions and behaviors. The present research addresses this gap, focusing on the franchisor’s brand benefits from the franchisees’ perspective through the following questions:What are the perceived benefits of the franchisor’s brand for franchisees?How are these perceived benefits conveyed to the franchisees?To what extent are franchisee’s perceptions of brand benefits well understood and anticipated by the franchisors and management consultants in franchising?Three qualitative studies were carried out in France to address the research questions, using in-depth semi-structured interviews with 22 franchisees, 11 senior managers of franchise networks, and 6 franchising consultants.Findings from the qualitative studies offer insights on the three research questions. The first set of results highlights six broad categories of brand benefits from franchisees’ perspective. Consistent with the resource scarcity theory, the franchisor’s brand is seen as a source of economic benefits for the franchisee. Through its awareness, the brand acts as a heuristic of choice for franchisees and drives consumer-based brand equity. Franchisees also perceive several functional benefits from the franchise brand, related to the brand’s commercial concept, know-how and innovations. The brand also offers experiential benefits, based on the sensory elements of both the branded products and the branded outlets, as well as symbolic benefits based on franchisees’ identification with the brand personality and values. Finally, the brand is a source of relational benefits, acting as a relationship partner for franchisees and as a relationship facilitator between the franchisee and a myriad of stakeholders.The second set of results reveals three important aspects of the process and mechanisms through which these benefits are obtained by the franchisees. First, the franchisees perceive the franchisor’s brand as a source of two types of benefits: positively added benefits on the one hand, and savings on important costs on the other hand. Second, franchisees receive brand benefits both directly and indirectly, through other stakeholders. Third, the importance of each type of benefits seems to evolve differently with time and more specifically throughout the franchise relationship life cycle.Finally, the third set of results reveals significant differences in the perceptions of the three interviewed stakeholders groups regarding the franchisee brand benefits. At the broadest level, these differences mainly point out that franchisors and consultants hold a much narrower perspective than franchisees’ on the brand benefits and underlying mechanisms.

Store brands play an integral role in shaping the supermarket industry locally and internationally. Store brands have predominantly competed on the basis of low price (Baltras 1997), which firmly delineated them from national brands. To more actively compete with national brands, retailers have moved to increase their product lines by introducing a range of premium store brands that are close to national brands in terms of quality and price (Burt and Sparks 2002). Many previous studies have considered grocery store brands to be competing on the basis of low price and low quality (Richardson 1997; Sethuraman and Cole 1999; Ailawadi et al. 2001; Garretson et al. 2002; Miranda and Joshi 2003; Mazur et al. 2009; Bao et al. 2010), however premium store brands that mimic national brands no longer compete on the basis of low price and low quality (Nenycz-Thiel and Romaniuk 2009). Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between specific consumer characteristics and the choice and usage of both regular and premium store brands. The research adopts Ailawadi et al.’s (2001) model of shopping benefits and costs towards the usage of regular store brands, and extends the model by adding the dimensions of premium store brand usage and likelihood of future usage for both store brand levels. Implications for retailers and brand managers are also discussed.

Some consumers are overwhelmed when buying certain complicated products such as computers, mobile phones, or automobiles. Product complexity is likely to play a role in such a complex buying situation. Until now, research regarding product complexity has been scarce and fragmented. For example, no common definition of product complexity exists, as the different definitions presented by various authors reveal. We conducted a literature review to defragment the prior research on product complexity, synthesized a definition, and discussed prior measurement approaches and the role of product complexity in the consumer buying process. Thus, we provide the fundamentals for more detailed research on product complexity in the future and derive some implications for marketing practice.

Organisations are continually searching for their next source of growth. One potential option is growth by acquisition. Acquisitions are not risk free, many fail to achieve their potential. One reason for failure is employees from the acquired firm not developing sufficiently strong bonds with the acquiring organisation, leading to poor integration and subsequent negative effects upon firm performance. This chapter presents an empirical study of UK front-line employees, 3 years post acquisition, finding a role for the acquiring organisation’s corporate brand to positively influence this integration. Establishing that aspects of the acquiring organisation’s corporate brand equally influences the organisational identification of both acquired and non-acquired employees, integrating both groups into the acquiring organisation. In addition the study establishes that employees from the acquired organisation use the corporate brand to integrate further by more strongly participating in the new organisation’s brand community to deploy their identification with the acquiring organisation and integrate. Determining corporate branding as a means of positively integrating all front-line employees post an acquisition and consequently reducing the attendant acquisition risks associated with poor employee integration.

One of the key goals for brand organizations is to make brands grow (Samuelsen and Olsen 2012)—and one of the most attractive ways of achieving brand growth is through brand extensions: extending an existing brand into a new product category (Keller 2012). The epic growth of the Apple brand illustrates that the rewards from even a small number of truly successful brand extensions are significant. The Apple brand also suggests another key issue that may be important for brand growth strategies—while Apple may loom large in the mind of most consumers, it does not seem to require much mental effort to maintain this image.

The persuasiveness of stories and their influence on consumers have been acknowledged within the fields of advertising, tourism, and services. Despite these findings, stories have not caught the attention that they deserve in the product and brand literature. Nothing indicates that stories would have less of an effect when applied to brands. It is especially intriguing that stories—of various kinds—have become ubiquitous on product packaging in practice. Yet there are no studies on the effect of such stories on the consumer’s response to the brand. Can it be taken for given that consumers will react more positively to a package when some of the brand information is presented in story form? Packages have limited space and are filled with information required by law, which is not the case for advertisements. Thus, findings from advertising cannot be directly applied to packing. Currently, there is scant empirical research that directly investigates the impact of short brand stories on consumer responses, and such research is particularly lacking on packaging, where stories are ubiquitously used in practice.This study uses a between-subjects experiment to test hypotheses pertaining to the impact of a short brand story communicated on a packaging on consumers’ brand responses. The chapter shows that a company originated short brand story, which is added to the marketing communication of an existing, fast-moving consumer brand packaging produces a higher level of on brand attitude, perceived value, and behavioral intentions as opposed to when no story is present.

Sustainability actions, such as ecolabels, are increasingly prevalent among companies. However, relatively little is known about consumer response to these actions for brands. The authors propose that the degree to which ecolabels enhance consumers’ perceptions of brand sustainability depends on brand strength (i.e., the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the brand). Two studies demonstrate that brand strength changes the impact of ecolabels on consumers’ perceptions of brand sustainability and purchase intentions. The findings suggest that consumers use ecolabels as cue for brand sustainability for weak brands (i.e., brands without significant positive brand equity), but not for strong brands (i.e., brands with significant positive brand equity). In addition, results suggest that sustainability mediates purchase intentions, but these effects are stronger for weak brands than for strong brands.

Since branding is a social construct as much as an economic construct (Fan 2005), brands are considered as a part of modern-day social customer’s life. Therefore, corporate brands and their unethical behavior are scrutinized more closely. The examples such as Apple’s labor violations while producing iPhone in China or Samsung’s infringing on several patents and design of Apple products had significant effects on the brand–consumer relationships (Aaker et al. 2004; Paulssen and Bagozzi 2009) regardless of loss types and severity of transgressions.

Brand management efficiency is a key issue for CEOs and the need to better understand how marketing capabilities and organizational structure influence business performance is among the 2014–2016 MSI research priorities. Even if brand managers are essential for strategic decisions and are expected to play an increasing role within the organization in the coming years, CEOs do not have a clear view of brand management actions and activities, and of their contribution to shareholder value (Madden et al. 2006). Verhoef and Leeflang (2009) indicate that the status of the marketing department within the firm depends upon its ability to demonstrate how it contributes to the firms’ return on investment. Brand management is both valued and criticized and there is a need to better understand the brand management system and assess its impact on performance.

The aim of this chapter is to gain insight on negative eWom about brands from a sender perspective, taking into account individual and social factors. We develop and test a conceptual model using a sample of 302 Spanish active users of social networks who have complained online in 2013. This study provides several theoretical implications. Firstly, using the Social Interaction Utility framework, we analyse the influence of social motivations on negative eWom. Our results show that social motivations are the primary antecedents leading consumers to communicate their negative experiences to other consumers. Successful network sites should identify the effect of social motivations and manage the needs of community members. Secondly, we extend academic literature on the influence of eWom on the behaviour of its receivers by focusing on the sender perspective. This study confirms that negative eWom derives value to the brands by directly impacting on consumer’s switching intentions.

Understanding brand equity dimensions and antecedents enables managers to build strategies that strengthen brand–customer relationships. However, prior research has dealt with the effect of brand equity on purchase intention and patronage in such a manner that allows for further contributions (Cobb-Walgren et al. 1995; Veloutsou et al. 2013).

This research examines the purchase intention effects of ethnic consumers’ views toward “animosity” and “affinity” target countries against a “neutral” benchmark country. The findings show that “old country” views persist in ethnic consumers’ new country, with very negative views of the animosity target and positive views of the affinity target, with views of the benchmark country being slightly positive. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed.

This study investigates the effects of moderators on the relationship between customer satisfaction and four common loyalty behaviors: (1) repurchase intentions, (2) positive word-of-mouth, (3) negative word-of-mouth, and (4) share-of-wallet. This evaluation is performed across three service industries and for two moderators—switching costs and variety seeking. The former is thought to be most relevant at low satisfaction levels whereas the latter is thought to be most relevant at high satisfaction levels. Eight hypotheses are formulated and tested.The data were collected from about 150 customers of cell phone services, restaurant services, and banking services, each. The three services differ in their potential to invite switching costs and variety seeking behavior. The survey consisted of questions assessing overall satisfaction, repurchase intentions, positive word-of-mouth, negative word-of-mouth, variety seeking, and switching cost. One questions assessed the share-of-wallet loyalty behavior. Published scales were used. An inspection of the Cronbach coefficients revealed very good scale reliabilities with alpha score mostly well above 0.85 (Nunnally 1978).Following Hayes (2013), the hypotheses were tested using regression-based moderator analysis. The analysis produced mixed results at α < .05. For switching costs as a moderator, the effects seem to be service and loyalty behavior dependent. For the phone services, switching costs significantly moderate the satisfaction–repurchase intention relationship, the satisfaction–negative word-of-mouth relationship, and the satisfaction–share-of-wallet relationship. Switching costs do not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth for any of the services. Switching costs do not moderate any of the relationships for banking and restaurant services.For variety seeking as a moderator, the effects are also service and loyalty behavior dependent. Variety seeking significantly moderates the satisfaction–repurchase intention relationship only for the restaurant service. The findings further suggest that variety seeking does not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and word-of-mouth. For banking services variety seeking significantly moderates the satisfaction–negative word-of-mouth relationship. The results suggest that variety seeking does not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and share-of-wallet.The findings yield two general implications. First, with respect to future investigations into moderators of the satisfaction–loyalty relationship, loyalty should not be operationalized as a single behavior construct. Different loyalty related behaviors exhibit different moderators. The second key conclusion is that moderators are service dependent. Therefore, future studies into moderators should refrain from analyzing and reporting on pooled industry results.References available upon request.

