Marketing Opportunities and Challenges in a Changing Global Marketplace

Given the increasing attention to building customer–brand relationships within online brand communities (OBC) in social media, this study examines the link between customer engagement (CE) and customer sharing behaviours across the USA and China. This study draws upon the perspective of CE to investigate how the customer–brand relationship within the OBC affects sharing behavioural intentions under different levels of perceived OBC interactivity and innovativeness intensity.Based on a sample of 1259 OBC followers (595 US and 664 Chinese) respondents in two different social media platforms (Facebook and Weibo), hierarchical moderated regression analyses reveal that while the relationship seems straightforward, its impact is more nuanced across country markets and platforms. Our results indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between CE and sharing behaviours, indicating there is a limit to the beneficial effect of CE. However, we consider two moderators that may influence the nonlinear relationship between CE and sharing behaviours which show that these moderating effects vary across countries. Within the US context (OBC in Facebook social media platform), the results show that perceived OBC innovativeness mitigates the U-shape effect and becomes a linear relationship. Further, considering perceived OBC interactivity, there still exists an inverted U-shaped effect although the nonlinear effect becomes lessened. Within the China context (OBC in Weibo social media platform), the moderators also impact the inverted U-shape effect, but when considering the increasing effect of perceived OBC innovativeness or perceived OBC interactivity, the inverted U-shape between CE and sharing behaviours becomes more pronounced.These results suggest that social media brand managers in the USA can increase perceived OBC interactivity and perceived OBC innovativeness in order to reduce the negative impact of CE on sharing behaviours, whereas in China, social media brand managers should be mindful of heightened perceived OBC interactivity and perceived OBC innovativeness levels to strengthen the negative impact of CE on sharing behaviours. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Within social media, projections of identities can be deceiving and differ markedly from reality. Without realising the impact of social media on their future career, students regularly project their current student identities on various social platforms. Despite the rapid increase, potential impact of social media and high tendency of younger people to use social media, this area lacks in empirically driven theory (Benson et al. 2014).This study therefore aims to address the research gap stated in the studies conducted by Casatander and Camacho (2012) and Jackson and Wilton (2016) by exploring the impact of social media on students’ digital identities in a higher education context. The author conducted 33 “talk and draw” interviews which lasted 45 min on average with final year students. This visual research technique provided the respondents with an alternative way to express and communicate their views around their digital identities which might be difficult to articulate in words (Theron et al. 2011).In line with the past studies (Linn et al. 2017; Woodley and Silversti 2013) there were major discrepancies between students’ digital identities and their future career aspirations. This was attributed to parents’ involvement in picking the professions for their children on the basis of high income. Students were aware of their digital prints on some occasions; however, this awareness did not create any positive impact on shaping their digital identities in contrast to Camacaho et al. (2012) study. Further, social media was identified as an overwhelming tool which can give rise to various uncertainties in relation to students’ future careers. For example, they demonstrated cognitive dissonance by portraying themselves as tech savvy without considering the bigger picture of creating their own digital prints which can be potentially looked at by their future employers.This study contributes to the identity formation literature through social media and has implications for Higher Education sector. The discussion concludes that universities must confront social media challenges as part of the educational experience for the development of a responsible and professional ethical digital citizenry. Future research is needed to assess the ways which can positively influence students to shape their digital identities to increase their employability opportunities.

This research offers a dynamic perspective on the evolution and use of marketing models through a content analysis of articles published in the top five marketing journals from 1990 to 2017: Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), Marketing Science (MS), and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Research (JAMS). Three independent researchers classified articles by their content (conceptual, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed), type of data source (experiment, survey, and observation), type of model (choice, hazard, panel data, nonlinear, theoretic, etc.), and subject (consumer behavior, research methodology, channels of distribution, etc.). The results of the analysis show that the number of studies per article has been steadily increasing in JCR (from 1 in 1990 to 5 in 2017), JM and JMR (from 1 in 1990 to 2 in 2017), less so in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (from 1 in 1990 to 1.5 in 2017), and no change taking place in Marketing Science. In methodological terms, conceptual and survey research exhibit a declining trend whereas experimental and observational research is increasing. This study looks at changes in the adoption of model types. Our findings reveal that researchers have been using simple linear models less with the ratio of linear regression models/more complex models being 50/50 in 1990 and 30/70 in 2017. The top five frequently used modeling methods in marketing (by percent of studies) include linear regression, choice, theoretical, multivariate, and structural equation models. However, the use of theoretical, multivariate, and structural equation models has been declining, while the use of hierarchical linear, dynamic, panel data models has been increasing. We believe that the rise of the latter models can be attributed to the increased availability of time-series cross-sectional data. We also find some journal-specific preferences for particular models. Our research sheds light on the interplay of research methods and the trends in model types in the top five marketing journals as well as provides direction for future research.

Qualitative methods of analysis are concerned with transforming and interpreting data to capture and understand the complexities of the social world (Edwards and Weller 2012). However, the question that has preoccupied many qualitative researchers is how can we know, and how can we come to know, others who are a part of this social world (Doucet and Mauthner 2008).The Listening Guide (LG) is a feminist, qualitative method developed by Brown et al. (1989) to enable researchers to hear how respondents uniquely make meaning of their social world (Woodcock 2005). It focuses on reconstructing the holistic meaning of the stories that people tell about themselves (Edwards and Weller 2012). I-poems are a fundamental component of the Listening Guide and centre on the relationship between the process of “selfing” (i.e., the activity of being a self) identified primarily through the use of “I” and knowing (Debold 1990). In I-poems, the collection of personal pronouns and the verbs/actions that go with them are presented in a format similar to that of a contemporary poem. I-poems have been recognised as an emergent method in social research (Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2006), and although the method has been extensively used by researchers in the field of psychology and sociology, only a small number of marketers have adopted this method (see for example Woodruffe-Burton and Brown 2015).In this paper we provide an introduction to this innovative method and detail its application in a study conducted on the attitude young girls have to money. At conference we will share our findings and reflect on the contribution and insights that the use of I-poems can make in marketing by comparing and contrasting the findings from a thematic analysis with that using LG and I-poems. We will argue for the wider adoption of I-poems by fellow marketing academics.

In today’s business environment, companies face more challenges and competitions since the consumers have a voice in the business environment, and companies have to find out new ways to reach consumers, whereas consumers, in the current environment, could serve as collaborators, communicators, or competitors according to their interests (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2009). Therefore, customer value co-creation concept is adopted because it is a path to collaborate with consumers as well as to meet companies’ economic benefits (Vargo and Lusch 2004). In order to collaborate with customers, they listen to their brand communities and ask questions to customers in order to test their offerings (Füller et al. 2008; Gouillart 2014; Kozinets 2010; Kozinets et al. 2008). However, the customer’s willingness to co-create may have different reasons, such as social, hedonic, and ethical reasons (Carù and Cova 2015; Schau et al. 2009). In this connection, the co-creation process here is understood as a means to emphasize the social and ethical aspects, with consumers embracing the need to fulfil a social and ethical function in society. It means that consumers are increasingly seeking solutions to their own concerns and they are interested in creating a better world, guided by their moral values when making buying decisions (e.g., Hollenbeck and Zinkhan 2010). However, there is a lack of study on ethical motives such as environmental and social sustainability. Hence, this paper aims to find out whether consumer’s willingness to co-create may be affected by companies’ social and environmental practices. In this study, the social and exchange theory was applied (Thibaut and Kelley 1959). In order to measure cause-end-effect relationship between sustainability practices and willingness to co-create (Thomas 2011), a survey was conducted (n = 454) and respondents assessed environmental and social sustainability perceptions, and their willingness to co-create. Findings show that both environmental and social sustainability practices of companies have positive effects on consumers’ willingness to co-create.

We are interrupted constantly in everyday life. These interruptions are usually considered a nuisance. For example, being interrupted during work normally lowers performance (Katidioti et al. 2016). But when it comes to decision-making, interruptions sometimes have counter-intuitive effects. After an interruption, for example, consumers may make better decisions (Dijksterhuis 2004). While previous research on interruptions focuses on alternative selection, this paper looks at downstream variables and examines the effect of interruptions on consumers’ subjective perceptions. When making a purchase decision, in reality, there is often no right or wrong. Especially when it comes to complex decisions like buying a car or choosing a holiday, consumers are usually confronted with many alternatives and various characteristics. The quality of such decisions cannot be judged from a normative perspective. Consequently, we test whether unconscious thinking can increase the quality of a decision from a subjective point of view. Accordingly, we investigate whether an interruption in the decision-making process can increase decision satisfaction and also affect more behavioral outcomes like willingness to pay for the chosen alternative and purchase intention for an add-on that is related to the product.In line with Dijksterhuis (2004), we assume that during an interruption, participants think unconsciously about their choice. We hypothesize that a more organized integration of information, which occurs when people engage in unconscious thinking, leads to a more correct weighting of the given information and thus enhances decision satisfaction. The specific type of information processing could reinforce this effect. We hypothesize that an instruction to form an overall impression increases the integration of information, compared to an instruction to focus on details. Accordingly, we expect an interaction between unconscious thinking that occurs during an interruption and an instruction to form an overall impression.To test our hypotheses, we conducted a 2 (instruction: “form an overall impression” vs. “focus on details”) × 3 (interruption: interruption, thinking, immediate decision) experiment using a between-subject design. In an online experiment, participants had to choose between two package holidays. The alternatives differed slightly in various characteristics but were very similar overall, taking into account all information available. In this manner, we created a realistic situation without a preset correct choice.We did not find the hypothesized effects in our data. Thus, our results are not consistent with the findings of Dijksterhuis (2004). Further research is underway to find potential moderators which may have influenced the findings.

Counterfeited luxury goods have increasingly become an economic and social problem worldwide. Buying counterfeits is a common act for many consumers, and the consumption of counterfeited luxury goods has shown an increasing trend. Considering negative effects associated with counterfeiting, how to encourage consumers to buy authentic products has increasingly become an important but challenging issue. Given the significance of the topic, we can find two things. The first thing is that except for Wilcox et al. (2009), socio-psychological motivation associated with counterfeit consumption is under-researched. The second thing is that most of previous studies overlook the importance of theory in explaining the motive behind purchasing counterfeits. To address the above gap, this paper employs Social Comparison Theory to examine the influence of envy (categorized as malicious envy and benign envy), which is a social-psychological aspect, on consumers’ counterfeit/genuine brand buying behaviors. Envy emanates from an upward social comparison, which is a basic constituent of human cognition (Lange and Crusius 2015). Malicious envy and benign envy can be distinguished based on the consumers’ feelings, thoughts, behavior, and motivations. Benign envy induces a moving-up motivation designed to improve one’s current position, whereas malicious envy leads to a pulling-down motivation designed to damage the position of the superior other. In this paper, we adopt this conceptualization of envy and then we make several novel contributions. First, ours is the first empirical effort in terms of employing envy as a socio-psychological driver to explain the reason why a group of consumers turn to purchase counterfeited luxury products instead of authentic luxury products to fulfill their needs. We found that the two dimensions of envy work differently to affect people’s consumption behavior in terms of choosing either genuine luxury products or counterfeit luxury products. Specifically, while benign envy drives genuine luxury product purchase, malicious envy drives counterfeited luxury product purchase. We suggest that the type of envy can also moderate the relationship between luxury product consumption behavior and personal well-being. What we found is that the well-being of people who are benignly envious is more likely to be affected by their choice of genuine luxury products or counterfeit luxury products in comparison with that of maliciously envious people. Second, this paper makes theoretical contributions by employing Social Comparison Theory to illustrate the motivation behind counterfeit consumption behavior. Third, previous researchers are largely focused on what antecedents can contribute to counterfeit purchase intention. They treat counterfeit consumption as a dependent variable. However, in this paper, we also regard counterfeit consumption as an independent variable that can affect personal well-being. Because personal well-being is an important indicator to gauge consumer satisfaction toward the good, this study can provide luxury brand companies with more insights.

In fear of the online competition and increasingly demanding customers, retailers strive for their competitive edge through a great retail experience. Opposed to the consequent anonymity and interchangeability in retail stands the consumer need for individualization as an expression of personal appreciation and a unique self. While consumers are already used to a personalized shopping experience in online environments, a personalization in brick-and-mortar retail is still in its infancy. Supported by recent technological advancements, it is not surprising that retailers put great efforts into equipping their stores with smart technology that enables personalization. In contrast to personalization online (Aguirre et al. 2015) and traditional personalization in brick-and-mortar retail through face-to-face encounters with store employees (Gwinner et al. 2005), in-store personalization enabled and conducted by technology is an unexplored phenomenon.As research points out that shopper-facing in-store technology should answer to actual consumers’ expectations and preferences (Pantano and Viassone 2014), this paper aims to elicit implication-relevant consumer concerns and expectations regarding personalization in brick-and-mortar retail. Identifying consumers’ expectations and concerns is essential to meet their future preferences, proactively address anxieties, and thereby overcome innovation rejection. This study is further guided by the question of whether the type of technology by which the personalization is conducted impacts consumers’ reactions.First results based on an exploratory qualitative study indicate that consumers expect technology-mediated personalization (TMP) to have a positive impact on their future shopping experiences by offering greater convenience and depending on the shopping mission, inspiration, or efficiency. In particular, the majority of participants expect the content to be context-specific, thus being based on their actual in-store behavior. While most respondents would prefer discreet messages on retailer-owned devices, only a few would favor receiving messages on their own smartphone. The main concern raised by the respondents is the fear of being watched by others. Privacy concerns towards other customers seem to surpass privacy concerns towards the retailer. We plan on empirically testing the proposed relationships in a lab as well as a field experiment. Further, we intend to extend the knowledge on personalization in offline retail by taking novel technological opportunities into account. Specifically, we take a consumer perspective and identify expectations and concerns in regard to the content of the personalized message as well as the medium over which it is transmitted. In addition, we contribute to retailing literature by identifying novel ways to address consumers’ in-store with innovative and interactive shopper-facing technology. Implications to theory as well as practice are discussed.

In this consumption-driven economy, consumers and companies, and by extension employees, must collaborate to ensure that consumption activities would contribute to societal well-being. Social responsibility is defined as stakeholders’ values, expectations, and practices that emphasize the responsibility of individuals as a member in society (Aguinis and Glavas 2011; Pigor and Rockenbach 2016). Corporate social responsibility refers to “obligations to take action to protect and improve both the welfare of society as a whole and the interest of organizations” (Davis and Blomstrom 1975: 6). By the same token, consumer social responsibility refers to consumer decisions which are driven by socially responsible motives rather than the individual’s own self-interest (Devinney et al. 2010; Öberseder et al. 2011). While the goal of social responsibility is to improve societal well-being, extant socially responsibility research has identified positive consequences of such actions for both consumers and companies as well. On the one hand, companies would be perceived as more trustworthy and in turn enhance evaluation of their product quality and brand image (Dacin and Brown 1997; Klein and Dawar 2004; Smith et al 1994). On the other hand, consumers would gain a better sense of self and improve self-image through moral licensing (Khan and Dhar 2006; Mazar and Zhong 2010).In this special session, the speakers examine social responsibility through the consumer, employee, and management lens. In doing so, we hope to extend our understanding of social responsibility with respect to its theoretical conceptualization and underpinnings as well as social and managerial implications. Moreover, we address some of the unanswered questions in this field of research. We first examine how consumers’ moral emotions (i.e., guilt and shame) may influence consumers’ decision towards socially responsible consumption choices. In this regard, it illuminates an affective mechanism through which consumers decide on whether or not to make socially responsible consumption. While both guilt and shame are negative affects, our study found that they have divergent effects on socially responsible consumption. Next, we propose a double mediation model that delineates how company’s corporate social responsibility climate may attenuate employee cynicism and enhance work meaning which would turn employees into brand ambassadors. As such, it extends extant corporate social responsibility research, which looked at employees’ affective commitment to and identification with the organization, to show that corporate social responsibility can enhance work experience for individuals. Finally, we consider the philosophical roots of corporate social responsibility though Confucianism, a Chinese philosophy that has been widely adopted in cultural and management research. Building on brand personality literature, this paper suggests that a socially responsible corporation can be personified as an individual who possesses virtuous qualities and puts others’ interest in front of self-interest.

Human activities are undeniably the cause of the abnormal climate change that has occurred in recent decades. Many of our daily habits cause serious harm to the environment (e.g., overuse of disposable products). Even though consumers understand that such a lifestyle is essentially in violation of our societal standards, very few will take the actions to correct it. We speculate that consumer decisions to correct their existing life habits depend on the emotions they experience in relation to an irresponsible lifestyle. Psychology research suggests that when people commit wrongdoing (i.e., behaviors that are in violation of moral or societal standards), they will feel guilty. There is a high tendency for a guilt-laden person to make amends and correct the wrongdoing. Therefore, guilt is commonly referred to as a moral emotion. Interestingly, another moral emotion, shame, coexists with guilt in most situations but can lead to divergent behavioral consequences by making the person more inclined to escape from the problem. We speculate that the divergence is rooted in a critical difference between the experience of guilt and shame. Guilt involves a negative evaluation of a specific behavior (i.e., “What I did is not environmentally friendly”), while shame tends to result from a negative evaluation of the global self (i.e., “I’m such a non-environmentally friendly person”). Therefore, shame has negative implications about the self. If this is the case, we predict that in situations where shame predominates, consumers will perceive it to be more difficult to improve the problem as it involves changing a defective self. As a result, consumers are less likely to correct their existing lifestyle. In our experiment, we induced feelings of guilt and shame by using bogus feedback about the environmental impact of one’s existing lifestyle (e.g., very high resource demand). The results show that a negative self-evaluation associated with shame leads to a lower intention to correct one’s existing lifestyle. The effect is mediated by the perceived difficulty in improving the problem.

This paper aims to develop an alternative model based on traditional Chinese Confucius ideologies and normative ethics that is different from existing strategic orientations. The philosophy of Confucius emphasizes the wholehearted social responsibility of a “Junzi,” the ideal image of a holy man in Confucianism, who always undertakes to behave righteously in all situations. Analogous to the popular marketing concept and the associated strategic marketing orientation concept, we define our Junzi concept as a business philosophy and Junzi orientation as the organizational behavior involved in the implementation of the guiding philosophy.Based on in-depth interviews with experienced Chinese business managers together with a comprehensive review of the existing literature, Junzi orientation is defined as a multidimensional behavioral construct made up of five dimensions: (1) Ren—benevolence or humaneness: Ren is the extent to which the company attempts to care about and satisfy the needs of its stakeholders; (2) Yi—appropriateness or righteousness: Yi is the extent to which the company acts in a righteousness manner and undertakes to do so at all costs; (3) Li—propriety or harmonious differentiation: Li is the extent to which the company strives to look for a harmonious relationship with its stakeholders and keeps the balance between conflicting needs of stakeholders to achieve a win-win outcome for all stakeholders; (4) Zhi—wisdom or knowledge management: Zhi is the extent to which the company recognizes the importance of learning and long-term vision, and the ability to see things as they truly are; (5) Xin—integrity or trustworthiness: Xin is the extent to which the company acts in an honest and trustworthy manner.A 30-item scale was developed based on the expert panel and a pilot study with MBA and MSc students in Hong Kong. The scale and other outcome measurements were mailed to 2760 firms in different industries in Hong Kong. The sample frame was obtained from the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, the oldest and largest nonprofit association representing all firms in Hong Kong. Four hundred and twenty-three questionnaires were collected (after two waves of mail and one wave of telephone reminder), representing a response rate of 15.3%. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, and the scale was found to be reliable and valid. The data also support that Junzi orientation has a positive influence on company performance.

Recent marketing management research, such as internal marketing (e.g., Berry et al. 1976), the service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch 2008), and the service-profit chain (e.g., Homburg et al. 2009), has acknowledged the value employees have to a company either as an operant resource (Constanin and Lusch 1994) or even as an internal customer (Wieseke et al. 2009). This suggests that consumers are not the only target for company’s marketing efforts and that more attention should be paid to understanding employees in order to achieve desirable outcomes.Cynicism is often examined as consumer resistance against company’s initiatives and actions out of the mistrust for its motives (Kanter 1988). Cynical consumers may become angry and bitter at companies (Helm 2004), and these negative affects may escalate to the detrimental actions such as spreading negative word of mouth and boycotts (DeCarlo 2005; Laczniak et al. 2001). In any case, consumer cynicism would have undesirable impacts on the company and its brand image (Odou and de Pechpeyrou 2011). Consequently, the impacts of employee cynicism towards the company cannot be overlooked. For this reason, the current research examines employee cynicism, in particular, how specific organizational climates (i.e., corporate social responsibility and servant leadership) can help reduce cynicism towards the company.Extant consumer research has long established that consumer make purchases not just based on functionality and utility, products are also purchased for more personal reasons such as symbolic meaning of status and achievement as well as a sense of social belonging (e.g., Ferraro et al. 2011). By the same token, employees view their work as a means to earn a living, but it also gives individuals a sense of achievement and a sense of communitas through exchanges with their supervisors, peers, and colleagues. That is to say, work would also serve as a means to earn respect and to demonstrate self-worth to others (Fineman 1983). Work meaning is conceptualized as the individuals’ understanding of the purpose of their work or what they believe is achieved in their work (Wrzesniewski and Dutton 2001). The current research proposes that work meaning can be cultivated via specific organizational climates (i.e., corporate social responsibility and servant leadership) and can increase perceived work meaning.Taken together, this study will investigate the chain effects of CSR climate, servant leadership climate, employee cynicism, and work meaning on an important marketing outcome—brand citizenship behaviors (i.e., extra-role behaviors congruent with the company’s brand values to strengthen brand identity; Burmann and Zeplin 2005; Burmann et al. 2008). In order to test the proposed theoretical model, a multilevel research design is deployed. CSR climate and servant leadership climate are team-level constructs, and work meaning and employee cynicism are individual-level constructs.

One of the most important premises in the field of marketing is the satisfaction of consumer needs and desires (Kotler and Armstrong 2010). While an employee’s capacity to attend to customer desires has always been critical to organization’s competitiveness, consumers of today expect companies to meet their customized requests like never before (Chandler and Lusch 2015). Considering this premise, over the last decade a body of literature has focused on understanding how to increase employee capacity to attend consumers’ desires (Kearney et al. 2017). This research explores the consequences to managers’ willful non-compliance with consumers’ desires. We propose that if consumers judge the producer as having high (low) expertise, the non-compliance will increase (decrease) consumers’ perception of how much effort was dedicated to product creation, thus increasing (decreasing) product evaluation and willingness to pay. We test the proposed intuition with three studies.In Study 1 participants (N = 107; Mage = 35.33, 48.6% female) were randomly assigned to two scenarios following their modification of a dish component request: “She tells you that the change can affect the dish integrity because all dishes are extensively and carefully though by the chef. She apologizes and tells you that the restaurant can’t do the changes [She tells you that if you want she will manage to do it].” Participants who read the non-compliance scenario judged the food as tastier (Mnon-compliance = 7.57 vs. Mcompliance = 6.98, F(1,105) = 9.458, p < 0.01) and were willing to pay more for the same (Mnon-compliance = 35.91 vs. Mcompliance = 27.00, F(1,105) = 5.866, p < 0.05) in comparison to consumers who read the compliance scenario.Study 2 replicates our findings but also shows that the effect of non-compliance is dependent on producer expertise. Specifically, when the producer had low expertise, the non-compliance decreased taste inferences (Mnon-compliance = 6.73 vs. Mcompliance = 7.35, F(1,175) = 4.61, p < 0.05) and did not influence willingness to pay (Mnon-compliance = 24.02 vs. Mcompliance = 21.71, F(1,166) = 0.56, p > 0.1). However, when the chef had high expertise, non-compliance increased taste inferences (Mnon-compliance = 8.13 vs. Mcompliance = 7.52, F(1,175) = 4.55, p < 0.05) and willingness to pay (Mnon-compliance = 32.42 vs. Mcompliance = 27.32, F(1,166) = 4.14, p < 0.05). Study 3 shows the same pattern on effect from non-compliance in a different context, fashion industry.This research has several contributions. First, we show that employees’ ability to translate the production process is important beyond attending consumer requests. We discuss the practical implications for adopting a no-substitution policy. Managers should consider adopting the no-substitution policy if they believe substitution could compromise the value of their product.

It has long been established that marketing science benefits from borrowing theories from other disciplines (Alderson 1957). One such organization theory that can inform marketing studies is institutional theory (Hult 2011). This study provides a critical review of marketing articles that draw on institutional theory as a theoretical lens and are published in top marketing journals. Specifically, it assesses the state of institutional theory in marketing to identify gaps and directions for future research.The findings of the critical review indicate that many marketing articles in the strategy area apply institutional theory to understand corporate behavior with a social dimension—for example, adoption of sustainable innovations orientation (Varadarajan 2017), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) (Nikolaeva and Bicho 2011), and voluntary green initiatives (VGIs) (Clemens and Douglas 2006). This application of the theory has benefited from the theory’s assertion that legitimacy constitutes one of the main motivations to participate in such activities.The second biggest research stream to use institutional theory is supply chain management (SCM). Given that institutional theory is a management theory, this finding is not surprising. Relative to other streams, SCM is closer to the theory’s roots. In SCM, researchers have looked at stages of institutional environment development and the influence of institutional pressures on supply chain constituents (Grewal and Dharwadkar 2002). In addition, mimetic pressures have been found to lead to “supply chain contagion” (McFarland et al. 2008).Consumer behavior researchers are increasingly using institutional theory, but it still remains underexplored. In this area, the theory has been used to study how media shapes legitimacy perceptions of consumption practices (Humphreys 2010) and industrial crises (Humphreys and Thompson 2014) as well as how consumers become institutional actors (Moorman 2002; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013).Institutional theory has been used several times to complement other theories—for example, service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch 2016) and transaction-cost economics (Gatignon and Gatignon 2010). However, the list of theories is not exhausted yet. Theories such as stakeholder theory and resource dependence theory can be integrated with institutional theory to explore firm and industry dynamics. Lastly, little research has investigated deinstitutionalization and institutional change, both in terms of companies and consumers. Future studies should use institutional theory to examine these issues as they have become important processes in an era of disruptive innovations and more turbulent markets.

This research evaluates consumers’ responses to the environmental friendliness of service organizations. It expands on the emerging literature connecting environmentally safe practices to customer loyalty (Chen 2013; Hur et al. 2013; Kwon et al. 2016; Koller et al. 2011). More specifically, this research investigates the mediating effects of positive emotions on the relationship between environmental friendliness and service loyalty. The positive emotions investigated include level of inspiration provided by the service, feelings of belonging instilled by the service, and the moral identity of a consumer. Repurchase intentions and word of mouth are investigated as the two primary behavioral manifestations of loyalty. The relationships are evaluated for three service industries.A total of six hypotheses were advanced. The data for empirically addressing these research hypotheses were collected from a convenience sample of 183 respondents. Each participant was asked to report on the consumption behaviors related to an educational service, a coffee shop chain, and a large retail chain. The study participants were familiar with each service. Existing scales were used. The hypotheses were tested using mediated regression models. The Hayes (2013) procedure was used. The results confirm inspiration and sense of belonging as mediator variables. The more enduring moral identity of the consumer could not be confirmed as a mediator.The findings of this study allow for two general conclusions. First, the results provide evidence for the existence of positive emotions as mediating variables affecting the relationship between environmental friendliness of a service and two service loyalty behaviors. Second, the findings suggest that the mediators are service specific. While sense of belonging was significant across the three services, the level of inspiration was service specific and only significant for the educational service.The findings from this study imply that for green efforts to result in customer loyalty, they first must instill positive emotions. If green-inspired loyalty is desired, service organizations may want to focus their green initiative on items most likely to evoke positive emotions.

Sometimes called an “aftermarket car warranty,” “vehicle service contract,” or “extended auto warranty,” extended service plan (ESP) market is significant, exceeding $16 billion (Warranty Week 2018). ESPs are typically purchased at the original equipment manufacturer (OEM, such as Toyota and Ford) dealership at the time the vehicle is purchased, but one may often also buy an ESP through a third-party warranty provider at a later time. Unlike other, the so-called manufacturer’s warranties, which are included in the price of the product, ESPs are really vehicle service contracts (or safeguards) against expensive, unforeseen repairs. The term “extended” is also sometimes used because ESPs usually extend the length of the coverage and allotted mileage (and sometimes a few other extra coverages such as roadside assistance) set by the OEM warranty.The purchasing decision of ESPs is complex, considering the fact that multiple parties from the seller’s side are involved: the salesperson, Finance and Insurance (F&I) personnel, dealership, the manufacturer (auto brand), and sometimes a third-party underwriter. The purpose of this research is to better understand the dynamics of the decision (not) to buy ESPs, given the buyer characteristics and their interactions with the selling parties. The research was conducted by surveying 341 new car owners. Among several findings, our results indicated that the decision to buy an ESP shares no relationship to the degree to which the respondent felt positively toward the F&I person. In line with previous research, attitude and loyalty had significant effects: specifically, consumer’s dealership loyalty (but not automaker loyalty) and attitude toward ESPs.

In summer 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for “storytellers” to address the problem that he said was top priority for him these days: “the intransigence, polarization, unwillingness to listen to diverse points of view, and tribalism-run-amuck that afflicts society” (Alan Murray, Fortune CEO Daily 2018-09-11). Given such great expectations of storytelling in transformative and public policy marketing, this special session tries to take a look at what the future holds for storytelling research in a marketing context. Expanding on the AMS special sessions “Unveiling the Magic of Storytelling in Marketing” (AMS 2016) and “The Values of Storytelling: From Tactics to Transformative Action” (AMS 2017), we set out to investigate and discuss potential future avenues for this research stream.Chaired by Edward L. Nowlin and Claas Christian Germelmann, this session’s objective is to spark fruitful research discussions on the topic and hopefully to contribute to shaping the future of storytelling research in marketing.The three papers in the session show potential mechanisms, measurements, and uses of storytelling in marketing. Various contexts are covered that range from consumers as recipients (and co-creators, Huber and Germelmann 2016) to B2B Applications and Sales. The look at mechanisms of storytelling is accompanied by a proposed scale measuring storytelling activities by salespersons. This duality highlights the contention that storytelling is a co-creative activity (Huber and Germelmann 2016), which links the session with the previous ones. The first paper by Sahar Karimi, “Storytelling: How Do We Process Consumer Stories?” investigates storytelling from an information processing perspective. It proposes the idea that that consumers process and value stories differently, depending on their individual characteristics and the story format. The second paper, “Measuring Salesperson Storytelling: Theoretical Construct Development and Empirical Validation,” by Edward L. Nowlin, Nawar N. Chaker, David M. Houghton, and Doug Walker, suggests a careful and rigorous scale development process and test the nomological net of salesperson storytelling. Beyond providing a comprehensive definition of salesperson storytelling, and developing and validating a scale this purpose, this paper shows that salesperson storytelling has an effect on job-related outcomes in the sales context. In the third paper, “Overcoming Barriers to the Acceptance and Commissioning of Projects as a Challenge to Storytelling in the B2B Sector,” Klaus-Peter Wiedmann considers whether the potential for storytelling can be used to persuade Buying Center (BC) members to accept project offerings related to the implementation of high-tech systems or sophisticated business consulting projects. This final paper opens the discussion and the search for new research opportunities and potential research cooperations.

In general, people find stories far more compelling than presentations. The importance of storytelling in business has even caught the recent attention of practitioners and scholars. For example, a recent article in Forbes suggests that effective storytelling could lead to increased profitability by enabling a firm to deftly and emotively express its capabilities as well as clearly differentiating itself from competitors. For organizations, salespeople, acting as boundary spanners, are the primary storytellers of the firm. In the literature, salesperson storytelling is currently defined as a “discourse dealing with interrelated actions and consequences in a chronological order” in order to drive sales. While past research has recognized the importance and produced meaningful insights on this phenomenon, it is too general to effectively provide guidance to researchers and practitioners. That is, it is likely that the notion of storytelling is a much more complex and multifaceted phenomenon than we currently understand it to be. Furthermore, much remains to be known about how to empirically capture and operationalize storytelling. As such, further research is needed in order to identify and offer a way to empirically measure storytelling. Toward this end, this study attempts to take a much-needed step towards unveiling the nature of salesperson storytelling and to offer a usable instrument that can be used to measure it. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to employ a careful and rigorous scale development process and test the nomological net, consisting of a multi-study approach to generating items, scale purification, and testing predictive validity. This research contributes to the marketing literature by (1) conceptualizing a comprehensive definition of salesperson storytelling, (2) developing and validating a scale for salesperson storytelling, and (3) empirically showing that salesperson storytelling has an effect on job-related outcomes.

As markets are increasingly dynamic with a rising variety from which customers can choose (Murray et al. 2011), brand-building activities have become top priority of management (Fischer et al. 2010). Strategic alliances have been receiving attention in the international market since the beginning of the twentieth century (e.g., Harrigan 1986; Lorange and Roos 1992; Faulkner 1995; Mackay 2007). The frequency of using strategic alliance has increased steadily over the past centuries. Companies have to input considerable effort to ensure a successful alliance. Brand alliance has an extensive popularity among various types of strategic alliance options. It is defined as a strategy in which: “two brands are deliberately paired with one another in a marketing context such as in advertisements, products, product placements, and distribution outlets” (Grossman 1997: 191). Previous literature has mainly focused on how companies like to use the co-branding strategy (e.g., Cooke and Ryan 2000; Ueltschy and Laroche 2004), on the motives behind using co-branding strategy (e.g., Mowery 1988; Hagedoorn 1993; Khanna 1996) and on the advantages of using co-branding strategy (e.g., Bernard and Ruth 1998; Rao et al. 1999; Washburn and Richard 2002). However, the role that the host country plays on the consumers has been overlooked despite the fact that previous research has shown that host country environments have a major influence on consumer buying intention (Bian and Forsythe 2012). The “global market” is made up of about 200 countries. Each country has its own consumer behavior, customs, lifestyle, and economy (Mooij and Hofstede 2010). Lin and Chen (2006) claimed that the Country of Origin (COO) is one of the factors that could significantly affect the consumers’ purchase intentions. Research has shown that differences in national culture can disrupt consumers’ attitudes towards the brand (Moon et al. 2008; Raymond and McClure 2001). By considering the moderating influence of host country context, this article expects to refine and extend our current understanding of the effect co-branding alliances have on consumer intention. These findings can potentially benefit MNEs, especially for luxury MNEs, in terms of providing strategic guidelines for them when they choose to use co-branding alliance in the future.

A literature review was conducted surrounding model ethnicity in the context of international advertising. Related literature and research are additionally reviewed in order to understand the diverse views and evaluations of model ethnicity in the international context. Varying factors can affect a viewer’s interpretation of ethnic model image, such as the level and strength of consumer ethnic identification, perceived or real threats to identity motives, or an individual’s culturally influenced self-concept. The literature was divided into four predominant research topics, and they are as follows: ethnic minorities in a majority region; a Western vs. Eastern context; beauty ideals and roles; and model ethnicity effects on product evaluations. Each of the four main topics is divided into subtopics and a decision tree is presented in order to organize and categorize the extant research. Determining the effectiveness of model ethnicity in advertising practice is a complex problem as many factors contribute to the viewer’s perception and subsequent evaluation of the advertisement.In addition to the contributions to scholarship, many practical implications can be used for marketing managers, such as advice for when to standardize with a particular type of model and when to adapt with a local ethnic model. For instance, in places where a minority group has low ethnic identification or is highly acculturated to the majority group, standardized marketing with the use of an ethnic model that is a member of the majority ethnicity might be the most effective model to use in advertisements. The same can be said about targeted marketing practices. Those who have high ethnic identification or those who felt their distinctiveness was under threat, such as found by Cano and Ortinau (2012) in the study of Hispanics’ response to multicultural advertising, may respond better to targeted marketing practices. Additionally, consumers in countries that have high power distance or strong vertical independent self-concepts, such as inferred about those is Japan, may respond best to Western models used in status appeal advertisements. In both individualistic and collectivist cultures, appeals to individualism will be effective for advertising personal use products. Appeals to individualism in Eastern countries can often be created through the use of Western models in “individualistic” portrayals. Marketing managers can benefit from the use of this information in choosing what type of model to use in advertisements.