To alleviate consumer privacy concerns, governments have introduced privacy regulations to manage excessive consumer privacy intrusion by organizations (Solove 2008; Bennett 2008). Yet research shows that these regulations are not sufficient in reducing consumer privacy fears as privacy concerns vary in magnitude from consumer to consumer (Mattison Thompson 2007) and the law can only protect against privacy intrusion on a uniform level. Despite the extensive body of research investigating the variance in consumer privacy concerns within the context of legislative boundaries (e.g., Milne et al. 2004; Milne et al. 2006; Shilton 2009; King and Raja 2012; King and Jessen 2010), little has been done to understand whether consumers would be willing to pay for additional privacy services offered by organizations to protect their privacy above and beyond the protection the law provides. Since consumers vary in their privacy needs, one solution that firms could adopt to reduce their customers’ privacy concern is to offer privacy as an individualized, personalized service or “Privacy Services” that cater to the higher privacy needs of some customers. Privacy services involve a customer paying an additional fee to receive privacy protection above what is offered to other customers, thus potentially mitigating the customers’ privacy concern for transactions they have with that firm.In this study, we explore how consumer privacy concern impacts consumers’ willingness to pay for “Privacy Services,” as well as the moderating effect of consumer trust on this relationship. We present empirical evidence from over 16,000 consumers in 20 countries. We contribute to the consumer privacy literature by showing that consumer privacy concern influences consumers’ willingness to pay for “Privacy Services,” and that consumer trust moderates this relationship.References available upon request.

Business strategies often demand refinements, such that core or supplementary offerings change frequently and possibly create imbalances that lead to dissatisfaction among some target customers. Therefore, relationship termination is an inevitable phase that arises when relationships between a firm and a particular group of customers are no longer mutually beneficial. With the existing resources and prices charged, the highest service quality the firm can provide no longer satisfies these customers. For example, the Australian Internet service provider Exetel recently terminated a group of unprofitable accounts, asking customers to switch to other providers (Cheng 2010). Reynolds and Harris (2009) challenge the assumption that customers act functionally and with good manners during service encounters; some customers routinely behave destructively. Retaining such customers may cause more harm than good and impose heavy financial burdens on both firms and other customers (McColl-Kennedy et al. 2009). Accordingly, it seems more appropriate and effective to terminate customers, before they reach the point of destruction. Effective management of the termination of unhealthy relationships thus is a crucial tactic that can reduce the service costs accrued by trying to satisfy misfit customers, as well as increase profit margins with remaining customers. This important strategic move can improve returns on resource allocations (Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2000).

The goal of this study was to explore the emotional and the professional costs incurred by service providers with a strong need to belong (i.e., craving for social acceptance, Baumeister and Leary 1995; Lavigne et al. 2011). The research model predicts that service providers with a strong need to belong will develop emotional labor strategies to please their customers, which will subsequently lead to emotional exhaustion, falling to provide high quality service, and low customer loyalty intentions.The sample consisted of 170 restaurant servers and customer dyads. Both parties were asked to relate to their latest service interaction. The results suggest that the service providers’ need to belong is positively related to emotional labor strategies, which are positively related to emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is negatively related to customers’ loyalty intentions. Furthermore, emotional labor strategies mediate the relationship of the need to belong with emotional exhaustion.The study sheds light on the complexity of service providers’ motivation to please customers. On the one hand, recruiting service providers who are internally motivated to please the customers appear to be desirable in the service context. On the other hand, such service providers are at a higher risk of burnout which might ultimately undermine business profitability.References available upon request.

Getting out of a buyer–seller relationship gone bad can be even worse than an ugly divorce, with a multitude of examples for transgressions in business‐to‐business (B2B) relationships making headlines every year. But what happens to the relationship after a transgression has occurred? For example, Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) threatened to terminate its collaboration with Siemens after accusing the latter of causing substantial losses to the power utility and sabotaging the SAP software used in managerial operations. In the end, however, the two firms decided to put the past behind them and KESC agreed to withdraw all court claims and instead continue the cooperation, thereby reestablishing an atmosphere of understanding and trust between the partners (Dawn 2007; Tribune 2013). Here, the customer decided to forgive the supplier after the transgression and to restore the relationship to its original state. Transgressions are violations of the relationship between at least two partners, e.g., customers and manufacturers or service providers (Tsarenko and Tojib 2011; Beverland et al. 2009), which can lead to dissatisfaction on both sides, and reactions such as negative word of mouth and relationship termination (Bendapudi and Berry 1997). While past research has especially focused on service failure and recovery (e.g., Maxham and Netemeyer 2002) and reinvigorations after transgressions in customer–brand relationships (e.g., Aaker et al. 2004), the impact of forgiveness as a complex social behavioral pattern in interorganizational buyer–seller relationships has not yet been empirically examined. We address this gap by investigating how forgiveness affects the performance and management of a buyer–seller relationship after a transgression.To this end, this qualitative study is first in advancing theory construction for the concept of forgiveness in interorganizational buyer–seller relationships. In doing so, it offers a number of theoretical and managerial contributions. From a theoretical perspective, our study (1) examines the potential effect of forgiveness as a moderator on the management and performance of the buyer–seller relationship, and thereby on the organizational success of both partner firms. Further, conclusions are drawn as to how full forgiveness (i.e., comprising both the cognitive and affective dimension) can be achieved in interorganizational contexts involving different groups of actors, in order to avoid the presumably negative effects of partial forgiveness on relationship quality and performance. (2) The construct is examined from an investment‐expectancy perspective, thus allowing for the development of explicit indicators of when it is appropriate for firms to either restore or terminate the business relationship. (3) Finally, it integrates prior findings from diverse disciplines such as psychology and management and thereby introduces the forgiveness construct into the relationship marketing research stream.From a managerial perspective, this research provides (1) key insights which allow examination of the conditions under which it is either appropriate to successfully restore or otherwise end the collaboration between buyer and seller, thereby facilitating effective relationship performance management. To this end, our study (2) enhances managers understanding of the transformation of the buyer–seller relationship after a transgression occurred, which may affect the satisfaction, trust, loyalty, and closeness of involved actors. (3) It identifies decisive influencing factors, which advise firms on what way to forgive is most effective in order to avoid long‐lasting discontent between partner firms (e.g., whether to display and/or communicate forgiveness openly, apologize, or compensate the victim).Our study is unique in its examination of the effect of forgiveness on buyer and supplier performance leading to a new way of thinking about transgressions in buyer–supplier relationships and highlighting the importance of appropriate reactions. In line with these first insights, this research provides a conceptual basis for future—qualitative and quantitative—examination of the implementation of forgiveness by both organizational actors (buyer and seller) and identifies forgiveness as a driver for future firm profits.

Communication is considered as one of the important factors in fostering relationship development and maintenance (Finne and Grönroos 2009; Dagger et al. 2011). It provides an understanding of the exchange partners’ intentions, and fosters trust and information exchange needed to promote long-term customer relationships. It is considered as a “necessary process” for developing and maintaining enduring and mutually beneficial relationships between the firm and its customers (Berry 1995). Despite its significance, communication has attracted limited attention in the relationship marketing and services marketing domain. In response to the recent calls for empirical inquiries into the role of communication (Finne and Grönroos 2009), this study contributes to literature by examining the strategic role of relationship communication in the B2C service relationships. More specifically, based on the intercultural and interpersonal communication and relationship marketing literature we propose and examine the role of relationship communication in enhancing the relationship quality and improving relationship continuity with the service provider.We conceptualize relationship communication as a multidimensional construct consisting of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components. Based on the extant literature, relationship communication is determined by the customers’ assessment of firm communication in terms of the clarity, pleasantness, responsiveness, and language (Coviello et al. 2002). Further, prior researchers suggest that relationship quality is a multidimensional construct consisting of trust, satisfaction, and commitment (Balaji 2015). Based on the review of literature, we propose that the relationship communication dimensions directly and indirectly influence relationship continuity through relationship quality dimensions. To test the proposed relationships, two studies are conducted. In the first study, 148 participants provided responses on their assessment of the firm communication. Following the exploratory factor analysis four factors representing the relationship communication dimensions of clarity, pleasantness, reciprocity, and language were extracted. In the second study, 200 actual banking customers in Malaysia provided response on the 18-item relationship communication scale identified in study 1, relationship quality dimensions of trust, satisfaction and commitment, and relationship continuity. Results of the structural equation modeling using SmartPLS revealed that relationship quality dimensions mediate the relationship between relationship communication dimensions and relationship continuity. In other words, the results suggest that customers’ perception of firm communication plays a key role in developing, maintaining, and enhancing customer relationships. Since the success of relationship marketing strategies largely depends on the effectiveness of marketing communications (Herington et al. 2009), our study extends previous research by empirically examining how communication affects relationship quality and relationship continuity in the B2C service relationships.

In markets with fierce competition and low switching costs customer attrition (or churn) is a key concern. In the past marketers addressed the problem primarily by making the customer loyal to the brand. More recently, roles are reverting and brands are being committed to demonstrate loyalty to the customer, through virtuous customer relationship management (CRM) that pre-empts churn before it occurs. As the business know-how is becoming increasingly data-literate and technology breaking down the barriers for IT infrastructure costs, analytics is proved effective in anticipating churn behaviour, enabling targeted, cost-effective retention campaigns towards customers at risk of defection.