Based on an exploration of the innovation practices in 20 French and Ukrainian exporting SMEs, our research highlights the role played by collaborative innovation and the domestic institutional environment in product innovation. Our research is based on the conceptual foundations of resource dependence theory (RTD) and the institutional profile approach. On the one hand, the collaborative practices mobilized (outside-in innovation and joint innovation) by the exporting SMEs aim to fill gaps in internal resources in order to propose new products or improve existing ones. On the other hand, the regulatory, normative, and cognitive dimensions of the domestic institutional environment guide the behavior of the exporters in terms of the development of innovative and exporting.

In the last 15 years, marketing research has significantly advanced the definition, the measurement and the operationalization of brand heritage. Originally developed at a corporate brand level in a Northern European context (Urde et al. 2007), this concept has been adapted to many other contexts since. Conceptually, brand heritage has been adapted for the study of product brands (Hudson 2011; Merchant and Rose 2013; Pecot and de Barnier 2017). Methodologically, it has generated both qualitative (Hakala et al. 2011; Rindell et al. 2015) and quantitative works (Pecot et al. 2018; Rose et al. 2016).The aim of this special session is to present the most recent advancements on the fabrication of brand heritage and its related tensions. Mario Burghausen focuses on a cultural institution as a corporate heritage brand, whose heritage is co-created by multiple stakeholders. He introduces the role of hybrid stakeholders to designate the membership department and its members as partners and value creators. Brad Hudson and George Wyner explore an in-depth case study of Lionel model trains, and the way the current management combines the brand’s heritage with cutting-edge innovations. Joshua Butcher and Fabien Pecot look at how Champagne brands and Champagne consumers make the brands’ heritage visible on Instagram.The three papers address a different kind of tension related to the fabrication or operationalization of brand heritage: the role of hybrid stakeholders, the articulation of brand heritage and innovation, and the visualization of brand heritage on social media. Altogether, this session will significantly advance research on the internal management of brand heritage, at both the corporate and product level.

The rapid technological advancements have revolutionized service encounters (Huang and Rust 2017) and provided an opportunity for companies to improve customer experiences through automatic service interactions (van Doorn et al. 2017). As an increasing number of companies begin to incorporate robotic assistants into their service designs, such as LoweBot adopted by Lowe’s as a shopping assistant (King 2014) and Pepper adopted by Pizza Hut as a waiter (Santos 2018), some of these companies have observed abusive customer behavior directed towards robotic assistants. For example, the co-founder of Starship Technologies, Ahti Heinla, indicated that it is not uncommon to find its food-delivery robots being kicked by people (Hamilton 2018). This type of abusive customer behavior may negatively influence not only organizations through the financial loss associated with the damage of robotic assistants but also other customers through the spread of such behavior. Given the importance of this issue, this research aims to examine why and when customers engage in abusive customer behavior directed towards robotic assistants, a behavior that is both dysfunctional and unethical because it violates the commonly accepted norm of morally appropriate conduct.Drawing upon moral disengagement theory (Bandura 1986), we propose that customers may abuse robotic assistants in service encounters due to psychological freedom derived from a lack of moral self-regulation that would refrain them from unethical and dysfunctional behavior. Specially, we expect that customers are more likely to morally disengage and abuse a robotic assistant if the assistant’s style is non-humanoid as opposed to humanoid. The non-humanoid style allows customers to view the assistant as a machine without human characteristics and to abuse it without experiencing self-condemnation. The negative influence of humanoid style on moral disengagement and abusive behavior is expected to be strengthened when the assistant’s features are hedonic as opposed to utilitarian. Hedonic experiences tend to involve people-focused service delivery, whereas utilitarian experiences tend to involve equipment-focused service delivery (Ng et al. 2005). Thus, we suggest that customers are more likely to attend to a humanoid cue of a robotic assistant when its features are hedonic than when they are utilitarian. The study results provided support for the proposed interactive effect of robotic assistants’ style (humanoid vs. nonhumanoid) and feature (hedonic vs. utilitarian) on customer abusive behavior. This paper offers managerial and theoretical implications regarding how to manage customers’ unethical and abusive behavior toward robotic assistants.

Due to rapid developments of service robots, artificial intelligence and other new technologies (including big data, analytics, speech recognition, biometrics, mobile and cloud technologies, and geo-tagging) the service sector is facing a new wave of digitalization, including at the customer interface. Service robots, defined as system-based autonomous and adaptable interfaces that interact, communicate and deliver service to an organization’s customers (Wirtz et al. 2018), will bring opportunities for a wide range of service innovations that will dramatically impact the customer experience, service quality, and productivity all at the same time (e.g., many hotel, restaurant and hair stylist services are likely to be robot-delivered in the future), lower cost will make high-end services available to the broad consumer base (e.g., personal concierge services, image consulting, and high-end personal tuition), while potentially offering new services we have not thought of yet (Wirtz and Lovelock 2016).This study explores how consumers perceive and respond to service robots. Based on conceptual and empirical data, we fine-tune and further develop an integrated framework: the service robot acceptance model (sRAM) and present a future research agenda (Wirtz et al. 2018). In the second part, we highlight that as service robotics are likely to impact all strata of society, important ethical and societal implications have to be considered. The purpose of ethics is the improvement of the general well-being of all participants in society. It especially focuses on protecting and improving personal integrity and human dignity, makes sure that the rights of the weakest in society are protected and aims at limiting possible inequalities caused by the advancement of service robotics. Our presentation will discuss crucial challenges at the micro (customers), meso (markets and organizations), and macro (society) level of analysis. Seeing the pervasiveness of service robots in the future, we also draw a number of potential approaches for these challenges from the literature and apply them to the service robotics context to provide several thought-provoking recommendations for the way forward.

Retailers have increasingly implemented multi-tier private brands (PBs hereafter), making them one of the hottest trends in the retail industry. However, multi-tier PBs are surprisingly under-researched, and specifically, few researchers have investigated the role of visual cues such as packaging design. Thus, this paper investigates how packaging design employed in multi-tier PBs drive differing consumers’ perceptions, evaluation, and responses.Study 1 tested the differing impact of packaging design. The data with US consumers recruited Amazon M-Turk was used to test the proposed model. The results supported that packaging design of PBs serves as an important evaluation cue for perceived quality and brand equity of multi-tier PBs even when controlling for price consciousness. Specifically, aesthetic and luxury designs evoked significantly higher quality perception and brand equity than did value design. In addition, quality perception enhanced brand equity and purchase intention but brand equity positively affected purchase intention only in the aesthetic packaging design condition.Study 2 investigated whether individual traits (i.e., visual processing) may interplay driving differential responses to the same PBs. Visual processing is chosen as they are pertinent to extrinsic, visual cues such as packaging design. The results showed that the impact of packaging design on consumer responses is greater for those with a high level of visual processing than for those with a low level of visual processing. Also, quality perception and brand equity positively affected consumers’ choice of PBs over NBs offered in the same product category.Comprehensively, the findings of this research contribute to the PB literature that primarily has focused on price and quality perception. As an initial attempt in this context, we show that aesthetic appeal of PBs’ packaging design can be a major differentiating attribute for consumers’ inferences about the product and purchase intention for multi-tier PBs. Also, we address a boundary condition of such effects by integrating an individual trait, visual processing. Future research is guided to test the same model with national brands or with more PBs to enhance the generalizability of the findings.

Televised drug injury ads, sponsored by law firms or legal referral networks, identify injured consumers for lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. They generally consist of warnings to the public about dangerous side effects associated with a particular drug and conclude with a phone number for consumers to call if they have experienced the side effect. Because the drugs discussed in the ads remain available on the market, drug injury ads have the potential to influence the prospective medical decisions of viewers. This research considers how differences in the content of drug injury ads affect consumer perceptions and intentions toward the featured medications. We report the results of two experiments using modified versions of actual drug injury ads.The first study tested which elements of drug injury ads most strongly affect consumer evaluations and intentions. The results of Study 1 suggested that ads which begin with warnings reduce the likelihood of correct sponsor identification and reduce the likelihood that participants will (re)fill a prescription. Further, elements which made it more obvious that the ad was sponsored by a lawyer increased the likelihood of correct sponsor identification.In Study 2 we manipulated Sponsor Identification (obvious sponsor vs. non-obvious sponsor) and the vividness of the Risk Statement (more-vivid risk vs. less-vivid risk) in a between-subject design. Our results indicate that when the persuasive intent of the advertisement is less clear (e.g., the sponsor is less obvious), vivid Risk Statements seem especially impactful and can affect intentions toward discontinuing the medications featured in the ads.An effective remedy for addressing the misleading character of some ads may be to require attorneys to prominently disclose the sponsor, preferably at the start of the ad. Prominent early disclosures about advertising sponsorship would be especially important where the side effects are severe, when the ad includes vivid graphic imagery of medical harms (e.g., an image of a person clutching their chest, or lying in a hospital bed), or where the ad contains strong cautionary language (“warning”).

Consumers are giving at record levels (Giving USA 2018) to charities providing a variety of different services. While prior work has examined donation likelihood (Lee et al. 2014), research on allocation in a donation context is tenuous. Donation allocation is particularly applicable in medical charities where consumers often face the task of allocating their contributions to either care for patients or research for a cure. We study allocation decisions in this research. In particular, we examine whether social distance between a donor and a patient may influence allocation between care and cure.We define care as providing patients with resources such as equipment, medication, and financial aid (In Your Community 2018). Cure represents funding to researchers to advance the search for a permanent remedy (Lopez 2018). Prior research supports the influence of social distance on donations (Winterich et al. 2009). We extend this stream, showing that donors who are socially close to a patient are more likely to allocate donations to cure than those who are socially distant from a patient. Furthermore, we argue that this effect is driven by a need for hope (Vergaeghe et al. 2005).Three studies were conducted. To rule out potential confounds, donations were destined for the charity in general and would not directly benefit any specific patient. We measured social distance in Study 1 and showed that, as predicted, closer social distance significantly increased preference for cure. In Study 2, we replicated the results with a manipulation of social distance, again showing a significant effect of social distance on donation allocation, such that participants in the close condition showed greater preference for cure than those in the distant condition. Study 3 tested the proposed underlying mechanism and showed that need for hope mediated the effect of social distance on donation allocations.The results of these studies show that, consistent with predictions, closer social distance increases preference for cure over care. Our research helps to develop a better understanding of donation allocation decisions. In particular, we introduce a new perspective to the donation literature by examining how donors choose to allocate their dollars between care and cure. Furthermore, the current research deepens the theoretical understanding by examining the underlying processes and identifying a mediating construct (i.e., need for hope) which has not been examined in prior consumer behavior literature. Together, this research provides guidance regarding how charitable organizations may implement effective marketing strategies to increase donations to their causes.

An increasing number of service providers offer automated service interactions (ASI) in an effort to improve service effectiveness and efficacy. However, there has been little academic research investigating ways to encourage customers to choose automated customer-to-machine service interactions over traditional customer-to-employee service interactions. From the service organization’s perspective, the main draw for offering ASI is to “do more with less” by enabling customers to more accurately, quickly, and efficiently perform tasks that were previously undertaken by service employees. Customer satisfaction from an increased level of customization and convenience and from giving customers more control over their own experiences are added benefits. However, there is evidence of customers’ resistance to adopting SST as a service option, as nearly 80% of respondents to a poll conducted by MSN claimed that they would be less inclined to go to a restaurant that uses ASI for ordering. Drawing on self-determination theory and prior research, this paper explores how promoting customer’s voluntary use of ASI drives positive customer service experiences. A dual study approach is taken to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, respondents’ personal experiences of voluntarily using ASI in field contexts are measured by surveying customers. In Study 2, survey findings are replicated in an experimental setting to enhance the robustness of the findings. The analysis reveals perceived control as a mechanism through which a customer’s voluntary use of ASI results in positive customer service experiences. In addition, customers are more willing to use ASI when their observation of other customers using it shows that it is hassle-free. This study focuses on understanding the benefits of encouraging a customer’s voluntary use of ASI in service delivery and identifies the boundary condition that enhances the intentions to use ASI. The findings demonstrate that promoting a customer’s voluntary use of ASI enhances the customer’s perceived control over completing the service task, which in turn leads to positive customer service experiences. Furthermore, ease of use amplifies the intentions to use ASI.

Marketing analytics has become an important tool for business practice, enabling companies to improve their marketing decisions and thereby business performance. While marketers are actively using structured data (SD) to support their decisions, usage of unstructured data (UD) remains overlooked by most organizations. Yet over 80% of available data is unstructured, meaning that companies cannot afford ignoring its potential in multiple areas of marketing decision making.Previous studies on usage of UD in marketing decision making are mainly focused on development of tools and approaches that can be used to work with such type of data (e.g., Büschken and Allenby 2016) or address opportunities of using UD in marketing decision making, suggesting instances when different types of such data can be used (e.g., Decker and Trusov 2010; Malthouse et al. 2013). This study generates deeper insights into the practice of using UD in marketing decision making by analyzing key challenges associated with usage of UD. More specifically, this study addresses the following research questions: What challenges do marketing managers face when using (or attempting to use) UD to support decision making? What are the main stumbling blocks related to the usage of analytics (and UD in particular) in marketing decision making?The study relies on in-depth qualitative interviews with marketing professionals representing international FMCG companies in Northern Europe. As a result, it develops a categorization of challenges related to the usage of UD, which are primary causes of hesitance towards usage of such data in marketing decision making. Mainly, the challenges are related to volumes and quality of data; limited ability of tools to work with different types of UD; skills of marketing managers; as well as outdated organizational routines. For managers, the present study points to diverse challenges related to the use of UD, both within and outside the power of their influence. The study analyzes common challenges related to data and tools; to managerial skills; and to aspects of organizational culture hindering the adoption of analytics. Furthermore, it highlights the need to simplify sharing of data between different parties that need it and to introduce centralized data management functions supporting this process.

Thanks to the Internet and its affordable retargeting tools, nowadays marketers have an unprecedented ability to target consumers using their previous browsing history to display them their ads (Goldfarb 2014; Goldfarb and Tucker 2011). Contrary to the early enthusiasm among practitioners for retargeting advertisement, several insights signal that retargeting might not always worth its higher costs (Lambrecht and Tucker 2013). To the best of our knowledge, there are few scientific studies about the effectiveness of retargeting advertisement on consumers’ behavior, in particular on their price perceptions.In this study, we try to address the abovementioned gap by investigating the effect of retargeting advertisement on consumers’ willingness-to-pay. Particularly, in Experiment 1, we compare the effect of price stimuli in the ads which consumers are exposed to at either the early or late stages of decision-making. On the basis construal level theory (Trope et al. 2007), we suggest that exposing to an ad at the early stages of decision making (vs. late stages) have a bigger effect on consumers’ willingness-to-pay. In Experiment 2, on the basis of assimilation-contrast theory (Sherif and Hovland 1961), our goal is to compare the moderating effects of the overlap between the advertised product and consumers’ preferences at early and late search on the effects of price stimuli on willingness-to-pay. We suggest that the effect of the price in the ads on consumers’ willingness-to-pay is directly related to the extent to which the advertised product fits consumers’ preferences. This relationship is more profound in the later stages of decision-making than the early stages.

This research examines how persuasive design of destination websites affects users’ intention to travel. Sixteen experiment sessions were conducted to evaluate eight real-existing tourism destination websites. Using structural equation modeling analysis, this study examined the relationships between hygiene design features, motivation design features, attitudes toward the website, intention to search for information, and intention to travel. The results showed significant relationship between both hygiene and motivation design factors and attitude toward the website. Information quality determined a large portion of attitude toward the website. This study contributes to previous technology acceptance model research by introducing the hygiene and motivation design features and empirically validates the model with regard to destination websites. Finally, this paper provides implications for destination marketers to increase the effectiveness of destination websites as a promotional channel.

Destination marketing organizations spend millions of dollars annually to entice consumers to visit the destination represented. Due to increased competition and market globalization, marketers are adopting innovative branding strategies and tactics to emphasize unique qualities of a destination. One such innovative branding tactic is the use of virtual reality as a marketing communication medium (MCM). Scholars and marketing managers have yet to examine the role of this MCM despite destination leaders believing VR is impacting “all aspects of the destination organization.” As such, this research implements a two-phase pretest–posttest experimental design tested via multi-group structural equation modelling to examine the impact of VR on visit intention and the formation of (a) destination image (DI), (b) destination personality (DP), and (c) attitude.The digital age has transformed the way consumers connect with brands. Therefore, branding strategies and tactics must adapt accordingly (Edelmann 2010). Firms and destinations that proactively innovate are positioned to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace (Hunt and Duhan 2002). While innovative branding strategies and tactics may be beneficial in differentiating a destination among competing destinations, little is known regarding consumer perceptions of destinations when destination marketers employ an innovative branding strategy or tactic. Additionally, extant research investigating branding in general and destination branding in particular has yet to understand the impact of an innovative MCM. However, one such innovative MCM is VR.A two-phase pretest–posttest experimental design (Maris 1998) was implemented to examine the impact of VR when used as an MCM. This design has two important advantages over the posttest-only design: (a) it permits error variance caused by consistent individual differences to be removed, thereby increasing power; and (b) it permits the groups to be equated for baseline differences, thereby increasing the internal validity of the design. The pre-treatment model revealed positive, significant relationships between the constructs of interests. Additionally, the post-treatment model revealed stronger relationships between (1) DP and attitude and (2) attitude and visit intention; however, the post-treatment resulted in a non-significant relationship between DI and attitude and a weaker relationship between DP and DI. Moreover, due to measurement invariance being established (Steenkamp and Baumgartner 1998), the latent mean comparison using the pretest as the baseline shows a significant positive difference for DI and DP. These results indicate VR provides a significant benefit to destination marketers attempting to influence the formation of both DI and DP. Future research should explore the specific mechanism(s) (e.g., telepresence or narrative transportation) associated with VR that are driving these positive benefits and compare VR to other MCMs for a deeper understanding of the impact of innovative MCMs to more common MCMs.

International communities are in general agreement that fulfilling environmental goals for a sustainable future is only possible with the reduction of consumptions’ detrimental effects. This, however, requires a deep understanding of the factors affecting environmentally significant consumer behaviors, such as buying ecologically friendly products, recycling, using household energy vigilantly, or driving less frequently. In recent years, we see an increasing number of studies in behavioral research looking at environmental attitudes, values, and behavior that try to understand relationships with different variables from different theoretical perspectives. These studies, however, largely lack an overarching perspective that considers variety of theories and behaviors with a comparative approach. As such, this study tries to fill this gap by exploring the functioning of consumer behavior in the environmental domain with a comparative approach, which is needed to uncover every aspect of the forces behind environmentally significant behaviors of consumers. Mainly, this study examines the explanatory power of the three theories, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Value-Belief-Norm (VBN), and Theory on Affect (TA), which focus on gain motives, moral concerns, and hedonic motives, respectively, and compares with each other for three different stages of consumption, namely, purchase, usage, and post-use behaviors.The analysis of primary data collected through the online survey using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) indicate that the three theories, TPB, VBN, and TA were all important frameworks in explaining the environmentally friendly purchase, usage, and post-use behaviors of consumers. In order to understand the best theory that explains each type of behavior, we performed a model comparison among the three frameworks, that is, VBN, TPB, and TA. This analysis gave us insights into how each framework explained consumers’ different types of environmentally significant behaviors. Overall, the results of the model comparisons indicated that consumer eco-friendly purchase and transportation behaviors can be better explained by TPB, eco-friendly household energy use can be better explained by TA, and consumer recycling behavior can be better explained by VBN theory.In conclusion, results obtained from this study are important in developing better intervention strategies in order to alter the relevant environmentally harmful consumer behaviors. Such information will be critical to the development of necessary strategies and expansion of environmentally significant purchase, usage, and post-use behaviors.

Increasing awareness about the best practice concerning how a firm should handle customer data, security, and privacy, and the risks of too much time spent on social media are increasingly showing up in the popular press (e.g., Johnson 2018; Ward 2018). Companies are beginning to realize that consumers are more informed about the data economy and the tacit transactions we have all entered into that involve the exchange of our data for free services. There is also an increased realization that companies must do more to protect consumer data and oblige explicit permissions for transmission, use, and sharing of consumer data. There is also notable work within scholarship exploring the landscape of consumer data, privacy, and platform issues (e.g., Martin 2016; Ferrell 2017; Baccarella et al. 2018). However, these conversations are just now being explored in various streams of research and application. There is sense in which the marketing academy needs to have more timely and relevant discussions on these issues and how they are and will impact our discipline.The purpose of this special session is to explore the impact of this quickly changing environment and how marketing scholars can and should address these changes in the context of research streams, classroom and pedagogy, and interaction and impact with business partners.

Instagram is a primarily visual social media platform that allows for enhanced intimacy, self-promotion and egocasting images (Hum et al. 2011; Winston 2013; Zhao et al. 2008). Due to the strong control users have over their self-images, Instagram is an attractive platform for narcissistic individuals, who want to showcase themselves in manners that benefit their own psychological needs (Moon et al. 2016). Also, the interactivity, online social-connection and ubiquitous characteristics of Instagram could entice compulsive social media users, who present uncontrollable needs to engage with social media platforms (Andreassen 2015). Furthermore, the perceived speed (Bridges and Florsheim 2008), the ease of the purchasing process and one-click settings could create a greater appeal for compulsive buyers than any other platform. As a result, Instagram could be an alluring platform for individuals with a great variety of psychological traits. The present study aimed to classify British Instagram users through their psychological traits and characteristics. The data was collected through the use of an online survey of a general consumer sample in the UK. It included Instagram usage questions, and questionnaires on narcissism, technostress, compulsive use and compulsive buying behaviors. We conducted a k-means cluster analysis, which yielded five distinct clusters: influencers, narcissists, muted, casual and pragmatists. Influencers presented no narcissistic tendencies but higher levels of technostress and compulsive traits; they had highest follower numbers and account checking frequency. Narcissists revealed strong narcissistic traits, compulsive tendencies and moderate technostress; however, they did not present higher posting or account checking behaviors. Muted are the largest group, they had the lowest followership, posting and account checking frequency; also, they presented the lowest levels of compulsive and narcissistic tendencies. Casual presented compulsive tendencies, and moderate technostress levels; their Instagram use was lower than other clusters. Finally, pragmatists had a weekly account checking and a medium number of followers but showed narcissistic traits and medium compulsive tendencies.

In the last decade, the widespread access to the Internet has favored the emergence of anti-brand communities that allow customers to express their hate feelings towards companies, their employees and their brands (Kucuk 2016). According to Kucuk (2007), brand hate affects the brand’s identity and image, and consequently has an impact on consumer decisions. It explains some of the consumer non-compliant behaviors such as brand rejection, resistance to the brand, brand boycott and negative word of mouth (Perrin-Martinenq and Hussant-Zébian 2008).Brand hate conceptualizations presented in the existing brand hate literature show that brand hate is associated with specific negative emotions and engenders particular emotional and behavioral consequences. Yet, despite the extensive work investigating the nature of brand hate, its antecedents and its outcomes, the literature fails to provide a clear classification of brand haters based on their motivations and reactions.The current study aims at drawing profiles of consumers exhibiting hate feelings towards brands, by specifying the consumption situations, the hate motives, as well as the emotional and behavioral reactions that are associated with each profile. With this aim in view, we conducted a series of qualitative and quantitative studies. Using the online multi-image elicitation (OMIE) protocol, we determined five types of brand hate motives as follows: physical threats, mental threats, conventional motives, emotional motives, and ideological motives. Moreover, three categories of brand hate reactions were identified including behavioral, passive, and aggressive reactions. In a third quantitative study, we discerned three groups of brand haters: rational haters, threatened haters, and hostile haters.By combining the results of the OMIE with the classification results of brand haters generated from the Correspondence Factor Analysis (CFA), we demonstrate that “threatened haters” associate their feelings of rage and anger with perceptions of physical and mental threats, which results in the boycott of the brand. However, “hostile haters” have emotional and ideological motives, engendering aggressive behavioral reactions (i.e. revenge), whereas “rational haters” report conventional reasons for brand hate such as price–quality ratio. This raises feelings of sadness and disappointment among them and may prevent brand repurchase.This study has important managerial implications. Indeed, understanding the different profiles of haters helps the firms to prevent and deal with hate feelings among their customers and restore good relationships with them.

The purpose of this work is to discuss how to develop, refine, and improve team-based role-playing competitions that could be used as a pedagogical tool in undergraduate selling courses. Specifically, we explore and test three factors—external competition rewards, student role-play and feedback involvement, and utilizing cases written by industry professional—that increase competiveness among undergraduate students, and consequently how those factors influence role-play performance and post-graduation job placement. Since there is an increasing demand for sales professionals across multiple industries and there is a trend toward more marketing students starting careers in jobs focused on sales, we explore how to improve upon known best practices in sales education. Bringing realism to the classroom required implementing techniques learned at intercollegiate sales competition and from sales professionals in the field.The context for our study is at a small, private liberal art university located on the east coast of the United States. Although the class utilizes a multitude of traditional methods including a standard text with lectures, we focus on the use of a team-based role-play case competition. The competition involves student teams, school wide faculty judges, and support from corporate sponsors who are involved in writing the cases. Overall, we found that adding competition to traditional classroom selling role-play improved student performance and learning. When student peers judged the competition along with alumni who had taken the class in a previous semester, our students were more open to criticism than only comments from the instructor. Careful selection of cases used in these sales competitions is also imperative to successful student outcomes. Practical cases written with input from sales professionals that reduces the emphasis on analytics and focuses more on sales techniques result in more vibrant class competitions. Bringing the selling experience to life in the classroom requires moving from a more traditional pedagogical process to a very practical and interactive class experience. Overall, we discuss how our findings can be applied and implemented in undergraduate courses related to professional selling.

Direct selling is a vibrant component of the economic fabric of the United States, as well as globally. As such, it merits serious research attention from both a macro perspective (for example, a channel of distribution) and a micro perspective (for example, individual entrepreneurship). Moreover, the personal nature of direct selling, being based on a strong person-to-person interactive process, enables a variety of research endeavors that use direct selling to provide a vehicle or venue for data collection and testing hypotheses. Indeed, more than 150 peer-reviewed articles have been published on direct selling topics or have used direct selling data in research.The Academy of Marketing Science has a long history of interacting with direct selling companies. For example, direct selling companies CUTCO/Vector and Mary Kay have funded endowments used in AMS recognition activities and have “opened their doors” to marketing professors desiring research, databases, consulting, and internship opportunities. This history amplifies possibilities for pragmatic and theoretical research.This direct selling research special session features a panel of professors who are not only involved in direct selling research activities but also represent current and former leaders of AMS. Through this special session, conference participants are exposed to present, past, and potential research in the direct selling arena and to relevant topics across direct selling structures (Robert A. Peterson), ethics (O.C. Ferrell), technology (Linda Ferrell), case studies (Victoria Crittenden), and social issues (Linda L. Golden). Direct selling, as a highly relevant business and entrepreneurial topic, offers abundant research opportunities relevant to business broadly, direct selling companies specifically, academics, and government policy makers.

Doctoral students and young academics face a vast array of challenges, especially during the early years of their career. However, international scholars experience even more difficulties beyond academic challenges, such as cultural ambiguities and uncertainties. A common behavior expressed by these future and young academics is staying within social and cultural zones of comfort shaped by home countries. However, this innate tendency could diminish integration efforts and job market performance due to limited awareness of American cultural and academic norms. This special session addresses international doctoral students and young academics acclimation efforts in the USA by exploring topics such as adaptation to course demands within the doctoral program, cultural differences related to relationship building, research collaboration demands, instructional delivery difficulties, and job-related hurdles. The international perspective fostered in this session allows for a unique opportunity for doctoral students around the global to compare experiences and provide guidance on how to become a successful international scholar within the USA. In addition, junior faculty members are encouraged to share their experiences and concerns related to adjusting to a new institution, work environment, and work requirements such as service and mentoring while adapting to a new cultural surrounding. The ultimate goal of the panel is to leave the audience with insights on how to overcome difficulties and challenges associated with being an international doctoral student, researcher, author, and junior faculty member in the USA.

Financial education has been recognised as a transformative service. It aims to increase individuals’ capability as financial consumers, thereby improving their financial well-being. Whilst many countries have developed financial education programmes for schools, the impact of such interventions is mixed (Hoffmann and Otteby 2018). A parliamentary report on financial education in schools in the UK (APPG 2016) concludes that much more support is needed to strengthen the delivery of financial education in schools, in particular through improving teacher confidence and skill set.To address this, we explore whether training teachers to teach financial education has a transformative impact on both the confidence and skill set of teachers and the financial well-being of the students they teach. The research design comprised a randomised controlled trial among teachers teaching financial education to young people aged 16–18 years: 60 schools were randomly assigned to the treatment group and 60 to the control group. The treatment comprised professional training in financial education delivered by Young Money, the UK’s leading financial education charity, before the start of the school year. In total, 87 schools fully participated in the study; 46 Treatment and 41 Control, including 101 teachers and 1215 students.Overall, the study confirms the transformative impact of financial education on the financial well-being of young people in this context, and provides evidence of the value of targeted professional training for teachers in financial education. As a result of the training, teachers felt more confident teaching financial education and their students were better able to manage their money, protect themselves from fraud and identity theft, think and plan about the future through using financial advice and choose financial products. Governments should consider the wider roll-out of teacher training in financial education according to a set, consistent curriculum. This could be embedded in Initial Teacher Education programmes for newly qualifying teachers and provided as CPD for existing teachers, supported by access to high-quality resources.

Logos are an integral part of a firm’s corporate identity and serve as the visual “face” of a firm. Because of their importance, virtually all firms have a logo, and logos have received extensive attention from researchers in marketing and related disciplines (e.g., Management, Graphic Design, Psychology, and Art). Logo-related research has examined such topics as logo selection and modification (Henderson and Cote 1993), the influence of logo design on logo visual processing fluency (Janiszewski and Meyvis 2001), and which of the many components utilized in logo design are most likely to increase brand strength (Henderson et al. 2003). Although extant research has provided important and essential insight into logo design, the approaches taken have utilized individual logos at a single point in time. An unfortunate consequence of this “snapshot in time” approach is that it does not provide insight into perhaps the most common problems managers face, which is the modification of their firms’ logos over time (e.g., how frequently should logos be updated, and to what degree redesigned logos should be similar/different to firms’ previous logos). This research addresses this shortcoming by examining logo life cycles. We first identify industries with firms that have had a significant number of logo changes over multiple decades (e.g., automotive, airline, and Major League Baseball). We begin with descriptive research identifying basic logo life cycle metrics (how long are logos utilized before they are changed, industry averages for logo change, etc.). We then evaluate the degree of logos’ perceptual fluency and conceptual fluency change over the logo life cycle, and the effect fluency has on the amount of time logos are utilized by a firm (“logo life”). We accomplish this by identifying the degree of change in the logos’ perceptual fluency of alpha-numeric and image design elements (e.g., if a design element in a logo is made larger or more clear, it increases the perceptual fluency of the element), and by identifying the degree of change in the conceptual fluency of the alphanumeric, image, and color design elements of logos. The managerial implications and the limitations of the research are then addressed, followed by suggestions for future research.

Marketing academics and practitioners have traditionally associated a product’s hedonic value with experiential consumption. However, there is a growing stream of research in the area of positive psychology that suggests that the scope of experiential consumption goes beyond merely hedonic value. The objective of this study is to expand the conceptualization of brand value to not only include hedonic (enjoyment) benefits but also to incorporate the crucial dimension of eudaimonic (meaningfulness) brand value. Furthermore, this study also aims to examine the dual role of both hedonic and eudemonic brand benefits in developing key consumer–brand relationship constructs. We hypothesize that both hedonic and eudaimonic brand value are positively related to brand experience. We also hypothesize that brand experience is positively related to the outcome variables of brand love and brand trust. We thus argue that brand experience mediates the relationship between brand value (hedonic and eudaimonic) on the one hand and brand trust and brand love on the other.A survey instrument was developed to measure the theoretical constructs in the study. Two-hundred and thirty-five undergraduate students from a Southeastern public university participated in the study by attempting to complete the self-administered survey in return for extra course credit. The survey instrument utilized measures and scales whose reliability and validity were established in prior literature and were used in prior branding and happiness research. A sequence of statistical tests were performed to evaluate the characteristics of the measurement scales and to test for unidimensionality, reliability, and discriminant validity. A measurement model (CFA) and a structural model were developed and assessed using SPSS AMOS 23.0. The results of the structural model lent support to our hypotheses indicating that importance of brand value in the form of both hedonic and eudaimonic benefits lead in the creation of a positive brand experience. Furthermore, the results show that brand experience is positively related to both brand love and brand trust.

Consumer demand for authenticity is a foundation of modern-day marketing (Brown et al. 2003). Marketers increasingly tout their brand’s authenticity to tap this underlying consumer need: Manatee County, Florida, claims it is “Real. Authentic. Florida.” (Salmon 2012), and Sargento cheese asks consumers to “Taste the Real Difference.” The importance of brand authenticity is also reflected within the marketing literature, as a significant amount of research has been dedicated to the topic (e.g., Beverland and Luxton 2005; Leigh et al. 2006; Morhart et al. 2015; Napoli et al. 2014; Spiggle et al. 2012).Nonetheless, in the marketing literature the meanings of authenticity and brand authenticity are still highly debated. Researchers agree that authenticity and brand authenticity contain various meanings, but little consensus exists concerning the number of meanings and what those meanings entail (Beverland and Farrelly 2010).In an attempt to address this lack of clarity in the literature, this conceptual research has two main objectives. First, this research introduces the Entity–Referent Correspondence Framework of Authenticity. The ERC Framework offers an overarching definition of authenticity. The ERC Framework proposes that, in the most general sense, authenticity is the degree to which an entity in one’s environment (e.g., object, person, performance) is true to or matches up with something else. We label this “something else” a referent—the point of reference to which the entity is compared. Thus, we assert that authenticity is the extent to which an entity corresponds to a referent. Further, the ERC Framework presents three general types of authenticity: true-to-ideal, true-to-fact, and true-to-self. True-to-ideal authenticity is defined as the extent to which an entity’s attributes correspond with a socially determined standard or exemplar. True-to-fact authenticity is defined as the extent to which information stated or implied about an entity corresponds with the actual state of affairs. True-to-self authenticity is defined as the extent to which an entity’s behavior corresponds with its intrinsic motivations as opposed to its extrinsic motivations. While the three types are similar in that they all involve entity–referent correspondence, they are distinguished by their unique referents: an ideal, a fact, and another’s self.Second, this research classifies 49 prior definitions of authenticity and brand authenticity and/or its types or dimensions (based on a systematic review) into one of our three authenticity types. Overall, all but two concepts fit within the proposed typology, offering strong evidence of the typology’s conceptual robustness. The ERC Framework of Authenticity contributes to the brand authenticity literature within marketing by organizing previous definitions into one of the three types. This paper also illustrates that these three different authenticity types may manifest at different levels of abstraction.

In a world of information-laden and feature-based marketing communications in business-to-business (B2B) marketing (Baack et al. 2016; Brown et al. 2011), some firms have resorted to the use of celebrities with the expectation that the endorsement coming from such public figures would help in catching the attention of the purchasers away from the competition (Canning and West 2006). The success of the branding campaign carried out by Accenture, with Tiger Woods, has brought celebrity endorsement in the spotlight. The situation is similar in developing nations like India, where actors Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun Chakraborty endorse the cement brand Binani and GoDaddy, respectively. Based on this premise, the present study investigates the following question: whether having a spokesperson would be a better advertising strategy than a generic ad? If yes, would it be better to have a celebrity spokesperson or a company employee? In addition, the present study also explores the conditions that may govern the choice of the spokesperson. To this end, three controlled experiments were conducted using fictitious advertisements (with a combined sample size of around 500) with industry executives in charge of purchases. In the three studies, we tried to investigate the relative effectiveness of a celebrity spokesperson vis-à-vis an employee spokesperson under different buying situations (study 1); with different levels of buyer attitudes (study 2) and at different levels of buyer empowerment (study 3). The data were analysed using MANOVA and ANOVA. Major findings indicate that a spokesperson would be a better choice than a generic ad. However, we find a celebrity spokesperson to be more effective in the following cases: (a) a low involvement product; (b) when buyer scepticism towards advertisements is low; and (c) when perceived empowerment of the buyer is high. The findings emphasize on the role of the spokesperson in B2B advertising and add a novel contribution to theory. This study opens up henceforth unexplored avenues for B2B marketing managers.

Customer complaints are inevitable given the complexity of products (service) and the inherent need for human involvement in aspects of service delivery. In today’s competitive, socially networked environment, customers are empowered by technology, their expectations increasing, with the magnitude of complaint effects having increased with the digital age. Complainants now regularly take to social media, review sites, blogs and YouTube to vent their frustration, spreading negative word of mouth (Tronvoll 2007, 2012) which can have damaging effects for an organisation’s brand equity and profitability. Managers know that customer complaints are important. For instance, effective complaint management has confirmed positive links between increased satisfaction, increased loyalty, repurchase intention and subsequent higher company returns in the literature (Casado-Díaz et al. 2009; Fornell 1992; Homburg and Furst 2005) and positive consumer experiences shown to be related to increased loyalty (Moliner et al. 2010; Johnston 2001). However, the return on investment (ROI) or complaint management profitability (CMP) of increasing satisfaction through “good” complaints handling has only received scant research attention.A critical reason for the lack of literature on ROI and CMP is difficulty attaining data relating to the complaint management function. Organisations do not measure all costs and benefits of complaint handling (Stauss and Schoeler 2004; Stone 2011). Nor can organisations or researchers agree on what constitutes the costs and benefits of complaints and their handling. Unfortunately, given the difficulty attributing a financial value to the benefits, costs are more usually measured, leading to complaints handling departments often being regarded as “cost centres” rather than providing opportunities for increased benefits to the firm (Sandelands 1994).The purpose of this paper is to explore the literature relating to ROI of customer complaints management to the organisation, identify the potential development on the subject in academia and direct future research with the goal of enhance complaint handling management practices for organisations. This paper reviews the literature on defining “good” complaints handling before reviewing the literature on ROI and profitability of complaints handling. Second, the drivers of ROI and profitability of complaints handling from the literature are highlighted. Finally, the paper concludes by synthesising the findings of the literature and proposes specific research questions to guide future research.

Drawing on the conceptual metaphor theory, researchers have discovered that the location of product image (Chae et al. 2013; Elder and Krishna 2012) or in packaging design (Sundar and Noseworthy 2014) matters in influencing product attitudes. The metaphor of “distance is worth” is theorized from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and further developed based on the sense of power and prestige evoked by the distance.Researchers have suggested that spatial distance presents a visual cue that influences consumer perceptions of power (Giessner and Schubert 2007; Huang et al. 2013), and power has profound effects on status or prestige consumption (Charles et al. 2009; Dubois et al. 2011). We propose that a greater spatial distance between the model and the product (SDMP) in an ad will make it easy for consumers to attribute greater sense of power and prestige to the advertised product, which leads to a price premium. We further examine whether the product’s brand power (high vs. low) and consumers’ individual differences in power distance belief (PDB) (high vs. low) serve as boundary conditions.Four experiments show that far SDMP increases product evaluation than close SDMP. Furthermore, for the high power brand, individuals with high PDB show a stronger willingness to pay for a price premium (WPPP) when the distance is far than when the distance is close. On the other hand, for the low power brand, individuals with low PDB show a stronger WPPP when the distance is close than when the distance was far. This research further demonstrates that the sequential mechanisms underlying the above phenomenon: perceived power and then perceived prestige.Our findings make several theoretical and managerial contributions. First, this research extends the study on conceptual metaphor theory and contributes to the literature on power in consumer research. Second, we empirically validate the underlying mechanisms by testing two sequential mediators. Third, marketers may benefit from using a far SDMP in ads to increase consumer associations with power and prestige. Finally, consumer differences in PDB will assist marketers to determine which SDMP (either far or close) should be used in advertising. Marketers should be judicious when implementing SDMP as their advertising strategy.

The impact of workplace deviance reaches 95% of all companies that reported some deviance-related activities within their company (Henle et al. 2005). Specifically, salesperson deviance is multidimensional. Deviant behavior may include lack of effort in the work completed, exaggerating the number of hours worked, and intentionally depleting company resources (Darrat et al. 2010). Deviant behavior, however, is not restricted to an isolated event and has extraordinary implications for both the organization and society (Bennett 2003). This study aims to reveal the causes for workplace deviance through a sample of 329 online survey respondents of B2B salespeople. We believe that outside factors such as burnout, emotional labor (EL), and family workplace conflict (FWC) contribute to the underlying deviant root factor-depression. We utilize the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory (Hobfull 2001) to predict loss of resources due to salesperson stressors. When a salesperson encounters a stressor (e.g., burnout, emotional labor, or family–work conflict), the individual may cope with the stressor by diminishing his/her sales/work performance (i.e., conserving work-based resources). Further, stressors may create negative emotions (e.g., dissatisfaction and depression). As a result, the individual may ultimately reduce work-related outcomes (e.g., sales performance) and employ negative coping techniques, such as workplace deviance.The data collected were analyzed using LISREL 8.54 confirmatory factor analysis. Results showed support overall for burnout, EL, and FWC all influencing the negative effects of depression in salespeople. Salesperson depression was found to be a significant influencer of organizational deviance. Thus, our study points to both depression and sales performance influencing organizational deviance. Individuals who experience job burnout have a depletion in physical and emotional well-being (emotional labor), and/or experience extraneous family workplace conflicts, are significantly more likely to form some level of depression. Workers’ depression, combined with a decrease in sales performance (feeling unsatisfied due to burnout and/or choosing family conflict resolution over work performance), contribute to an increased level of deviant behavior. We suggest implementing annual managerial training sessions to address absenteeism, company policies, and identification techniques for deviant behavior in employees. Overall, reduction in workplace deviance can be achieved by enacting policies such as the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) or training managers to follow progressive discipline and treatment measures, which will help mitigate the contributing factors leading to depression, negative sales performance, and ultimately, deviant workplace behavior.

Narcissism, the individual tendency towards an objectively unjustified conceit, is a well-known determinant of luxury consumption. Research suggests that narcissists should shun counterfeit luxury for its inability to match the grandiosity of the narcissistic self. However, the same may not hold true for high-quality counterfeit (HQCF) luxury, that is, imitation products of established luxury brands that can be almost indistinguishable from genuine originals, thus offering status-signaling benefits. We offer new insights into luxury brand consumption by exploring the mechanisms behind narcissistic preference for genuine vs. HQCF luxury.First, we expected narcissism to be associated with intentions to purchase genuine luxury for self-expressive reasons, that is, only genuine luxury reflects the grandiosity of the narcissistic self. Further, we expected narcissism to be associated with intentions to purchase HQCF for self-presentational reasons, that is, also HQCF luxury can deliver status-signaling benefits. Second, we considered two forms of consumer pride, authentic (i.e., pride in one’s achievements) and hubristic pride (i.e. pride in one’s global self), as psychological processes explaining each relationship. Following licensing effects associated with the achievements that elicit authentic pride, we expected authentic pride to mediate the effect of narcissism on intentions to purchase genuine luxury. We developed competing explanations on hubristic pride as a mediator of our main relationships. We argued that hubristic pride might mediate the narcissism effect on intentions to purchase HQCF luxury because that luxury can satisfy self-aggrandizement needs at a lower cost. Alternatively, we argued that hubristic pride might mediate the effect of narcissism on intentions to purchase genuine luxury because only genuine luxury offers the self-affirmational benefits that people experiencing hubristic pride might seek to address their insecurity.Empirically, our study of luxury consumers in China shows that narcissism is associated with intentions to purchase genuine luxury and that authentic pride mediates that relationship. However, findings do not show an association between narcissism and intentions to purchase HQCF, thus failing to support our alternative mediation effects. However, we do find that hubristic pride is associated with preference for HQCF. Taken together, our findings suggest that narcissistic consumers prioritize the self-expressive over the self-presentational benefits of luxury, thus choosing genuine over HQCF luxury—perhaps also due to the reputational risk of being exposed as a user of “fake” products in a context characterized by high face-consciousness. Further, the lack of support for a relationship between narcissism and hubristic pride may relate to the narcissism subtype we studied, grandiose narcissism. Vulnerable narcissists, that is, narcissists with lower self-esteem and higher shame-proneness, may experience higher hubristic pride and thus be at a higher risk of purchasing HQCF luxury. We discuss implications for luxury research and luxury brand managers.

Oftentimes, marketers and retailers offer promotions to attract customers. While offering such deals may increase revenue temporarily, it often also causes undesirable effects subsequent to the withdrawal of such deals. Once having seen the product go on sale at a lower price, customers may not be willing to buy it at the regular price anymore.Foregone options that cannot be recouped should not influence present decisions. However, previous research has demonstrated that missing a superior opportunity affects consumers’ present decisions by creating a psychological cost. For example, when we have previously missed a great deal (e.g., 50% off retail price), buying the product at just 30% off may not seem attractive anymore, causing inaction inertia. This contributes to the pervasive “post-promotion dip,” where sales of a product decreases after it has been on a promotion.One way to attenuate this effect would be to offer deals which do not arouse a strong negative comparison. However offering such weaker deals may not attract customers during the off-season. This begs the question: What kind of deals can attract customers during off-season but not cause a strong inaction inertia once it is withdrawn?In this paper, we demonstrate an innovative solution to this widespread problem of the post-promotion dip. Instead of offering conventional price-based discounts, equivalent time-based deals could be offered (e.g., lower wait times, faster shipping).Most of the inaction inertia literature has demonstrated the effect of foregone superior monetary opportunities (Tykocinski and Pittman 1998, 2001). However, missed opportunities may have been superior to current options not in terms of money but time. Consumers think about temporal costs differently than similar monetary costs (Okada and Hoch 2004). When people account for time, they show less economic sophistication and accountability than when they deal with money (Soman 2001). This lower accountability of time is likely a result of its malleable value and reduced fungibility (Saini and Monga 2008; Okada and Hoch 2004). This results in temporal payments being associated with lower “pain of payment” than similar monetary payments. We posit that people will experience lower inaction inertia when they have missed attractive temporal (vs. monetary) opportunities in the past.Across three controlled experiments, we demonstrate that such non-monetary deals elicit lower “pain-of-payment,” thereby causing reduced inaction inertia. In Studies 1 and 2 we demonstrate that inaction inertia is lower for time. In Study 3 we provide confirmatory evidence for our proposed underlying mechanism by demonstrating that when accountability for time is reinforced, consumers start exhibiting inaction inertia even for time.

This qualitative research has provided new insight into consumers’ decision-making mechanism from a food-related context. Forty respondents recruited for participation via convenience sampling technique. The data was collected by using in-depth interviewing and photo elicitation technique and was scrutinized with the help of thematic analysis. Our findings suggest that consumers have a narrow-sighted approach towards food as they process fewer cues less well and take into consideration the most immediate gains of their food choices while ignoring the resulting consequences. The product attributes such as price, quantity, and taste become more salient, whereas the resulting consumption consequences such as health, well-being, and food waste become least prominent. We call this short-sighted tendency towards food as food myopia.The concept of food myopia is supported by psychological myopia which refers to the individual tendency to emphasis more on information proximately linked to their judgment and overlook the less striking fragments of information (Hsee et al. 2003). Consumers consider food as part of a low involvement decision despite making over 200 food-related decisions a day (Wansink and Sobal 2007). Hence, consumers focus on information which is immediately related to them.The consumers experience food myopia both in food choice and consumption quantity decisions. The food marketers are specialists at making consumers desire for the food they endorse, which is often higher in fat and sugar, tastier, more convenient, and lesser expensive simultaneously. Marketers capitalize on consumer’s use of heuristics for product judgment and prompt decision making. Hence, these food attributes are made to appear more salient in the retail environment, and consumers start paying more attention to them, whereas they become short-sighted about the long-term post-consumption consequences of their choice (i.e., overconsumption, obesity, diabetes). This paper also discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of food myopia along with future research directions and suggestions to overcome this problem.

Brand communication practices relying on ordinary consumers—that is, peer endorsers—is getting increasingly popular (Kapitan and Silvera 2016). Advertising campaigns for new products resulting from consumer empowerment strategies (CES) often include the CES winner’s endorsement. For instance, the winning consumer-creator of new Oreo “Cherry Cola” was pictured in the product launch campaign, including additional descriptions and stories about her. Little is known about the effectiveness factors of peer endorsement though and more research is needed. Attractiveness is acknowledged to be influential in a celebrity endorsement context (e.g., Knoll and Matthes 2017). Instead, in a CES context, it might be reasonable to think that consumers expect to see peer endorsers looking “like themselves,” by virtue of their social user identity (Dahl et al. 2014). This research examines whether attractiveness also prevails in a peer endorsement context, that is, CES-related advertisements.First, relying on Strauss and Corbin’s procedures (1998), this research analyzes 29 informants’ (20–68 years old; various backgrounds) reactions towards peer endorsers in a CES context. Interviews, based on semi-directive guides, were either individual (32–120 min) or in groups (5, 6 and 9 informants, 120 min). It emerges that informants spontaneously perceive the winner’s presence in advertising as a CES credibility enhancer, that is, it makes CES more real and consumers’ voices more effectively listened. But doubts about the winner’s authenticity simultaneously arise for three reasons: perceptions of too much attractiveness, too much congruence with the ideal brand audience and difficulties to understand the motives justifying the winner’s participation in CES. Drawing on the schema theory (Mandler 1982), we assume that the incongruities between the endorser and the mental representation the informants store about a “consumer-like-themselves” generate too high cognitive efforts, hence doubts about endorser’s authenticity.Two between-subjects experiments confirm that endorser’s attractiveness and congruence prime skepticism toward the CES process. Besides, we find that skepticism attenuates when cueing brand process transparency. This is because audiences may attribute public-serving motives, that is, the brand listening of participants’ voices in their greater diversity. Then, describing a winner as highly creative provides audiences with valid, disposition-based motives, in line with the attribution theory (Kelley 1973) and also helps to decrease skepticism. The perceived manipulative intent is discounted to innovativeness for the greatest number’s sake. Finally, the negative skepticism effect we describe is found to mediate purchase intentions.This research contributes to the endorsement literature by showing that attractiveness and congruence are no effectiveness factors in a peer endorsement context. It also answers innovation scholars’ call for research (Nishikawa et al. 2017) by showing the effects of giving additional details about the CES-winner. Alerting marketers about potential negative effects of peer endorsement and identifying remedies to attenuate them are also of high practical relevance.

The manipulation of the rightmost digits in prices has been an effective tactic utilized by retailers for decades. A long stream of research studies how the manipulation of price endings plays a role in influencing consumer behavior intentions and perceived value of a certain item. While a lot of research focuses on the effectiveness of those tactics or the different form of them, very little research is available on what might moderate those effects, specifically, whether factors like subjective relative income will moderate the effect of this price frame on offer attractiveness or even behavioral intentions. This paper explores that very question. We begin by reviewing literature on the effectiveness of 99 ending pricing strategies and then explore the variances in those tactics’ effectiveness in low vs. high subjective relative income conditions. Next, we conduct an experiment to test our propositions.To explore our effects an online experiment was conducted. Respondents were presented with one of the four offers that are manipulated in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. The first factor is the price ending where a Blu-ray disc player was presented with either a 99-ending price or no right digit ending ($49.99 vs. $50). The second factor is the income manipulation (Haisley et al. 2008) (high relative income vs. low relative income). To manipulate relative income we followed the procedure utilized by Haisley et al. (2008), where respondents were told they just won some money (money to burn) and were later asked about their income level; however half of the respondents were induced to feel that their income was low and the other half were induced to feel their income was in the middle income range. After seeing one of the offers, respondents were asked, “How attractive (or an attractive) was the offer?” and responded on a 9-point scale with “Very Unattractive” at one and “Very Attractive” at nine as anchors. A three-item scale was also utilized to measure the respondents purchase likelihood/purchase intentions.Our results extend previous research by exploring the moderating effect of subjective relative income on the effectiveness of 99-ending pricing tactic. Additional process measures are being explored, by the authors, with the hope of building a better understanding of how subjective relative income will impact pricing tactics. Once completed, the authors believe that the paper will have a great impact on the right digit effect research in pricing.

As customers, operations, and supply chains produce ever more volumes of data, firms must explore new ways of extracting valuable insights to improve efficiency and efficacy of decision-making processes at the same time as reducing noise and abnormalities in data streams (Sivarajah et al. 2017). Machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques can aid the creation and design of new products and services by producing highly sensitive analytics. These analytics can increase the speed of idea generation or “creative intensity” (Erevelles et al. 2016) by providing real-time assessments of multiple offering variations and predictions of their potential market success (Lehrer et al. 2018). Furthermore, these analytics can be a source of competitive advantage in highly competitive markets that require a continuous degree of product newness. Although several studies show that various organizational processes can be optimized and automated to some degree (Bradlow et al. 2017), relatively little is understood about the value that advanced data manipulation systems bring to the decision-making process at individual, cognitive, level, in particular when choices and judgments of product creativity or innovativeness are involved. Understanding how to capitalize on augmented and data-driven decision-making processes in relation to different creative alternatives becomes essential to generate competitive advantage in this area. Individual decision makers, with their limited mental capacities, are still required to frame problems, select which data to collect, assess the robustness of the data and their sources, and decide on analytical frameworks. Most importantly, decision makers must interpret the findings within the business context in which they operate and use insights to support strategic, tactical, and operational decisions leading to the development of new market offerings. Within this context, this study seeks to understand how managers use analytics to stimulate new product and service innovations and aid creativity decisions. In particular, the study seeks to contribute to the field of marketing decision-making by providing an assessment of how machine learning and artificial intelligence affects the generation and selection of new product ideas. It also contributes to the growing multidisciplinary literature on data analytics by assessing its value from a decision-making perspective.

Salesperson motivation has long been one of the most important areas of sales research and one of the most important challenges for sales managers (Doyle and Shapiro 1980; Jaramillo et al. 2005). Historically, sales managers and researchers emphasized extrinsic over intrinsic motivation assuming that in combination they cannot coexist (DeCharms 1968; Deci 1971; Deci and Ryan 1985; Lepper et al. 1973). However, research in psychology (e.g. Amabile et al. 1994; Amabile 1993) suggests that certain types of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be used in combination to enhance work outcomes. So far, however, there is little evidence for Amabile’s assumption that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be used simultaneously, and the results of previous research have been inconclusive (Kanfer et al. 2017; Khusainova et al. 2018). Drawing on self-determination theory (Deci 1975; Deci and Ryan 1980, 1985), we empirically examine the relationship between the combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations and three key performance outcomes: output performance, behavioral performance, and work engagement.We collect data from a cross-sectional sample of (196) industrial salespeople. To test the proposed hypothesis we use the advanced technique of polynomial regression with response surface analysis (Shanock et al. 2010; Ahearne et al. 2013). The study findings reveal that salesperson intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations have a positive combined effect on output performance and work engagement. Congruence was shown to be important in most combinations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations as they relate to output performance and work engagement. Finally, results indicate that the combinations of intrinsic with extrinsic motivational orientations lead to higher levels of output performance and work engagement as opposed to the combinations of only intrinsic or only extrinsic motivational orientations.This study offers several vital managerial implications. Sales managers are advised to carefully utilize both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to increase salesperson performance and work engagement. It is important that sales managers attempt to utilize a more balanced approach without overemphasizing any one single type of motivation.

A service provider may manage its service personnel through service regulations and policies. Alternatively, a service provider may empower them and delegate more authority by relying on morals of service personnel. The latter approach may enable service providers to accommodate degree of latitude in meeting service specifications and allow them to better prepare themselves for service recovery in the event of unexpected service failure. Such discretion in service encounters has been the object of study employing the construct of “reasonableness” (Fukawa and Erevelles 2014). In allowing for a certain amount of discretion in service encounters, a service provider must rely on the judgment and moral values of service personnel and customers instead of immutable standardized service specifications. During service recovery, a customer assesses the reasonableness of the recovery experience. In this process, a “reasonable” customer would consider not only his/her own welfare but the welfare of others (e.g., the service provider, others customers and society) (Lydenberg 2014).In this study, first, we investigate whether the moral identity prime affects perceived reasonableness in service encounters and if so, how this effect is moderated by an environmental factor (i.e., cognitive load) and a motivational factor (i.e., work experience in services). Second, we investigate whether affect (vs. cognition) mediates the effect of perceived reasonableness on customer satisfaction. Third, through a set of in-depth interviews, we further investigate the role of work experience in services and affective responses in relation to perceived reasonableness. Our study reveals the effect of moral identity prime on perceived reasonableness among those without work experience in services under a cognitive load. Additionally, our study shows that the effect of perceived reasonableness on customer satisfaction is mediated through affect regardless of a cognitive load. Finally, the set of in-depth interviews imply that those customers with work experience in services form specific service expectations; thus, their assessment of reasonableness in service encounters might be affected more by conscious thoughts than non-conscious thoughts.

Sales performance is not a static event but rather a dynamic process that unfolds over time with significant investments from the salesperson into key stages of the selling process. Because of this, salespeople continue to be critical producers within their organization, leading revenue generation and retention activities (Raynor and Ahmed 2013). Managers, as organizational leaders, are faced with the dilemma of ensuring their sales force delivers on revenue goals. As a result, U.S. companies spend approximately $20 billion annually on sales training with the goal of improving performance through increasing salespersons skills and abilities (Association for Talent Development 2013). Yet approximately 50% of salespeople fail to reach their annual quotas (Ahearne et al. 2012, p. 39), and managers often feel helpless in increasing these target percentages.These challenges lead to several questions. Why do salespeople miss their performance targets, what can managers do to help their salespeople, and what traits and activities should managers value most during the hiring process? The present research answers these questions by identifying where in the sales process should the greatest amount of effort be applied to increase sales performance and drive firm revenue. The authors look at the following stages: prospecting, new customer acquisition, cross-selling current customers on new products and services, and the retention activity of post-sales service. Subsequently, they identify salesperson traits that inherently produce effort in the most beneficial selling stages. Finally, they identify manager behaviors that can be implemented to increase the impact of salesperson traits on effort in those particular sales processes. In doing so, the authors make contributions to the body of research on salespeople and provide hiring and sales managers with useful insights for implementation.

Digital advocacy by employees can provide the firm with reach and desirable outcomes. Increased reach and visibility can impact an organization’s brand awareness and employer branding (Sivertzen et al. 2013; Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). In addition, increased brand awareness among stakeholders can help strengthen positive associations with the corporate brand that will make it easier to attract and retain employees (Backhaus and Tikoo 2004; Kohli et al. 2015; Sivertzen et al. 2013). Digital advocacy on social media is very much a double-edged sword, and it is therefore increasingly important for organizations to develop strategies for how best to manage it (Kietzmann et al. 2011; Kohli et al. 2015). The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyse the impact of internal branding and organizational commitment on the willingness of industrial employees to undertake advocacy. Five dimensions of employer branding have been labelled: Work Life Balance, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), Training and Development, Healthy Work Atmosphere, Compensation and Benefits (Tanwar and Prasad 2017; Ambler and Barrow 1996; Berthon et al. 2006). This research proposes a second-order hierarchical latent variable model whereby employer branding acts both directly and indirectly through organizational commitment to impact employee advocacy.Data was collected via a self-completing online questionnaire from among employees of a Swedish industrial organization that has a global presence. A total of 306 complete responses were collected with 51.7% response rate. Respondents come from a diverse group of individuals, 66% male; 61%, were aged between 35 and 54 years; 28% were between 18 and 34 years; and 11% were older than 5 years. The structural model was assessed in order to determine how well the empirical data fit with theory (Hair et al. 2014; Sarstedt et al. 2014).Findings indicate that training and development and healthy work atmosphere are the most influential dimensions, followed by a healthy work atmosphere, ethics and CSR. This implicates that industrial organizations who seeks to strengthen their employer brand could focus on these two dimensions primarily. According to Anitha (2014), it is important that employees are engaged in their organization and that can be obtained with the help of a pleasant work environment and good relationships with colleagues. Regarding testing the mediation effect, all the effect that employer branding has on digital employee advocacy is mediated by organizational commitment. This means that even though the employer brand is strong, an employee will not become a digital advocate if he or she is not committed to the organization. A strong employer brand does, however, increase the possibility that a committed employee will become a digital advocate.

Despite the recent findings that connected consumers’ reactions to brand transgression are more negative when brand’s wrongdoings are of an ethical nature (Trump 2014), little research has examined the mechanism underlying the negative effect of consumer–brand relationships on consumer brand evaluations in the context of brand failures. This research examines the role of brand ownership in consumers’ reactions to brand failures.Brand ownership is defined as a psychological state in which individuals have possessive feelings towards a brand. In other words, consumers consider the brand as “theirs” through incorporating it into their self-concept and considering it as an extended self (Belk 1988). We propose that a brand’s moral failure negatively influences self-concept for consumers with high brand ownership. A moral misconduct projects an unfavorable image to consumers, thus making them think that they themselves are doing something morally wrong. One’s self-view can influence “self-conscious” moral emotions (Aaker and Williams 1998), and shame is considered as moral emotions evoked from reflection on one’s own actions (Haidt 2003). When consumers see themselves as the one who brings socially undesirable outcomes (Tracy and Robins 2004), they would experience feelings of shame and blame themselves for negative events (Van Vliet 2009), which in turn affects their reactions to brand failures. Thus, it is hypothesized that consumers with high brand ownership will have more negative brand evaluation and feelings of shame will mediate the relationship.In Study 1, using moderated mediation analysis (Hayes and Preacher 2014), we show that consumers who have a strong brand ownership develop more negative brand evaluations towards brand moral failures but not towards product failures. The index of moderated mediation was significant at 95% CI [0.07, 0.75], indicating that the indirect effect of brand ownership on brand evaluation via feelings of shame was moderated by brand failure types. In Study 2, we further show that interdependent (vs. independent) consumers are more prone to experience feelings of shame towards a brand’s moral transgression.This research has theoretical and managerial implications. First, it contributes to the consumer–brand relationship research by proposing brand ownership to capture a specific form of relationship between consumers and brands. Second, we uncover feelings of shame as the mechanism underlying the negative effect of brand ownership in brand moral failures. Our findings suggest that companies need to take greater efforts to avoid moral transgressions and engage in recovery efforts to ensure consumers of high brand ownership continue to advocate the brand.

Companies’ spending on influencer marketing campaigns is growing exponentially. In 2016, firms invested more than $80 billion on influential social media users (ANA 2018). These users are considered “influential” as they contribute to the formation of attitudes toward products and services of a large number of other social media users. The basic idea underlying this novel marketing communication technique is that influencers build a relationship over time with those who follow their social media pages and thereby gain their trust and confidence. However, despite its massive growth and promising advantages, influencer marketing is still a considerably underexplored technique. Prior research has focused on influencer authenticity (Audrezet et al. 2018), likeability (De Veirman et al. 2017), the credibility of influencer posts (Boerman et al. 2017), and success metrics of influencer campaigns (Gräfe and Greff 2018), while the dynamics of influencer-follower relationships remain unexplored. In this paper, we develop and empirically test a life-cycle model of such influencer–follower relationships.Our results indicate that several properties of the influencer–follower relationship reflecting relevance-related aspects (e.g., interest in the influencer) and follower engagement (e.g., liking and sharing influencer posts), as well as relationship (e.g., commitment and trust) and consumption-related (e.g., purchase intentions) variables display an inverted U-shaped pattern over four consecutive relationship stages, namely, the phases of analysis, affection, attenuation, and alienation. By establishing a model that describes the dynamic evolution of influencer–follower relationships and by testing it through a variety of relational variables, we contribute to a better understanding of the development of the relationship between influencers and their followers. From a practical perspective, our findings suggest that not the number of followers per se but the number of followers in the peak stage of the influencer–follower relationship (referred to as affection phase) should be considered a key figure when planning campaigns. In addition, organizations can monitor the relationship development over time and offer insights to influencers in order to keep them relevant to their followers. Furthermore, our stage classification scheme may help influencers to analyze their follower base and manage their follower portfolio. In order to remain attractive to marketers in the long run, our results suggest that influencers should aim at having an ample number of followers situated in earlier relationship stages, indicating that popular influencers should not rest on a large number of followers and stop acquiring new followers.

Traditionally, companies have managed salespeople differently than other members of the firm, emphasizing the importance of individual performance. However, practitioner research notes a change in the relationship between individual performance and unit profitability. Specifically, between 2002 and 2012, the impact of individual performance on firm profitability decreased more than 20%; whereas the impact of “employee network” performance increased by more than 20%. As such, firms now rely increasingly on sales teams as opposed to individual sales performance, and an important aspect of the sales team is the composition of the team itself. Yet, our understanding of team composition remains quite limited due to the fact that research on team selling, in general, and sales team composition, in specific, is quite scarce. The focus of this study is therefore to investigate the potential effects of a team’s functional diversity on its effectiveness, the conditional nature of any effects, and the process by which the effects occur. In particular, we examine diversity as a functional capabilities difference and, consistent with the work group diversity literature, expect functional diversity to yield within sales teams both advantages (e.g., better task solving skills due to differences in experience and knowledge) and disadvantages (e.g., decreased team flexibility). The findings suggest that functional diversity positively impacts team effectiveness by building task interdependence among team members, which enhances team effectiveness through both higher levels of team stability and cohesion. However, functional diversity actually reduces team effectiveness by hampering team flexibility, another positive driver of team stability and cohesiveness. The key takeaway rests with the role of team complexity, on which both of these effects depend. Overall, the competing effects of greater task interdependence but lesser team flexibility essentially net each other out when the task is simple (i.e., functional diversity has no net effect on team effectiveness at low levels of task complexity). Under these circumstances, sales managers can make decisions about team composition based on other considerations, such as costs and the complexity of tasks rather than functional diversity. However, when the task is complex, the enhanced value of functional diversity on task interdependence, coupled with the diminished impact of team flexibility, calls for assembling a functionally diverse team.

China is the biggest e-commerce market and a trend leader in the global marketplace. This study focuses on understanding romantic gift-giving and online consumer reviews and how they impact consumers purchase intentions. Specifically, the study examined how different types of online consumer reviews (OCRs) and types of romantic gift-giving might affect Chinese consumers’ online purchase intention. The study further introduces product involvement as a mediator between online review types and purchase intension. To provide a holistic view of the romantic gift shopping online, the study further examined how need for uniqueness affects the relationship between OCRs type and product involvement, and how gender plays a role in influencing consumers’ product involvement with regard to OCR types and romantic gift types.Through an experiment design, the study suggested that informational online consumer reviews lead to more product involvement than transformational reviews; and consumers shopping romantic gifts for their significant other are more likely to have a higher product involvement level than those shopping for a romantic gift for the relationship. The study also found that product involvement serves as a full mediator, leading to consumers’ purchase intention. In addition, consumers with a higher need for uniqueness are more likely to use informational reviews for romantic gift shopping. Women showed more product involvement when they were exposed to informational reviews, while men had more involvement in transformational reviews.The findings also provide strategic guidelines for international marketers. Given that informational reviews with product attributes and features are salient in China, firms should devote their efforts to an online review system as a primary source for product information. Since Chinese consumers might use others’ perspectives for romantic gift shopping, a firm should have the target audience as gift recipients and encourage consumers to write reviews for gift recipients. And because men and women differ in processing consumer reviews to select romantic gifts, it might be beneficial to create a female forum with more informational reviews and a male forum with more transformational information.

Grounded in Morgan and Hunt’s Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing, the current research examines the effects of dialogic communication (DC) of CSR through digital media on brand loyalty (LOYT) mediated by customers’ online brand community engagement (OBCE) and brand trust (TRUST). To test the proposed mediation model, we conducted a national survey with a representative sample (N = 1022), randomly drawn from Qualtrics’ U.S. panel. After ensuring the validity, reliability and model fit of the measurement model, we tested the postulated model using a structural equation modeling procedure. All proposed hypotheses were supported showing (1) the direct effects of dialogic communication on CSR authenticity and OBCE; (2) the direct effects of OBCE on brand trust and brand loyalty; (3) indirect effects of dialogic communication on brand loyalty through OBCE and brand trust; and (4) the indirect effects of CSR authenticity on brand loyalty through OBCE and brand trust.In accordance with the theory of customer brand engagement, this study found that OBCE had the largest effect on brand loyalty. A notable contribution of the current research is that OBCE was driven by customers’ perceptions of a firm’s dialogic communication in CSR communication through digital media, which was partially mediated by perceived CSR authenticity. The results provide brand managers with practical implications—that is, a brand can build an online brand community and foster customer engagement when its communication is dialogic rather than monologic or purely promotional. Another noteworthy finding is that both dialogic communication and CSR authenticity has no significant direct effect on loyalty. The effect from DC to LOYT was fully mediated via OBCE. The effect of CSR authenticity on LOYT was fully mediated through OBCE and TRUST. The results of mediation analysis indicate that the specific mediation through TRUST was larger than the specific mediation through OBCE, although both were significant. Another notable finding is the effect of OBCE on loyalty. The results of mediation analysis show that the direct effect is stronger than the indirect effect via trust. The results give practitioners significant implications and justification to nurture an online brand community through communicating the company’s CSR activities.

This work offers a conceptual typology for digital customer empowerment (DCE; informative, productive, and experiential), which results from offering customers digital tools that expand the freedom of and control over the choice and action to shape their consumption experiences.There are various marketing opportunities and challenges that exist in today’s fast-changing digital landscape. Especially, marketing scholars acknowledge the digital age’s unique capacity for empowering customers (Erdem et al. 2016; Labrecque et al. 2013). Traditionally, customer empowerment has been defined as a challenge with an antagonistic power struggle between customers and marketers focusing on the power shift, from marketers to customers, as a consequence of widespread communication among customers (Deighton and Kornfeld 2009). Yet, more recently, the marketing opportunities associated with empowering customers have been acknowledged in the field with a view of customer empowerment as complementary to marketer power (Erdem et al. 2016). One such opportunity is the increased customer engagement resulting from the feelings of empowerment that strengthens customer–brand relationships (Kull and Heath 2016). Given the ever-growing interest in customer engagement, both scholarly and managerially, and that empowered customers engage more with brands, the advantages of appropriately empowering customers are invaluable.This work represents a conceptual categorization of customer empowerment in digital platforms, with the purpose of pushing marketing scholars to think more clearly and broadly about the construct in this fast-changing digital landscape. Accordingly, digital customer empowerment (DCE) tools are described as digital products, services, and practices that expand the freedom of and control over the choice and action to shape consumption experiences (Yuksel et al. 2016). Accounting for a wide spectrum of such digital tools, this work presents a typology of DCE (informative, productive, and experiential) and our future goal for this conceptual work is to explore how the use of such tools results in enhanced customer engagement with illustrative examples. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating how empowerment differentiates across different digital tools, as this differentiation may make it easier to compare findings across papers and help identify novel insights (see MacInnis 2011).