Online retailing is thriving as consumers become more comfortable shopping online (Cho 2004). In the USA alone, online retailing total revenue topped $280 billion by the end of 2013 (Sehgal 2014), an increase of greater than 20 % from just 2 years ago. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has been identified as an increasingly important component of marketing strategy and customer relations (Close and Kukar-Kinney 2010). Consequently, marketing scholars have acknowledged the need for new models and theories which contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of online consumer behavior (Kukar-Kinney and Close 2010).According to industry reports, continued growth in the e-commerce industry will result largely from existing web shoppers spending increased time and money online (Forrester 2013). With this in mind, firms must consider marketing strategies aimed at increasing purchases of existing online shoppers as opposed to a focus aimed only at acquiring new customers. A promising avenue to better understand the behavior of current online shoppers involves addressing an issue of considerable importance in today’s online retailing environment (Close and Kukar-Kinney 2010)—understanding why consumers take the time to make purchase decisions (browsing for and placing items into an online shopping cart) only to abandon that shopping cart without making a purchase. As the importance and relevance of e-commerce continues to grow, it is imperative that scholars gain a deeper understanding of “non-buyer behavior” (Kukar-Kinney and Close 2010, p. 250), an important but understudied segment of online consumer behavior (Close et al. 2012).Formally defined, online shopping cart abandonment occurs when a consumer places an item or items into their online shopping cart and then leaves the retail website without purchasing the item(s) during that online shopping session (Kukar-Kinney and Close 2010, p. 240). This “epidemic” is costing online retailers $18 billion of revenue a year in the USA alone (Kramer 2011). While the ability to effectively recapture abandoned carts would clearly boost revenues, it is imperative to note that, in the eyes of the consumers, these virtual shopping carts have multiple uses that are not always tied to procurement (Kukar-Kinney and Close 2010).Additionally, the varying effects of risk and benefit perceptions on consumers’ likelihood to abort online transactions shown in previous research (Cho 2004) suggest relevance in examining this issue through a regulatory focus framework (Higgins 1998). Regulatory focus theory suggests that individuals assign different importance to the same decision based on their promotion-focused (i.e., individuals are concerned with maximizing gains) or prevention-focused (i.e., individuals attempt to minimize losses) regulatory orientation. With billions of dollars at stake (Close et al. 2012), this opportunity presents a compelling case for research that expands the knowledge of regulatory focus theory in the online retailing environment.Based upon these pressing calls to research and the limited online shopping cart abandonment research, this study addresses two main questions: (1) How does consumer shopping motivation (specifically hedonic shopping motivation and utilitarian shopping motivation) influence consumer online shopping cart abandonment? and (2) How does regulatory focus theory apply within this context? That is, how do promotion and prevention framed messages aid in the recapture of abandoned shopping carts? Specifically, this research proposes that a retailer is more likely to recapture sales through initiated contact with the customer when the strategic focus of their message fits the regulatory focus of the customer’s end-goal.

In order to improve customer lifetime value, retailers are increasingly trying to extend relationships with their customers. The “breadth” of a buyer–seller relationship is defined as the number of additional (different) products or services purchased from a company over time. It is commonly viewed as customer cross-buying or add-on buying behavior. Cross-buying has been associated with customer retention, revenue generation, switching costs, and loyalty and is vital for a company’s stable financial development. Despite its obvious relevance, the breadth dimension of a buyer–seller relationship is a relatively unexplored issue and only little research has attempted to identify the drivers of cross-buying. Furthermore, there is no research so far that has investigated an arguable even more important type of cross-buying: cross-buying of peripheral services. This study is the first attempt to empirically investigate the determinants of that type of relationship breadth extension strategy. Findings demonstrate that factors stimulating customers to cross-buy additional peripheral services from the focal retailer are not be the same as previously found by studies in the financial services context. Some factors like commitment, which are considered crucial for stimulating cross-buying behavior in financial services, do not seem to be important for peripheral services purchase behavior in the retailing context. On the other hand, convenience and social benefits seem to be quite crucial in the retailing sector. We discuss implications for academic research as well as retail management.

Motivated by potential savings, an increasing number of consumers travel to neighboring countries for the main purpose of shopping (e.g., Canadians to the USA, Swiss to Germany). This cross-border shopping might seriously harm local economies, for example in terms of revenue, unemployment, and social well-being.

Online shopping is significantly increasing worldwide and is showing a continuous potential in terms of growth, security, price and shopping convenience. A constant 11 % increase in online retail revenues suggests that online orders are increasing and will grow steadily to $370 billion in 2017 (Abramovich 2014). This growing trend might be also advantageous for second-hand online retailers as it has been reported that one third of consumers buy more second-hand goods compared to previous years (Chahai 2013).Second-hand online shopping is one of the industries that everlastingly remain unaffected even if it undergoes any economic circumstances (Heller 2011) as recession might even have a positive effect on sales growth of second-hand goods. Currently, at least seven out of ten customers have purchased second-hand goods, such as DVDs, CDs, books or adult clothing (Chahai 2013). Since the second-hand industry has been predicted to grow steadily, second-hand retailers need to have a better understanding of their target market’s initial beliefs and their purchase intentions of second-hand goods. Thus, our study investigates how initial beliefs, trust and perceived value influence intentions to purchase second-hand goods from unknown online retailers.To achieve the objective of the study, we conducted an online survey with 251 respondents who purchase second-hand goods from online retailers. Respondents were recruited using online social communities (i.e., Myspace and Facebook). Our findings suggest that information on safety and reliability that second-hand good online retailers present on their websites affects customer intentions to purchase second-hand goods from those retailers. The perceived safety of the website translates into positive perceptions about second-hand goods and contributes to customer purchase intentions from that online retailer. This research offers implications with a practical focus on maximising purchases of second-hand goods sold online.

Retailers, more specifically nonfood vendors, struggle to reduce consumer churn when shopping for consumer goods. From simple coupons to sophisticated big-data-based loyalty systems, modern merchants undertake all sorts of initiatives to maintain customers’ loyalty to their stores (Grönroos 1991; Iniesta and Agustín 2003; Knox and Walker 2003; Lohr 2012; Uncles et al. 2003).

Intensive competition in B2B markets is leading to a sustained change in customer behavior. The altered conditions lead to aggressive price negotiations and abuse of power, while making negotiation situations in sales more difficult. Bearing these facts in mind, we can see that for a sales employee, the ultimate indicator of success lies in the final result of negotiation. This is clearly determined by the price. Surveys among sales executives in the B2B sector show that other negotiation elements, such as the duration of the business relationship, are ascribed virtually to importance in the negotiation situation itself. Despite these tendencies, the question remains as to whether other elements, including the character of the negotiation partners, can either consciously or unconsciously influence the negotiation situation in a positive or negative way in everyday negotiations. This paper examines the role extreme typologies from the purchasing company have on sales and the importance of long-term business relationships in comparison to the type of negotiation partner and immediate pricing.An adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis (ACBC), based on Kuhn and Zajontz’s “Industrial Lifestyle” model, was conducted with a total of 102 sales employees from various sectors.

This research investigates the impact of sales and marketing collaboration on the customer’s propensity to purchase and customer value, thereby extending the current research into the sales and marketing interface. Prior research has established that sales departments may fail to support marketing initiatives and that marketing been known to fail to communicate marketing objectives effectively and to exclude sales from decision-making. This lack of coordination may become visible to the customer and consequently influence their relationship with the supplier. We suggest that internal sales and marketing relationships can impact on relationship quality and consequently the customers’ propensity to purchase.Customers demand greater value from their suppliers and consequently a relationship-building approach to marketing has been more widely adopted by many organizations (Harker and Egan 2006; Biggemann and Buttle 2012). Further, sustainable long-term relationships benefit the supplier by reducing costs and increasing sales (e.g., Hennig-Thurau et al. 2002). It has been suggested that relationship quality encompasses the concepts of satisfaction, trust and commitment related to the selling organization (Crosby et al. 1990; Palmatier et al. 2006).The study was conducted through a series of semi-structured, hour-long interviews within the sales and marketing personnel from four B2B organizations in the UK, and with a selection of their customers. This approach produces rich qualitative data on the participants’ attitudes and experiences of the interface between buyer and seller. The customer respondents were selected randomly from the organizations’ databases.The study highlights that conflict or collaboration between sales and marketing is visible to the customer and affects the different dimensions of relationship quality. Collaboration creates customer satisfaction and operating through the dimensions of trust to improve customer commitment, and creates customer value in the relationship and leads to an increased propensity to purchase.

The succession of events referred to in the media as the financial crisis (2008), the economic crisis (2009), and the sovereign debt crisis (2011) has produced an environment which is manifestly uncertain. Characterized by periods of economic recession, this uncertain environment has in recent times presented management with new challenges, with the potential to cause major organizational problems. In the light of this, we thought it would be of interest to analyze the management of an operational unit at a time when “the organization has to deal with a new situation” (Weick 2001, p. 27). Our research relates more specifically to the way in which companies modify their control systems in response to a crisis, and to the strategies that salespeople adopt in response to any changes. As a result, it aims to answer the following questions about what happens during a crisis: Do firms or their management modify existing sales force control systems? What is the effect of any changes on the salespeople? In the front line with clients, what do salespeople feel, and how do they respond? Is there any sign of a fall in ethical standards?

The wide disparities of sales compensation plans observed across firms and industries imply that firms do not value their sales organizations similarly. More to the point, sales compensation research does not take directly into account the compensation of other functions, as if sales compensation policy decisions were isolated from other compensation decisions. Needless to say decisions regarding salesforces are included in wider strategic plans. Curiously, literature on the relative value firms attribute to various functions does not include the sales function. This chapter investigates organizational (e.g., innovativeness, marketing resource endowment) and environmental (e.g., market uncertainty) factors that can affect the pay level and structure of sales jobs as compared to jobs in other functions. We test our theory with a unique data set of all large firms (i.e., with more than 100 salespeople) in France. Our results shed new light on pay practices of sales organizations.

There is a global consensus today on the relevance to consider the strategic role of sales departments, at least in BtoB. Nevertheless, to our knowledge and recently, only two empirical research studies have proposed what could be the components of a sales strategy (SS). The choices of these components are based only on salespeople’s interviews in one case, and on convenience choices in the second one. The authors conclude that their measures of sales strategy need to be further validated and established.The contribution of the present research is to broaden the perspective of SS to consider more congruent components, by considering some conceptual contributions from the strategic literature.SS can be associated with the concepts of operational strategy, the Balanced Score Card, the questioning approach of strategy, and the customer approach of strategy. These approaches confirm the pertinence of considering these three dimensions of SS (clustering, organization structure and relational objectives/selling models), even though they suggest some sub-dimensions of the three main components considered by the sales strategy literature. Moreover, a fourth dimension is proposed to foster a holistic view of a SS.Empirically, 22 in-depth interviews were conducted with Sales Managers in France. Even though great discrepancy was noticed in the responses, these dimensions were mentioned frequently. Our next step will be to quantitatively validate these components.

Can consumer knowledge that a scent is 100 % composed of natural ingredients influence sensory perception of the fragrance? In the present study, 112 participants were asked to test and evaluate a floral fragrance. Prior to the test and the evaluation of the scent, half of the consumers were informed of the 100 % natural origin of its components, while the other half were not provided with that information, even though the individuals were exposed to exactly the same perfume made from totally natural essential vegetable oils. Results found that participants gave a higher mark to the scent when they had been informed that it was completely natural in origin. This study demonstrates that information proclaiming the natural origin of substances comprising a scent may change consumers’ sensory perception of the fragrance. This finding is of great relevance for scent manufacturers and cosmetics companies, enabling them to manage such claims as tools to market their products.

Previous research showed that imagining touching an object—the so-called haptic imagery—may engender sensations that closely resemble those aroused by tactile perceptions (Peck et al. 2013). Little is still known, however, about the exact nature of such cues as well as the mechanisms through which they affect individuals’ perceptions and behavioral intentions. To fill this gap, the present research aimed to empirically assess the extent to which an advertisement incorporating a haptic cue is able to shape consumers’ dispositions and behavioral intentions, thus attempting to throw light on the mechanisms through which such a phenomenon occurs. We argued that a visual representation of the physical contact between human hands (which are the most important means to acquire haptic information) and a product may act as a cue capable of activating haptic imagery and have positive effects on consumer purchase intentions. The study concentrated on technology-based products, which are increasingly sold through online commerce and hence without a previous physical evaluation by consumers.We created two versions of an advertisement featuring a technology-based product: one featuring only the advertised product (haptic version), the other featuring the advertised product held in a person’s hands (non-haptic version). Then, we administered a short online survey to a total of 80 subjects. They were asked to fill in Peck and Childers’ (2003) NFT scale. Next, they were randomly assigned to our two experimental conditions, and hence saw one of the two pretested advertisements. All of them were subsequently asked to rate the perceived ease of use comfort of the advertised product (Davis 1989), their intention to purchase the advertised product, and the extent to which the advertisement made them imagine themselves touching the advertised product.A moderated mediation model allowed to establish that the presence of a haptic cue raises the perceived ease of use of the advertised product, which, in turn, favorably affects the related purchase intention. Such an effect resulted stronger for highly autotelic individuals, i.e., individuals who tend to touch products to experience a sense of enjoyment. From a theoretical perspective, this result suggests that the presence of a haptic cue in a print advertisement may compensate highly autotelic individuals’ need for instrumental haptic information. While, from an operational point of view, this result could be taken into account by marketing practitioners interested in fostering confidence in technology-based products through advertising messages.

During a sunny summer afternoon on the beach, who has never been attracted by a relief picture of an ice cream on a poster? This type of poster highlights some products and invites the consumer in order to touch them. Our communication focuses on this advertising tactic consisting in adding relief to some elements presented in a printed medium. Past research in advertising has scarcely considered the question of the sense of touch when the target contacts the medium. Those studies have considered the influences of an external tactile stimulation (Peck and Wiggins 2006; Peck and Johnson 2011) or the influences of the smell and the touch of a paper on its evaluation (Krishna et al. 2010). Both underline the opportunity of considering the role of touch as an interesting lever for enhancing persuasion.

Sport, arts, and cause events are a service product in their own right and also often a platform for the marketing of other products. Emotions are recognized as important both in marketing of the event (attendance and future attendance) and marketing of products via the event. When positive emotions prevail, this can influence both future attendance as well as responses to sponsorship. This study examines the role of emotions and atmosphere at an international track and field event. Mediated regression results show that event activities support positive emotions and in turn the development of a good atmosphere; the resulting atmosphere influences both sponsor awareness and future patronage in a positive way. As well, event activities hold a direct positive influence on sponsor awareness.

The perceived quality of online didactic resources and the instructor’s attitude are conceived as pillars of e-learning environments (Edwards et al. 2011; Udo et al. 2011). However, research has not delivered evidence about the connections of these two important elements with the e-learners’ post-adoption decision, throughout which they reconsider the e-learning environment and determine whether they will continue using e-learning or not.To analyse the potential effects of the perceived quality of online didactic resources and the instructor’s attitude on e-learner’s post-adoption decisions, TAM (Davis 1985, 1989) can be a valid model (King and He 2006). First because, in e-learning, didactic resources—which include content and tools of all kind of origins and formats—become one of the main sources of information and knowledge (Rodríguez-Ardura et al. 2009), so they can activate e-learner’s favourable perceptions about the ease of use and the usefulness of the learning environment (Cheng 2012). And second, because the positive instructor’s approach in conducting teaching activities and providing guidance helps e-learners to construct knowledge, and leads them to perceive the e-learning environment as easy to use (Lin 2011) and useful (Lee et al. 2009). Yet, on the basis of literature in consumer behaviour that suggests that individuals interpret incoming information online through both affective and cognitive mechanisms (Rose et al. 2012), we further propose to capture a range of psychological phenomena that go beyond TAM’s utilitarian beliefs of ease of use and usefulness. Consistent with this, we build an integrative model that considers the mediating role of flow episodes and presence feelings in the perceived quality of online didactic resources and the instructor’s attitude.To test the integrative model, we used data from a web-based survey and merged them with registrar’s office data on e-learners’ academic records. A database of 2530 records was built. The substantial predicting power of the structural equation modelling robustly supports the hypothesized causal paths. The findings confirm the crucial link of perceived didactic resource quality, and instructor attitude, with TAM’s beliefs; and also that these two pillars of e-learning environments elicit both flow episodes and presence feelings. Indeed, it shows a causal connection between perceived ease of use and flow, in line with Self-Efficacy Theory (Bandura 1982) and Tao et al. findings (2009), and that flow episodes and presence feelings trigger e-learning continuance.

With the growing significant development of economics, the industry has changed from physical property-driven machines and facilities to services-driven knowledge. In this knowledge-based economy, innovation capability is the key factor to attain the competitive advantages. Therefore, for facing the trend of service industry, service innovation is regarded as a value-creating activity which derived from customers’ needs. It is also a critical strategic weapon for firms achieving competitive advantages. Evidences showed for acquiring superior business performance, the link from marketing capability to service innovation is important and necessary for firms introducing new products into market. Thus, drawing on the previous studies, this present research tried to examine the relationships between two types of marketing capabilities, i.e. explorative marketing capability and exploitative marketing capability on service innovation. According to the empirical data collected from service sector companies in Taiwan, meaningful findings and conclusions will be proposed and discussed.

Increasingly competitive service markets force firms to look for ways to increase the operational efficiency of service delivery (e.g., Ostrom et al. 2010; Ulaga and Reinartz 2011). At both conceptual (e.g., Sahay 2005; Parasuraman 2002, 2010) and empirical (e.g., Lääts et al. 2011; Rust and Huang 2012) levels, growing management and marketing literature centers on service productivity, generally defined as units of output (e.g., processed customers, sales) divided by units of input (e.g., labor hours) (e.g., López and Sune 2012). However, productivity measurement continues to pose a challenge for service firms, primarily because of the difficulty of accurately quantifying service inputs and outputs. One reason for this relative lack of measurement especially in people-processing services may be the complexity involved in measuring service productivity, particularly the difficulty of modeling the trade-off between changes in productivity (e.g., increasing customer throughput) and key service outcomes such as satisfaction (e.g., Brady et al. 2002; Wirtz et al. 2012), as well as the difficulty of aligning productivity measures with varying levels of customer integration. Beyond the trade-off, little is known about the antecedents of service firms’ decisions to measure productivity. This is surprising given that performance measurement continues to be an important topic in management practice and research (e.g., Lai et al. 2012; O’Cass and Ngo 2011). Also, in many industries, efficient service delivery processes are built into business models (Meuter et al. 2005). Against this background, the authors explore why few service firms have adequate service productivity measurement (SPM) systems in place.

Nonprofit arts organizations historically have struggled to survive and thrive, since their business models, including their marketing and fund development efforts, often develop reactively rather than being strategically planned and tactically managed to successfully target key stakeholder groups and individuals. In addition, both program ticket sales and contributions from all sources are often affected by changes in economic environments at all levels, which are not directly controllable by arts organizations. The challenges for arts organizations of achieving and maintaining sustainable financial health are serious ones, particularly in many countries which are moving towards government support models which require organizations to become more self-sufficient by improving their fund development and marketing programs.This study builds on the authors’ prior research (Kirchner et al. 2007) which assessed potential correlational and causal relationships of Levels of Nonprofit Organization Government Support and Marketing Investment on Organizational Financial Health. It presents an expanded conceptual model which utilizes a more detailed breakout of the previous study’s summary variables in order to assess, at a finer level, factors which are proposed to contribute to, and/or be affected by, Organizational Financial Health. The current longitudinal research project analyzes, over a period of 10 arts organization seasons (fiscal years), financial ratios which are used to assess financial health of the symphony orchestra sector. Those ratios capture empirical interrelationships among key revenue variables (government support, foundation support, business support, individual support, and concert revenue) and expense variables (marketing expense, fund development expense, artistic expense, and administrative expense), and a variable which measures organizational financial health. The model also incorporates demographic variables (e.g., organization age, budget size, and number of concerts) which are proposed to moderate those relationships. The study also assesses differences between pre-2008 (pre-recession) data, 2008–2009 (recession) and post-2009 (post-recession) data to discern implications of significant changes in the macroeconomic environment for the symphony orchestra sector and its marketing-related efforts and results.From a methodological standpoint, this research utilizes a combination of correlational analysis and Granger causality analysis, proposing that organizational financial health can be predicted by projecting future values of time series data based on measurement of past values of time series data variables which have been shown to be empirically correlated with financial health. It uses secondary data from the League of American Orchestras’ annual Orchestra Statistical Report financial and operational survey data.