Sport organizations are attempting to reduce their environmental impact but have difficulty in managing stakeholders’ behaviors. To combat this challenge, sport organizations have increased the sophistication of their environmental sustainability initiatives to include stakeholder engagement campaigns. Until recently, no guidelines have been provided to sport organizations on how to evaluate the effectiveness of current communication strategies to convey the organization’s prioritization of sustainability initiatives. This research extends and evaluates the sport sustainability campaign evaluation model (SSCEM; Trail and McCullough 2019), using a sport organization’s (the Games’) sustainability initiative across multiple campaigns (waste diversion, transportation, energy conservation, and water conservation) and across time. The SSCEM depicts that needs and values influence attitudes toward sustainability campaigns. Furthermore, internal constraints have a negative effect on attitudes, while points of attachment have a positive one. An increase in positive attitudes toward the sustainability campaign increases intentions to act in a sustainable way; however, the intentions may be negatively impacted by external constraints. Trail and McCullough (2019) tested the SSCEM and found some support for the hypothesized relationships. We are extending the SSCEM to test sustainable behaviors and post-behavior evaluations and reactions to the sustainability initiative. From the SSCEM, we propose that needs, values, and internal constraints influence attitudes about the campaigns and intentions to modify behavior to actively participate in the campaigns. We extend the SSCEM by proposing that sustainability intentions prior to the event will predict actual sustainable behaviors during the event. These sustainable behaviors will be reduced by external and internal constraints. These constraints and the behaviors themselves will impact satisfaction with the organization’s communications and campaigns. Furthermore, satisfaction level will influence post-event change in attitude toward sustainability, which in turn influences advocacy of sustainability and the intention of taking sustainability behaviors back to the stakeholders’ hometowns. Data was gathered (both pre- and post-Games) from caregivers (N = 182) of intellectually disabled athletes who attended the Games. The structural model fit adequately well (RMSEA = 0.071; χ2/df = 1.79). Personal needs and values, along with internal constraints (lack of knowledge and lack of worth) explained 51.3% of the variance in pre-Games attitudes toward sustainability, which in turn explained 48.1% of the variance in intentions to act sustainably during the games. Intentions, combined with external constraints during the games, predicted 38.3% of actual behaviors. Behaviors and constraints predicted 47.9% of post-Games’ satisfaction with communications from the organization. Behaviors and constraints also predicted post-Games’ satisfaction with the campaigns (71.1%). Satisfaction with communications and with the campaigns explained 48.4% of the variance in improved sustainability attitudes, which in turn explained 52.7% of advocacy behavior and 97.3% of intentions to improve sustainable behaviors in their hometown.

Humor in advertising targets a very heterogeneous audience simultaneously on the local and national even international scale. While it is universally practiced, practices of humor are, nevertheless, extremely varied, and its use in advertising may require adaptation when communicating in different contexts (Alden et al. 1993).As advertising is strongly based on the culture of the country (Ozdemir and Hewett 2010), on tradition and on a specific mode of communication (Newman 2004; Tungate 2007), it can register strongly in this context which will impact the understanding and perception of the message it wants to convey and influence consumer behavior and purchasing decisions (Palmatier et al. 2006). Considering this, some advertising campaigns would be totally impossible to export (De Wulf et al. 2001), while others might require some adaptation to suit different cultural contexts (Alden et al. 1993).The question of standardization and adaptation of advertising campaigns on the international scale has been the subject of extensive research (Schmid and Kotulla 2011). However, reviews of existing literature show doubt on the results of the previous research (Birnik and Bowman 2007). In the case of humorous ads, companies are advised to “standardize” in their international communication (Alden et al. 1993) and at the same time to “adapt” their strategies even locally on their national markets (Rutigliano 1986).Considering that the proportion of international advertisements using humorous appeals can reach up to 50% of TV advertising campaigns in the USA, while similar statistics can be observed in other countries and other types of communication (Millward Brown Brand report), and the huge and growing global advertising spending which represented $550 billion dollars in 2016 (McKinsey, Wilkofsky Gruen Associate: © Statista 2017), it appears essential to understand the stimulus of humor in ads tendency with a cross-cultural comparison. The objective of this research is to understand the cultural differences in terms of humor in ads and the influence of culture in the consumer perception and behavior.

Previous research has investigated the effect of several determinants on relationship satisfaction, each one considering different factors and testing them in different settings (e.g., Anderson and Narus 1990; Heide 1994). However, the concern that arises is whether those determinants have the same effect in buyer–supplier relationships in other countries and different industry sectors. Although many researchers have investigated buyer–supplier relationships, there is still no consensus on the components of a relationship quality model (Huntley 2006; Skarmeas et al. 2008). The research objective is therefore to examine the RELQUAL determinants on satisfaction in buyer–supplier relationships in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Puerto Rico.The sampling frame consisted of a sample of 400 SMEs in Puerto Rico. A total of 133 usable questionnaires were returned, generating a response rate of 33.2%. A five-point Likert-type scale was used for all items. As suggested by Norusis (1994) and Hair et al. (2006), an exploratory factor analysis was used to identify relevant factors to be used as determinants of satisfaction in business relationships between SMEs. The reliability of the RELQUAL constructs was tested using the coefficient of Cronbach’s Alpha (Cronbach 1951), fluctuating from 0.79 to 0.94.A multiple regression analysis was run to determine the determinants that influence the satisfaction in buyer–supplier relationships. The regression model consisted of satisfaction as the dependent variable and eleven independent RELQUAL constructs: continuity, specific assets, dependence, opportunism, coordination, trust, cooperation, commitment, formalization, competitive intensity, and market turbulence. The results from the regression showed that seven out of ten independent RELQUAL constructs turned out to be significant. The following constructs indicate a significant influence on satisfaction in the studied buyer–supplier relationships: cooperation, continuity, specific assets, opportunism, formalization, competitive intensity, and market turbulence. However, the following ones do not indicate a significant influence on satisfaction: dependence, coordination, trust, and commitment.The contributions obtained from this study can be summarized in three statements. First, RELQUAL constructs, with its measurement properties, are available for future studies. Second, the determinants that influence buyer’s satisfaction of relationships with suppliers in Puerto Rican SMEs were identified. Third, findings from this research will benefit owners of SMEs in Puerto Rico by providing a guide of the key determinants they need to consider to develop and maintain a satisfactory business relationship with their suppliers.

This study responds to the call for more conceptual and theoretical work for the knowledge development in the field of marketing. This study aims at providing insights into customer experience from the aspect of value and its link to the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, as well as its link to customer loyalty retention.This study reviews past studies of customer experience and customer value, customer loyalty and customer retention, and the relation between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Accordingly, this study proposes a conceptual framework that depicts the possible influential factors for employing customer experience of value in the processes of strengthening the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and in retaining the loyalty of loyal customers. In addition, the conceptual framework depicts the possible effects of customer experience of value on the pre-existing causal relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and on customer loyalty retention.This study contributes to relevant research areas by providing the theoretical background for the possible answers regarding defining the formation process to convert satisfied customers into loyal ones through customer experience of value, and which aspect is important to retain customer loyalty after the success of transformation through customer experience of value. This study advances the research on customer experience and customer value regarding the consequences of consumer experience by providing insights into the impact of customer experience of value on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and on the retention of customer loyalty; and regarding the effect of customer experience management on business performance by exploring the issue from the aspect of managing customer experience of value for building and retaining customer loyalty. In addition to research implications for service researchers, this study provides practical implications for managers in the service outlets and frontline service employees.

The literature is mixed on the role of luxury influencing consumers’ sustainability behaviors. The purpose of this research is to examine the role of value-expressive and social-adjustive attitudes on sustainable behaviors, both ecologically consciousness consumer behavior (ECCB) and socially responsible consumer behavior (SRCB). The study also looks at whether the desire for unique products mediates the relationship between value-expressive and social-adjustive attitudes and sustainable behaviors, and if culture and brand self-congruence moderate these relationships. The study utilizes survey research collected in the United States with a Qualtrics panel of 359 respondents. The research finds that the desire for unique products mediates the relationship between the value-expressive luxury attitudes and both ECCB and SRCB sustainable behaviors for U.S. consumers. The link between the desire for unique products and ECCB is strengthened by the moderating factors of brand self-congruence and collectivism. The results provide reasoning for the mixed literature on luxury and sustainability and offer a means for how businesses and policy makers can increase the sustainability behaviors of consumers in the United States. The results illustrate that consumers who hold positive luxury social attitudes, particularly in terms of utilizing luxury as a means of self-expression of who they are, whether or not they behave sustainably is mediated by the desire for unique products. These results build on costly signaling theory by explaining how luxury can impact sustainability through value-expressive luxury attitudes and the need for unique products and that sustainability can serve as a signal for luxury consumers. Furthermore, the results help explain the gap between luxury attitudes and sustainable behaviors by demonstrating the importance of the desire for unique products mediating the relationship between value-expressive luxury attitudes and sustainable behaviors. Thus, this research demonstrates that sustainable behaviors, both ecological and socially-responsible, can be encouraged by American luxury consumers through meeting these luxury consumers’ need to express their self-identity through their desire for unique products. Finally, this relationship is strengthened by emphasizing the importance of impacting the group and how luxury and sustainability are compatible in terms of brand self-congruence.

Due to the existence of multiple bias sources, the scores in online systems cannot reflect products or services unbiasedly. Regardless of the bias, the new consumer may be misled to make a wrong purchase decision, resulting in lower satisfaction. Therefore, research on the bias and distortion of online commentary information is an important issue of the current marketing and information system area.However, the scarce online review bias literature currently focuses on the source of bias and the extent of impact. A holistic framework for studying the relations of online review components and bias is still necessary. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), we attempt to find the evidence of biases from the online components, verify how the different online review components lead to biases with the central route and peripheral route, and how to calibrate the biases. We attempt to use eye tracking to study the persuasion process to verify whether users who tend to consider both feedback components and auxiliary components use central route have less biases than the users consider auxiliary components with peripheral route. Besides, we use the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) unsupervised learning method to find and calibrate the bias among the topics from online review text component. We hope to provide a valuable supplement to traditional research methods that struggle to correctly and effectively identify the degree of information bias of online review contents by applying the topic model, which is an emerging data mining technology for large-scale text data. Topics and review valence will be automatically extracted based on online reviews.Our research findings not only help companies to deeply understand the relative importance of each online review component but also to know how to design and develop an effective online review system to reduce the bias. As a result, companies will benefit from facilitating successful transactions, inhibiting false comments and increasing reputation.

Given the increasing spend on social media brand advertising (eMarketer 2017) as well as the consumer tendency to avoid advertising on social media platforms (Eckler and Bolls 2011; Seyedghorban et al. 2016), understanding the factors that influence consumers to respond differently towards brand advertising across social media sites is important and managerially relevant. Current research points to disparities in usage motives across social media platforms (Gao and Feng 2016; Haridakis and Hanson 2009; Johnson and Yang 2009), thus helps to forward the idea of a ‘dominant motive’, driving brand advertising responses differently on social media. Building on prior research, this study examines differences in motivational and perceptual factors affecting consumer response to brand advertising on social media. We focus on Facebook and YouTube as they reflect the most commercial platforms to-date in terms of advertising spend (e-Marketer 2016), with similar media presence or richness but different in terms of functionality i.e. self-presentation and disclosure (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). We collect data from 185 respondents recruited in a within-subject, web-based study using an online questionnaire. Analysis via repeated-measures ANOVA yields interesting results about differences in dominant motives driving usage of Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, we find that the underlying mechanism of motives linking to brand advertising responses differs between the two social media sites, thus extending current limited knowledge. Specifically, our findings show that on Facebook the dominant motive is the one that influences advertising response via perceived advertising informativeness and interest, while on YouTube the less dominant motive is the one that shapes advertising responses. The results of the study contribute to the provision of guidelines to practitioners on how to shape consumers’ usage motives of Facebook and YouTube, and also in terms of communicated values of advertising (e.g. advertising informativeness and interest), in order to influence responses to brand advertising on social media.

The rapid acceptance of social media across consumers of all age groups has prompted researchers to examine the social and psychological effects that social media usage may have on its users (Cabral 2011; Vogel et al. 2014). The content that users choose to post is often selectively chosen to project a particular image (Rosenberg and Egbert 2011), while associations with specific brands, where a user’s online community can view this interaction, aid the expression of self-identity (Mensel and Petersen 2011). User-generated content is often self-evaluated based on the ‘performance’ of the content. Odden (2012) acknowledges that individuals often evaluate the performance of their online content based on the presence or lack of an immediate reaction from their online community. This evaluation becomes particularly important when the user-generated content is brand-related. This paper is the first attempt to conceptually delineate the parameters of ‘social media performance’ (hereinafter referred to as SMP) and formalize this evaluation.This paper suggests that SMP may follow an Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT) framework (Elkhani and Bakri 2012; Oliver 1980). Much the same as a consumer holds expectations of the performance of a particular product, so too do they hold expectations of the performance of their online content. The expectations of the ‘performance’ that a post could achieve would be in terms of the potential popularity that is expected (De Vries et al. 2012), according to the number of responses received. In line with the ECT, the user would experience satisfaction or dissatisfaction dependent on whether the post met initial expectations (Elkhani and Bakri 2012). We propose that when social media users willingly post brand-related user-generated content, they express particular concern for the performance of such content amongst their online network. The following proposition is suggested: P1: The SMP of brand-related user-generated content can influence the user’s attitude towards the stated brand. The formalization of SMP explains how the personal evaluation of performance influences brand relationship. This relationship bears significance for practitioners implementing social media strategies. The proposed relationship stresses the importance of active engagement with consumers, which has been shown to play a fundamental role in enhancing consumer–brand relationships (Van Iwaarden et al. 2002). Future researchers could create an empirical measurement of SMP to evaluate sub-dimensions of perceived performance further. Further, empirical assessment could quantify SMP and examine the influence that performance bears on acts of conspicuous online consumption and brand interaction.

Over the course of the past four decades, the conceptualization of what is encompassed by social and environmental sustainability has evolved in depth and scope. This evolution now arguably includes organizational engagement in discourse pertaining to divisive social–political issues or politically divisive discourse engagement (PDDE). In addition to the increase in PDDE, the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand Study found that the large majority of consumers (64%) now buy or boycott brands due to a brand’s stance on a social or political issue. Far fewer (39%) than the majority of consumers were influenced in this way only 4 years prior to the 2018 findings. While increasingly more organizations are partaking in PDDE and more consumers are influenced by an organization’s PDDE, there remains relatively scant literature-based guidance for organizations in this context and for understanding consumer reactions to an organization’s PDDE. Accordingly, this study seeks to contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of organizational PDDE on consumer perceptions of the following: legitimacy, courageousness, integrity, and empathy. Impacts on consumer behavioral intentions in relation to said phenomenon are also investigated.Political corporate social responsibility (P-CSR) encompasses the area of CSR within which PDDE arguably best fits. P-CSR is an emerging area of CSR in which one of its multiple domains pertains to organizational behavior that illustrates a firm’s view of its social responsibility. In the case of this P-CSR domain, organizational behavior may impact government regulation even if this is not necessarily the intended aim. This behavior occurs due at least in part to existing gaps in global governance and national public relations. PDDE is argued to fit within this domain.Legitimacy theory posits that organizations operate within the bounds of societal expectations. It is expected that PDDE will impact consumer perceptions of legitimacy. Courage, integrity, and empathy are each component of virtue ethics, which have been found to impact consumer behavior depending on perceptions of organizational activities. Finally, the relationships among the aforementioned factors to behavioral intentions are investigated. Political ideology and social–political ideology are included as factors to help better understand consumer responses in relation to each relationship of interest. A between-subjects experimental design is utilized to study the phenomenon of interest.

A study was conducted to determine whether subjects will infer that a non-Hispanic dentist is making a special effort to target Hispanic consumers (ITM) when the home page of the dentist’s website says, “Hablamos Español.” Subjects did make this inference. In addition, subjects seeing this website rated the dentist less favorably and were less likely to intend to make an appointment with the dentist versus subjects seeing the same home page without “Hablamos Español.” Neither the perceived risk of the procedure (dental examination and X-rays costing $50 vs. a root canal and crown costing $2000) nor ethnocentrism-impacted responses.This study examines situations where two groups are targeted in the same message, for example, when a marketing communication contains both English and Spanish. We posit that the stereotypes the groups have of each other can impact how each group evaluates the product or service. Although general stereotypes can impact evaluation, a stereotype involving characteristics relevant to the purchase likely plays a greater role. For example, Groups A and B are targeted in the same message. Group B is stereotyped as buying only the highest quality product. When Group A sees that Group B is also targeted by the message, the positive stereotype of Group B’s purchase habits is likely to enhance Group A’s evaluation of the product.We posit that the inclusion of Spanish in the message causes non-Hispanics to infer that the firm is making a conscious effort to target Hispanics. Because of negative stereotypes of Hispanics, the inference of a Hispanic target market can result in a less favorable evaluation of the product or service for non-Hispanic consumers. This effect happens when (1) the consumer infers that another market is also being targeted in the same message and (2) as a result of this inference positive or negative stereotypes are evoked that impact the evaluation of the product or service. We call this the inferred target market (ITM) effect. There is some support for the ITM effect in the literature. For example, Gopinath, Glassman, and Nyer (2013) found that when bilingual (English/Spanish) packaging is used, consumers infer that the firm is actively targeting Hispanics living in the United States, and prejudice and negative stereotypes of Hispanics cause the product to be evaluated less favorably. Our purpose here is to extend the literature by providing a model of the ITM effect and explore the ITM effect in a service situation, namely when choosing a dentist.

Although traditional media remains the primary value driver for sponsors, when all media platforms are considered, social media accounts for 5–20% of the total value generated for sponsors. Because it has redefined consumer–brand interaction, social media is considered an important customer activation tool by businesses across the globe. Social media has recently become an effective tool that can be utilized by marketers for tapping shared interests of their customers and stimulating engagement to create positive attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, especially in the sponsorship domain. This is because social media is extremely popular with sports fans and acts as a great outlet for discussions related to sport and sport-related issues, which sometimes spill over to conversations about associated brands. Although there is a scholarly focus on consumer engagement in online platforms, there are scant studies on the use of social media by sponsors, and on how social media can act as a tool for achieving marketing objectives. This work offers two dimensions related to sponsor messages that enable effective communication by a brand about its association with an event on social media platform Twitter: articulation (focus of the message: product/event) and activation (trigger for user interaction with the message: promotional/interactive). Effect of these two dimensions are proposed to create positive user behavioral outcomes in form of positive sentiment (in related user tweets) and e-WOM respectively. The study makes four key theoretical contributions to extant literature. First, authors offer a novel way of defining and measuring message articulation on a social media platform. To date, extant literature discussed broadly commercial and noncommercial aspects of articulation, with little application to digital media. Second, this study empirically validates the usage of activation tactics, and provides insights into the individual effects of interactive and promotional messages on e-WOM, which has its contributions to the consumer engagement literature from the context of sponsorship in social media. Third, using incongruity and unexpectedness theories, analysis of functional and image fit as moderators highlights their important role for sponsors and explains how unexpectedness can act as a boon for low-fit sponsors on the social media platform. Finally, from a methodological perspective, this research suggests a unique way to capture Twitter data that can help sponsors to track the performance of their sponsorship-related messages. Authors used the Twitter–LDA algorithm, clubbed with topic modeling and NRC lexicon, to capture user sentiment.

A variety of mobility challenges burdens cities globally. Driven by urbanization and a growing number of private vehicles, negative externalities such as traffic congestions, parking shortages, air pollution, and noise are intensifying. Along with producing greenhouse gases and other detrimental emissions, private car ownership is characterized by crucial inefficiency. For example, single-occupant vehicles in the United States prevail with an average operation time of 4%, resulting in high idling capacities and overcrowded highways in rush hours (U.S. Department of Transportation 2018). However, these challenges are counteracted by trends, such as access-based consumption, sustainable mobility, and millennials’ unwillingness to embrace car-oriented lifestyles, which further encourage an academic focus on alternative mobility solutions.Multimodal mobility behavior is a central element to cope with these challenges that instrumentalize the aforementioned trends. Among the strengths of multimodality are increasing flexibility, promoting health, and reducing mobility costs. Multimodality has found particular interest in commuting to the workplace. Nearly half of the total car mileage originates from business activities or work commutes, out of which 67% are covered by motorized private transport (Mobilität in Deutschland 2018). Thus, companies have the ability and consequent responsibility to encourage desired mobility behavior by promoting multimodal commuting behavior. However, there is a twofold lack of research insights for advancing the needed change in commuting behavior. First, existing research falls short of providing insights into motivational patterns being essential for the change of a commuter’s mobility behavior. Second, insights into consumers’ perceived attractiveness of multimodality in the commuting context are lacking.This study takes an exploratory approach to enrich the nascent research stream on multimodality with a particular focus on consumer motivation. It employs a qualitative means-end chain analysis to uncover important findings on phenomena that are not directly observable. The qualitative approach further enables us to obtain insights without previously committing to a theoretical model. We analyze the overall motivations underlying a commuter’s switch from monomodal to multimodal mobility behavior, as well as consumer motives for multimodal commuting. In a range of laddering interviews with employees of a large German insurance company and a governmental institution, the underlying hierarchical motive structure is unveiled.Preliminary findings suggest the relevance of aspects related to sustainability, fitness, status, and economic interest. Especially the significance of status and fitness enriches the portfolio of consumer motivations in the current discourse. However, economic interest, which found high levels of attention in traditional mobility research, was only of minor importance. Finally, implications for further research as well as applications to incentivize employees’ shift to multimodal commuting are deduced.

Political ideology reflects one’s views about ethical ideals, principals, politics, and the role of government (Kim et al. 2018) and is generally categorized as liberal or conservative (Jost 2017). Conservative ideology is associated with in-group conformity (Kidwell et al. 2013) and the racial majority (Craig and Richeson 2014). Although extant literature advocates for the use of congruence between aspects of persuasive messaging and a brand’s overall image (Kamins and Gupta 1994; Gwinner and Eaton 1999; Krishna et al. 2010), the current research proposes that persuasive appeals, which are incongruent with a brand’s perceived political ideology may, in fact, have a positive influence on consumer preferences and outcomes (e.g., purchase intentions). Specifically, we propose that an emoji in a dark-brown skin tone can enhance consumer attitudes and intentions for brands that are perceived to be conservative. Prior literature from political psychology supports the influence of stereotype-incongruent messaging on creating favorable attitudes (Redlawks 2002; Redlawsk et al. 2010). We extend this stream by showing the effects of incongruent messaging cues on consumer preferences for conservative brands and uncover the process, which underlies such effects, namely perceived inclusiveness.Three experiments were conducted. Study 1 showed that, as predicted, a dark-brown emoji significantly increased the likelihood to visit a conservative store but had no effect on a neutral store. In study 2, we replicated the effects of study 1 and tested the proposed underlying mechanism, showing that a conservative brand’s use of a dark-toned emoji was perceived to be more inclusive than control brand, which ultimately increased consumer outcomes for the conservative brand. In study 3, we examined a boundary condition, demonstrating that promotion of an incongruent cue reverses the effects of studies 1 and 2, thus lowering attitudes toward a brand.The results of these studies show that, consistent with predictions, incongruent messaging cues increase consumer outcomes for conservative brands. The current research contributes to the nascent literature on political ideology in consumer behavior, showing that incongruent cues increase consumer perceptions of conservative brands’ inclusiveness, thus enhancing brand attitudes and purchase intentions. In addition, we contribute to the limited literature on the use of emojis in social media communications, showing that they can be used to affect consumer perceptions. In addition, we provide consequential managerial implications, showing that conservative brands should integrate diversity in persuasive messaging and provide guidelines regarding the use of such messaging.

Smartphones have become globally famous and change since their introduction to everyday life. The rapid rise in the use of smartphones, for instance, has significantly influenced consumer behavior. The resulting increase of smartphone usage in purchase-related situations, however, also yields negative consequences (e.g., consumer distress, decreasing attention). Hence, more still ever marketers are challenged to develop a deeper understanding of these novel objects of consumer behavior. Extant research provides limited insights on the relationship between consumers and their smartphones. Inspired by the ideas of attachment theory, we hence seek to fill this gap by investigating antecedents of consumers’ smartphone attachment. Extant research reveals that attachment to nonhuman objects like brands, places, and popular objects/products equals patterns of interpersonal attachment. Smartphones are considered as one of the most prevalent objects of modern society, which are constantly kept close to the human body. Thus, this study hypothesizes that consumers’ relationship to a smartphone reflects a form of attachment. In summary, this research broadens research on product attachment, brand attachment, and smartphone attachment by elucidating the drivers of smartphone attachment. In particular, this research provides, among others, novel insights into research on consumer–object relationships and develops a model of smartphone attachment considering the self-concept of consumers (i.e., an aggregate of beliefs about oneself). In particular, this research shows that smartphone attachment has an emotional and behavioral character, while the emotional attachment represents a crucial predictor of attachment behavior. As hypothesized, the greater consumer materialism tendency, the greater is the smartphone attachment. Sociability needs, in turn, positively influence only emotional attachment and thus shape attachment behaviors in an indirect way. Interestingly, internal locus of control attenuates consumers’ emotional attachment to the smartphone. By integrating different consumer self-perceptions, this research advances the work of Thomson et al. (2005) who reflect on the role of emotional attachment for attachment behaviors in a consumer research context. In addition, this study advances research on information systems and more specifically on smartphone attachment by introducing the emotional attachment construct and by elucidating major determinants of smartphone attachment.

Terror management theory (TMT) underlines the repercussions of death-related thoughts on consumers’ decisions in everyday life. More specifically, TMT suggests that a reminder of one’s own death or mortality salience (MS) is likely to make people defend their cultural worldview and boost their self-esteem by favouring materialism. Indeed, prior research corroborates that individuals consume more in their defence against MS, which also amplifies their materialistic tendencies. However, an empirical exploration on the relationship between TMT and materialism, especially in a Middle Eastern context, seems almost non-existent. To fulfil this research gap, we conducted research in Lebanon with a mixed approach. First, focus groups were conducted. Perhaps due to its critical geopolitical location and history in the region, our findings suggest that there is a preference for experiential rather than materialistic consumption under MS in the short term. Research on experiential consumption shows that people prefer experiences to material purchases in the distant future, and that the social context of the experience shapes its attractiveness. Second, we carried out an experiment, positing that MS may induce more experiential consumption, rather than materialistic consumption, particularly in the near future, in a brand loyalty setting. Results show that individuals under MS choose to redeem accumulated loyalty points for experiential rather than materialistic rewards in the near future, and particularly when these experiences are solitary. Marketers and advertisers could capitalize on our findings by tailoring their brand’s loyalty programs and rewards to appeal to such underlying individual motives.

Over several decades, marketing researchers have worked to understand the nature of brand and consumer relationships (Aaker 1997; Fournier 1998). As Hollebeek (2014) notes, consumer “involvement” or “level of interest and personal relevance with a brand” plays a role in fostering brand communities, relationships, and brand loyalty in interactive or online environments. Using a conceptual framework based on the FCB grid and consumer involvement, the present research works to link salient brand/product characteristics to social media engagement using field data and a laboratory experiment.The preliminary results of our field study suggest that social media engagement is affected by involvement and consumer motives (Study 1). In addition, the results of our controlled experiment suggest that a social media user’s sex may impact engagement intentions (Study 2). Male consumers’ engagement intentions are found to be higher for low-involvement products, while female consumers’ engagement intentions are found to be higher for high involvement products. In addition, this gender effect is found to be mediated by consumer involvement.Our mixed-methods approach provides preliminary evidence for the effect of involvement on consumer engagement with brand communications on social networking sites. Doing so helps to bridge research on brand and product messaging (Ratchford 1987; Rossiter et al. 1991; Vaughn 1980, 1986) information processing (Meyers-Levy 1985; Darley and Smith 1995; Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran 1991; Meyers-Levy and Sternthal 1991), consumer involvement (Zaichkowsky 1985), and consumer engagement (Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek 2011).Notably, our research is limited in its treatment of gender as a moderating variable of consumer involvement, and there is an opportunity to expand on the present research using midrange gender theories. For example, the selectivity model may prove useful in identifying specific features of social media communications, which are most influential in shaping consumer involvement online.

Metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not only in language but also in thought and action. In addition to increasing the effectiveness of communication, metaphors have also contributed toward theory development in social science. Specifically, in the marketing discipline, there is a rich tradition of research based on metaphors. However, a systematic review of advancements in research on metaphors and, correspondingly, research in marketing communication regarding and employing metaphors, reveals that the potential of metaphors and metaphoric transfer for marketing communication remains under-realized. Given that metaphors research has been developed in disparate fields, such as linguistics, psychology, and social sciences, understandably, research on metaphors is fraught with non-conciliatory issues with regard to conceptualization, different types of metaphors, uses, and metaphoric theory. Therefore, on the foundations of the significant developments in metaphors research that can be useful for marketing communications scholarship, we undertake a systematic overview as to the status of research on metaphors in order to develop an appropriate framework for reviewing metaphors and explore implications for the domain of marketing communications. Specifically, we develop a brief review of metaphor conceptualizations, various typologies in metaphors, uses of metaphors, models of metaphor, and potential issues with and pitfalls of metaphors. To demonstrate that marketing research can be significantly advanced by focusing on metaphors as linguistic tools and as well as research tools that can spark inquiry, the objectives of this research are to: (i) provide an up-to-date review of metaphors research in terms of conceptualization, types of metaphors, uses of metaphors, models of metaphor, and issues and pitfalls of metaphors; (ii) identify several communication and theoretical metaphors that are relevant to marketing communication; and (iii) develop a research agenda on the different roles of metaphors for the domain of marketing communications. Consequently, the contributions and implications of this research for marketing communication scholarship are discussed.

Goal pursuit represents an important psychological mechanism under loyalty programs (Bagchi and Li 2010; Fishbach and Dhar 2005; Lee and Ariely 2006). Although academic research on loyalty programs has examined the extent to which consumers succeed or fail in reward–goal pursuit, insufficient attention has been paid to the consequences of such successes or failures. Addressing this gap, we draw upon research on goal pursuit and counterfactual thinking to examine the effect of goal completion magnitude on individuals’ effort toward achieving subsequent goals, and how maintenance versus attainment goal types moderate this relationship. Analyzing flight activities from 5719 members of a major airline’s frequent flyer program, we found that (1) individuals who failed (vs. succeeded) at achieving an attainment goal will put more (vs. less) effort into subsequent goal pursuit than individuals who failed (vs. succeeded) at fulfilling a maintenance goal; (2) a linear effect of goal achievement magnitude on future goal pursuit effort under the maintenance goal, such that the more one completed his/her previous goal, the more effort he/she will invest in the subsequent goal cycle; and (3) a reverse U-shaped effect of goal achievement magnitude under the attainment goal, such that substantial goal achievement in the previous goal cycle creates a surprising hampering effect (i.e., close-but-no-cigar effect) on subsequent goal pursuit. Instead, moderate achievement of the previous goal leads to the most effort invested in subsequent goal pursuit. These results and the proposed underlying processes are further explored in a lab experiment. Our research provides new insights for marketing scholars and managers with regard to goal pursuit and loyalty programs.

The focus on building a superior experience throughout a customer’s journey has become a top goal for service providers (Lemon and Verhoef 2016). It is important to understand the customer experience over numerous touch points and across multiple interactions. On the research agenda from the authors’ Journal of Marketing article is to “identify anomalies in customer journeys—whereby customers deviate from habit or predictions—and identify potential moments of influence” (p. 87).One such anomaly explored here is the case of a customer making a mistake during the service experience resulting in a penalty or fine. All services require some customer participation (Bitner et al. 1997), and providers are asking more from customers during the service experience than ever before (Dong and Sivakumar 2017). Customers are frequently error-prone (Chase and Stewart 1994) and cause one-third of all service problems (Tax et al. 2006).In order to understand the customer experience after a penalty, a critical incident technique study with a content analysis was conducted. There were 126 critical incidents after cleaning the data. Participants were asked “Can you think of a time when you made a mistake that led to a penalty? (Or you almost got a penalty but the company waived it?).” Participants were asked a series of questions, depending on whether they were charged a penalty or the company waived the penalty.Fifty-nine percent of the sample asked for a waiver after receiving a penalty due to a mistake. In terms of retention, 43% of the individuals who asked for a waiver and did not receive it left the company. None of the participants who asked for a waiver and received the waiver left the company.Forty-one percent of the participants did not ask for a penalty waiver. Twenty-one percent of these individuals left the company. Service providers must carefully consider the outcomes of denying penalty waivers, and how the refusal to grant the waiver affects the customer’s overall experience with the firm. Firms should be as flexible as possible, considering each customer’s individual situation. These findings set the framework for a series of scenario-based experiments.

The construal level theory and the idea of consumer involvement are two important topics in contemporary consumer research, yet few studies have previously examined their interaction, especially in the online context. Current trends indicate that internet-enabled markets play a pivotal role in a firm’s revenue generation. The alignment of the customer’s perceived value (i.e., value to customers) and firm value (i.e., value from customers) is also of extreme importance in creating consumer value, consumer satisfaction, loyalty, and a firm’s ultimate profitability (Kumar and Reinartz 2016). Thus, it is time to investigate the interaction among consumer self-construal level, consumer involvement, and firm resources in the context of internet-enabled markets.Extant research suggests that the proliferation of online markets where millions of sellers and buyers exchange with each other is mainly supported by websites run by third-party companies (such as Singh and Kundu 2002). It is through websites that, regardless of actual resources owned (limited or adequate), individual sellers (i.e., one-person seller) compete with their firm counterparts, and unknown sellers (i.e., entrepreneurs, small brands) compete with well-known sellers (i.e., famous brands) or even with big companies.All firms have limited resources; only those that can effectively allocate these resources will achieve profitability and sustainability. To this end, firms must adopt appropriate strategies and develop the corresponding marketing tools in order to enhance consumer engagement. It is our interest to study the strategic implication stemming from the dynamics among consumer self-construal level, consumer involvement with a website, and firm resources of sellers on the website. Notably, our initial assumptions that drive this paper are (1) that consumer self-construal level affects consumers’ information processing of sellers and products; (2) that consumer involvement with a website does not indicate consumer involvement with any sellers on the website, given there are millions of substitutes; and (3) that outperforming firms/individuals compete with their counterparts by successful manipulation of marketing strategies that are contingent on their products, resources, and consumer characteristics.We develop our propositions by drawing on the construal-level theory, literature on consumer involvement, and the resource-based perspective. Enabled by contemporary technology and marketing analytics, we argue that hypotheses could be further developed from our propositions and could be tested using real-time behavioral data pulled from third-party platforms (such as amazon.com), data from complementary surveys, and interviews of sellers on these platforms.

This study develops a scale based on the concept of “consumer normalcy,” which is composed of four dimensions: (1) ability to participate in the marketplace, (2) demonstrating competence and control, (3) achieving distinction, and (4) being perceived as an equal. This important new construct can be used as a tool to more fully understand the experience of an individual who feels he or she has been discriminated against in the marketplace based on demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation/preference, or disability. The scale is tested in two large random samples using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, where one sample shows how consumer normalcy is directly connected to avoidance of the offending retailer and how this effect along with the scale’s measurement capabilities are stronger in the demographic-based service failure condition. The Consumer Normalcy Scale may provide a valuable tool for other scholars who may be interested in conducting research in areas of marketplace diversity and discrimination as well. The diversity of the marketplace requires investigation of differential treatment of consumers, along with the ramifications for firms who do not implement appropriate policies to prevent the occurrence of such service failures. This scale provides a view into the psychological mechanisms of how and why consumers feel as though they have been discriminated against along with a prediction of subsequent anti-firm behaviors. Following the proven processes for scale development has led to the achievement of favorable results in both validity and reliability considerations. This scale measures what it purports to measure and should be relied on to provide valid and consistent results. These were preliminary tests, and further exploration into the scale’s behavior in different populations is anticipated.