Due to the complexity of services, service failures are inevitable events for service organisations and can make customers dissatisfied and willing to switch. When these events occur, organisations often attempt service recovery. Notwithstanding, recovery efforts do not always reduce customer discontentment and restore repatronage intentions. This is attributed to other factors outside the firm’s control, including how customers cope with service failures. Some customers cope with equanimity, whilst others vent their frustration and anger by complaining and generating negative word-of-mouth. Service failures are stressful and emotion-laden events, which trigger coping processes; thus, understanding these processes is vital for service organisations. However, evidence in this research area is rather sparse. This study investigates the role of individual characteristics and situational factors in shaping customer coping with service failures. In particular, the study examines how self-efficacy and failure severity, and their interaction, influence customer coping mechanisms in the context of failed health services. In the healthcare sector, patient safety is a priority for health service providers. Yet, ensuring patient safety is challenging. Medical errors occur frequently, with serious consequences for patient health and the finances of health service providers. The healthcare sector, therefore, provides a timely and relevant context for examining customer coping. The study employed a scenario-based experiment. For data collection, a self-administered questionnaire was designed embedding a scenario of a customer experience of service failure with a private US healthcare service provider. Two versions of the same questionnaire were designed based on the manipulation of failure severity set at two levels, high and low. Prior to the main study, a pilot test was conducted (n = 30) in order to establish the ecological and internal validity of findings. In the main study, respondents included a convenience sample of US consumers using a private healthcare service provider (n = 113). For data analysis, linear and moderated regression analyses were conducted. The study’s findings reveal that individuals high in self-efficacy are inclined to use their individual capabilities to actively attempt to find a solution, especially when health service failures are low in severity. When failures are severe, on the other hand, customers foresee the lack of capability to resolve the failure, thereby engaging less in active coping. Further, results show that customers high in self-efficacy rarely engage in denial coping, thereby avoiding that the service failure even happened. The study makes two important theoretical contributions. First, it investigates customer coping in the private healthcare service context, which has been largely overlooked in past research. Second, it demonstrates how self-efficacy differentially impacts customer coping strategies depending on the level of failure severity. From a managerial perspective, the study’s findings indicate that some customers are keen to be actively involved in the recovery process, especially in the context of high involvement health services. Service providers could identify efficacious customers and engage them in co-created service recovery. Further, employees could be trained to deal with different types of customer coping behaviour.

Service firms typically focus on increasing their operational proficiency and generating service innovations to stay competitive (Wilder et al. 2014). Researchers as well as practitioners widely acknowledge that service innovation especially is crucial for service organizations’ financial performance (e.g., Ordanini and Parasuraman 2011). However, in contrast to research that centers on firm-level data, research that is devoted to employees’ roles in generating and delivering service innovations remains rare (Cadwallader et al. 2010). Customer contact personnel especially are important to execute service offerings. Or, as Zeithaml et al. (2009, p. 352) state, “employees are the service” in many people-processing services. Frontline service employees are also important to successfully introduce and explain services to customers. Thus, through their motivation to recommend newly designed service offerings to customers (or not), service employees are in a position to either promote or impede service innovation implementation (McKnight and Hawkrigg 2005).The authors draw on two theoretical perspectives in the innovation literature, that is, the efficiency-oriented perspective and the social–political perspective, in conjunction with social identity theory to predict how employees’ perceived external reputation affect service innovation implementation. We test resulting hypotheses with two data sets from German (N = 150) and the USA (N = 208)-based frontline service employees. Results imply that the path from perceived external reputation to employees’ willingness to recommend service innovations is significant across both studies. In addition, the path is fully mediated by expected positive performance outcomes and expected reputational gains. The authors discuss implications for practice and for innovation and marketing theory.References available upon request.

This chapter puts forward the elements of service environment termed as ‘servicescape’ that will influence the behavioural intentions (loyalty, word of mouth, and recommendation) in service organizations, which provides service environment as their predominant offering. Interestingly, there is a growing group of service firms where consumers pay to consume the environment rather treating the environment as a facilitator of their purchase of merchandise or services. One such service environment focused business is the coworking spaces. They are business that offers the physical and social environment for consumption. It is an environment where creative, entrepreneurs and knowledge workers work in a commercial space, work on flexible work stations with a host of facilities at their disposal. These coworking spaces are designed to create a productive physical and social atmosphere. We propose an enriched servicescape framework specific to this industry and label it as ‘Coworkingscape’. The conceptual focus of this chapter enables contribution in the field of service environment marketing and management. The practical implication of this chapter will be of help to coworking space providers/managers to further plan, design and manage the coworking spaces.

Today, consumers share their positive and negative experiences about products and services using social media sites and online platforms provided by companies. Electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) usually spreads through social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), and it affects how consumers make their decisions on what to buy or recommend within their network (Simonson and Rosen 2014). In particular, online reviews have been noted as providing useful information (Yin and Zhang 2014) not only for other customers but also for companies searching for new ways to attract their customers to visit their websites. This chapter aims to investigate the role of online reviews in social media in the services sector and offers implications for services firms.Two independent studies in a large emerging market of India were conducted to achieve the aim of this research. The first study consisted of two phases: in phase I, advantages and disadvantages of online reviews along with judgement criteria about online reviews were identified using data from a focus group with nine participants. In phase II, various factors that consumers consider before making their final decisions to book a hotel were identified through an online survey with 110 responses. The second study also utilized an online survey to collect the data from 223 respondents about the use of social media sites and online interviews on various travel aspects when planning and booking travel.The results of the first study suggest the increasing role of online reviews in India, in particular among young adults. The main advantages sought from online reviews were to search for up-to-date information and comparisons of previous customer experiences. Negative reviews did contribute to discouraging potential travelers using those sites to book their trips. The results of the second study indicate that females use social media more often than males when traveling (e.g., they might look for “things to do” while at their destination). Our study offers managerial guidelines for services companies. For instance, companies should tailor their websites to fulfill the needs of specific customer segments (e.g., female travelers). Future studies might investigate how companies can strategically respond to negative reviews and minimize their impact on consumer decision-making.References available upon request.

It is widely acknowledged that service quality is profoundly affected by the service providers with the frontline employees playing a critical role in providing customer satisfaction (e.g., Bacon 2012; Dagger et al. 2013). Achieving customer satisfaction through superior service is a strategy that service providers such as retail banks strive to pursue (Frey et al. 2013). Prior literature showed that the intangible nature of services is critical determinants in creating customer satisfaction (Dagger et al. 2013). More recently, Keh et al. (2013) concluded that the simultaneous and interactive effects of different employee attributes collectively drive customer satisfaction. However, what is lacking in the literature is the relative importance of different attributes and interaction effects among them in different physical and cultural service settings (Dagger et al. 2013). This study builds on this stream of research to investigate the relative and interactive effects of three employee attributes, namely friendliness, helpfulness, and respectfulness on customer satisfaction with the employee in the Chinese banking industry.

Interest in understanding and managing the student experience has been growing in order to develop and offer high-quality, satisfaction-creating service experiences (Bowden and D’Alessandro 2011; Fagerstrøm and Ghinea 2013). This interest appears to be driven by a range of changes in the higher education sector. Students are becoming more demanding and active information seekers and prefer informal and personal forms of information to formal information (Fagerstrøm and Ghinea 2013). With technology-literate and highly diverse students, universities are increasingly facing pressure to manage students’ expectations and offer a high-quality learning experience. This pressure is coupled with the introduction of higher tuition fees and constraints on public funding in some countries, such as the UK.These changes reinforce the perspective in which students are viewed not only as customers who seek personalized services and high-quality outcomes, but also as active players in shaping the university experience. Therefore, the challenge remains for universities to determine how to respond to these changes and engage students as active co-producers of the university experience (Bowden and D’Alessandro 2011). In view of this orientation, this study examines the role of students’ satisfaction with university augmentation services (financial, maintenance, campus life, and health augmenters) in generating their overall satisfaction with the university and explores the influence of brand choice attainment and satisfaction on student participation behaviour.Drawing on an empirical survey of 238 international students in UK universities, the model was tested using structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that not all service augmenters are equally important in creating satisfaction. Campus life and maintenance augmenters are found to be the crucial elements in generating satisfaction for current international students. The results also suggest that satisfied students are more likely to participate actively in co-producing the university services compared to dissatisfied students. The effect of brand choice attainment on participation behaviour is mediated by satisfaction. This implies that it is not sufficient for a university to be students’ first choice of brand to get them to participate actively in co-producing the services. Whether they enrol in their preferred university or an alternate university, students should be satisfied to participate actively in co-producing non-academic services.University administrations should prioritize their efforts to put more emphasis on some elements especially crucial for international students and could embellish or deplete the core of education services. There is also a pressing need for universities to segment their international students based on the brand choice and give more emphasis to those students not accepted by their preferred university. A superior university experience should be created, particularly for ensuring this type of students can overcome the disappointment of not enrolling in the preferred university.References available upon request.

Interactions between service employees and customers have long been suggested to have a tremendous impact on customer assessment of service delivery. Among a variety of constructs in the studies of employee–customer relationships, rapport is an important issue for service organizations. Researchers have found customer–employee rapport is influential in the creation of customer satisfaction and loyalty (Yim et al. 2008). Increased customer perception of rapport also positively influences customers’ judgments about the service and commitment toward a service relationship (Gremler and Gwinner 2000, 2008). Customer–employee rapport could be achieved in the very first service interaction (Gremler and Gwinner 2000). In building a customer relationship, a service employee’s interaction with a customer in the initial encounter is critically important in creating the customer’s impression of the firm and thereby his/her desire to have future interactions with the firm (Bitner 1995).