Companies market their products by employing various elements in their advertisements. Previous studies have shown that the use of different types of endorsers (e.g., product experts, consumers) can result in different effects. At the same time, the use of certain appeals (rational vs. emotional) in product advertisements also matters for customer outcomes. While the extent to which the effects of message appeal depend on endorser type has received some research attention, the interaction between message appeal and endorser’s age is not yet known. A 2 (message appeal: rational vs. emotional) × 2 (endorser type: product expert vs. consumer) × 2 (endorser’s age: an endorser in his 20s vs. an endorser in his 50s) experimental study with 270 German consumers was implemented. MANOVA results indicate that only the message appeal matters for consumer outcomes such as message credibility, product attitude, and purchase intention. The hypothesized main effects for endorser type on the dependent variables are not empirically supported. Furthermore, the interaction effects for message appeal and endorser types are also not statistically significant.

Service dominant logic (SDL; e.g., Vargo and Lusch 2004, 2008) and customer engagement research (e.g., Hollebeek et al. 2016) over the past two decades have led to an increased focus on the customer experience journey and its subsequent challenges (e.g., Lemon and Verhoef). Given the increasingly connected world, organizations must now try to manage multiple touchpoints in the customer experience journey; one of these touchpoints being customers interactions with other customers. While customer-to-customer interactions can present a challenge to organizations, this research seeks to find the opportunity in these connections. Specifically, this research will examine how both online and face-to-face customer-to-customer interactions impact customer engagement behaviors, as well as objective organizational outcomes (e.g., actual purchases in a retail establishment). The present research seeks to examine how different levels/types of customer-to-customer interactions impact the customer experience (customer engagement behaviors (CEBs; Hollebeek et al 2016)) as well as organizational outcomes. Specifically, this research will look at two different partner-owned customer touchpoints and their impact on the customer experience. These include: (1) Online customer-to-customer connections (e.g., F.B. group tied to the retail establishment, partner-owned touchpoint) and (2) Face-to-face customer-to-customer connections (e.g., group of customers formed by the establishment, partner-owned touchpoint).

The 2016 United States’ presidential election has been deemed “An Election like No Other” and could be characterized as the ultimate insider, Clinton, versus the ultimate outsider, Trump. This research, utilizing data (n = 375 likely voters) collected one week prior to the presidential election, finds that the brand image of a presidential candidate is formed through the dynamics of threat/fear and political trust. Trump tapped into a general belief that people do not trust the government, and the government is not working for them. He stated that government was broken and that he was the person who could fix it. The lack of a relationship between trust in the government and evaluation of Clinton as a candidate means that she was unable to establish a relationship between all the good government does for people and support for her candidacy. Trump avoided any negative feelings of political cynicism, which can be attributed to his “outsider” status in the minds of voters. He also understood the level of political cynicism in the country would be directed toward an experienced politician. It was found that voters’ levels of nostalgia, belief in equal rights for immigrants, free-trade resentment, and concerns over their financial future impacted their view of the political system. While voters’ trust in government and political cynicism impacted their perception of the image of the candidates, the opinion that immigration harms/benefits the country proved to be a significant and direct factor in evaluating the candidates.The 2020 presidential election of the United States is approaching. Based on our research findings, we predict whether Trump, incumbent president, will be reelected depending on three factors. First, how much of the 2016 election issues remains intact toward the election? If still intact, they could be recycled for the incoming election. Second, how do voters view Trump? Is he a Washington insider or yet an outsider after serving one term? Surprisingly, Trump is still called a president like no other previous president. Third, have new issues appeared since Trump took the White House? Especially, the trade tensions with China and nuclear threats from North Korea have recently intensified—what is their impact on the 2020 election. Future studies need to expand this research by examining the added issues facing presidential candidates in the upcoming election.

Recent years have seen an unpreceded development in ethnic marketing communications, with global and local brands attempting to reach the ethnic consumer segments with tailored messages. Research shows that ethnic marketing communications may act as a double-edged sword – they may enhance individuals’ positive feelings towards the brand (Appiah and Liu 2009) or, on the contrary, may trigger feelings of exclusion and exoticization (Schroeder and Borgerson 2005). The current study aims to address this inconsistency in the extant literature by investigating the impact of mono- and multi-ethnic advertising on ethnic consumers’ felt social inclusion in the broader society. Studying this is important because inclusive ethnic marketing campaigns contribute to ‘the increased visibility, social reality, and normative ethic of multicultural integration’ (Peñaloza 2017, p. 277) and are 47% more likely to be effective and to generate positive engagement (Campaign 2018). This abstract presents the results of a 2 × 2 experiment, which examines the effect of mono- and multi-ethnic advertisements with ethnically congruent or neutral products on targeted ethnic consumers’ ad-triggered social inclusion, attitudes towards the ad and purchase intentions. We define ethnic consumers’ ad-triggered social inclusion (hereinafter referred to as SIad) as an ethnic individual’s momentary feeling of acceptance, equality, empowerment and respect in the host society, triggered by his/her exposure to ethnic advertising. This definition is rooted in the conceptualization of subjective social inclusion (SSI) proposed in the extant literature (Licsandru and Cui 2018), and our original qualitative research conducted with a sample of 23 ethnic individuals. Drawing on the common in-group identity model (Gaertner et al. 1993) and the intergroup contact hypothesis (Allport 1954), this study shows that multi-ethnic advertisements arouse higher level of ad-triggered social inclusion than mono-ethnic advertisements (F(1,103) = 6.40, p < 0.05, ηp2 = 0.059). Results show that ad-triggered social inclusion leads to more positive attitudes towards the ad, supporting SIad’s important role in the ethnic advertising effectiveness. Moreover, ad-triggered social inclusion impacts ethnic consumers’ intentions to purchase the advertised product via their positive attitudes towards the ad (full mediation). The results challenge the self-congruity theory (McGuire et al. 1978) in that higher levels of ethnic congruence (either through ethnically congruent products or mono-ethnically targeted ads) does not trigger more positive response by ethnic consumers. On the contrary, higher levels of diversity are better received. Overall, this research makes an important practical and theoretical contribution, by clarifying the difference between mono- and multi-ethnic marketing communications and the mechanisms through which they impact the targeted ethnic consumers’ response, advancing previous findings focused on inclusive marketplaces (Thomas 2013) and inclusive spaces (Saatcioglu and Ozanne 2013), towards a model of inclusive ethnic advertising.

Augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a new technology available to retailers to engage with customers in a novel and vivid way (Yim et al. 2017). While AR is in its infancy in terms of its application in consumer markets, spending on the technology is expected to reach $60 billion by 2020 (Porter and Heppelmann 2017). Augmented reality aims to link the real world with the virtual world (Rauschnabel et al. 2015). Azuma (1997) asserts that augmented reality integrates computer-generated objects with the real world and provides individuals with real-time interactions. For a long time, AR has been hindered by large and cumbersome devices (Rese et al. 2017). However, with the adoption of the ubiquitous smartphone, developers, retailers and consumers’ interest in augmented reality has significantly grown, as many retailers are now implementing augmented reality features into their mobile applications (Dacko 2017).Pantano (2014) highlights the potential of augmented reality in engaging customers and influencing their purchase intentions. AR’s ability to overlay the physical environment with virtual elements, including information and images, which can interact with the physical environment during real-time, offers firms new possibilities in delivering content to consumers. In turn, the functions available through augmented reality have the potential to change a number of consumer activities, including product trials, virtual try on and information search and acquisition (Javornik 2016).Drawing upon Javornik’s (2016) augmented reality research agenda, as well as Rese et al. (2017), Kim and Hyun (2016) and Yim et al. (2017) research on the adoption of AR mobile apps, the aim of this research is twofold. First, to explore the variables that influence customer engagement with augmented reality features on mobile applications, and second, to assess the influence of such augmented reality brand engagement on satisfaction with the customer experience and brand usage intent.In the form of an online questionnaire, data were gathered from 474 consumers who had used the augmented reality features on the IKEA Place app, which is downloadable from the Play Store on the android platform and the App Store on the IOS platform. Respondents had downloaded and retained the app for at least one month and used the augmented reality feature more than once. A model of hypothesised relationships was examined with the use of structural equation modelling to identify the influence of AR and technology attributes on consumer brand engagement and subsequent outcomes of satisfaction with the experience and brand usage intention.

Prior research has shown that attributional judgments about the cause of a service failure are linked to post-consumption activities and intentions (Richins 1983). Specifically, these judgments are related to opinions about redress. Consumers feel more deserving of compensation when a failure is attributed to an external (vs. internal) cause (Folkes 1984). This phenomenon has been fairly well established in the literature, yet several unanswered questions remain. First, how do service recovery outcomes differ when a firm steps up and corrects a service failure that was caused by the customer versus failures perpetrated by service providers? Does this change the mindset of the consumer? Can goodwill and future value be obtained by the service organization if it amends an issue it did not cause? Ample research has been conducted regarding service recovery strategies for firm-based failures (external attributions), but little has been done to answer questions relating to customer’s self-failures (internal attributions).Our first study illustrates that consumers respond more negatively to failures attributed to external versus internal (self-inflicted) causes. Our second study shows that while customers tend to react in a more positive manner (i.e., higher repatronage intentions) to self-caused failures, these reactions can be further amplified. The results demonstrate that accommodating guests who showed up to a concert on the wrong day led to higher distributive justice perceptions and repatronage intentions (RPI) compared to those who were not accommodated. Moreover, the amount of effort exerted during the service recovery process was found to be an important factor when the service provider was not able to offer a sufficient resolution to the problem. Findings indicate that when not accommodated, consumers who felt a high level of effort was provided during service recovery had greater distributive justice perceptions and were more likely to repatronize in the future compared to when minimal effort was exerted. Thus, practitioners should note that even when an organization cannot resolve a customer-caused failure, a high amount of perceived effort significantly enhances customer retention.

As an “object of desire,” luxury brands provide their own “prominence” to signal conspicuousness and status (Han et al. 2010). Lipovetsky (2007) has described postmodern luxury as “emotional luxury,” which suggests that, besides the traditional desire of social distinction, postmodern luxury consumption also involves significant personal and experiential elements and self-directed motives such as materialistic motive and self-gifting intention (Wiedmann et al. 2007). Materialism is considered to be associated with luxury consumption and has been identified as an individual driver of luxury consumption in previous research (Wiedmann et al. 2009).Self-gift giving is regarded as a means of personal self-communication and indulgence (Mick and Demoss 1990). Consumers can buy luxury goods as a gift to themselves for self-serving purpose; therefore, self-gift giving is conceptualized as an antecedent of personal orientation toward luxury brand consumption (Tsai 2005) and has been empirically identified as an individual motive of luxury consumption (Wiedmann et al. 2009). This research suggests testing a model that allows understanding links between materialism, self-gift, and luxury consumption.A quantitative study has been conducted among 303 French volunteers. The macro process (Hayes 2012) has been used in order to test the mediation role of self-gift giving on the effect of materialism on luxury product purchase intention.Results show that materialistic “success” has a direct significant positive effect on luxury purchase intention and an indirect positive one through self-gift mood reinforcement and through self-gift reward (p < 0.05). Success related to materialistic goods is a determinant of luxury purchase intention mainly because it arouses a self-gift motivation oriented to the enhancement of positive emotions. Moreover, centrality has a direct significant positive effect on luxury purchase intention and an indirect positive one through self-gift mood reinforcement and through self-gift reward (p < 0.05). The more materialistic goods are central for an individual, the more luxury purchase intention is high, mainly because it arouses a self-gift motivation oriented toward the enhancement of positive emotions. Hence, happiness is a determinant of luxury purchase intention only when it arouses a self-gift motivation oriented toward the enhancement of positive emotions. These results may help advertiser to better communicate on luxury products, mainly when putting these products in a self-gift context.

In an intensely competitive environment, a high level of price uncertainty can challenge and confuse consumers. This paper focuses on an important phenomenon resulting from frequent deep price changes—consumer procrastination, which is defined as the decision to wait rather than make an actual purchase when one recognizes a need for purchase. Consumer procrastination has received little attention among marketing scholars, resulting in a lack of understanding of its antecedents and consequences. Through two empirical studies, we extend findings from psychology and decision making to examine the market versus personality-related factors that lead to consumer procrastination and post-decision cognitions, emotions, and behaviors that result from consumer procrastination.The purpose of Study 1 is to create a psychological theory of procrastination to explain why consumers procrastinate under uncertain shopping decision conditions. We used a scenario-based experiment with a 2 (price uncertainty: low vs. high) × 2 (time limit: 2 weeks vs. 6 months) between-subjects factorial design. Established scales were used to measure potential dispositional predictors of consumer procrastination as covariates: trait procrastination, price consciousness, sale proneness, and prestige seeking. The results showed that time limit, price uncertainty, price consciousness, sale proneness, and prestige seeking positively influence consumer delay in making purchase decisions, and the positive impact of uncertainty is only salient when people have short time limits rather than long ones.Study 2 focuses on the negative outcomes of consumer decisions when retail prices change. This study compares consumers’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to their undesirable actions versus undesirable inactions in retail sale context. The hypotheses were tested using an experiment in a 2 (outcome knowledge: larger future sale vs. no future sale) × 2 (decision: purchase vs. not purchase) between-subjects factorial design. To control for a potential effect of price and type of product, a hedonic low-price product (i.e., a shirt) versus a utilitarian high-price product (i.e., a laptop) was used as an additional between-subjects factor. The dependent variables of regret, anger, and complaint intention were measured using established scales. This study extends and challenges past research regarding the emotional outcomes of action versus inaction. Although past research has found that negative outcomes resulting from actions are stronger than the outcomes resulting from inactions, we found the opposite to be true for the effects on regret and found no significant difference for anger.

Globalization, technological advances, and transport development have largely contributed to the increase in the flow of goods and services but also of people (Appadurai 1990). This leads to the inevitable consequence that millions of consumers are exposed to multiple cultural environments and contacts. Among those consumers, we can mention the category of high-skilled professional expatriates with high purchasing power (HSBC Expat Explorer Survey 2008). When people of different cultures come into contact, we observe the phenomenon of “acculturation.” In this context of increased mobility, it seems to us very interesting to study the process of food acculturation and consumption of very mobile consumers like the professional expatriates.The aim of our study is to explore the food acculturation among expatriates under a dynamic lens. First, by analyzing the influence of transnational cultures competing in the food acculturation process of expatriates settled in a new cultural environment beyond the dualistic home versus host culture’ influences; second, by studying the accumulative effects of previous acculturation experiences and cultural contacts over time on food consumption behavior of expatriates; and third, by exploring the food acculturation process with the different stages of food acculturation experienced by expatriates in their new cultural environment. We conducted a qualitative exploratory approach with the life narrative method. We interviewed 16 households (spouses and teenagers included) of American, British, and German expatriates settled in the East area of France (Alsace) characterized by an important international community of expatriates working in international companies. A content analysis was carried out identifying the most recurring and common themes based on food acculturation process. We used the software NVivo10 to identify and sort the different themes based on our research objectives.Our study extended the existing acculturation models by adding different categories of transnational cultures competing in the acculturation process of expatriates. We highlighted the influence of transnational cultures from previous acculturation experiences and intensive travels abroad and from “proxy” acculturation experiences. We also identified the influence of two foreign host subcultures in the host country (Arabic and Turkish) in the process of food acculturation of expatriates settled in France. Finally, we identified five different stages of food acculturation among expatriates: the “honeymoon,” the “crisis,” the “resistance,” the “gradual adaptation,” and the “in-depth adaptation” stages. Those stages vary from one cultural group to the other based on the cultural distance, the length of stay in the host country, and the family status.

Wine perception and consumption are drastically changing in France, before considered “as food,” wine is now considered “pleasure.” A wine choice is strongly driven by the perception of its terroir of origin. Terroir has the ability to carry symbolic meaning, expertise, authenticity, etc., which will infer on the wine’s perception. Nevertheless, to market a product with its terroir of origin, practitioners have to stay close to the image a customer has of this place. Otherwise, it could lead to cognitive dissonance and strongly distort the way their product is perceived.As wine consumption and consideration are evolving, it became important to investigate how customers perceive a wine’s terroir of origin? To answer this question, an innovative projective qualitative methodology, the album online, was used. This research highlights the dimensions of wine’s terroir of origin perception, particularly, an enchantment dimension. It also confirms and details the structure of wine terroir of origin image.

Social media has become a popular platform for conversations about, and with, companies and their brands. Increasingly, customers are using social media platforms to express their experiences and emotions with an organization’s products or services. Recently there has been interest in the role that social media sentiment can play in predicting stock returns.Social media sentiment data can, for example, reveal customer preferences, customer satisfaction, and customer feedback on product ratings. In some cases, customer satisfaction can lead to increased investor returns. Added to this, strong links can be found in the literature between customer satisfaction levels and subsequent stock price returns. Therefore, our study explores the predictive power of social media sentiment on stock returns, using a logic where social media sentiment acts as an early indicator of customer satisfaction.We draw upon publically available data to test our hypotheses. We source our customer satisfaction measure from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for a 2-year window. The data for social media sentiment were scraped from Twitter. Due to the qualitative nature of tweets, the data were transformed to quantitative data for analysis using sentiment dictionaries. Finally, for each of the firms in our data set, we calculated daily stock returns for the 2-year observational window.We find that global social media sentiment is positively associated with stock returns. While financial sentiment performs even better than global sentiment in predicting returns, customer sentiment does not predict returns. Further, we find no relationship between social media sentiment and customer satisfaction. Finally, we find no relationship between customer satisfaction and stock returns.We conclude that, while social media sentiment does indeed predict stock returns, this effect occurs wholly through financial, rather than consumer, channels.

As young adult consumers have driven much of the growth in the luxury goods market, they become an important target group for luxury brand managers. As more young adult consumers gain access to luxury, it is imperative to understand key determinants that impact their luxury brand purchases. Based on the “Functional Theories of Attitudes,” this study aims to examine the impact of both need for uniqueness and bandwagon effect on multi-motivational functions of attitudes and purchase intentions toward luxury brands with a focus on young adult consumers in order to expand the general understanding of this emerging market and develop appropriate marketing strategies to enhance business success. A total of 711 college students at a Midwestern and a Southern university in the United States participated in the online survey. Respondents who had purchased at least one luxury good (n = 540) were used for this study. Using structural equation modeling, this study finds that both young adult consumers’ need for uniqueness and bandwagon effect of luxury brands positively influenced their functions of attitudes and purchase intentions toward luxury brands. Bandwagon effect can be explained through the conspicuous consumption behavior. In the case of luxury brands with high bandwagon effect, consumers would consume more conspicuous luxury fashion goods to communicate their conformity toward the noticeable branded goods. The need for uniqueness concept in luxury fashion goods consumption reflects one’s self-directed hedonic pleasure attained from using of the luxury goods. This hedonic experience would be heightened through expressing one’s individuality through unique and different luxury goods than others. Interestingly, compared to the direct effect of need for uniqueness, bandwagon effect had much stronger impact on both attitudes and purchase intentions toward luxury brands. This means that young adult consumers tend to have a stronger drive to conform to others by following trends or imitating popular styles and brand choices. Adopting luxury goods allows them to stand out from others by expressing their individualistic or unique style when they shop for luxury brands. This result does not reject the importance of need for uniqueness, yet highlights the greater importance of bandwagon effect in the luxury brand consumption context. These findings offer marketing insights that highlight the greater importance of bandwagon effect in the luxury brand consumption when focusing on young adult segment of luxury consumers.

This study is particularly relevant in understating consumer’s evaluation of multi-ingredient sustainable food products. Firms are in a constant need to introduce sustainable products; thus, the authors consider product type (vice/virtue) implications on the perceived performance of the product. In examining this relationship, they draw from compensatory inference and attribute centrality (the degree to which the ingredients are integral in defining the food product) theories. Compensatory assumptions in food and beverages segment identify a product to be healthy and good for consumers in long term or can be a source of immediate fun and excitement but not both (Kivetz and Simonson 2002). Therefore, a wholesomeness claim might lead consumers to suspect reduced enjoyment and pleasure in a vice product category (Raghunathan et al. 2006) such that consumers might recognize the product to be less superior in vice rather than in virtue category. This proposition is also supported by an empirical confirmation, which shows that consumers are less reactive to the advertisement (Bezawada and Pauwels 2013) and willingness to pay for organic products in the vice category (Van Droon and Verhoef 2011). Thus, findings of the study 1 show that the consumers perceive a sustainable product to be superior in case of virtue product category (e.g., Yogurt) and inferior in case of the vice product category (e.g., Chocolate).In study 2, the authors show that the perceived performance inferiority of product can be avoided by linking sustainability to peripheral rather than central ingredients of the food product. The presented studies support the hypotheses and explore the effect of ingredient centrality on product type-perceived performance relationship in sustainable foods. The authors conclude the paper with both managerial and theoretical implications. It helps the firms to mediate the efforts of sustainability effectively.

Sonic logos have been around since the original NBC chimes, which was the first sound to receive an audio trademark. Even now, Sonic Logos are utilized as a strategic branding element across a variety of mediums. Despite the importance of sonic logos, surprisingly little research has examined their usage and impact on consumer perceptions of brands. Significant work has investigated other forms of music and marketing such as background music (Park and Young 1986), creating the impression of social presence (Sayin et al. 2015), persuasion in marketing (Bruner 1990; Kellaris and Cox 1989; Park 2003), and through the use of sounds and music in retail or public environments (Beverland et al. 2006; Mattila and Wirtz 2001; Morrison and Beverland 2003; Spangenberg et al. 2005).In our study, we expand on the previous sonic logo research conducted by Krishnan et al. (2012). In their study, they looked at how the number of tones affected consumers’ willingness to pay and processing fluency. In our pretest and experiment, we use the baseline results from Krishnan et al. (2012), which showed an optimal six sonic tones and explore how other characteristics of sonic logos, such as timbre, modality, tempo, and key (Bruner 1990), have an effect on consumer perceptions of brands.In our pretest, we manipulate the characteristics of timbre, modality, tempo, and key that shape consumer evaluations of happiness and sadness in order to create two short (e.g., 4 s) composite orthogonal musical stimuli to use in the remainder of our research. In our experiment, we show that these two separate sonic logos can affect consumers’ perceptions of a brand’s customer service and attitude toward an advertisement by the mere presence of the sonic logo. In our further experiments, we will continue to tease out various effects that short sonic logos have on consumer sentiment, advertising, and brand perceptions.

Gift giving is prevalent in most cultures as it is a symbolistic ritual of love, care, and often help build social relations (Anton et al. 2014; Areni 1998; Belk 1976). In the United States, consumers give gifts to friends and loved ones on multiple occasions every year. In 2016, it was estimated that Americans spent $929 on average per person on holiday gifts (American Research Group cited in Backman 2016). Gift giving, hereafter gifting, is such an important aspect of life, that 56% of U.S. consumers planned to accumulate debt in order to give gifts during the 2016 holiday season (Backman 2016).The aim of this research is to examine if there are differences in gifting practices across demographic factors among U.S. consumers. From a marketing viewpoint, generational differences in consumers focus on values, attitudes, and consumption preferences (Urbain et al. 2013). Drawing on Davies et al.’s definition of “the gift,” we define gifting practices to include the planning, searching, shopping, and the act of giving something without the expectation of immediate compensation. The current study examines gifting practices in general and did not focus on a specific holiday or event. As recent gifting research has called for more quantitative approaches in gifting research (Davies et al. 2010), we contribute to the literature by doing an empirical analysis of current gifting practices.After informal interviews with 33 informants, we designed a questionnaire focusing on different aspects of gifting. The questionnaire included sections on emotions involving gifting, closeness of relationship to the recipient, reasons for gifting, among other factors. We examined the difference of gifting behavior across gender, across two combined age group categories—Gen Z and Millennials (younger) and Gen X and Baby boomers (older), as well as across income levels. We further examined shopping environment preferences (e.g., online vs. in-store). Our study shows an interaction effect with deal proneness and age group on gifting behavior. Results reveal significant interaction effects of deal proneness and age, on the enjoyment of gifting and involvement with the gifting process. Additionally, we examined how to deal proneness in gift shopping affects consumer acquisition of gifts in terms of in-store versus online purchases.

There has been much discussion within the marketing literature about marketing’s influence both within the firm and within the family of academic business disciplines (e.g., Clark Key et al. 2014; Eisend 2015; Homburg et al. 2015). This begs the question of whether or not marketing provides the relevant answers and knowledge base needed in areas of theoretical and conceptual innovations that reflect the changing social, technological, and global growth-oriented realities of the twenty-first century (Webster and Lusch 2013; Ferrell and Ferrell 2016). These issues signal the significant change to business models, growth strategies, marketing channels, customer relationship management, as well as the domain of mainstream marketing research, its methodology and relevance. Inquiries into the adequacies of marketing’s extant knowledge base for continued development may uncover intellectual, methodological, and conceptual ruts that further distance marketing scholarship from its proper place in knowledge creation at every level of the firm and academic scholarship.The purpose of this Special Session is to stimulate critical, forward-looking conversation on the nature of marketing insight, its place in the firm, and in the family of business disciplines. Questions of marketing’s ability to create relevant understanding within various contexts: in the marketplace; in the lives of consumers, in society, will be taken up, with a view to addressing marketing’s ability to answer, “how does marketing fit in today’s world?”

Customers have increased their power toward the seller in B2B sales. One reason is that the buyer has access to more information. Moreover, it has been argued that customer collects, and makes decisions based on, this information before contacting a salesperson. The traditional listening model, relying on a physical meeting between the seller and the buyer, does not offer a solution in this new buying situation, where the customers collect information through digital media, and knows much more about the seller’s solution before any contact. Therefore, to continue to add value to the customer, the seller needs to listen to the customer through digital channels to understand which customers are looking for information about the seller’s solution and to collect information about the customer’s business.The objective of this research is to present a theoretical framework of “Digital Sales Listening and Learning” (DSLL) and related research propositions. By looking at, among others, the salespeople’s digital exposure and the strength of their network, and how they are using their network to sense what potential customers are asking about their products, we argue that this will have an effect on selling-related knowledge.DSLL proceeds the traditional sales listening model. Based on listening- and Connectivism learning theories, the model argues that sales listening can be used to collect information about prospects before the initial contact, making it possible for the salesperson to more fully understand the needs of the customers and thereby offer additional value propositions when in contact with prospects. It also makes it possible for salespeople, in an early phase, to detect prospects that are looking for information regarding possible solutions offered by the seller.Our main contribution is a proposed extension of salesperson listening, by including how salespeople listen to their customers online, including proposed antecedents, consequences, and moderators of the DSLL model.

The organic movement has gained a lot of momentum in the last two decades and currently underlies a huge global market. Hand-in-hand with the growth in consumption of organic food around the world, academic research on organics has also made great strides. However, there seems to be a dearth of studies focusing on organic food consumption in emerging economies (Hughner et al. 2007). Specifically, it becomes important to understand and identify consumer perceptions regarding consumer behavior surrounding the concept of “organic” in emerging markets vis-à-vis developed economies. This paper takes a qualitative approach in order to better understand how people in India and the United States perceive organic products, along with the consumer behavior processes surrounding them. Four focus groups in total were conducted—two with American respondents separated into low and high involvement consumers; and, two with Indian respondents separated into low and high involvement consumers.Results show that high involvement consumers in both the United States and India were confident about the meaning of organic, and felt that organic food consumption focused on being healthy, eating better-tasting food, and feeling lighter. While organics were perceived to be more of a lifestyle in the United States, Indian consumers felt that a lack of availability and awareness, along with high prices, restricted consumption. Furthermore, in the United States, information acquisition regarding organics emanates primarily from word of mouth, social media, and label reading; while in India information acquisition primarily emanates from parents. High involvement Indian organics consumers’ favorable views toward organic foods were pragmatic and centered around matters such as superior taste, health, safety, and trust, while low involvement but aspirational Indian organics consumers favored organics for altruistic and spiritual reasons, considering them to offer spiritual benefits and to be environmentally friendly. The low involvement U.S. group, on the other hand, was skeptical of the benefits of organic foods, found them to be expensive, to taste no better than nonorganic foods, and viewed the lifestyle of those they perceived to be organic food consumers unfavorably. This group was the only one of the four groups that held a negative view of organic foods and the organics movement in general.

This research project aims to investigate the impact of music on female empowerment. Previous research established the link between listening to music and affective, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes (e.g., Anderson and Eubanks 2003; Hansen and Hansen 1990). However, there is a dearth of research on the impact of music on female empowerment. Songs that encourage and promote female power have been part of the pop culture for a long time. Some examples of such songs are “Hit me with your best shot” by Pat Benatar, which was released in 1980, and “Sit still, look pretty” by Daya, which was released in 2016. The influence of these songs on pop culture and women, especially at younger ages, makes it important to study their impact on the female audience. Understanding such effects is critical to practitioners as well. To keep up with their target markets, firms continuously monitor the trends in the pop culture and try to adapt those in their promotional campaigns.The purpose of this research is to study the impact of music with female-empowering lyrics on audiences’ feel of power, specifically, in terms of, their reported level of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and positive thoughts (hope). Spreading activation theory suggests that receiving a new piece of information triggers the related node of information in the brain (Collins and Loftus 1975). Therefore, hearing a female-empowering song should make the information about power more accessible. The audience would demonstrate higher levels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and hope, at least momentarily.Female empowerment has been a recurring theme in the pop culture. Therefore, it is essential to understand how these songs impact the emotions, cognition, and behavior of the audience. The current research plan aims to understand the psychological implications of such songs and examine the effects of adapting female-empowering trends into the marketing campaigns.

Brands choose to sponsor a sportsperson as a way to reach out to their consumers. Sports personalities are considered as vehicles for advertisements or product endorsements, and athletes who carry symbolic messages can attract companies seeking effective endorsers. Athletes carry powerful images, have a mass international audience, and appeal to all classes. For the first time, Forbes’ list of the 100 top-earning athletes of 2018 contains no women. This list is an annual rich list of athletes around the world and consists of their earnings from endorsements, prize money, salaries and bonuses, and appearance fees.This study acknowledges the role of brand managers and qualitatively explores their business decision with regard to selecting sportswomen as their brand ambassadors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted across the United Kingdom with 15 brand managers. Results indicated that brand managers are considering sportswomen for their media campaigns, they acknowledge that the demand for women sports is increasing; however, and there are still some challenges that need to be addressed. Brand managers acknowledge that there are prospects for sportswomen, but they are making a business decision based on the limited coverage and their appeal to their targeted audience.Theoretically, this provides additional insight, albeit from the brand managers point to view to understand the challenges of sportswomen as brand ambassadors, it further adds to the discussion around the financial prospects of sportswomen and their ability to align with a brand’s value and cocreate a sense of meaning and attachment. Likewise, this study offers practical implications for brand managers and sportswomen managers. The awareness about women sports is rising, and it is vital for brands to join the movement and be a part of it. Brand managers are expected to take more creative risks as Nike was able to support Serena Williams after the French Opens raise concerns about her cloth; brands can do more by breaking the mold and engage with something unique and different, which sportswomen can offer.Sportswomen do have a unique fan base, and they are seldom seen to cause any scandal, which could be an advantage to the brand. Besides, having a sportswoman as a brand ambassador seems to be a cheaper and economical option to have an endorsement. Moreover, given that consumers have demonstrated a positive attitude toward brands that sponsor a less conventionally popular sportsperson/team, there is an opportunity for more brands to sponsor sportswomen and their teams. Additionally, sportswomen offer brands a chance to reach new audiences, which, in turn, can lead to an increase in sales.

Investigating political candidates as brands is a relatively new field in the area of political marketing research (French and Smith 2010; Phipps et al. 2010; Smith 2009). As such, there are few, if any, empirical studies demonstrating that candidates do function as brands (e.g., Guzmán et al. 2015), and none relating to elections in the United States. To fill this void, data were collected over the last two U.S. presidential election cycles. Results show that not only did candidates function as brands in both the 2012 and 2016 elections, the experiential brand of a candidate is a significant predictor of voting intention. However, it was the candidate who lost the election whose experiential brand proved to be the most significant.In the 2012 election, it appears Mitt Romney’s brand experience was more of a factor than the Barack Obama brand experience when it came to voting intention. Voters considered both candidates’ as brand experiences when considering themselves (self-assessed brand image) in relation to the two candidates. That is, voters used a cognitive short cut to assess which candidate in an election appeals to them most based on which one is most like themselves. In other words, as voters considered voting for Romney, they considered how in sync they were to the candidate’s experiential brand. There was no such effect for the Obama brand, nor was there any significance for voters’ self-brand image on the voting intention for that candidate.The primary differences between the 2012 and 2016 elections appear in Democratic voters, who did not consider the brand of the candidate from the Republican party in 2016, but did so 4 years earlier, and Republican voters who did not consider the Obama brand when evaluating the relationship between themselves and for whom they would vote, but did consider Hillary Clinton’s experiential brand. Because Republican voters did not weigh Donald Trump’s experiential brand and their self-brand image at the same time when considering voting for that candidate, this seems to be in line with the previous researchers (e.g., Dahl et al. 2017; Kidwell et al. 2014) who argue that voters focus on the things on which they want to focus and ignore what does not align with their previous political beliefs and ideology.It is possible that, in each election, one candidate was able to negatively affect the brand of the other by attacking the candidate’s brand early in the election cycle. And the candidate whose brand was damaged first ultimately lost.

The current study examines the conditions under which a fixed and growth mindset affects managers’ decisions regarding the level of adaptation and involvement in cross-border strategies. Grounded in the implicit theory from psychology, we developed a model that includes psychic distance as the boundary condition of this effect. To test our hypotheses, a 2 (fixed vs. growth mindset) by 2 (low vs. high psychic distance) between-subjects experimental design was employed. Two hundred and fifty-two international marketing managers from firms based in Greece were recruited to take part in the study and were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. Results revealed that mindset had a significant effect on adaptation intentions. Furthermore, psychic distance moderated the above effect; more specifically, in the low psychic distance condition, growth mindset managers demonstrated higher adaptation intentions than fixed mindset managers, whereas, in the high psychic distance condition, both growth and fixed mindsets opted for similar levels of adaptation. In addition, the effect of mindset on entry mode was strengthened for low psychic distance as growth mindset managers tend to select higher involvement business arrangements than their fixed mindset counterparts. The current study offered insights into the international marketing and consumer psychology literatures by introducing mindset as a new antecedent of adaptation and entry mode decisions, and showed under which conditions managers take internationalization decisions. Moreover, the proven effect of mindset on international marketing decisions has equally important implications for organizations. We support the view that managers are boundedly rational, therefore neglecting their cognitive orientation and perception would generate flawed results. Therefore, chief stakeholders should not take for granted that their international marketing managers’ way of thinking will be aligned the firm’s idiosyncrasy and follow the intended cross-border strategies. In order to cultivate or acquire a desirable mindset, relevant and carefully designed internal and external training sessions are deemed necessary for senior and international marketing managers.

Recent evidence suggests that materialism is a learned personal value incorporated or rejected through consumer socialization processes (Dettmar et al. 2014). That is, a consumer’s materialistic tendencies are developed based on the environment he or she interacts with regularly. Therefore, it is no surprise that materialism has been studied extensively within an international context, especially given the significant differences in marketing environments across national markets. Indeed, a considerable amount of research notes that materialism levels vary significantly across different countries (Felix et al. 2000; Cleveland et al. 2018). Most studies have attributed the extent of materialistic tendencies to various demographics, national culture, ethnic identity, or other structural changes specific to sample markets (Ger and Belk 1996). However, most of these international studies have often assumed culturally homogeneous national markets (Nakata 2009). Therefore, while these studies have offered understandings of the characteristics of specific markets, they fall short of providing insights into multicultural “global” marketplaces where consumers are embracing globalization and markets are opening to global corporate powers and international brands (Tung 2008).Despite the often-implied relationship between globalizing consumer habits and materialism, a review of the literature suggests that there is relatively little empirical research that supports (or refutes) such assertions, especially in the case of multicultural global markets. This study represents an early attempt to shed light on globalizing consumers’ materialism tendencies in a multicultural “global” marketplace. Using Dubai as a proxy for such markets, the study proposes that there is a significant link between consumer tendencies to merge into the global consumer culture and materialism. Indeed, we ask a simple question: Are globalizing consumers in multicultural markets actually more materialistic?The authors developed a questionnaire based on the original Cleveland and Larouche (2007) seven-construct Acculturation toward the Global Consumer Culture (AGCC) scale (57 items) and the 18-item, three-construct materialism scale developed by Richins and Dawson (1992). A mall-intercept survey was conducted at one of Dubai’s busiest malls and a total of 496 usable responses were obtained. Preliminary findings suggest that various aspects of AGCC and materialism levels are significantly higher in Dubai. However, not all dimensions of ACCC were found to be relevant factors with regard to materialism tendencies.

Review valence refers to consumers’ positive or negative evaluations of products (Mudambi and Schuff 2010). It can be reflected by star ratings or dichotomous choices such as recommendation rates and thumbs up or down rates. The effects of valence reported in previous studies have been equivocal (King et al. 2014). Therefore, this dissertation aims to identify factors that help reconcile these inconclusive findings through two essays. Specifically, the first essay investigates the role of numerical framing with five experiments, including an eye-tracking study. It shows that the effect of review volume (vs. review valence) on purchase likelihood will be lower when valence is presented as absolute numbers (160 of 200 customers recommend) than when it is in percentages (80% of 200 customers recommend). This is because consumers adopt two distinct approaches (piecemeal vs. holistic) when processing the two aforementioned numerical formats. In addition, the ability of an absolute number format to weaken the impact of volume on purchase likelihood will be lower when valence and volume are shown in two different colors than when they are in the same color.Through two lab experiments and one field study, the second essay examines the moderating effect of emotional arousal on review valence and consumer decisions. It shows that consumers consider extreme reviews with high emotional arousal as being less informative about the product performance. Therefore, the presence of high arousal emotions dilutes the extremely negative reviews’ ability to discourage consumer purchases as well as the extremely positive reviews’ ability to boost consumer purchases through consumers’ perceived informativeness. However, consumers’ decision strategy varies depending on the purchase stage they belong to. Whereas, consumers discount those extreme reviews with high arousal during their search stage, negativity bias causes them to rely more on the extremely negative reviews accompanied by high emotional arousal.

In order to find ways to reduce wastage of food leftovers, it is necessary to understand the factors that influence such wastage. Using the extreme example of reusing food leftovers from unknown consumers, we consider the extent to which consumer contamination of food leftovers influences the probability of choosing these food leftovers, through the emotion disgust, taking into account the gender of the participant. Additionally, we investigate how the level of attractiveness of the consumer who left the food influences this relationship. Here, we assume a cross-gender effect for the attractiveness manipulation. These assumptions are in line with the recent literature that investigates consumer contamination in another context (Argo et al. 2006, 2008).We tested our hypotheses with data from two online experiments that were based on a 2 (level of contamination: low vs. high) × 3 (level of attractiveness of the consumer who left the food: less attractive woman (man) vs. attractive woman (man) vs. no woman (man) visible) between-subjects design with a control group (female study: N = 248, 49.6% women, Mage = 23.3 years; male study: N = 311; 46.6% women, Mage = 22.4 years; both online studies were based on pure student samples). In all experimental conditions, participants were asked to imagine that there is a new offer in their university canteen aimed at reducing food waste. They can now choose returned leftovers, in addition to the fresh dishes. The level of contamination was manipulated by showing either a photo of leftovers rearranged on a new plate by a canteen employee in the low-contamination condition or a photo of leftovers just as they were returned by the consumer, who left the food, in the high-contamination condition. In the control group, a fresh dish was shown, and no consumer was mentioned.We found that consumer contamination leads to disgust, which decreases the probability of choosing food leftovers. This mediation is gender independent. We found no significant effect for female participants regarding the effect of attractiveness in both studies. Nevertheless, we found a significant direct effect of the level of attractiveness on the probability of choosing food leftovers for male participants in the female study, and a significant first-stage moderated mediation for male participants in the male study. Further research, which should enhance our understanding of the gender effect and yield more insights into food leftovers itself, is underway.

A well-established influencer of salesperson job performance that has not received as much attention over the years is job insecurity. Given the technological revolution that has been occurring in the field of professional selling for several decades, requiring salespeople to become more technologically proficient than their predecessors ever had to be, job insecurity regarding this unique aspect of professional selling is exceedingly overdue for academic inquiry. Job insecurity as an influencer of job performance has not received as much academic research attention as its counterparts. Chaker et al. (2016: 344) unambiguously declare that “salesperson insecurity has been largely neglected in the literature.” Ahearne et al.’s (2004) study on the impact of customer relationship management (CRM) technology on sales performance showed technology has an observable “disabling effect” on sales performance. Recognizing that the relationship between technology and sales performance is dependent on the salesperson’s level of ability, their study calls for further research “into the differing relationships between different expertise classes of users,” and into technological proficiency’s moderating effect on sales performance, yet not on the its possible effect on salesperson job insecurity. Johnson and Bharadwaj (2005) reported that firms were developing, “web sites designed to provide information and conduct transactions with customers, replacing many routine sales force activities…heightening job insecurity concerns” (p. 3). More than a decade later, their portentous observation demands further investigation. This study will investigate if technological self-efficacy creates a less insecure salesperson among newer salespeople compared to more experienced and established salespeople who learned how to sell without digital supplementation. This current study strives to help remedy this overlooked enigmatic gap in the existing literature of professional sales. It will not only contribute to the body of theoretical scholarship in this field but will additionally provide sales managers and practitioners with new and relevant information, which can aid in improving the performances of both new and established sales force members.

The objective of this special session is to explore the intersections among marketing, consumer well-being, and digital environment. The proposed research presentations will address a wide range of cutting-edge topics—digital unengagement, access economy, smart interactive services, social media spokesperson character, influencer, and compulsive media use. These topics are timely, novel, and important and thus are expected to stimulate active discussions at the AMS conference.This special session attends to consumer well-being in digital environment in two ways: physical well-being and psychological well-being. As for the former, we attempt to explore the impact of interactive health applications and smart services. As for the latter, we focus on a social media environment and access economy, where issues related to world-of-mouth from and proper product/service representation are increasingly important.We strongly believe that this special session will effectively deliver one of the key AMS missions—“promoting high standards and excellence in the creation and dissemination of marketing knowledge and the furtherance of marketing practice through a role of leadership within the discipline of marketing around the world.” This session unites scholars from the United Kingdom and Japan, two of the G20 members that represent an important portion of world digital economy. The United Kingdom along with Germany account for 25% of the top 100 digital multinational enterprises, including Internet platforms, e-commerce, and digital content firms (UNCTAD 2017). Likewise, Japan is considered as the innovation hubs of automation, sensory technologies, and artificial intelligence (LSE Consulting 2018). Therefore, our research presentations may reflect important organizational and technological transformations in the business environment.

M-commerce has been defined in a variety of ways over the years and essentially encompasses all online-based transactional activities conducted through wireless handheld mobile devices (e.g., Hillman and Neustaedter 2017). As such, it has been considered an umbrella term for more specific types of commerce activities; Marriott et al. (2017) suggest that m-commerce can be divided into three main subcategories: mobile banking (m-banking), mobile payments (m-payments), and mobile shopping (m-shopping). M-shopping is defined as the online searching, browsing, comparing, and purchasing of goods and services by consumers through wireless handheld mobile devices, in particular, smartphones and tablets (Marriott et al. 2017).Three fundamental observations arise within the m-shopping literature. First, the role of m-shopping within the global marketplace is apparent with the surge of literature since 2015 (Marriott et al. 2017) and academic response to emerging retailing trends. Second, the incorporation of risk and trust within m-shopping literature remains in its infancy; although discussions surrounding risk and trust have increased in the recent years, more research is required to examine their specific roles within m-shopping adoption. Finally, most m-shopping literature adopt a technology-based acceptance model as a theoretical grounding; although this is commonplace and has given rise to an interesting array of findings, it becomes questionable as to validity of using a technology-based model to predict a service-based activity. Therefore, this research aims to develop understanding into consumer’s m-shopping adoption intention through incorporating risk and trust into a contemporary theoretically grounded technology adoption model to explore their future roles within this area. The theoretical foundation for this study was UTAUT2 (Venkatesh et al. 2012) due to its contemporary nature and suitability to a voluntary or service setting.In the form of online and face-to-face questionnaires, data were gathered from 435 consumers who are UK residents over the age of 18 and who have had at least some experience in the m-shopping process. Covariance-based Structural Equation Modelling, using AMOS software, was used to test the hypothesized relationships to identity the influence of utilitarian, hedonic, trust, and risk factors on consumer m-shopping adoption intention.

A key question facing firms today is should they integrate customers into their innovation processes and cocreate new products. This research examines how strategic change (e.g., closed to open innovation) impacts the attitudes of the periphery of customers and how a firm’s current innovation reputation impacts strategic change. The results show that firms will benefit by moving from closed to open innovation. This relationship is contingent on a firm’s current innovation reputation. When a firm has a high reputation for building innovative products, it should continue with its current strategy for innovation (i.e., regardless of open or closed). Conversely, having a low innovation reputation suggests that any change in strategy is good in order to overcome previous negative perceptions of the firm’s reputation.

Research into the delivery of services through multiple channels has revealed the importance of channel integration, the design of the service experience (Patrício et al. 2008) and service/integration quality (Sousa and Voss 2006). At the same time, instances of misalignment between customer expectations and service failures have equally been noted (Banerjee 2014). Multichannel services are concerned with the creation of value (Payne and Frow 2004), where customers and firms integrate their resources (Pinho et al. 2014; Vargo and Lusch 2004). There is extensive research on value creation but considerably less on how value might be destroyed (Echeverri and Skålén 2011; Plé and Cáceres 2010). In value co-creation, customers are producers (Ramaswamy and Ozcan 2018) who define their roles in accordance with other actors within a service system (Akaka et al. 2013; Brodie et al. 2006), such as a multichannel service system (MSS). If the elements of co-creation are not well understood by all the actors within the system, then value may be destroyed rather than created (Plé and Cáceres 2010). Value destruction has been described as the misuse of resources by an actor within the system (Plé and Cáceres 2010), which may be accidental or intentional but arises owing to an asymmetry embedded in the interactions (Edvardsson et al. 2011). The misalignments referred to above may be examples of such asymmetries. The purpose of this investigation is therefore to empirically explore how these misalignments or asymmetries might destroy value in MSS.To address the purpose of the study, qualitative data were generated through 26 in-depth interviews with life, general and health insurance managers in France. Using a semi-structured guide, interviews were conducted in French, face-to-face, lasting up to 90 min. The analysis of the interview transcriptions followed familiar protocols of coding, categorising and identifying themes (Miles and Huberman 1994; Patton 2002), which were enfolded with the literature (Eisenhardt 1989). During this iterative process, a framework of value destruction in multichannel services emerged that consisted of an interrelated set of misalignments including lack of trust, product complexity and the customer path (an in vivo category).While the focus on multichannel management lies understandably on how value can be co-created with actors (Payne and Frow 2004), understanding how value can be destroyed through misalignments in the systems also advances theory in this domain. This preliminary framework of value destruction points to three areas of misalignment in MSS: lack of trust, product complexity and the customer path, all of which resonate with theoretical contributions in related areas.

This paper explores the role of gender and its influence on the relationship between trust and organizational performance as well as on the perception of women as managers. As we recognize the barriers implicit in gender roles, this research helps to highlight the need to build greater trust in leadership and organizations. Understanding how differently men perceive women, compared to how women perceive women, is key to achieving the levels of trust, confidence, and support for the organization’s strategic initiatives. We argue that the more positive the perception of women as managers, the stronger the relationship between trust and organizational performance and that this relationship is moderated by gender.Utilizing a sample of 321 business managers and executives from Mexico and Peru, results indicate that organizational trust does lead to stronger perceived performance, and this relationship is mediated by the employee’s perception of women as mangers. Interestingly, this mediation only holds for male employees, with female employees having a direct relationship between trust and performance. As such when men have a lower perception of women as managers, this has a negative mediating effect upon their perception of firm performance. The perception of women as managers by women neither strengthens nor weakens the relationship between trust and performance.The results of this study offer valuable insight for managers in both emerging markets and developed countries, as they work toward increasing and utilizing firm-level trust, expanding on the role of women as leaders, and the overall performance of their firm to create a sound and ethical environment for all employees to contribute and prosper.

When consumers shop online, it is primarily their visual sense that is being triggered. With technology under development to also provide an experience in the olfactory, taste, and haptic sense, this paper investigates the added value of background music in the online store environment. In particular, a study is conducted with three conditions: a no music condition, a condition with music which is crossmodally incongruent with the online store environment, and a condition with music crossmodally congruent with the online store environment. Crossmodal congruency refers to the crossmodal correspondences (i.e., the tendency of one sensory attribute to be associated with an attribute in another sense) that are shared between the music and the online store environment. Although both musical pieces used were considered as pleasant, consumer reactions were not more positive when compared to the no music condition. Interestingly, the value of the money spent in the no music condition was significantly higher than in both musical conditions. The incongruent music condition, however, did lead to significantly lower consumer reactions for the other variables measured (i.e., pleasure, arousal, and store environment evaluation) when compared to the no music and congruent music condition.

Trust is a fundamental concept in relationships, between humans and organizations alike. It has been noted that trust is essential to almost all business transactions (B2B or B2C); moreover, trust is essential to internal organizational aspects as well. Management scholars define trust as the willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor. This definition, although consistent with the Trust Game in experimental economics, accounts for reciprocity; yet, it fails to account for high risk or uncertainty. For instance, there are cases where the trustor trusts the trustee in a generalized sense without anticipating concrete actions from the trustee.The purpose of this study is to extend management and economics insights by providing a clearer definition of the concept of trust by distinguishing two different types; “trust under risk” and “trust under uncertainty.” To lend support to our contentions, we seek evidence from salespeople and customers relationships, a complex business relational context reflecting the two aspects of trust (e.g., “salesperson A trusts customer B to close the deal” vs. “salesperson A trusts customer B”). Moreover, we model trust by relying on insight from experimental economics and decision theory in order to enhance our understanding of when and how trust is generated and how it can be maintained, lost, or regained when prior beliefs cannot be postulated. Further, we attempt to link the different types of trust with salespeople’s utility outcomes, such as job satisfaction, job embeddedness, and ultimately, individual (subjective and objective) performance.

Despite common knowledge now that key to learner engagement is asking high cognitive-level questions, why is it still, even after a hundred years of research on teacher questioning, hard for practitioners to ask them enough times in class? Its practical root cause, the authors observe, is that current best practices seem to address and also add value to the beginner practitioner concerned about their survival in class. However, once these practitioners believe they can survive, once they have their planned questions in place, they start moving to build competence in spontaneous questioning, the current best practices, because they were learnt as a beginner, seem self-evident. What practitioners are then left with is a planning-centered scripted approach to questioning, a proliferation of classifications of questions, or a broad description of questioning styles, the knowing of which still does not reveal the elusive pattern of moves that one senses is being spontaneously performed by experienced practitioners in class. This gap, this lack of clarity in the discourse moves behind spontaneous high-cognitive level questions, the authors observe, is the conceptual root cause of why emerging practitioners find such questioning hard to sustain in class.Interestingly, research in classroom discourse analysis offers great clarity in the questioning pattern of discourse moves underlying low learner engagement: the IRF pattern, expanded as Initiate, Respond, Feedback. Modeled along the same IRF pattern, derived from constructivist theory, conceptualized by inductive reflection, practicalized by the categories of the ARCS Motivational Instructional Design Model, and validated by the Interaction Analysis Model for sustaining knowledge construction discourse, the authors identify and propose a pattern made of four fundamental discourse moves underlying high learner engagement: the OHCR pattern, expanded as Observe, Hypothesize, Challenge, Resolve. As a framework, the OHCR model offers a method to plan the discussion around high cognitive-level questions, and as thumb rule, the model offers a principle for spontaneous questioning, hence flexibly appealing to both the planner and the spontaneity-seeking practitioner. Applications in concepts across their variety and implications by way of (1) a pre-lecture do-confirm checklist for beginners, and (2) discourse visualization software to offer practitioner feedback at scale, are discussed.

Smart technologies, such as wearables, represent an attractive innovation that many companies still perceive as a way to build competitive advantage. This is exemplified by the recent launch of the Apple Watch Series 4 and the Gen 4 Smartwatch by Fossil, among others. However, due to the short product life cycle of such devices and weaker than anticipated consumer adoption, manufacturers find it even more important now to overcome those challenges and convince customers their products are useful and desirable.Traditionally, the way to encourage adoption of new products was to target innovators, those who are most likely to purchase and use novelty products (Rogers 1995; Im et al. 2003; Im et al. 2007). Innovators are crucial in encouraging adoption of new products, as they are not only more likely to purchase them but are also likely to wear those products, use them, and build interest about them (Agarwal and Prasad 1998). Consequently, to enable marketers to facilitate further diffusion of smart technologies, we need to understand the cognitive processes that underlie positive user experiences of this specific group, the experiences that are likely to guide their future decisions (i.e., use or purchase of another device in the future), and the way adoption is likely to diffuse beyond this segment.Addressing this research gap, we draw on the consumer behavior, IS, and wearables literatures to develop an innovative user experience cycle model, and propose how such a process affects use and upgrade intention (replacing a wearable after a year or two) for wearables. User experience is a type of product knowledge that consumers learn as a result of using a product for a given amount of time and is related to knowledge about that product (Raju et al. 1995). We propose that innovative user experiences are affected by individual innovativeness (using the example of technology and fashion innovativeness) and product type (using example of mass fashion or luxury). Then, considering those individual and product differences, we show how perceived ease of use and usefulness together with perceptions of hedonic value and social self-congruence affect both intention to use and replacement (upgrade) of a wearable.

Despite an apparent scarcity of studies on the role of packaging design in innovation and marketing research (Luchs et al. 2016), integrating a practical functionality into a packaging can enhance the whole consumer experience of how products are used. Within the product design literature, functionality has been described as a set of potential benefits that a product delivers to the user during consumption (Ziamou and Ratneshwar 2003). However, looking at the majority of studies that focus on product packaging functions and their associated benefits, it becomes obvious that this notion of packaging functionality is characterized by an inherent passivity that is not connected with the act of using a product, implying a very narrow understanding of package functionality.We propose that packaging functionality can have two roles: First, packaging functionality can be passive, meaning that the benefits stemming from the packaging are not directly linked to the goals associated with the actual consumption of the product. Second, package functionality can be active, implying that the packaging itself holds a functionality that actively supports users in achieving their consumption goals. The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of active packaging functionality and to provide first empirical evidence on how it influences consumers’ product and firm evaluations. In order to achieve our research goals, we present two experimental studies. The first study tests the influence of active packaging functionality (vs. passive packaging functionality) in an online setting (n = 230, 63.9% female; M = 32.67 years). In our second study, we use a point-of-sale experimental setting to validate and further explore the role of active packaging functionality (n = 125, 63.3% female; M = 39.61 years).Our results show that active packaging functionality leads to more positive product perceptions and to increased purchase intention. Moreover, our findings show that active packaging functionality was associated with a perceived higher innovation ability of the offering firm.

The rapid growth of mobile technologies has given rise to the emergence of applications (apps) that facilitate the creation and dissemination of online content for educational purposes. Some of these applications allow marketing educators to curate digital magazines that can extend student learning beyond the classroom. The use of curated digital magazines can help students better understand class-related topics by providing them with instant access to recent business content across different platforms (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers). Marketing educators can curate their magazines by selecting business articles that expand the knowledge acquired in the classroom or clarify important class topics.Given the relevance for educators to embrace technology and find innovative ways to engage students with class content, this research explores the adoption of curated digital magazines in marketing courses and their effect on student learning. This paper evaluates the impact of curated digital magazines in marketing courses in a three-stage analysis. Study 1 focuses on understanding students’ attitudes, perceptions, and evaluations of the tool during the implementation phase. Study 2 evaluates the effect of curated digital magazines on students’ engagement, enjoyment, and learning relative to the use of traditional (paper-based) class materials. Following up on these findings, study 3 proposes and evaluates a model of the impact of instructional media on student learning by using structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis.Overall, students responded positively to the adoption of the digital magazine in their classes. The use of curated digital magazines in marketing classes (a) sparked students’ curiosity and interest, (b) increased their engagement with class content, (c) provided a learning experience beyond the classroom, and (d) offered them an extended accessibility through different devices. Furthermore, the use of digital magazines increased students’ learning, engagement, and enjoyment relative to traditional (paper-based) class materials. Analyses for the third study, which evaluates a model of the impact of instructional media on student learning, are still in progress.Curated digital magazines represent a novel way to increase students’ engagement with class content through a platform that is convenient, innovative, entertaining, and educational. For marketing educators, a curated digital magazine can facilitate their explanation of class concepts by connecting them to current events. As demonstrated by this research, app-based digital magazines have a positive impact on students’ enjoyment, engagement, and learning. Thus, marketing educators may benefit from implementing this tool in their classes.

After completing a doctoral program, many researchers find that they need to find new research collaborators. Their former professors will have new students to mentor, and at small institutions, they may not find colleagues with similar research interests. Conferences can provide networking opportunities to assist with solving this problem. Yet, sometimes, conditions may make it difficult for these connections to occur.The purpose of this special session is to provide an opportunity for researchers, and specifically those who are new to the field, to connect with other researchers who share an interest in specific areas. Researchers will select two topics of interest as they arrive. The session will be composed of three rounds in which all will participate in “research circles” with other interested researchers. Groups will be formed for e-commerce, social media, advertising and IMC, consumer behavior, ethics and sustainability, nonprofit and public policy, services and retailing, and branding, among others. The goal of this special session is to facilitate the making of new research-related connections.

More than 35 years after its introduction to the sales literature, a salesperson’s customer orientation is still a key concern of managers and researchers alike. While scholars and managers have assumed a positive relationship between salesperson customer orientation and performance, extant research does not provide evidence for a consistent relationship. To date, research cannot explain why.Why does salesperson customer orientation not consistently increase performance? Drawing on in-depth interviews with 39 purchasing and 40 sales experts from various B2B industries, the study illustrates that more research is needed to fully understand the conceptualization of a salesperson’s customer orientation and its relationship with performance outcomes as well as possible moderators. Although previous research has refined the conceptualization of a salesperson’s customer orientation to include a psychological aspect, little has been done to broaden our understanding of the behaviors that customer-oriented salespeople engage in. Our research expands on previous conceptualizations and outlines the importance of previously neglected customer-oriented behaviors after a deal has been closed. Second, our research addresses the effectiveness of a customer-oriented selling approach by outlining its negative impact on a customer’s perceived level of risk and its positive impact on the formation of trust. By doing so, we provide a theoretical mechanism to explain how a salesperson’s customer orientation influences performance outcomes in the short- and long term. Third, this study reveals the need to carefully examine contextual factors that have an impact on a customer’s perceived level of risk and the formation of trust and thus the relationship between customer orientation and performance. Saxe and Weitz (1982) already proclaimed the importance of accounting for situational factors in analyzing the relationship between customer orientation and performance. However, since then little has been done to investigate potential moderators.Given the great investment in, and high managerial focus on, salespeople’s customer orientation, we urge managers to reconsider the link between a salesperson’s customer orientation and performance. We provide a set of behaviors that can support a customer-oriented selling approach after the sales encounter with the customers. We further encourage salespeople and companies to place a stronger focus on situational factors. In some situations, the customer’s perceived level of risk is rather low, he or she is not interested in a business relationship, and a customer-oriented selling approach is less effective. While in other situations, a salesperson’s customer orientation becomes more important to reduce the customer’s perceived level of risk and build trust as the basis for a business relationship with the supplier.

Offering a strong customer experience gives companies a difficult-to-copy competitive advantage, yet companies often do not understand what customers gain from such an experience in return. We posit that customers derive different types of perceived value as they go through an experience, which contributes to customer happiness and, in turn, positively affects desired customer experience management (CEM) outcomes. We test a proposed model that links customer experience to CEM outcomes (e.g., customer recommendation) in service contexts (a gym and four airlines). Six types of perceived value (functional, escapist, fantasy, intellectual, self-image, and status signaling) and two types of customer happiness (hedonic [experiencing pleasure] and eudaimonic [reaching meaningful goals]) complete the model. Structural equation modeling is the main analytic method. The results confirm that different experiences create different kinds of perceived value, which subsequently influence customer happiness in different ways. The results also show that increasing customer hedonic happiness is the key mechanism through which managers can improve customer recommendation, whereas increasing customer eudaimonic happiness improves other CEM outcomes, such as frequency and loyalty intention. Managers need to be cautious, however, about the role of specific values in bridging experiences and hedonic happiness. The impact of some values (e.g., fantasy in a gym, intellectual in an airline) on hedonic happiness could backfire. Finally, the length of the relationship between a customer and a firm moderates the results. For example, customers who have been with the firm for a shorter duration derive more value in self-image and status-signaling value from brand experience than those with a longer duration. By contrast, customers with a longer duration attain more eudaimonic happiness from perceived value in escapist and intellectual value than those with a shorter duration. The study provides managers guidance on how to effectively provide a strong customer experience and improve CEM outcomes in different service settings.

The growth of self-service technologies (SST) has continued to change the nature of services. Many service providers have adopted a wide range of technologies to allow customers to participate in the service production. Some examples of self-service technologies (SSTs) include applications such as ATMs, Internet shopping, self-checkout at airports, and self-pumping at gas stations (Meuter et al. 2000). The SSTs enable both customers and service providers to get and provide better and efficient services. Despite increasing popularity of this trend, very little seems to be known about consumers’ perceived challenges when they are involved in this process. The current research addresses an important question: Do SSTs always produce better outcomes to customers?In this study, we suggest that the feeling of powerlessness is an aversive state that will generate undesirable consequences with the result being a denigration of value or net negative value for the service experience. Power is one of the most omnipresent forces in customers’ lives. Rucker and Galinsky (2008) show that a state of low power might signal to customers that they have fewer resources, and such feelings reduce the amount the customers are willing to spend on products and services. This research focuses on the impact of SST on the feeling of powerlessness, while consumer-perceived control and consumer expertise about the technologies are included to further examine these relationships.Across three experiments, we found evidence consistent with the notion that placing consumers into a service environment where only self-service technologies are available increased their perceived feeling of powerlessness. We believe the present research offers the following important contributions. The present work provides one of the first systematic investigations of the effects of SSTs on consumer behavior when important variables such as powerlessness, control, and customer expertise were included in the research framework. Prior studies on SSTs have focused on topics that have not examined the important mediation effects of control between customer feeling of SSTs-only environment and the perceived powerlessness. In addition, this research also demonstrates that the impacts of control on powerlessness rely on the moderator consumer expertise.

In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that the sports industry is worth £20 billion, with football accounting for 43% of this figure. Football clubs use a branding strategy to connect with the fans and to differentiate the club from its competitors. One of these components is the management of the club, specifically the manager. The manager is the human face of the football club brand and is the target of the fan’s joy or frustration with the performance of the team.Branding is not limited to products and services, with people, specifically celebrities and CEOs having been the focus of research to determine how they impact the brand (or company) with which they are associated. However, the branding of football managers, either personally or as the representative of the football brand, has not been examined. This is surprising due to their contribution to the football (club) brand. Using an integrated theoretical perspective based on personal branding, corporate and CEO branding, this paper seeks to contribute the understanding of how an English Premier League (EPL) football manager (Arsène Wenger) develops his brand identity.The study makes use of an exploratory research design, specifically a qualitative case study method. The league selected as the EPL, specifically a U.S.-owned club and from these clubs, Arsenal, and specifically Arsène Wenger was selected. Media articles were collected from the leading newspapers sites and from leading press agencies and sports writers in the United Kingdom with the initial search done using the manager’s name. A total of 1364 newspaper reports were analysed using NVivo from the perspective of the brand owner, that is, Arsène Wenger.The analysis suggests there are three main components used to develop the football manager’s brand identity. First, the performance that includes player management, the on-pitch tactics and their managerial philosophy necessary to deliver positive results. The second component is the person (manager) including his personality, emotions and his visual and verbal communication style and finally the context in which the manager works, which includes the club, its finances, transfer policies and the supporters (fans) and professional bodies (such as the FA and UEFA).The study seeks to develop understanding of how human brands are built in a dynamic and competitive sporting environment while assisting clubs in using this persona in their branding activities.

Virtual trade show (VTS) marketing has been growing as a major issue of interest from the last decade, attracting the businessperson and researcher. However, this body of research has not been subject to systematic review. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to highlight past assessment, present trends, and to direct future research agenda within the VTS domain. The approach is taken as a literature review format. For this purpose, multiple databases were searched, and ten VTS articles were extracted. The extracted articles were carefully analyzed from the broader perspective, and only four empirical studies were found in this field. The paper was aggregated into the following themes: (1) preliminary discussion on VTS and comparison with physical trade show based on participation mode; activity stage; subject area; and performance and (2) from the empirical findings, three categories of antecedents are identified, namely, website factors; market-orientation factors; and firms’ motives. Also, direct as well as indirect consequences through mediators and with moderators are identified. All these are presented as an integrated framework. (3) Based on the compendium of the antecedents and consequences of VTS literature, the research focused on the limitations, implications, and extends future research avenue that can be utilized by trade show attending firms for their better performance in the future. The findings suggest that future VTS research can exploit from the application of concepts and theories used in the physical trade show literature and offered by other disciplines that traditionally have not been examined in VTS. Future researchers could also focus on the development of a technological aspect of VTS systems to overcome the limitation of unavailability of modern technology, low-quality website design, lack of timeliness and accuracy of information content, inability to measure effectiveness, virtual rudeness, lack of after service initiative, and lack of synergies between human and electronic elements. Managers of VTS firm can identify the important technologies related to VTS on different stages (preshow, at-show, and post–post) and can imply a convenient way to establish human interaction along with technological issues.

This study addresses a critical question concerning how a firm’s succession practices for senior salespeople impact the sustainability of selling strategies and the consistency of sales and service results. Customer account strategies frequently rely on a sales leader, commonly identified as a relationship manager or account manager, designated by the selling firm as a central contact point and internal advocate for the customer. When a sales leader leaves the firm, the departure can result in disruptions for customers and raise questions about the continuity of relationships built on trust and customer knowledge accumulated over time. Further developing this area, our study employs an inductive approach to understand how firms that rely on deep personal relationships between salespeople and customers manage the succession process.Interviews with 41 managers in the financial services sector and 12 industry experts reveal a customer–engagement paradox, where an element often considered essential to sales success—a high level of salesperson–customer affinity developed through successful customer engagement—becomes the proximate cause of impediments in sustaining the relationship post-succession. Our findings offer specific insights gleaned from managers and industry experts who have engineered effective sales–leader succession processes. Strategic relationship management has received increasing attention from sales scholars in recent years, yet this critical boundary condition and associated vulnerabilities of relationship management strategies have remained largely unstudied.We contribute to both theory and practice by using a disciplined induction approach to develop a “Customer Engagement Framework for Sales-Leader Succession” intended for sales executives facing the retirement or departure of senior sales leaders. The framework provides guidance to executives who need to assess the firm’s level of reliance on customer engagement efforts and define the full scope of their sales succession needs in order to choose a sales succession strategy with the greater likelihood of success. The results of the interviews were summarized and provided to the study informants immediately following data collection. Several of the firm leaders who participated have applied the insights from the study and reported greater success in recruiting and retaining sales leaders to fill the roles of long-time producers who retired or left the firm, providing some face validity to the study’s findings.

Crowdsourcing is the consumers’ participation at the accomplishment of a task, traditionally performed by the internal employees (Howe 2006). Examples are proposing innovative ideas, contributing to product development or solving complex problems. Consumers may also engage in creative tasks (e.g., ad creation, logo design, packaging design), which constitutes the popular practice of creative crowdsourcing. The value and success of a creative crowdsourcing initiative require attracting sufficient numbers of participants (Hopkins 2011). This remains a persistent issue (Faullant et al. 2016): the majority of the crowd does not participate. If crowdsourcers are to be considered as workers (Cova and Dalli 2009; Rieder and Voß 2010), they must be managed and motivated. Traditional management principles, such as recruitment, hierarchy, and internal coordination, might not apply here. Therefore, this research addresses a pressing question: why may people be reluctant to participate in creative crowdsourcing and what might encourage them to participate? As the crowd is heterogenous, composed of professionals/experts in the creative tasks and others, rather ordinary/amateur consumers (Brabham 2008, 2012), this research examines the meaning that potential participants, both creative professionals and ordinary consumers, assign to their nonparticipation. To this aim, we mobilize the theoretical framework of the meaning of work (Rosso et al. 2010) borrowed from human resources literature.Rosso et al. (2010, p. 94–95) define meaning as “the output of having made sense of something.” The meaning of work not only influences work motivation but also affects other critical organizational outcomes, such as engagement, empowerment, individual performance, and personal fulfilment (Steger et al. 2013).The results of our qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 19 ordinary consumers and 14 professionals from the creative sector, highlight different reasons for nonparticipation. Creative professionals express clear meanings underlying their nonparticipation decision. Their discourse highlights a resistance to current creative crowdsourcing practices, whether individually and/or collectively (Peñaloza and Price 1993), such that they “rant” and initiate expressive actions (Hirschman 1970), encouraging “general boycotts” of these practices.Ordinary consumers’ nonparticipation can be better explained by an inability to meet their expectations or a perceived lack of competences. This absence of willingness to participate might signal a perceived lack of work/activity meaning or a perceived lack of value creation for themselves.Current research limitations are delineated and implications for researchers and practitioners are further offered. These results should also encourage organizations to adapt their recruitment activities, based on the different crowd groups.

This research aims to explore the role authentic assessments can play in the learning, engagement and skill development of students who wish to pursue a marketing career. The use of assessments within the classroom has taken on a more significant role today with assessments not merely testing students to evaluate learning, but rather demonstrating students’ success in achieving pre-set learning outcomes (Stone Watt 2012; Astin and Antonio 2012). The role of assessments in ‘authentic learning’ has emerged as a way in which students learn-by-doing and ultimately challenge educators to provide opportunities for students to experiment with complex issues in varying settings as they would in the workforce (Lombardi 2007). Interestingly, it is perceived that authentic learning is most likely to flourish in a ‘high-impact’ setting such as business practice, in which ‘students integrate diverse theories and concepts, share ideas with faculty and peers outside of class, judge the value of information in specific situations, and learn from perspectives other than their own’ (Brownell and Swaner 2009, p. 26). Ultimately, this is expected to contribute to higher grade achievement and knowledge transfer (Kuh 2009).This research study is set within the context of an undergraduate business module, integrated marketing communications (IMC), and serves to provide interesting insight into the role of formative authentic assessments in generating and nurturing learning, engagement and key skills of students, while creating solutions for organizations in response to specific marketing problems that mimic the real-world projects. Three authentic assessment practices were undertaken by 134 marketing students within the IMC module over a 12-week period. These assessments were based on the information of key skills required by graduate employers in Ireland in 2018/2019. A multi-method approach was adopted using a two-stage survey as well as a student reflection journal to gather rich insight into student’s perceptions of the authentic assessment practices on their learning, engagement and skill development. Through the authentic assessment practices, students reported enhanced skills sets as well as feeling better prepared to undertake a marketing career. It is evident that this type of formative assessment practices is beneficial for future marketers and employers, demonstrating a marrying of the academia/practice divide as well as providing students with future skills as marketing practitioners.