Creating superior customer satisfaction has been the primary objective for service firms. The importance of service employee satisfaction in enhancing customer satisfaction has been emphasized in past research, yet there is limited research exploring the mechanism linking them. As service employees are mainly responsible for service delivery, the interpersonal interaction between customers and service employees has been found to substantially affect customer perceptions of services and considered as the key to customer satisfaction (Brown and Lam 2008). Past research also indicated that employee satisfaction can enhance customer–employee interactions, which, in turn, increases customer satisfaction (Homburg et al. 2009). Thus, there has been particular academic call for exploring the mechanisms linking employee and customer satisfaction. Integrating emotional labor and emotional contagion theories, this study attempts to bridge this research gap by developing and testing a framework that includes the mediating emotional mechanism through which employee satisfaction affects customer satisfaction in service context.

How does consumer–brand relationship quality (CBRQ) influence behaviors attributed to personal values? We answer this question by proposing a model that links customer voluntary performance and propensity to leave with CBRQ that stems from customer–brand value congruence. We collected data from an online survey of 371 consumers of restaurants and hospitals in Egypt. Irrespective of the service context, we find that, (1) value congruence is positively related to CBRQ, (2) there is a negative relationship between CBRQ and propensity to leave, and (3) a positive relationship with customer voluntary performance. However, the positive relationship between value congruence and customer voluntary performance was only observed in the hospital context. Furthermore, CBRQ partially mediates the effects of value congruence on customer voluntary performance and fully mediates the effects of value congruence on propensity to leave.Our findings suggest that, by focusing on the notion that brands have similar values to those of consumers, brand managers could achieve some important and desired consequences, most notably consumers voluntary behaviors such as cooperation, participation, and loyalty. In addition, invest in building customers relationships pays dividends as high quality customer–brand relationship acts as a deterrent to customers’ willingness to leave.By synthesizing the literature from relationship marketing and branding research streams, the current study represents a new endeavor to specify the direct association between value congruence and propensity to leave and customer voluntary performance and the indirect associations through CBRQ in the services context. This opens the door for future conceptual and empirical evaluations. Given that a considerable bulk of research on value congruence and CBRQ has been developed in Western contexts, our contribution is salient in that we test hypothesized associations in an emerging market. Overall, our study takes relationship marketing and branding literature one step further by identifying the role of value congruence might play in enhancing the relationship quality with the service brand as well as projecting the outcomes of both constructs in a new research setting.

Retirement is often perceived to be an important life stage or event that requires significant planning and preparation. Demographic shifts in the retirement population across the globe have driven the need for proactive planning and financial preparedness for retirement. As the composition of consumers in this traditionally aging, male-oriented product category alters, an increased understanding of female behavior towards consumption of retirement planning products and services is critical. With marital status as one of the most significant predictors (Glass Jnr and Kilpatrick 1998) of retirement wealth, planning for retirement income outside a married or partnered context is a determinant of wealth differences between single and married women (Butrica and Iams 2003). As a consequence, this research focuses on this cohort of single women who are at a significantly higher risk of a reduced standard of living post-retirement to illuminate the concepts under study. With the women of the baby boomer generation, born between 1945 and 1964, the largest cohort of women to reach retirement age in history (Lusardi and Mitchell 2007), they present a good unit of analysis to study the retirement preparedness by single women. Building on a very small body of research, this study provides exploratory insights into how older single women plan and prepare for retirement. Through examining the psychological drivers and barriers to accessing retirement planning services this study identifies factors critical to the development, delivery, and management of products within the financial services industry.

Uncivil behaviors, which include rude, humiliating, and disrespectful behaviors, generally create unmanageable and uncontrollable conditions in service settings. Incivility is one of the most experienced interpersonal misbehaviors in organizations (Cortina et al. 2001; Pearson and Porath 2005) but organizational studies have dealt with incivility as a latent intra-organizational problem, disregarding the effects on customers. However, incivility is a human conduct that can occur not only among employees but also among all social actors. By drawing on Appraisal Theory (Lazarus 1991), this chapter encompasses three experimental studies to understand the effects of uncivil interactions (among employees and among other customers) on customers’ emotional appraisals of the service context and behavioral intentions. Incivility and its role in the appraisal process will be evaluated in Study 1 by comparing high incivility, low incivility, civil, and no messages conditions. We hypothesized that high incivility will result in higher degree of regret and disappointment than low incivility. Furthermore, all incivility conditions will result in higher degree of regret and disappointment than civil and control conditions. We also hypothesized that regret and disappointment mediates the effect of the level of incivility on customer’s overall satisfaction from their service experience and generalized judgments from service provider. Moreover, the incivility source (employee vs. other customer) moderates the effect of incivility level on these emotions (moderated mediation). To have a profound understanding of the influence of incivility with further studies, service expectancy (Study 2—high vs. low value proposition) and the agency role (Study 3—customer is the decider for the service provider vs. not) will be examined with between group scenario-based experiments. In these studies, we expect that appraisals of these factors influence customers’ attitudes and intentions via the mediation of certain emotions (regret and disappointment). In study 3, by drawing on the literature on regret and disappointment (Zeelenberg et al. 1998, 2000) we also hypothesized that regret is significantly higher than disappointment only for incivility among employees condition when the customer is the decision-maker (self-agency). Appraisal theory indicates that emotional states of individuals vary by self-agency level, due to the perceived responsibility of what is experienced (Dijk and Zeelenberg 2002). In all of the studies customer’s empathy tendencies (McBane 1995), proximity to emotional contagion (Doherty 1997) and tolerance to negativity levels will be measured and integrated to the model as covariates because in social contexts, personality traits that are prone to emotional contagion may introduce bias. After pretests for manipulation and credibility checks, scenario-based experiments will be conducted using online data collection methods (MTurk). MANOVA, Hayes and Preacher’s (2014) moderation analyses, and bootstrapping methods for testing moderated serial mediation will be used for testing group differences.References available upon request.

Many firms feel obliged to reply to customer complaints and even knowingly unjustified high claims after service failures with generous compensations in order to keep customer satisfaction on a maximum level. An expanding body of literature has focused on opportunistic customer behavior reflected in customers who intentionally engage in cheating or fraudulent actions to take monetary advantages after a company’s service failure during service recovery (e.g., Wirtz and Kum 2004; Berry and Seiders 2008). However, the majority of this work is related to knowingly and incorrect reported failures which did not occur such that customers’ cheating on firms is not necessarily triggered by dissatisfaction or service failures at all (Ro and Wong 2012). Although several factors driving opportunistic customer claiming behavior have been identified (see also Baker et al. 2012)—i.e., customer-centric (e.g., customer financial greed, customer personality traits, and customer oppositional cultural model; Reynolds and Harris 2005; Andreasen 1988; Ringberg et al. 2007), firm-centric (e.g., generous redress practices and firm size; Harris and Reynolds 2003; Wirtz and McColl-Kennedy 2010), and relationship-centric drivers (e.g., low justice perceptions and one-time transactions; Wirtz and McColl-Kennedy 2010)—the impact of damage values on opportunistic claims still remains unexplored. Thus, the purpose of this research is to improve our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of customer claiming behavior triggered by the value of damage caused by service failures.The results of three experiments detect a seemingly paradoxical behavior: The likelihood of engaging in opportunistic claiming declines with increasing damage values, whereas the magnitude of opportunistic claims rises. Further analysis reveals that these opposing effects can be ascribed to perceived risk of opportunistic claiming.This research provides important implications for a more efficient complaint management in business practices. For instance, firms could develop a classification scheme of damage values tailored to their specific businesses. For each respective type of failure value, strategies referring to different levels of generosity should be developed. For high value level situations, stricter checking routines for the assessment of claims have to be put in place. Thereby, companies should generate a sense of thinking in trade-offs between high-frequency complaints associated with relatively low amounts of fraud and, in contrast, opportunistic claims of high magnitudes which occur less frequently.References available upon request.

Nostalgic cues can be identified in many areas of consumption (Cui 2015) such as nostalgic brands of toys and cars (Barnes 2008), as well as in advertising (Reisenwitz et al. 2004; Muehling and Sprott 2004). The decision to use nostalgic cues relies on the assumption that nostalgic symbols induce nostalgic memories, which in turn evoke positive (sometimes negative) emotions in consumers (Wildschut et al. 2006). These responses are expected to influence consumer behavior in the marketplace (Chebat and Michon 2003; Cui 2015). Most of the studies on nostalgia have been conducted in the context of marketing, and specifically product advertising (Muehling and Sprott 2004). The issue of whether and how nostalgic cues actually work in the context of services remains largely unknown. In this work, we present a set of five experiments aimed at studying differences between goods and services in terms of the impact of nostalgic cues on customers.

In real situations, ethical buying intention does not correlate with ethical buying behaviour (Madar et al. 2013). This is because when consumers have to make their purchasing choices, even if they are informed from the ethical cues of the products, they do not automatically give it priority. Buying a socially responsible product or service often implies arbitration between a socially responsible cue and a utilitarian cue. In this communication, we propose to investigate the compatibility between solidarity and performance in consumer’s perceptions of brands.

Customer referral reward programs (CRPs) are an important and widespread marketing tool in various service industries. However, the effectiveness of CRPs is contingent on the success of the recommender–receiver interaction. This research focuses on reward schemes, that is, systems that involve payments from service providers to customers that help the provider acquire new customers. Specifically, the authors investigate situations in which the referral reward is split between recommender and referral receiver, whereby both parties negotiate how much of the referral reward each party receives. In studying referral-reward allocations the present research investigates an important issue regarding the effectiveness of CRPs in general and the recommender–receiver interaction in particular. Building on equity aversion models, the authors show that rewarding only the recommender brings about perceptions of unfairness on part of the referral receiver, resulting in disruptive behavior and inefficient referral processes. The results expand the existing theoretical assumption that CRPs are continuously controlled by firms and indicate that due to biases in fairness perceptions the interaction between recommender and referral receiver remains unpredictable and difficult to control for referring firms. However, results also reveal that tie strength cushions the effect of biased fairness perceptions on successful referral processes.