Research on consumer–brand relationships has started to empirically examine mechanisms behind the brand relationships—customer brand loyalty link (e.g., impression management, feelings of security; Sen et al. 2015), but still little is known about the cultural and institutional settings that enable these links. In this study, we conduct a meta-analytic investigation of how seven country-level cultural and institutional variables moderate the relationship between consumer–brand relationships (CBR) and customer brand loyalty. Specifically, we investigate how and why different types of CBRs—namely brand attachment, brand love, self-brand connection, brand identification, and brand trust—drive loyalty better in some cultural and institutional contexts than others.The indulgence versus restraint dimension is a significant moderator, such that the effect of all five different brand relationships on customer brand loyalty is significantly more positive in restrained cultures (βtrust = −0.35, p < 0.001; βlove = −0.54, p < 0.001; βattachment = −0.42, p < 0.001; βidentification = −0.66, p < 0.001; βself-brand connection = −0.55, p < 0.001). Individualism versus collectivism is also significant, such that the impact of each of the five brand relationships on loyalty is more positive in collectivist cultures (βtrust = −0.46, p < 0.001; βlove = −0.51, p < 0.001; βattachment = −0.47, p < 0.001; βidentification = −0.56, p < 0.001; βself-brand connection = −0.60, p < 0.001). We show that the link between brand trust and loyalty is significantly stronger in feminine societies (βtrust = −0.38, p < 0.001). We also find that in cultures higher on power distance dimension, the positive effect of self-brand connection-based and identification-based relationship loyalty is stronger (βself-brand connection = 0.45, p < 0.002; βidentification = 0.30, p < 0.001). Further, compared to countries that are high on economic globalization, countries that are comparably less economically globalized exhibit stronger positive influence of brand identification on loyalty (βidentification = −0.17, p < 0.009). Finally, countries that were lower on voice and accountability showed stronger brand identity–loyalty effects (βidentification = −0.41, p < 0.001) as did less urbanized countries (βidentification = −0.25, p < 0.004). However, similar moderating effect of voice and accountability as well as the level of urbanization did not emerge for the self-brand connection–loyalty link (βself-brand connection = −0.19, p = 0.176 and βself-brand connection = −0.09, p = 0.490).Our approach of trying meta-analysis to country-level factors is new to the consumer–brand relationship literature. Theoretically this work helps to identify what particular brand relationships drive loyalty most effectively (Khamitov et al. 2019) under particular cultural and institutional settings (Eisingerich and Rubera 2010). Second, we contribute to the work on cross-cultural consumer behavior and cross-cultural research in general (Al Omoush et al. 2012; Hofstede and Bond 1984; Lam et al. 2009) by providing a more nuanced understanding of the differential influence of cultural dimensions in a branding context. Practically, our findings suggest it may be critical to approach selection and fostering of brand relationships differently based on the types of cultures and institutional contexts brand managers operate in.

Research studies on brand transgression (BT), service failure-recovery (SFR), and product-harm crisis (PHC) appear to have a common focus, yet the three streams developed surprisingly independently and with limited reference to one another. This situation is unfortunate because all three fields study a similar phenomenon by using complementary conceptualizations, theories, and methods; we argue that this development in silos represents an unnecessary obstacle to the development of a common discipline.In response, this review synthesizes the growing BT, SFR, and PHC literatures by systematically reviewing 236 articles across 21 years using an integrative conceptual framework. In doing so, we showcase how the mature field of SFR in concert with the younger but prolific BT and PHC fields can enrich one another while jointly advancing a discipline of critical negative events. Through this process, we provide and explicate seven overarching insights, across three major themes (theory, dynamic aspects, and method), to encourage researchers to contribute to the interface between these three important fields.First, the current systematic review has brought together diverse academic research (BT, SFR, and PHC). As our analysis indicates, the last two decades have witnessed significant developments in these three areas on our seven integrative dimensions of interest. The analysis reveals that various strengths, weaknesses, and gaps exist in each literature, complementing each other and offering significant opportunities for future research. This review differs from and complements previous syntheses on related areas (Cleeren et al. 2017; Davidow 2003; Fournier and Alvarez 2013; Sayin and Gürhan-Canlı 2015) by specifically bridging the gap between BT, SFR, and PHC and by using a broader perspective on a phenomenon labeled “critical negative events.” In so doing, our first contribution lies in identifying a series of seven priority insights generated from systematic integration of BT, SFR, and PHC and the corresponding future directions that should help researchers in all three streams.Second, this review advances the idea of a broader science of critical negative events (Fournier and Alvarez 2013), which goes beyond any individual contributions of BT, SFR, and PHC. We hope that our review will spur the development of a general discipline by combining deep insights from SFR, BT, and PHC. Such a “discipline of critical negative events” could systematize our understanding of critical negative events, and it could help the development of not only SFR, BT, and PHC but also other streams studying negative events (e.g., customer deviance, immoral actions, and relationship termination). The current research aims to be a first step toward the development of this discipline by generating a unifying seven-insight framework.

This paper investigates psychological factors that influence consumers to engage in bandwagon consumption when purchasing luxury motor vehicles. The South African Black middle class has been receiving attention in consumer markets, especially from luxury brand houses looking at emerging markets for growth. This study was designed to measure the impact of the self-concept, susceptibility to normative influence, propensity to seek status and the need for uniqueness on the propensity to engage in bandwagon consumption behaviour. An online survey of 184 respondents provided the data that was analysed using the PLS Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique.Findings noted that cultural and individual orientation dynamics play a pivotal part when examining the role of the self-concept in influencing bandwagon consumption behaviour through the susceptibility to normative influence trait. The results confirmed the presence of bandwagon consumption and found that the behaviour occurs in spite of the self-concept and the need for uniqueness.

In the growing digital advertising market, programmatic advertising plays an indispensable role. Thanks to its audience-targeting capabilities, through the collection of big data, programmatic advertising has changed the way of buying advertisement and the relationship between advertisers and publishers. By leveraging algorithmic data analytics, programmatic advertising allows advertisers to target a consumer in the right context and at the right time. However, despite its benefits, there is still limited scientific research about the impacts of programmatic advertising on marketing management. Hence, this study investigated the issues and impacts of the use of programmatic advertising, with a specific focus in the financial sector—one of the main buyers of digital advertising in Canada.We adopted a qualitative approach due to the recency of the topic and the lack of studies about the issues and impacts of programmatic advertising on marketing management. We opted for a triangulation approach, comprising a journal-based observation inside the marketing department of a large financial company in Canada during a period of 4 months; and a series of five in-depth interviews with experts and managers directly involved with programmatic advertising in the financial sector.The results of our analysis show that the two main issues of programmatic advertising for marketing management are expertise and transparency. Expertise was a primary issue for the respondents in the creation of an in-house team, while transparency is related to operating cost and placement of advertisements and reflected in traders’ day-to-day tasks. Data were also considered an important issue in connection with measurement indicators. Also, some respondents mentioned the risk of fraud as a significant issue, since it can impact on several elements in the ecosystem (data, inventories, and audience). The main positive impacts of programmatic advertising throughout our observations are flexibility, efficiency, and personalization. The media buying process is simplified due to less human integration, and the results of the marketing investment are measurable. On the other hand, the two most cited disadvantages of programmatic advertising are the lack of transparency about the cost and the loss of control over ad placement. To counteract these problems, the financial company in the study has decided to create an internal team to take charge of programmatic advertising. Not only that decision allowed the company to reduce operating costs and increase transparency (compared to outsourcing programmatic advertising to a digital marketing agency), but it also allowed the team to get more value and better work quality. Finally, the use of a DMP (data management platform) allowed the company to manage its audience in a more refined way, predict audience scenarios in advance, and acquire greater data independence on ad campaigns management and easier data exchange with its partners across sectors.

Initial public offering (IPO) share overhang refers to the share retention in an IPO by pre-IPO shareholders, who are predominantly insiders. We evaluate the link between overhang and the strategic value of post-IPO marketing activity. IPO overhang is positively related to post-IPO marketing spendings. On average, a one-standard deviation increase in overhang leads to an additional $4.6 million spent on marketing during the three years after an IPO. Furthermore, in these three years, high overhang firms that spend more on marketing significantly outperform their counterparts. Finally, while greater marketing spendings are associated with enhanced equity liquidity, insiders do not derive an economically significant benefit. Overall, our results suggest that the positive link between overhang and marketing is more a reflection of insiders’ interest alignment than a self-serving desire to boost short-term stock performance or stock liquidity prior to cashing out. This positive effect is moderated by the existence of financial stakeholders such as venture capitalists, and non-financial stakeholders such as key customers. Despite the capital infusion and the rapid growth they realize from an IPO, newly public firms should not consider aggressive marketing a universal choice, as it is value-enhancing only when pre-IPO shareholders’ interests are aligned. Our findings advance the literature on marketing resource allocation, insider ownership and IPOs, and highlight their relations within an agency theory framework. The paper intends to contribute to the knowledge of researchers, managers, and investors. To date, the marketing literature has focused on agency issues and interest alignment mechanisms (e.g., compensation) of lower-level agents such as salespeople. However, mechanisms to align the interests of higher-level agents such as corporate decision makers have not received commensurate attention. Accordingly, we apply agency theory to corporate marketing decisions, by investigating the impact of share retention by pre-IPO shareholders, a potential interest alignment mechanism, on a firm’s post-IPO marketing strategy.

Extant research in social cognition has utilized perceived entitativity to discuss group perceptions and identified eight antecedents for the group entitativity, including interaction, importance, outcomes, goals, similarity, duration, size, and permeability. On-line processing is activated if the groups are perceived as high entitative groups, whereas memory-based processing is elaborated if the groups are perceived as low entitative groups. As the cognitive processes underlying the evaluations of social objects including groups and products are common, it is expected that the influences of perceived entitativity on group perceptions also apply to brand perceptions. Thus, capitalizing on the perceived entitativity theory, this research examines the applicability of the eight properties of group entitativity for brand evaluations.The eight properties of perceived entitativity were utilized to measure 40 prestigious consumer brands selected from the Top 100 Global Brands of Interbrand. One hundred and ninety-two undergraduate students participated in this study. A 40 × 9 matrix in which each cell contained the average rating of a single family brand on a single property was created by averaging the 192 participants’ ratings of each of the brands for each of the nine properties. Descriptive analyses on brand ratings revealed that participants did see substantial variation among the brands. Correlational analyses indicated that six properties, except importance and interaction, were positively (i.e., duration, goals, outcomes, and similarity) and negatively (i.e., size and permeability) correlated with entitativity. Regression analyses indicated that these variables were strongly correlated with entitativity and accounted for a substantial portion of the variation of entitativity. However, the pattern of inter-correlation across properties for the brands was different from the pattern for the social groups. Hierarchical cluster analyses identified a six-cluster solution for the classification. Further, K-means cluster analyses specifying the six-cluster solution identified the brands of each cluster. Based on the characteristic patterns of the clusters in the eight properties, six types of brands were captured, including intimate, resemblance, performance, loose association, task, and conscious brands.The results indicated that, as with social groups, properties of perceived entitativity are effective antecedents clustering brands, which may subsequently elaborate different cognitive processes (i.e., online and memory-based information processing) for brand evaluations. Brands can be effectively differentiated with perceived entitativity consisting of various patterns of brand properties. As with group perceptions, consumers’ information processing about brands should be more spontaneous (or online) for high-entitativity brands than low-entitativity brands. The discussions about brand evaluations and adverse extension effects will be more insightful whenever the perceived entitativity is considered. Research may be further conducted to verify the hypothesis.

In this study, we investigate the relationship between levels of variety in buyers’ purchases and the variety offered by umbrella brands. We studied that relationship in a competitive market where there are many product alternatives available to buyers.Humans have a Love/Hate relationship with variety. On the one hand, humans all seek variety to some extent because “variety is the very spice of life that gives it all its flavor” (Cowpers 1785). On the other hand, too much variety can complicate life and cause the stress associated with information/decision overload. Umbrella brands offer a means of relieving some of the tension in this Love/Hate dilemma by providing a variety of products under a common brand name. This variety offers buyers added “spice” without the cognitive tasks and risks of assessing additional brands. In this study, we investigate the relationship between levels of variety in buyers’ purchases and the variety offered by umbrella brands. We studied that relationship in a competitive market where there are many product alternatives available to buyers. The definitions of variety fall into two broad categories. The first category includes definitions that focus on patterns of behavior such as sequences of purchases (processes). The second broad category includes definitions that focus on the variability within a group of purchases (outcomes). Our preliminary analysis employed an outcomes approach.The retail grocery industry is the context for this research. We started with data from one category in one store (approximately 120,000 purchase observations, 10,600 rewards card numbers, 660 brands of wine, 297 umbrella brands). We removed buyers with fewer than three purchases in the category from the data (approximately 4500 buyers and 90,000 transactions). We measured several characteristics of buyers, brands, and brand attributes. Our measures included (a) Category Variety Score, (b) Among Brands Variety Score, (c) Within Brand Variety Score, and (d) Brand Umbrella Width. The preliminary analyses found positive and significant relationships between brand Umbrella Width and brand sales and negatively correlated with buyer’s Category Variety Score. Category Variety Score is also correlated with Within Brand Variety Score. The implications of this research are intended to enhance our knowledge of this relationship and to provide insights that are useful to brand and retail category managers.

Past research and practice often focus on brand anthropomorphization along a single dimension. In spite of being parsimonious and rigorous, the single dimension model may not fully capture variation in consumers’ perceptions of brands. This article clarifies an important nuance by proposing that people attribute human consciousness (i.e., a human-like mind) to brands on two distinct dimensions: Think and Feel. Think brands are perceived to have the capacity to think, plan, remember, and intend. Feel brands are considered to be able to feel and to experience anger, pain, and pleasure. Eight studies were conducted to first develop and validate the 14-item Brand Anthropomorphism Questionnaire (BAQ) with two subscales, which are psychometrically sound and show discriminant validity with regard to existing brand constructs. Furthermore, Think or Feel brand anthropomorphism dimensions can predict consumers’ moral judgment of brands above and beyond existing brand scales. Think brands are attributed moral agency and hence responsibility, whereas Feel brands are attributed moral patience and hence rights and privileges. This distinction has important implications when brands are blamed for their wrongdoings or praised for their socially responsible actions.This research makes theoretical contribution to the brand anthropomorphism literature by differentiating the two dimensions and exploring the influence of anthropomorphism of consumer moral judgment. The present research offers preliminary evidence about the value of distinguishing between Think brand and Feel brand in consumer moral judgment. Further research could investigate other potential impact of the two dimensions, and possible antecedents of Think/Feel dimensions. Managers can use the scale for assessment, planning, decision-making, and tracking purposes. In addition, in the event of brand scandal or brand CSR activities, public-relations efforts can use the findings to earn or regain the trust of consumers, as this research demonstrates that marketers can shape (tailor) the Feel or Think dimensions of brand perception to change consumers’ moral judgment of the brands.

This paper investigates the significance of luxury fashion brands’ country of origin on consumers’ responses based on brand origin matching consumers’ origin. The results of two experiments indicate that respondents do not have an explicit preference toward home brands (i.e., French respondents do not state a preference toward French luxury brands; Italian respondents do not prefer Italian brands in self-report measures). Yet, when assessed indirectly (through an Implicit Association Test based on response-latency measures), there is an implicit preference toward luxury brands from the home country over foreign countries, particularly among respondents with high levels of consumer ethnocentrism. In addition, when exposed to messages of delocalization to a foreign country, respondents adopt defensive responses to home brands (e.g., denial) and negative responses to foreign brands (e.g., decrease in quality perception and alteration of luxury image). This research concludes that even if brand origin is not salient when consumers evaluate brands and does not determine explicit brand preferences, brand origin is nonetheless present below awareness (implicit preferences), as part of the brand heritage and the brand identity; it influences brand liking, brand image and might be weighted as a purchase decision making criterion. It might manifest in defensive reactions in the home country (e.g., Keep Burberry British! in 2007). It might also take the form of consumers’ higher perceived risk and guilt when purchasing counterfeits of home brands versus foreign brands (see Chakraborty et al. 1996). In the luxury sector, the made-in has legitimacy to be promoted by brands as it contributes significantly to the perception of luxury and reinforces the emotional bond with consumers in the home country.

Sharing economy is now a worldwide phenomenon that describes economic activities to connect interdependent economic actors as “sellers” and “buyers” in the marketplace. Despite the remarkable growth of sharing economy, a review of the academic literature and business press indicates two major gaps: (1) There is a lack of clear conceptualization of the definition and domain of sharing; and (2) there is an absence of a unified typology to explain varied sharing activities and delineate managerial guidelines from their nuanced differences.Phrases such as “sharing economy” and “collaborative consumption” are in their nascent stages of development of the lexicon to represent some new and emerging business models. The exact definition and meaning of these terminologies require refinement as more and more enterprises come under this “sharing economy” umbrella. For example, Zipcar, Bikeshare, Uber, and Turo all call themselves sharing economies while there are inherent differences in what is being delivered and how it is being delivered.This diversity of examples under “sharing economy” necessitates a more precise conceptualization of the definition and domain of sharing economy, and a unifying typology to capture the nuances, similarities, and differences among the various examples. This article aims to address these research needs by (1) providing a definition of sharing, clarifying its conceptual domain, and differentiating it from other related constructs such as renting, leasing, etc. and (2) developing a comprehensive typology of sharing to classify various sharing activities based on two dimensions: nature of the service provider (who provides the service, the company or the peer who are also regular customers in other times) and nature of the interaction (who controls the interaction, service provider-controlled vs. 3rd party platform mediated). Such a conceptualization results in three types of sharing: company-owned sharing, freelancer-based sharing, and peer-to-peer sharing. Our inclusive framework covers a broader domain of sharing than existing literature and the typology suggests the importance of adjusting managerial practices accordingly when dealing with different sharing activities. We then discuss the theoretical connections of the typology to other constructs and research streams, managerial implications of the research, and future research directions emanating from the typology.Following MacInnis’ (2011) delineation of the ways of making a conceptual contribution to marketing, our work contributes toward identifying (what is and what is not sharing), delineating (describing the characteristics of sharing and related terminologies and increasing conceptual clarity), differentiating (differentiating sharing from other similar constructs, differentiating various sharing examples), integrating (providing an inclusive framework to cover a variety of sharing activities), and advocating (justifying the appropriateness of using “sharing” over other terms such as “collaborative consumption”).

The proliferation of information and communication technologies, including communication applications such as social networking sites, email, instant messaging, and mobile telephone, has led to an age of “perpetual contact.” The initial concern that such technologies would lead to diminishing face-to-face time has been argued against with much research showing how they can develop, maintain, and strengthen social interaction, and demonstrating how social conceptions of people’s online and offline identities and behavior are changing. Particularly social networking sites that make extensive use of the co-presence of their members in real and virtual spaces are growing faster than others. Despite their popularity, the merger of the digital and real-world perception of public urban spaces remains largely unexplored in the literature. Under the umbrella of location-based services, these sites offer people a connection between the real and the virtual world. Despite their popularity, little research exists on how these sites impact the digital and real-world perception of public urban spaces. Using the social networking site Yelp as a research context, our case study investigates the mediating role that social networking sites play in the digital and real-world perception of public urban spaces. Our article discusses the underlying social and behavioral norms and the implications that the emerging third spaces play for the convergence of online and digital worlds. One of the implications of this research for managers is in learning from the business model that Yelp has created whereby users generate content for free, and Yelp successfully created an atmosphere, or as some yelpers call it, a “lifestyle”-like realm by engaging people that is especially effective in long-term loyalty. Among other contributions, this work provides marketing implications for managers with respect to designing platforms that support effective utilization of user-generated content, for example, through incorporating gamification mechanisms, status levels, and others.

The importance of social influencer marketing as a means of brand communication is consistently growing. This is hardly surprising, as social influencers have the advantage to be generally perceived as authentic testimonials who can communicate in a customized way to the consumer target group. Certain social influencers can even attract a larger audience than an average television production. Thus, it is crucial to know the success factors of an influencer marketing campaign. Until now, research has mainly focused on global measures of success such as different measures of number of followers, pagerank, or retweets. However, practitioners sometimes state that these measures are too superficial. This presumption becomes further substantiated by numerous examples of social influencer campaigns that failed, although the endorser fulfilled the above mentioned criteria. Often, the reasons for these failures lie in a mismatch between influencer and brand. Hence, practitioners speculate that it would be relevant to consider the triad of (a) social influencer personality, (b) brand personality, and (c) consumer personality. An exemplary follow-up question may be whether it is important that the personality of the social influencer matches one of the brands. The work at hand picks up on this chain of thoughts: It investigates whether the interplay of (1) personality congruence between influencer and brand, (2) the identification of the consumer with the influencer, and (3) the level of product involvement have effects on constructs of brand perception (brand attitude, brand trust) and brand behavior (purchase intention). For this purpose, stimulus material in the form of social influencer profiles and posts endorsing two well-known brands. Hypothesizes testing occurs by means of structural equation modeling. The results indicate that (1) personality congruence between influencer and brand is the most important success factor, followed by (2) identification. (3) The level of product involvement is nearly insignificant. Based on these findings, implications for management and further research are developed.

Starting a business involves many risks and current data indicates that over half of new ventures do not survive to see their fifth birthday. As for any firm, entrepreneurial firm’s executive leadership team plays a pivotal role, because of their responsibility to make strategic decisions aimed at both ensuring firm survival and driving firm performance. Research shows that better strategic decision making can be expected to positively influence firm performance, while sub-optimal decision making is expected to negatively influence performance. In this context, the type of strategic orientation a firm has (such as market, technology, learning, entrepreneurial, or marketing) specifically influences firm performance. Extant research indicates that inter-relations between different strategic orientations aid competitive advantage and that balancing more than one strategic orientation enables better firm performance. The research question for this paper aims to analyze what options in leveraging the type of strategic identity may be available for different types of entrepreneurial firms, to optimize strategic leadership decision making related to marketing strategy. This decision making in turn is aimed at driving firm performance and market success. The context of this paper is the entrepreneurial firm environment, focusing on decision making related to creating and executing marketing strategy. In this work, literature related to the inter-relation between entrepreneurial and marketing orientations is reviewed. The different blends of strategic orientation inform the firm strategic identity type. Options are discussed related different blends of marketing orientation and entrepreneurial orientation, contingent on the type of result the executive leadership team targets to drive. A set of propositions are developed and a framework is proposed, to be further tested in an entrepreneurial context. Additionally, for the practitioner, this framework may be used to provide input for a leadership team to—depending on the outcomes they are aiming to achieve—identify and introduce a desired strategic identity. Limitations and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Advances in technology have facilitated an increased emphasis on targeted price promotion to consumers. Given the increased use of targeted price promotion by firms and the significant emphasis on marketing’s ability to generate substantial value for firms, it is imperative that researchers give increased attention to the value-creating potential of targeted price promotions. The significant push by manufacturers and retailers to embrace targeted price promotion as a strategy to offer special prices only to select customers is fueled by the continuous developments in marketing technologies, which enhance firms’ ability to target customers. In fact, projections also suggest that firms will continue to engage in the use of targeted pricing strategies and individualized offers to customers expected to remain on an upward trajectory. Overall, firms’ targeted price promotion strategies involve the collection and interpretation of vast amounts of data on consumers to generate insights into consumers’ likely response to promoted products, brands, and services. However, the effectiveness of a targeted price promotion as a strategy to help generate firm value is dependent on consumers’ response to the promotion. Unfortunately, although marketing researchers have examined the impact of targeted price promotion on firm outcomes, targeted price promotion research remains highly fragmented. In addition, mixed results from existing research and the growing use of the targeted price promotion by firms demand a systematic approach to bring clarity, specificity, and comprehensiveness to targeted price promotion strategy. To address this research gap, we first frame our research question as the impact of targeted price promotion on the creation of value for firms. Next, we systematically review and summarize research findings on how targeted price promotion impacts key firm value indicators such as increased marketing effectiveness, customer loyalty, and revenue, while also discussing challenges such as sub-optimal returns and customer switching. Finally, we offer a research agenda and implications of our research for theory and practice.

Although high pressure sales tactics are still sometimes applied by salespeople in the marketplace, most academics and marketers alike agree with Hartman (2005, p. 74) that “pressure is consistently an effective strategy for producing managerially undesirable consequences.” So, the study of consumer perceptions of sales pressure is vital to better understanding in what situations consumers feel pressured, in an effort to minimize such situations.Using Friestad and Wright’s (1994) Persuasion Knowledge Model as a framework, this research seeks to focus on consumer entitlement, product knowledge, and persuasion knowledge as antecedents to consumer perceptions of sales pressure. Particularly in focus is the moderating role of product knowledge on the relationships of consumer entitlement and persuasion knowledge on perceptions of sales pressure. We seek to test whether product knowledge can simultaneously enhance the impact of persuasion knowledge on perceived pressure, while mitigating the impact of consumer entitlement on perceived pressure.Though the moderation was insignificant where consumer entitlement was concerned, product knowledge did significantly moderate the relationship between persuasion knowledge and perceived aggressive sales pressure. Although it is logical that someone with high levels of self-confidence in their persuasion knowledge should feel less sales pressure in a buying experience, our results suggest that this outcome is not realized at low levels of product knowledge. In fact, the pressure alleviating impact of persuasion knowledge increases significantly with consumer product knowledge. It would behoove marketers to not only encourage, but also actively enable consumers to be more informed in their buying efforts. These enabled consumers will, as a result, feel less pressured in a buying situation, resulting in a more satisfying and trusting interaction and relationship with their seller. The buying process will be more of a partnership among buyer and seller with the goal being a quality purchase and experience for all involved.

We investigate consumer behavior in situations of interracial sales contact and explore how prejudice influences prosocial purchase decisions towards vendors from a racial in- and out-group by applying the theory of overcorrection. In general, out-group interactions are widely associated with negative behavior; however, the opposite can also occur by showing overly friendly and controlled behavior (so-called overcorrection).Overcorrection is an under-researched phenomenon in the domains of consumer behavior and sales management. We argue that overcorrection has potentially important marketing implications and aim to shed light on this issue by focusing on the role of prejudice, as well as on the motivation to appear unprejudiced. In a laboratory experiment, the race of street vendors (Whites vs. Blacks) was manipulated between subjects and a prosocial purchase decision was measured. Implicit and explicit prejudice, as well as the motivation to act without prejudice, moderated the relationship between the vendor's race and the likelihood of a prosocial purchasing decision (willingness to purchase). Overcorrection is observable at a very low level of prejudice (implicit and explicit) and disappears at moderate and high levels of prejudice. Where prejudice towards Black vendors is low, participants indicate a higher willingness to purchase from Black than from White vendors. We argue that participants with low prejudice showed the highest overcorrection because they experience less intergroup anxiety, hence are not experiencing cognitive depletion and can regulate their behavior. A higher motivation to act without prejudice (regardless of the level of prejudice) leads to overcorrected behavior. Despite its omnipresence, race, in general, is an under-researched construct in consumer behavior and marketing and needs to be investigated from many perspectives.Our research extends existing research on influential factors in sales interactions and charitable giving by considering prejudice and one’s motivation to control it. Furthermore, race in the marketing context has only been investigated from the perspective of the consumer’s race or ethnic origin but has been neglected from the stand of the seller. The insights of these findings have substantial implications for sales and charity managers.

Guided by goal interdependence theory, this research examines different effects of person-team fit in the sales force. Of particular interest are the ways trait cooperativeness and trait competitiveness might individually and jointly affect objective measures of salesperson performance. In the current study, person-team fit implies that salespeople and their sales teams have compatible personality traits (i.e., trait cooperativeness and trait competitiveness), while person-team misfit implies that salespeople and their sales teams have incompatible personality traits (e.g., cooperative-oriented salespeople within competitive-oriented sales teams).Following a review of relevant literature, the authors explore relationships between the two traits (i.e., competitiveness and cooperativeness) and measures of learning goal orientation. In line with extant marketing literature, learning goal orientation is modeled as a function of both individual and environmental characteristics. Ultimately, this research proposes that (1) cooperative salespeople in cooperative teams exhibit higher learning goal orientation than those in competitive teams, and (2) competitive salespeople in competitive teams exhibit lower learning goal orientation than those in cooperative teams. In turn, salesperson learning goal orientation is expected to directly and positively affect objective sales performance. As such, person-team fit is proposed to strengthen the positive effect of the two traits studied only when individuals and teams are fit on trait cooperativeness. However, in contrast with a traditional view that misfit is inferior to fit, this research suggests that person-team misfit (e.g., competitive-oriented salespeople in cooperative-oriented teams) can be beneficial and positively drive salesperson performance.In the end, the current research builds on goal interdependence theory literature to suggest that, in addition to formal goal structure and team structure, trait competitiveness and trait cooperativeness at the team level can also define cooperative contexts and competitive contexts. Several managerial implications (e.g., recruiting and selection) are explored. Research limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.

Although a large body of literature highlights the benefits of crowdsourcing initiatives (both for brands and participants), innovation in collaboration with communities can “create frustration and evoke angry reactions” due to disappointing experiences (Gebauer et al. 2013). Indeed, while the literature reveals that users engage in virtual co-creation activities as they expect the participation to be rewarded by the nodal brands (Füller 2010; von Hippel 2005), only a very small fraction of crowd proposals is selected and rewarded by the brand contest committee.This research, carried out in two studies, investigates the impact of rejection of participants’ submissions on the brands running a crowdsourcing project. In a first study, a longitudinal survey dealing with repeated measures before and after the announcement of the non-selection (ideation stage) was conducted. The study aims to identify the consequences on customer-brand relationships of attitudinal and behavioral responses to proposal rejection, focusing on brand trust, attitude, loyalty, attachment, emotional attractiveness, proselytism, and commitment, as well as the intention to diffuse negative word of mouth.The findings reveal that rejection does not impact brand attachment, brand trust, brand attitude, and brand loyalty. However, participation in the contest, even if the submission is rejected, reinforces positively the emotional attractiveness of the brand, proselytism, and brand commitment. Subsequently, a second quantitative study goes further by comparing these variables at two stages: ideation stage (pre-selection round) and expansion stage (development and deepening phase leading to the finale). No significant differences between ideation stage rejection and expansion stage rejection were found for brand trust and attitude toward the brand. Nevertheless, the results reveal that participants rejected at the expansion stage rate the brand higher than those rejected at the ideation stage on the following variables: brand attachment, emotional attractiveness of the brand, proselytism, brand commitment, and brand loyalty. In both studies, no intention to diffuse negative word of mouth is revealed. These findings offer interesting managerial contributions for managers who can be fearful of engaging their brands in crowdsourcing activities. Indeed, brands initiating crowdsourcing projects gather new ideas to improve new product development and, simultaneously, reinforce their relationship with participants.

Firms are increasingly promoting user-designed products, but earlier work revealed a mitigated effect of customers’ reactions towards customer participation in new product development (e.g., Haumann et al. 2015). In this study, we explore the user-design effect by comparing consumers’ perceptions if a product is developed in collaboration with fans of a brand or any average consumers. We also test if the effect on (1) the perception of co-created product and (2) sending WOM to others could be moderated by the perceived complexity of the product category.To answer this question, we build on social identity (Tajfel and Turner 1986) and social comparison (Locke 2003) theories. Both let us think that consumers’ reactions regarding the co-created product would be improved if a product is co-designed with a fan of the brand (compared with ordinary users). However, this effect may be reduced when the product is perceived as complex. Based on the previous theoretical development, we hypothesize that (1) Product class involvement, (2) Domain-specific knowledge, and (3) Similarity with fans will affect positively the perception of the co-created product and, in turn, spreading WOM.We tested the hypotheses with an online questionnaire survey. Data collection was conducted by a professional market research agency with a representative sample of 240 Japanese consumers. Product selection was based on the perceived complexity of the product: beer represents low-complexity consumer product, whereas cars are perceived as high-complexity consumer goods.The results show that, in all cases, consumers who are involved in the product class tend to perceive positively the co-created products, both for low- and high-complexity products. The product class involvement however affects WOM intention only for the cases of co-developing a beer with ordinary consumers or with fans, not for cars. If consumers are knowledgeable about the product category, they tend to spread WOM on the product co-created with both ordinary consumers and with fans, in both cases of beers and cars. However, it does not influence the perception of the co-created product except for the case of developing a car with ordinary consumers.One of the most interesting findings is that, when consumers feel similar and familiar with the fans of their favorite manufacturer, they tend to evaluate the co-created product higher in both cases of co-creation with ordinary consumers and with fans. However, similarity with fans does not affect the level of WOM for all the cases. Finally, the level of WOM is improved by the perception of the co-created product for both categories.

Frugal innovation is on the rise (Levänen et al. 2016). Practitioners and academics increasingly acknowledge the promising potential of developing frugal products for both emerging and industrialized countries. However, the frugal innovation literature still lacks a universal conceptualization of product frugality, an adequate operationalization, and an investigation of the anticipated consequences of product frugality, for example, in the form of high adoption rates. Our study addresses these gaps in the current literature.In this multi-method study, we develop a comprehensive conceptualization and operationalization of product frugality using a systematic literature analysis, expert interviews, consumer interviews, and consumer surveys. Applying established procedures of index construction to a large and diverse set of consumer data from the USA, the U.K., Germany, India, and South Africa (n = 2,398), we develop and validate an index of product frugality. Our results depict product frugality as a formative construct with four dimensions: cost of consumption, sustainability, simplicity, and basic quality. We define product frugality as a set of product characteristics that particularly appeals to consumers who, by necessity or choice, value products with low cost of consumption that, at the same time, are sustainable, simple, and offer basic quality. For example, the TATA Nano as a very simple and no-frills economy car that is highly fuel efficient and reduces the usage of raw material over the entire product lifecycle is a frugal product. In contrast, the Smart Fortwo, as an economy car manufactured by the Daimler AG is not a frugal product. The Smart Fortwo starts at US$ 13,000, offers a long list of infotainment features and configuration packages, and does not pay particular attention to a conscious usage of resources such as raw materials or fuel.Our findings provide important implications for theory and practice as we generate a common understanding of product frugality that acknowledges the multi-dimensional nature of this construct. Nomological examination of our index reveals that product frugality increases consumers’ willingness to generate word of mouth. Our research proffers guidance for managers seeking to explore the potential of frugal products in addressing consumers’ need for higher value products while minimizing environmental impact.

Policymakers have long suggested a need to overhaul supplemental nutrition assistance programs in the USA to save taxpayer money. However, these efforts are often met with resistance because cutting costs is often paired with reducing the quality of diet which can result in even greater costs in government-provided healthcare. This research takes a consumer-driven perspective and explores the cost factors driving food purchases for low-income, urban consumers in order to better understand the ways that the current food marketing system is failing to provide this population with value. The samples include a 32-person sample from a low-income urban area in North Carolina as well as a 52-person general population sample taken from Amazon mTurk. This exploratory research shows that low-income consumers tend to rely more heavily on well-known food and are most concerned about the cognitive burden and time required to prepare meals at home. These findings can be used to better understand the shopping decisions of low-income consumers and for policy makers to design higher value supplemental nutrition programs to address these concerns.

The Global Games Market Report released by Newzoo has shown that almost 2.2 billion gamers across the world are estimated to have generated sales volume of US $108.9 billion in 2017. Mobile gaming is performing as the most lucrative segment with the highest potential growth. More than half of the US population play games on their smartphones and tablets and the percentage of population who play games on smart devices is expected to hit 63.7% in 2020. The time people spent on gaming apps accounts for 32% of the total time spent online. Not surprisingly, with the trend of increasing time spent on gaming apps, companies’ expenditure on mobile gaming apps advertisements is increasing accordingly. Mobile advertisement spending is estimated to hit US $195.55 billion which accounts for 70.1% of digital ads.Even though there is a noticeable market value in the mobile gaming apps industry, there has been limited research examining experiential value of gamers in respect to in-game ads in gaming apps. This study addresses this gap in the literature by examining factors associated with “Experiential Value of Gamers through Ads in Gaming Apps (EVGAGA)” as well as investigating its antecedents (in terms of cognitive and affective involvement) and consequences (positive word of mouth and continuance intention to play gaming apps). A total of 600 valid responses from gamers were used to test the model fit, measurement and structural models, conditional probabilistic queries, and nonlinearity. This study found that EVGAGA is a second-order factor of four constructs: escapism, enjoyment, social affiliation, and entertainment. The structural paths between cognitive/affective involvement and dimensions of EVGAGA are supported. Surprisingly, only social affiliation and entertainment values predict positive word of mouth and continuance intention to play gaming apps. Furthermore, the results of multi-group analysis indicate that the relationship between Enjoyment → Continuance intention to play gaming apps is stronger for those having high level of attachment to games. The findings have important implications for companies that could help develop brand and communication strategies. For instance, by understanding factors associated with experiential value of gamers, companies could leverage specific advertisement formats and present their ads to the right audience in the right gaming apps and at the right time.