Given the difficulties in assessing and delivering acceptable service due to the varying degree of consumer service expectations, scholars have introduced the zone-of-tolerance (ZOT) concept to represent the range of expectation (desired-to-adequate) as an acceptable level of service quality (Zeithaml et al. 1993). The major objective of this research was to propose and empirically examine a theoretical model of BRIDAL-ZOT. Specifically, a number of antecedents of service expectations were expected to influence ZOT, which in turn, affected perceived service quality, satisfaction, and word of mouth (WOM). ZOT is the range of service performance a customer would consider satisfactory because it is bounded by the customer’s desired and adequate expectations of service quality (Zeithaml et al. 1993). According to Zeithaml et al. (1993), changes in the adequate expectations of service level may have caused ZOT to be either wider or narrower, given the relative stability of desired service level. That is, the customers with a wider ZOT tend to tolerate acceptable levels of service as compared to the customers with a narrower ZOT because they are likely to pay more attention to detect any errors that might occur in service performance. The 38-item scale measuring the antecedents of expectation levels based on Zeithaml et al.’s (1993) model of consumer expectations was pretested with 30 soon-to-be brides. Data were collected from 192 soon-to-be brides who had been to, at least, one bridal shopping retailer within the past 6 months. A series of multiple regressions, a paired-sample t-test, and a structural equation modeling technique were employed to test the hypothesized relationships. All measures, adopted from previous research, displayed acceptable reliability (≥0.70). Results revealed that customers’ past bridal shopping experience positively influenced both desired and adequate service expectations (β = .28** and β = .32**, respectively), whereas the explicit service promises given by bridal retailer only positively influenced desired service expectation (β = .19*). As expected, desired service quality expectation was significantly higher than adequate service quality expectation (t-value = 2.95**). Results also revealed that the BRIDAL-ZOT model explains that the differences between desired and adequate service expectations (ZOT) negatively influenced customers’ overall perceived service quality (γ = −0.25**, t-value = −2.88), which in turn, positively influenced satisfaction (β = 0.81***, t-value = 13.30). The results also were also in line with previous studies in that perceived service quality positively influenced satisfaction, which in turn, influenced word of mouth (Anderson 1998). Based on our findings, it is suggested that bridal retailers must provide positive shopping experiences to these customers because such experiences can create the carryover effects on the different levels of service expectations (desired versus adequate) when visiting a store in the future. As such, the soon-to-be brides can become demanding customers as their ZOT are narrower due to a high involvement nature of bridal products and their prior experiences. To gain a competitive advantage, the bridal stores should provide a superior service quality as this level of service will satisfy most customers and create positive marketing outcomes for a future business (e.g., positive WOM). A future study needs to replicate this BRIDAL-ZOT model with other retail industries (e.g., personalized services).References available upon request.

The recent economic downturn is causing consumers to examine their personal budgets with a critical eye as they endeavor to become more efficient in their spending. One means of increasing the efficiency of expenditures is for consumers to participate in the creation of the products they consume. Popularly depicted as do-it-yourself, academics are using the term prosumption to describe this trend. Its popularity is evident in the highly rated HGTV and DIY (do-it-yourself) networks and shows such as Income Property, Renovation Realities, and I Hate My Kitchen. The movement to prosumption is not insignificant as the global do-it-yourself market is expected to reach $716.2 billion by 2015 (Global Industry Analysts 2012). Because SDL suggests that all value is co-created, research that investigates the effect of prosumption on value creation. Specifically, firms are relying on consumers to “do-it-themselves” rather than to co-create.

This study examines customer co-production in a prolonged, complex, and negative service context—medication adherence in chronically ill individuals. We integrate services and medical perspectives to develop a novel theoretical framework of adherence as a nested system of co-production behaviors, characterized by temporal and scope dimensions. Utilizing a qualitative approach, our findings point to two key insights about co-production in the customer sphere. First, the enactment and form of regular-restricted, intermittent-intermediate, and irregular-expansive co-production behaviors are determined by the characteristics of the customer sphere—that is, co-production is contextualized. Second, the co-production system in the customer sphere is complex, and the different levels are interdependent. Our research contributes to the emerging literature on service co-production by elucidating the behaviors through which customers strive towards adherence. The identified co-production framework holds important implications for providers of prolonged and complex services and future research directions.

Imagine you are in a restaurant and your experience is either enhanced or diminished by the behavior of other customers within the same environment. To whom do you attribute your experience? When things go well the enjoyment of other customers creates or enhances a positive atmosphere within environment (Grayson and McNiell 2009; Yoshida and James 2010) and may increase the value a customer places on the service experience. The positive atmosphere and enhanced value the customer experiences is likely to be reflected in positive attitudes and feelings toward the firm and result in positive repurchase intentions (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy 2013) and positive word-of-mouth (Hooper et al. 2013). However, if other customers’ behavior is incompatible with the particular service or creates any sort of negative event, then the value the customer attaches to the service experience decreases (Tombs and McColl-Kennedy 2013) and often results in customers not wanting to go back to that establishment. Even worse than that they are likely to indulge in negative word-of-mouth (Huang et al. 2010) therefore dissuading others from going. These approach or avoidance behaviors are often the result of customers perceiving that the atmosphere of the service environment and subsequent enjoyable or dissatisfactory experiences are reflective of the overall service experience provided by the organization. This chapter examines the responses of customers when exposed the positive or negative behavior of other customers. Specifically it applies Attribution Theory (Weiner 1980, 1986) to explain how customers allocate blame for having their experience within a service environment disturbed (either positively or negatively) and what this blame does to service evaluations and repurchase intentions. We report on a qualitative study of regular restaurant patrons. The findings revealed that the attribution of blame for a disrupted service experience will vary, i.e., to the perpetrators (other customers), the organization and its staff, or even to the affected customer, depending on such factors as controllability, and perceived stability. These factors may be more stable and better predictors of customers’ reactions to disruption than the apparently shifting locus of causality. Conversely positive behavior of other customers appeared to be attributed not to the other customers but to the firm itself. This may be because when a customer is in a positive mood they perceive the elements of the servicescape are in harmony and as such look at the service environment more holistically. Whereas the disturbance caused by other customers may produce conflicting signals from the servicescape (positive things the firm does to attract the customer in the first place and the negative actions of others within that same environment) thus causing customers to be more analytical in an effort to resolve these apparent conflicts.References available upon request.

“Poverty is the worst kind of disease to have” is a literal translation of an African proverb. However, the ravages of poverty are not limited to Africa. Poverty is a world-wide problem that is being fought with tools such as economic aids to developing countries (Daud and Nor Azam Abdul 2012; Ekanayake and Dasha 2010), programs against world hunger (Mowbray 2007), and several other micro-finance programs (Halvorson-Quevedo 1991/1992). In this chapter, I argue for yet another tool in fighting poverty, using the principles of services marketing, religion, and an established church—the Catholic Church.

The main goal of this chapter is to broaden the extent of political tourism phenomenon in order to explain recent practices in Turkish political life theoretically. Very few researchers dealt with the non-monetary outputs of tourism which falls beyond the conventional economical value of it. Thus firstly, the political tourism and political tourist concepts were reviewed by introducing daily election meetings as a new type of political tourism and election meeting tourists as a new political tourist classification. Secondly, the pull factors for election tourism were indicated as solidarity, support (emotional and/or financial), nostalgic/patriotic/nationalistic reasons following the motivation list of Simone-Charteris and Boyd (2010). The other motivators such as the thrill of political violence or none of the attractions defined by Simone-Charteris and Boyd (2010) were found relevant with the Turkish phenomena. Besides meeting areas can be introduced as attractions.References available upon request.

This research investigates how people experience happiness via experiential purchases and explains the mechanisms of how willingness-to-share, materialism and life satisfaction affect happiness. Interpersonal communication is important. As consumers often tell others about their travel experiences (e.g. hotels, attractions or restaurants), do the “talkable” characteristics of tourism make a difference in advancing happiness? Prior research has shown that higher well-being is associated with spending less time alone and more time talking to others. By using naturalistic observation, this research shows that happy and unhappy people differ in the amount of small talk and substantive conversations they participate in. By measuring the extent to which consumers are willing to share their purchase information with others, we provide insight into why tourism provides more happiness through experiential rather than material purchases.Two studies which asked people to recall or imagine happy tourism experiences revealed a meaningful distinction between experiential and material purchases. The results of Study 1 show that people’s higher willingness-to-share share their experiences explains why experiential purchases elicit greater happiness than material purchases. That experiential purchases elicit greater happiness than material purchases is demonstrated by people's higher willingness to share their experiences (Study 1). For individuals who are high in materialism, the effect of experiential purchases on greater happiness is reduced. The results of Study 2 reveal that consumers gain more happiness by participating in non-commission-based package tours than in commission-based package tours. For individuals who have high life satisfaction, the effect is reduced. Together, these findings help better understand the interplay across experiential (vs. material) purchases, materialism, and life satisfaction in advancing tourism happiness.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been an important research area for more than three decades, and has evolved from executives’ idiosyncratic philanthropic activities to widespread acceptance as a valuable component of stakeholder management and incorporation into strategic performance models (Liu et al. 2014). As such, this study refers to CSR performance as customer perceptions of a firm's efforts in fulfilling its obligations toward a society and its stakeholders, rather than the actual CSR activities that a firm implements.

The tourism industry is widely recognized for its prominent role to foster economic development, wealth creation, and employment opportunities in modern economies (Lee and Chang 2008; WTTC 2013; OMT 2014). In this sense, during the last 5 years the tourism sector has experienced a higher growth than other economic sectors (OMT 2014; sectors (OMT 2014; sectors (OMT 2014; sectors (OMT 2014; WTTC 2013). The cross-sectorial nature of tourism-related activities enhances this effect and reinforces the vision of tourism industry as an engine for global economic recovery (Vellas 2011).In order to guarantee its future competitiveness, tourism firms experiment an increasing pressure to innovate (Edvardsson et al. 2013; Ernst and Young 2013; Ordanini et al. 2014; Salunke et al. 2013; Thomas and Wood 2014). Several studies have analyzed the determinants of successful service innovation although empirical evidence in the tourism industry is still scarce (Kuester et al. 2013; Ottenbacher et al. 2006, 2010; Papastathopoulou and Hultink 2012). Similarly, there is a lack of research about the potential impact of organization-level characteristics in the presence of project-level determinants for new service success (Edvardsson et al. 2013; Melton and Hartline 2010; Ordanini et al. 2014).Accordingly, using a sample of Spanish hotels, this study analyzes the impact of the hotel’s innovativeness and market orientation (Papastathopoulou and Hultink 2012) on a key driver of service innovation performance, the new service added value (Kuester et al. 2013; Ordanini et al. 2014); as well as how these effects translate to the new service performance. In this way, this research seeks to contribute to our understanding of how organizational factors and project-level factors favor new service success.Results indicate that the hotel’s market orientation exerts a direct, positive effect on the new service added value, and that fully mediates the relationship between the hotel’s innovativeness and the new service added value. This finding suggests that in the hotel industry an innovative culture is not enough to provide added value from the customers’ perspective and that, therefore, hotels need to incorporate the market insights provided by a market-oriented behavior. The research also confirms that the new service added value favors its performance at a customer level (satisfaction, improved hotel’s image, and leadership among customers) and a market level (sales, market assessment, profitability).References available upon request.

The main aim of this chapter is to explore the existence of a bond that tied together the satisfaction of a cultural heritage’ visitors (after the experience of the technological visits), their propensity towards the word-of-mouth and their intention to discover the local territory in which the cultural attraction is located. To achieve this purpose, a theoretical review was carried out, in order to analyze the existing literature on cultural tourism and relative flows, visitors’ satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and destination management. Nowadays, the cultural visit is changing and a wide number of sites provide to their customers the possibility to experiment a “technological visit.” Starting from the results of the literature analysis, a theoretical model was developed with the following objectives: (a) detecting the main aspects that impact on the visitors’ satisfaction; (b) understanding the relation between the visitors’ satisfaction and the word-of-mouth (WOM) inherent to a cultural site; (c) identifying the existence of positive relation between the WOM and the willingness to come back to discover the local territory. Many authors studied the factors that affect visitors’ satisfaction, but only few researches have been oriented to deep analyze the specific role played by the technological applications along the cultural path. In addition, the literature on cultural tourism shows a lack in the analysis of the tourists’ satisfaction ability to generate a positive WOM, in turn able to increase the attractiveness of the territory in an important way. To verify the developed model, a survey on the visitors of the Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri was carried out. The presented cultural site is part of the Cultural and Technology District (CTD) of Lazio region and providing the possibility to experiment a technological visit, allows the study of this new feature on visitors’ satisfaction. The model was test by using a structural equations modeling (SEM).

Research on the effect of fans’ psychological response to pop-culture destination is arguably limited (Lee et al. 2008). To develop a better understanding of fans’ psychological response to pop-culture destination and its relation to their post behaviors, this study expanded self-expansion theory to the existing place attachment framework to examine the relationships between self-expansion, fandom, recollection, place attachment, and post-behavioral intentions. Furthermore, this study argues that place attachment as a key mediates the relationship between fandom and recollection. The survey population were international tourists who are interested in or favor Chinese pop-culture. To represent Chinese pop-culture, particular Chinese pop-stars and their fans were sampled. One-to-one interview method was used to investigate more detailed information from the fans. Nine hundred copies of the questionnaires were used in the survey, and a total of 768 questionnaires were collected during on-site data collection. This study empirically demonstrated that fans and tourists respond to pop-culture tourism emotionally and thus develop further behavioral intentions. This study also examined the bridge created by place attachment and memory recall as it occurs in the cognitive process. The relationship between fandom and post-behavioral intentions is shown.

Although several scholars have examined a possible relation between international tourism flow and international trade and confirmed that wine tourism creates marketing opportunities to sell products, most have carried out quantitative research. Therefore, there is a lack of exploratory and qualitative research. Moreover, it is also necessary to study why some wine producers internationalize suddenly after being local-market oriented for decades (become born-again globals/-internationals) and why they experience difficulties in internationalization as such firms have received less attention in internationalization literature. This study contributes toward closing these gaps and aims to examine the influence of international tourism on the internationalization process of Italian SMEs producing Bianchello del Metauro wine.

For destinations to compete in a context of global competition, they rely on their destination image as a way to position themselves and resonate with prospective visitors. The image of the destination is created in part through the identity of the community. Despite longstanding efforts to move community-based initiatives more to the centre of tourism planning (Hall 2008; Jamal and Getz 1995; Murphy 1985), research on community involvement in tourism activities can often result in pessimistic conclusions. Concerns are usually centred on efforts to involve communities which are driven by multinational corporations and, as such, are largely top-down processes. In these cases, only lip service is paid to involving local residents in planning and as such community involvement may suffer from tokenism. Alternatively, doubt is also placed on the ability of communities to make a valuable contribution (Aas et al. 2005; Campbell 1999; Simmons 1994) or the lack of cohesion within communities (Burns 2004; Simpson 2008). Hamilton and Alexander (2013) suggest that success can be achieved through a more organic co-created approach, where communities are given the freedom to develop their own identities.This study focuses on a case study of a town in the highlands of Scotland—Pitlochry. Pitlochry is a small town located on the River Tummel within the Perth and Kinross county, and with a population of approximately 2500 the town remains reliant on the income generated by tourism. In line with well-established case study methods and procedures (Yin 2003), multiple methods of data collection were utilised including interviews, observation, and documentary analysis. In-depth interviews were undertaken with residents of the community. Interview participants were selected on the basis of their involvement in a wide range of tourism activities with varying degrees of community involvement. Participant and non-participant observation at various tourist attractions and sites and documentary analysis (including analysis of photographs) were also conducted. Four overall themes were identified within the data collection: the Pitlochry brand, community engagement, motivations, and funding. The Pitlochry brand explored the community-driven promotion of the destination. Community engagement consisted of four sub-themes: taking ownership, free riders, surrogate council, and succession planning. Motivations consisted of two sub-themes: satisfaction and business success. Funding revolved around the need to compete for grants and fundraise to ensure the projects could continue. All of these themes revolved around the need to enhance the beauty and liveability of the town, and a benefit of this is the increased visitation. Community involvement in destination branding presents a paradox. Our case suggests that on the one hand community involvement can create many benefits for a community including increased tourism visits; increased satisfaction of residents and visitors and; a more focussed branding effort created through a bottom-up process. However, community involvement is not without sacrifices particularly, in our case, considerable time and effort by a few committed individuals. There is also evidence here of both free rider, funding and sustainability problems which may dissuade other communities from embarking on similar programmes. Our study suggests that value can be gained by empowering smaller communities to take increased ownership of destination branding but handing over complete control may lead to sustainability problems and lead to a lack of continuity.References available upon request.

This study assesses the financial effects of spectacular “cruise failures” and will, on the basis of this assessment, make macro and micro policy recommendations. The macro policies will involve public policy in general while the micro policies involve the individual companies.

In order to survive in the current customer-driven market economy, companies should continuously strive for enhancing customer satisfaction through offering high-quality services. The airport industry constitutes no exception. Due to the specific, multicultural nature of this industry, in which hundreds of passengers coming from different nations interact and experience the same airport services, managers should dedicate considerable effort towards improving the service quality provided to them. In the tourism literature, the important role that different cultures play when exploring service quality or satisfaction issues has gained increased support. Specifically, it has been proven that customers from different countries of origin tend to evaluate differently the service quality they receive. However, these issues are rather unexplored in the international airport environment. The purpose of this chapter is to address this gap in the literature. Drawing data from 911 passengers departing from Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy (Aeroporti di Roma), the aims of this study are (1) to explore the underlying dimensions of airport service quality and (2) to identify potential differences in perceptions of Italian passengers and those of other nationalities. Results indicate that Italian air travelers tend to under-value the service quality provided to them by their homeland’s airport compared to their foreign counterparts.

This chapter explores the ways in which individuals seek out consumption experiences that are driven by pleasure and which connect with a sense of self-identity. We theorize the experience of pleasure stemming from ethical consumption practices as “hedonic ethics”; a particular type of hedonic experience inspired by ethically driven consumption practices. Building on Soper’s theory of Alternative Hedonism, we investigate the notion of hedonic ethics in a participant-defined “ethical” tourism context. We employ a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological approach, which concentrates on individuals’ subjective experiences as part of their lifeword, their meaning, and how they make sense of them. The findings provide detailed insight into the role emotion plays in the process of self-verification. The self-conscious emotions of pride, both positive and negative (i.e., hubris), and disgust are highlighted as significant. Implications for marketing research and practice are outlined.

Internet presents a special channel in the personal process of finding the touristic information, the formation of an individual opinion, and the communication of it to others. The tourists can find the information necessary for their travel needs, using a wide range of Internet tools like search engines (mainly Google), destination management systems (such as visitbritain.com), social networks and Web 2.0 portals (such as Tripadvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Ebookers, HolydayCheck, Orkut), price comparison websites (such as Expedia, Kelkoo, and also Trivago), photo sharing sites (like Flickr), software applications for tourist mobile phones, gps, Iphone app (like Foursquare), interactive guides (as Tripwolf), Q&A sites (i.e., Traveller and Mygola). In particular the world of social networks provides essential tools in the information and feedbacks exchange. Web 2.0 is, therefore, the place where it is now possible to interchange travel opinions and experiences and travel portals promote the formation of consumers communities with a relevant amount of user-generated contents (sharing of information). The social networking tools have been joined (canceling partially their effectiveness) by intermediaries tools, such as travel agencies, tour operators, and hotels social networks channels.

Senior tourists represent an attractive target for the wellness industry. Despite the diversifying needs in the senior market, the tourism and hospitality literature has only recently started to investigate the importance of hotel attributes for this specific target. In particular, very few studies have explored the importance of hotel attributes for senior tourists involved in wellness tourism activities. Hence, the aim of this study is twofold. First, it intends to explore the importance of basic hotel attributes according to senior tourists. Second, it aims to identify the underlying dimensions of those hotel attributes.A quantitative study was conducted on a sample of 200 senior tourists at hot spring hotels located in Italy, a European country with a high proportion of senior residents. The findings reveal that the most important attributes are the personnel’s friendliness and kindness, efficiency, reactivity, and the presence of a doctor at the hotel. In addition, four dimensions of hotel attributes emerged: senior-friendly facilities; customer care; spa facilities; servicescape. The results allow interesting theoretical and marketing contributions.

Research on the influence of a product’s country-of-origin (COO) on consumers has been a very active field for many years (Usunier 2006), and many studies have claimed the existence of such effects (Pharr 2005). Nevertheless, some academics more recently suggested a decreasing interest in products’ COO by consumers, and raised questions on the actual strength of this influence (Samiee 2011; Samiee et al. 2005; Usunier 2002).