This study provides an examination of the current literature on advertising creativity and suggests that what has been published in recent years will enable a prediction of future trends. In order to do so, this study offers a structured literature review. It provides a “viewpoint” with the intent to provide an assessment of the direction of advertising creative research combining the author’s perspective based upon a review of selected literature.At the outset it was decided to confine the review to 50 articles published between 2012 and 2018, given the objective was to identify trends and to project these into the future. Two databases were utilized for source material. One was EBSCO Business Source Complete, a leading business and management database and the other WARC (World Advertising Research Center), a leading advertising and marketing one. The elements identified were year of publication, authors, location of research, primary research method, and sample. That left the thematic coding of topics as the most subjective aspect of the structured review, given the potential for multiple categorizations. To go some way to addressing the problem each article was categorized by the author according to highlighted keywords listed in the two databases. Each article was then comprehensively reviewed.Six primary themes emerged. (1) It comes as no surprise to suggest that, in terms of the location of data for advertising creative research will continue to be dominated by studies from the USA and Western Europe. Equally it will come as no surprise to suggest that Asia (in particular China) will provide an increasing number of studies with Australasia continuing to be well represented. Some growth in studies from the Mideast and South America are also to be expected. (2) A combination of the dominance of experimentation, qualitative, survey, and content analysis are to be anticipated. Conceptual studies utilizing databases and cases will likely feature more prominently. (3) Samples featuring practitioners will continue to form a basis for much of the investigative work, but those featuring the public, assessments of media and, to some extent, students, will also be in evidence. Further progress in the use of market data is also to be expected. (4) Thematically the fascination with responses to creative versus non-creative advertising is set to continue given it remains debatable. (5) Work on agencies and the agency–client relationship will do likewise. (6) However, it is to be anticipated that the role of creativity and the media, especially digital and social, will see growing interest.

Mobile devices possess the ability to enable consumers to use and interact with in-store based technology (Grewal et al. 2016). Despite the increasing interest in this topic, relevant both for academics and practitioners, to date, only few studies have focused on mobile in-store advertising and its effects on consumers’ decisions (Bues et al. 2017; Hui et al. 2013). Yet, closer insights are needed in order to address the literature gap regarding the drivers affecting in-store mobile advertising effectiveness.By focusing closely on location based advertising (LBA), this study investigates the effect of the platform used in the mobile promotion (Facebook–WhatsApp) and the content of the promotion (shopping goal congruent–shopping goal non-congruent) on consumers’ purchase intention. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that, due to the level of social presence perceived, WhatsApp mobile promotions are more effective in driving purchase intentions, and such effect will be greater when the promotion is congruent with the consumers’ goal.Social presence (SP) is defined as the degree to which a medium allows users to experience others as psychologically present (Short et al. 1976) and is an important construct that affects consumer’s reactions to marketing communication stimuli (Robert and Dennis, 2005). The level of SP changes according to the communication media types. For instance, Karapanos et al. (2016) showed how WhatsApp triggers higher level of social presence (SP) compared to Facebook. The perceived congruity between the shopping goal and the promotion, too, may affect consumers’ responses in a shopping setting (van't Riet et al. 2016). Congruently, we expect to find WhatsApp in-store mobile promotion having more positive effect on promotion redemption than Facebook in-store mobile promotion, because of the higher level of social presence triggered by WhatsApp. Also, we propose that this effect will be stronger when mobile ads are goal congruent.A pre-test and two experiments were conducted. Findings demonstrate that WhatsApp in-store mobile promotion is more effective in driving purchase intentions, especially for goal congruent promotion. Moreover, the research shows that the level of social presence triggered by the platform mediates this relationship.Overall, the results demonstrate that goal congruent mobile promotion positively affects promotion redemption when delivered during a shopping expedition; also, they show that WhatsApp exerts a higher influence than Facebook, and such difference is particularly significant when the promotional message is goal congruent. From a theoretical perspective, the study sheds light on the role played by specific mobile platforms and applications, namely WhatsApp and Facebook. Moreover, by applying social presence theory in the context of real-time mobile communication, the study explains why WhatsApp is more effective in driving decisions, thus contributing to a better understanding of the differential advertising’s effects and implications of both platforms.

Despite the ubiquity and importance of print advertisements in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, academic research on the content of current B2B ads is limited. Researchers have acknowledged that B2C marketers often value content design of print advertisement more than their B2B counterparts (Bellizzi and Hite 1986). With notable exceptions (Bellizzi and Hite 1986; Bellizzi et al. 1994; Lohtia et al. 1995; Lohtia et al. 2003; Turley and Kelley 1997; Clark and Honeycutt 2000; Baack et al. 2016), the investigation of content design elements in B2B advertising has received less attention.The purpose of this investigation is to compare three elements of content design—influential language, imagery, and claims—between B2B and B2C advertisements. Specifically, we examine (1) how does the use of influential language, imagery, and claims differ in B2B versus B2C, (2) how does the use of these tools differ among B2B advertisers, and (3) how should researchers and B2B advertisers proceed to improve B2B print advertising.The results of a content analysis of 270 print ads showed that B2B ads lag behind B2C ads in employing some persuasive elements. B2C ads showed a higher frequency of influential language such as taglines, slogans, spokespeople, humor, and links to other media. When employing imagery, B2B lagged behind B2C ads in employing dynamic images of products, images of products in use, and showing spokespeople. B2B advertisers did not lag behind B2C advertisers in the use of claims.The results should provide researchers and practitioners with a clearer view of print ad content development. These insights may help researchers target important ad elements and practitioners take better advantage of little used tools of persuasion. The results may also facilitate improved management of ad creation. The framework developed for classifying influential language, imagery, and claims in ads may be adaptable to classifying content in digital and other advertising to facilitate integrated marketing communications.

Most consumers look favorably on companies that promise to do good (Kelleher 2007), that is, companies with an explicit statement of supporting a social cause, for example, engaging in charitable donations or environmental stewardship. In 2000, Carroll predicted that businesses would focus on aligning their philanthropic interests with their economic mandates, allowing both to be achieved at the same time. Carroll (2000, p. 37) referred to these efforts as “strategic philanthropy.” While Carroll did not go so far as to predict the development of a new business model based on philanthropy, his description of strategic philanthropy seems to have been a harbinger of this movement. The purpose of this research is to conduct an investigation into the long-term sustainability of one of the newest classes of business models, one that integrates social enterprise into traditional for-profit business. TOMS Shoes, for example, promises to donate one pair of shoes for every pair of shoes purchased. This study investigates the history and evolution of three businesses founded on an integration of social enterprise and traditional for-profit models: TOMS Shoes, Warby Parker, and Ten Tree. We traced the evolution of the social promise at the core of each of these businesses—all variations of the buy-one-give-one promise. Our objective was to examine whether businesses founded on promises of charitable donations in exchange for purchases are in fact profitable and sustainable in the long-run, or whether the high costs associated with the donations, along with the appropriateness of the social interventions, require adaptation and down-scaling of the promises to be sustainable as the businesses grow over time. Our research revealed that companies founded on a for-profit, social enterprise business model adapt their promise of social responsibility as the company grows and matures. Throughout their histories, these companies have expressly promoted their promises to good, something which resulted in positive media coverage and set the foundation for building goodwill with customers and a positive brand image. This also created expectations of continued social responsibility in the future. When companies are so vocal about their corporate ethics, and then are faced with the need to change their promises, they would perhaps be better served by being as open about the reasons for changing as they were about making the promise in the first place.

Customers are frequently being asked to make charitable donations at the cash register when making purchases. This growing trend of point of sale donations (POSD) brings in about $500 million for causes annually (Catalyst 2018). Research has examined consumer response to these inquiries, demonstrating mildly positive reactions (Catalyst 2018). To a far lesser extent research has examined employee response to POSD, revealing ambivalence and discomfort (Basil et al. 2018). To date, little or no research has examined POSD from the perspective of the manager who is responsible for both customer and employee experiences. Through a series of interviews this research examines managerial perceptions of POSD.Information in this study is drawn from 13 face-to-face structured interviews administered to Canadian management personnel who oversee POSD initiatives in their stores. Their responses to this topic indicate that although they recognize the functional challenges of requesting donations at the cash register, such as taking more time for the employee and the customer, they do not recognize potential emotional challenges the employees may face. Previous research suggests that requesting donations can be quite challenging for employees. It can affect their morale, which impacts their overall job performance (Basil et al. 2018). The managers we spoke with do not seem to recognize these challenges.Results suggest that managers’ positive POSD attitudes may lead them to underestimate negative responses from customers and employees. As such, managers may be reducing the potential value of these programs and missing an opportunity to further engage employees. Managers appear reluctant to acknowledge that requesting donations may be emotionally challenging for employees, and declining to donate may be similarly challenging for customers. Managers are encouraged to adopt a more empathic understanding of all perspectives in order to maximize the benefit of POSD programs.

The wide array of sustainability labels used in retail environments across the globe is staggering. One source indicates that there are currently 463 labels used in 199 countries across 25 industries and the number of labels used is anticipated to grow (Ecolabel Index 2018). Despite this widespread labeling, however, consumers still express confusion over the green attributes of products, suggesting that the information presented on these product labels is frequently insufficient and that this may be a contributing factor to unsustainable choices (Frazier 2007).We draw from schema congruity theory and the information disclosure literature to examine sustainability labels with scale ratings on product perceptions and purchase outcomes. This study presents sustainability disclosures, in an absolute format, that incorporate life cycle assessments (cf. GoodGuide) and utilize a scoring scheme in a comparative context—more accurately depicting a purchase scenario in a retail environment in which multiple products (vs. a single products) are presented. Therefore, in these situations, the provision of objective sustainability information at the product level (e.g., overall indices or levels that are attribute-specific across a product category) should influence consumers’ product evaluations.Our findings demonstrate that implementing a sustainability disclosure system informs consumers in status quo retail environments and enables them to make more sustainable decisions. Findings suggest that the level of schema congruity must be increased so that the sustainability level is consistent with consumers’ expectations within specific product categories. However, consumers’ perceived efficacy and concerns with social desirability must be considered because they serve an important moderating role in the effects of sustainability disclosures on product evaluations. In summary, the provision of sustainability disclosures for all products within a category may provide substantial benefits to manufacturers, retailers, consumers, and the environment.

Høgevold and Svensson (2016) identify multiple organizational directions to assess the organizational efforts and priorities of sustainability initiatives through time. This study combines and applies their developed frameworks in the service-oriented industry of health care organizations, namely both private and public hospitals.This study aims to offer a foundation to understand past and present organizational efforts and priorities of sustainability initiatives. In doing so, it seeks to provide an empirical foundation for the organizational direction of sustainability initiatives through time, as well as revealing similarities and differences between private and public sectors.An inductive approach (Thomas 2006) has been used to gather data in this study. In this study, we have used the triple bottom line (TBL) framework proposed by Elkington (1997) to interpret and structure the data. This study has been conducted in one industry, overcoming contextual bias (Hartline and Jones 1996), targeting both public and private hospitals in Spain. A judgmental sampling was used in this industry to select the organizations (Fischhoff and Bar-Hillel 1982).The present situation across hospitals reveals both similarities and differences in terms of their initiatives and actions of sustainability. A research implication based on this study is that the areas identified by Høgevold and Svensson (2016) and Høgevold et al. (2014) to assess the organizational direction of sustainability initiatives through time has enabled us to characterize past and present efforts and priorities of sustainability initiatives in Spanish health care organizations.We conclude that the multi-dimensional framework of past and present organizational efforts and priorities applied in this study offers a relevant foundation to understand the determinants of organizational direction in sustainability initiatives through time. We also conclude that this study provides an empirical foundation for the organizational direction of sustainability initiatives through time, as well as revealing similarities and differences between private and public sectors.

To date, research has revealed that the concept of customer loyalty is tantamount to gaining strategic success during customer exchanges (Cronin et al. 2000; Wolter et al. 2017). To this end, this paper seeks to determine the antecedents of enhancing loyalty outcomes associated with the service exchange. Three studies are undertaken to not only propose the antecedent effect of satisfaction and mediating effect of value on loyalty outcome but also to further advance understanding by identifying the moderating effect of perceived justice to service satisfaction, value, and customer loyalty outcomes.The direct effect of satisfaction on loyalty outcomes such as (a) identification (b) exclusive consideration, (c) advocacy, (d) strength of preference, and (e) share of wallet was supported in our study. Assessment of the indirect effect of value on loyalty outcomes was based on the bootleg confidence interval estimates associated with each effect (Hayes 2017). From these tests, four of the five models proved value as a significant (p-value ≤0.001) mediator. Only the influence of satisfaction on strength of preference proved not to be mediated by value. A moderated mediation model of perceived justice and the relationship between satisfaction and value was also tested and suggests that greater perceived justice enhances the effect of satisfaction on value. Moreover, perceived justice positively moderates the strength of the mediated relationship between satisfaction and loyalty outcomes through value such that the mediated relationship is stronger under greater levels of perceived justice for loyalty outcomesThe purpose of this study was to gain greater understanding of the antecedents and moderators of customer loyalty outcomes. Herein, the findings suggest that value plays a significant role in mediating the influence of satisfaction on all loyalty outcomes. Further, the indirect effect of value is moderated by increased justice perceptions such that perceptions of value are enhanced when customers feel a heightened sense of justice during the service encounter. This proved true for all outcomes with the exception of strength of preference.These findings have significant implications for service strategy in that, while value tends to be a key driver of loyalty, its role is diminished if customers perceive injustice during the service encounter. Thus, equity in the exchange is a key driver of loyalty outcomes.

Experiences are a critical element in creating value for customers of service companies. In the tourism industry, employee–tourist encounters are particularly important as a lever for experience value creation. However, typically such encounters are based on a service quality logic that is standardised and functional (based on standard quality theory), thus missing considerable opportunities for employee-related experience creation. In this research, we seek to apply big data analytics to identify the types of customer–employee interactions that are the most influential in improving customers’ perceptions of service, value and overall satisfaction. A popular and well-known review website was selected to provide data for a range of hotel rankings (one- to five-stars) and sentiment performance. English language reviews and related variables associated with each review were used. This provided more than a quarter of a million reviews for analysis. A dictionary of terms was created by collecting and compiling synonyms associated with the types of hotel customer–employee interaction based on personalisation, flexibility, co-creation, emotions and knowledge gain/learning. Dictionary terms were also developed for mentions of employees. The process helped us to develop a final list of 639 words. To improve the computational efficiency of the analysis, the data were pre-processed using Python’s Natural Language Toolkit. In order to focus on the most objective and reliable reviews, we reduced the sample to those reviews with a subjectivity level less than or equal to 0.5. Each review was then content-analysed for sentiment and interaction type in order to explore these important relationships statistically. ANOVA tests were applied to examine differences in service quality, satisfaction and value based. The overall assessment of our results appears to suggest that hotel customers are difficult to please; positive employee–customer interactions receive significant positive improvements in customer perceptions of satisfaction, values and service, but customers are extremely sensitive to any problems in employee–customer interactions. Amongst the types of employee interactions, emotional intelligence and co-creation of customer experiences appeared to be the most promising for increasing the three outcome variables, whilst flexibility appeared to be a critical element of employee interactions not to get wrong. The research has significant implications for future research and practice.

The evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness is a major research stream in academic research provided well advances regarding the assessment of sponsorship performance (Cornwell and Maignan 1998; Walliser 2003). However, business practice as expressed in the ANA (2013) study demands more sophisticated sponsorship evaluation approaches that currently incorporate (a) the application of additional measurement instruments, especially from the area of neuromarketing and (b) the analysis of various customer and spectator perspectives, e.g., fan vs. anti-fan in the context of rivalry. With regard to the latter, Madrigal and Dalakas (2008) reviewed that the nature of fan behavior ranges from socially acceptable reactions to negative inappropriate reactions. However, there is only little research explaining how affective dispositions of fans and anti-fans determine the effectiveness of sport sponsorship outcomes such as association transfers from the sponsored entity (e.g., a football team) to the sponsor brand. The sweetness and spiciness of rivalry nurtures media’s and public’s awareness and gets them geared up for an ongoing competitive contest (Stead 2008; Whitson 1998). In the light of the relevance of rivalry as a key element for a high viewer attraction in sports (Kimble and Cooper 1992; Mahony and Moorman 1999) and with reference to Cornwell (2008), the present study partially fills the gap of empirical research in general and empirical evidence in particular related to the measurement of sports sponsorship impact. Particularly, the current research relies on an adapted implicit association test (IAT; Greenwald et al. 1998) from cognitive psychology and widely applied in neuromarketing to better understand consumer’s automatic and spontaneous responses, the so-called implicit processes, to marketing stimuli (e.g., Dimofte 2010: Horcajo et al. 2010). Specifically, the effect of team sponsorship on explicit and implicit brand-related information processing from a fan rivalry perspective is addressed. The empirical results of the presented study suggest that team sponsorship has an impact on implicit and explicit brand information processing. However, a significant positive impact on both dual processes was only revealed within the group of fans, whereas within the group of non-fans only negative implicit and explicit association changes could be identified. In sum, sport spectators’ feelings in terms of affective dispositions toward a sponsored subject or object in a rival competition are of high relevance for the marketing management of the sponsor brand (e.g., Tyler and Cobbs 2015). Particularly, affective dispositions are often related with positive reactions such as favoritism (e.g., Gwinner and Swanson 2003) and a potentially positive association transfer as well as with negative reactions such as aggression (e.g., Wann et al. 2015) which might lead to a negative association transfer.

An overall research question grounded in theories of arousal is: Among underage consumers, what is the role (if any) of exposure to alcohol sponsorship and arousal of the sport on their attitude to the alcohol brand sponsor and subsequent choice between the sponsor’s alcoholic beverage vs. a non-alcoholic drink? In this set of experiments, we narrowed the sample to underage drinkers (age 18–20) to investigate the effects of the sponsorship dynamic on alcohol consumption choice. The pilot test (n = 24) is in the context of Ultimate Fighting Championship, sponsored by Bud Light. Arousal is manipulated, while brand familiarity, prior brand attitude, and product category involvement are measured. The dependent variable is beverage choice (beer vs. non-alcoholic beverage). Results indicated that the arousal manipulation, sponsorship manipulation, and their interaction did not influence the level of positive emotion. Together, this result showed that arousal level is important for future study. Thus, the main study seeks to build on this in the soccer context. In total, 124 participants were assigned to one of the four experiment conditions: a 2 (sponsored brand: alcohol brand of Budweiser vs. non-alcohol brand of Toyota) × 2 (level of arousal: high vs. low) between subjects randomized experiment. A two-way ANCOVA with attitude toward the brand and purchase intention as the dependent variable revealed significant main effects of the brands and interaction effects between brands and arousal levels. We captured significant main effects of a brand on brand attitude (F (1, 118) = 14.14, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.107) and purchase intention (F (1, 118) = 18.48, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.135), but did not find main effects of arousal. Participants who were exposed to the non-alcohol sponsor (i.e., Toyota) during the match exhibited more favorable brand attitude than those exposed to the alcohol brand (i.e., Budweiser) (Mnon-alcohol = 5.58, SD = 1.35 vs. Malcohol = 4.75, SD = 1.50). For purchase intention, consumers who watched the non-alcohol-sponsored match indicated a higher level of purchase intention than those who watched the alcohol brand-sponsored match (Mnon-alcohol = 4.91, SD = 1.40 vs. Malcohol = 3.84, SD = 1.68). We found a significant interaction between arousal level and sponsored brand type on purchase intention (F (1, 118) = 5.57, p = 0.020, partial η2 = 0.045). For those who watched the high-aroused match, the discrepancy between the non-alcohol brand and the alcohol brand (Mnon-alcohol = 5.15, SD = 1.35 vs. Malcohol = 3.45, SD = 1.69) was greater than for those who watched the low-aroused match (Mnon-alcohol = 4.66, SD = 1.43 vs. Malcohol = 4.24, SD = 1.60). In conclusion, our research investigated the role of different types of sponsorship in underage drinker’s brand attitude and behavior.

Designing creative ads is a critical goal for advertisers. Yet, while many researchers find positive effects of creativity on consumer responses, others argue that creativity is wasteful for ad persuasiveness or find no impact of creativity on outcomes such as ad attitudes. This paper identifies two boundary conditions affecting the effectiveness of an advertisement’s creativity: consumption motive (utilitarian vs. hedonic) and claim set-size (small number of claims vs. large number of claims). We propose and find that creativity is more effective for an advertisement when the consumption motive is utilitarian rather than hedonic. Further, using a larger claim set-size within an advertisement increases (decreases) the effectiveness of advertisement creativity for those with hedonic (utilitarian) consumption motives. Across two experiments, we find support for our hypotheses using both hedonic vs. utilitarian products (study 1) and manipulated hedonic vs. utilitarian decision goals within the same product category (study 2).This is the first research to explicitly study boundary conditions for when ad creativity matters by showing that creativity matters more (i.e., enhances persuasiveness of the ad and attitudes toward the ad) when the consumption motive is utilitarian, especially when ads have small claim set-size. Additionally, creativity matters for hedonic consumption contexts if the advertisement has a large claim-size. Thus, our research contributes to the creativity literature by showing when creativity matters depending on the consumption motive and claim set-size. In addition, our research expands the utilitarian vs. hedonic consumption literature by highlighting another way in which these two motives differ. Finally, our research expands the claim set-size literature by demonstrating that the effects of claim set-size depend on both consumption motive and features of the ad (i.e., its level of creativity). These findings help marketers manage their advertising budget more effectively and efficiently knowing when advertisement creativity matters and thus when to invest in creativity.

Donations by individuals make up the vast majority of contributions received by nonprofit organizations. Based on the statistics published by Giving USA, around 72% of donations made in 2014 ($258.5 billion) were individual contributions. Not surprisingly, in a digital era, online donation campaigns account for a significant part of contribution figures. Crowdfunding campaigns, in particular, collected about $16 billion in 2014, a 1718% increase from 2010. While it seems intuitive that sharing these campaigns on social media increases donations, as more people get to know about them, the net effect of such sharing has not been studied. Using data collected from a major crowdfunding website, and utilizing three econometrics models, it is shown that sharing crowdfunded campaigns on social media actually has a negative effect on donations. A phenomenon which, in recent literature, has come to be known as slacktivism; the tendency of people to make fast, easy contributions (e.g., sharing a campaign, wearing a bracelet to support a cause, etc.) instead of meaningful, perhaps more difficult contributions (e.g., actually giving money to a cause). It is further shown that consistent with similar social living (non-donation) campaigns (e.g., Groupon), there is a “critical mass” beyond which donations increase significantly. The existence of these phenomena in the nonprofit domain has important strategic implications about how awareness is to be made about nonprofit campaigns in the online world. It could also lead to more creative social media awareness strategies than merely sharing.

Nostalgic cultural brands and products are impacting the market place due to the increasing levels of immigration (Bundas 2018; Hernandez 2014). A manner in which immigrants can be transported back to their home country is through consumption of nostalgic cultural brands. Their memories are a way to reconnect with their home country (Bray 2014; Fujita et al. 2006). Nostalgia oftentimes serves as a strong driver in their decision-making when choosing products (Guzman and Paswan 2009; Sierra and McQuitty 2007).Nostalgia is defined as a “preference toward objects from when one was younger or from times about which one has learned vicariously perhaps through socialization or media” (Fairley 2003). Guzman et al. (2009) proved that immigrants have higher affinity toward home country products in contrast to those living in their home country. Moreover, we infer that immigrants, in regard to nostalgic products, have a stronger desire for products depending on the psychological distance to their home country.Psychological distance refers to the manner in which we think about particular situations, high- vs low- construal levels (Klaus 2007). Thus, drawing on CLT, the objective of this article is to explore the role that psychological distance (temporal-, spatial-, social-, and hypothetical-distance) plays on the relationship between nostalgic cultural brands and purchase intentions.Given the diverse demographics of the United States, it is an ideal conduit for immigrant data collection. Statistically, the USA receives a large number of immigrants both in sheer volume and variety. Our general hypothesis states (H1): The relationship between nostalgic cultural brands and purchase intentions is positive, such that nostalgic cultural brands will lead to higher purchase intentions among immigrant consumers.Primary research to be conducted in both survey method and focus groups to gather immigrant emotions toward and perceptions of home and host country, reaction to nostalgic cultural brands, and the motivation of purchasing the products of nostalgic cultural brands.As immigration is a natural experience in the modern day, understanding immigrants better is critical for the success of nostalgic cultural brands. Knowledge of immigrant purchase intentions allows for more refined marketing techniques (i.e., segmenting, targeting, and positioning).

Research acknowledges a variety of sources that can influence country image, including a country’s economic, political, and social conditions; culture and traditions; citizens; tourism; sports; historical events; and the media (Anholt 2002; Jaffe and Nebenzahl 2006; Kotler and Gertner 2002; O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy 2000; Papadopoulos and Heslop 2002). Our study examines the neglected area of country image formation by focusing on the role of a country’s brands. Specifically, we assess the influence of the dominant type of recalled brands (hedonic vs. utilitarian) on the affective and cognitive components of country image. The study is based on empirical evidence provided by collecting quantitative data through an online panel comprised of British people. Respondents were asked to retrieve from memory as many brands as they could about Italy and South Korea, respectively. Then they evaluated the country image (the cognitive and affective elements) of Italy and South Korea. To test the hypotheses, we classified the retrieved brands into hedonic and utilitarian categories. The results suggest that the link between hedonic (utilitarian) brands and the affective (cognitive) is complex and may be moderated by other variables. Theoretically and managerially, it is crucial to determine how a country’s brands contribute to shape the country’s image. Understanding the makeup of a country’s image and the contribution of each element can shed better light on the mechanisms underlying the country of origin effects and help identify the elements in a country’s image that are crucial to the activation of such effects. The results of this study should help practitioners allocate resources in nation-branding campaigns.

For service firms to achieve and maintain competitive advantages, they must understand and appropriately serve their consumers. The United States is becoming increasingly multi-cultural and there are various new immigrant consumer groups that businesses try to reach through ethnic-based segmentation and targeting. Often, businesses offer accommodation strategies to their ethnic consumer groups through language or other cultural accommodation tactics. There are inconsistencies in the literature for the efficacy of ethnic-based targeting and accommodation strategies: often these do not have the desired results and there is evidence that ethnic identification may be fading over time for many immigrant groups. Service firms need another way to understand, segment, target, and serve their various cultural groups.There is evidence that acculturation may be a better predictor of consumer behavior and preferences in service settings. Acculturation is the adoption by a person or group of the culture of another social group, or the process leading to acculturation, and assimilation is the complete adoption so that a person has left behind their former culture. There are various existing measurement tools to identify an individual’s level of acculturation; however, there are concerns with the existing tools. All but one measurement tool treat acculturation as a reflective scale, all view acculturation as a one-time event, and the tools have been largely developed for specific contexts such as mental healthcare. Also, many scales lump all ethnicities into one group such as the Suinn-Lew Asian Acculturation Measurement. This presents theoretical cultural concerns. The difficulty is that the acculturation process involves both formative and reflective components.In order to effectively examine acculturation, there must first be a desire or propensity to acculturate and then that propensity in turn will influence actual acculturation behaviors. In order to do this, we are proposing the development of a propensity to acculturate index which will causally influence subsequent acculturation behaviors. To develop the index, we are using Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer’s (2001) index-development protocols. In order to recognize someone’s acculturation categories, we are also adapting existing Asian context acculturation measures using the Churchill (1979) scale-development method.

We are faced every day with social comparison about our performances, abilities, appearance, attributes, or emotional states relative to others’ (Gerber and Wheeler 2018). Some comparisons are positive, that is, we are better than peers on certain tasks or dimensions. This type of comparison is also called downward comparison. Some comparisons might be negative, that it, we are worse than peers on certain tasks or dimensions. Such comparison is called upward comparison. Both directions of comparison appear as part of a rich social milieu. They not only play a role in self-evaluation but also have significant effect on intrapersonal consequences (Corcoran et al. 2011).Researchers have been interested in examining the effect of social comparison on prosocial behavior (e.g., Klein 2003; Schlosser and Levy 2016; Yip and Kelly 2013). However, the current findings are mixed and far from being inclusive. Klein (2003) found that people show higher prosocial behavior when making downward social comparison compared to those making upward social comparisons. While Shipley (2005) found that people increase donation after receiving upward social comparison information. Furthermore, Yip and Kelly (2013) showed that individuals are less likely to give after making social comparison, regardless of the direction of the comparison.Obviously, the influence of social comparison on prosocial behavior is more complex than a simple main effect. We suspect that the mixed effects are caused by some unmeasured factors that change people’s interpretation of the upward or downward differences in social comparison. We propose that when individuals receive feedback about upward or downward comparison, their self-construal level may affect how they process the information of upward/downward difference, thus influence if they choose to help others or not.There are two kinds of self-construal that are especially powerful in influencing one’s relation to the social world and available to be activated at different times or in different contexts, the personal-self and the social-self (Cross et al. 2011; Oyserman and Lee 2008). We demonstrate that when the individuals are personal-self (vs. social-self), downward comparison can induce more scorn, and scorn can decrease their prosocial behavior. Whereas, the upward comparison can induce more envy, and envy can decrease their prosocial behavior. When the individuals are personal-self (vs. social-self), downward comparison can induce more sympathy, and sympathy can increase their prosocial behavior. Whereas, upward comparison can induce inspiration, and inspiration can increase their prosocial behavior.

With the ongoing shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes and the bleak projections of many social security systems across the world, individual consumers are increasingly expected to prepare for a financially secure retirement themselves (e.g., Hira et al. 2009). Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that many individuals are incapable of making the required financial decisions (Lusardi 2015), in particular as the financial environment becomes evermore complex (Agnew and Szykman 2005). Overall, financial literacy and interest in retirement matters are low, with only two in three US adults having a basic understanding of financial matters (Klapper et al. 2015). An important question, therefore, is: How can we increase consumer intentions to learn about and start preparing for retirement? Providing financial information is often seen as a remedy in this regard (Allen et al. 2016; Clark et al. 2017), but the most appropriate format of financial education in order to effectively change consumers’ financial attitudes is yet to be established. With the majority of the US population online, the Internet offers new opportunities to get informed on financial matters from government and peer-generated sources (Lusardi et al. 2017).Following the meta-analysis of Fernandes et al. (2014), we investigate the impact of providing financial information on consumers’ immediate willingness to learn more about retirement planning and plan for retirement. Moreover, we examine how source (government vs. peer-generated), tone (prescriptive vs. descriptive), and presence of graphical illustrations (vs. text only) affect the effectiveness of financial information messages. We examine the process through which the aforementioned effects occur by studying the mediating role of retirement financial self-efficacy (Danes and Haberman 2007; Wiener and Doescher 2008). To do so, we develop an online experiment. The 736 participants are recruited through Qualtrics, who maintains a large nationally representative online panel of Americans and ensures a consistent panel quality. We perform a between-subject design with a hanging control group. Every participant was randomly attributed to one of the 9 experimental conditions. We use established scales with demonstrated validity and reliability to measure all constructs. The results reveal a significant effect of financial information on participants’ propensity to plan and willingness to learn more about retirement planning with an exception of prescriptive information having no impact on propensity to plan. Also, a governmental message is more effective than a peer-generated message to stimulate willingness to learn. A mediation analysis revealed that retirement self-efficacy has a significant positive effect for both studied financial behaviors. Our results provide valuable insights for policy makers and business practitioners on how to design an effective message containing financial information to stimulate consumers’ intentions regarding retirement planning.

Negative eWOM is becoming an ever more serious threat to brands’ reputations. Dissatisfied consumers increasingly engage in negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) by sharing their complaints in online communities rather than reaching out to the brand with which they have an issue. Brands, in turn, have been ineffective in responding to such complaints. It is also because consumers are inclined to look for answers from their fellow users who they consider more trustworthy due to a lack of commercial motives. As a result, certain consumers take it upon themselves to defend their preferred brand against those attacks. This under-researched phenomenon is becoming of high interest to both theoreticians and practitioners, as brand defence ceases to exclusively rely on the company.The first aim of this research is to examine how negative eWOM arising from customers’ dissatisfaction due to product failure can be mitigated by the collective power of brand defenders in the context of a consumer-organized brand community. The second aim is to identify different characteristics of brand defenders and their adopted strategies. By linking Jung’s (1990) theory of archetypes with consumer-brand defending literature, a Multimodal Discourse-Mythological Approach is proposed to display how the negative eWOM within a Thai online consumer-organized community devoted to Samsung is mitigated. Our findings result in the reconceptualization of the existing binding expectation that companies are solely responsible for the defence and protection of their brands. The negative eWOM is shifted away from relying solely on a company’s responsibility to (re)create a new boundary of what constitutes the fair treatment and legitimate responsibilities that the brand could undertake and what is beyond a brand’s responsibility.

Consumers develop feelings and build relationships with brands (Fournier 1998; Veloutsou 2007) and these relationships have a valence (Alvarez and Fournier 2016), ranging from strong positive (e.g., Albert and Merunka 2013; Carroll and Ahuvia 2006) to strong negative relationships (e.g., Hegner et al. 2017b; Zarantonello et al. 2016, 2018). A number of strong brands have at the same time lovers and haters (Luo et al. 2013a; Outram 2016; Walsh 2017) and they are called polarizing brands (Luo et al. 2013a, b; Monahan 2017; Monahan et al. 2017). There is very little research on polarizing brands (Luo et al. 2013a, b; Monahan 2017; Monahan et al. 2017) or polarizing products (Rozenkrants et al. 2017) and their effects to different stakeholders. It is widely unknown if brand polarization can be helpful or even benefits for the parties involved with the polarizing brand. This exploratory study explores potential benefits of brand polarization, and the negativity towards brands that is evident in the context of brand polarization, for all parties involved with these polarizing brands.To reach saturation, in total 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with UK residents of different backgrounds face-to-face or via video conferencing. These interviews lasted in total about 12 h and when transcript they produced 68,925 words of text. Line-by-line coding and thematic analysis was used.The analysis of the results revealed that from the standpoint of consumers there are three distinct entities benefiting in various ways from brand polarization. The three entities are (a) the brand management team supporting the polarizing brand, (b) the polarizing brand as a stand-alone entity and (c) the consumers who are positively or negatively predisposed towards the polarizing brand.The study identifies advantages of brand polarization for various parties involved. The three parties that advance from brand polarization are the brand management team, the brand as an entity and the engaged consumers. Polarizing brands act as anchors that link the three parties and help them benefit. Both the brand management team and the passionate consumers get enhanced value through their engagement with the polarizing brand. The study extends recent research suggesting that the identity of the individuals, the brand and the brand community around a brand are co-created through constant exchange (Black and Veloutsou 2017) by suggesting that the brand management team is also a player in the process of developing brand meaning.

Given the growth of the luxury market, the size of the millennial cohort, and millennials’ growing interest in luxury products, it is vital for luxury marketers to gain insight into these millennial consumers to build consumer-brand relationships with them now as they start to enter their peak earning years. The purpose of this research is to examine millennials’ relationship with luxury through a content analysis of 630 luxury collages (10 collages each from 63 college-age millennials) to determine what represents luxury to them, how millennials perceive the consumer-brand relationship, and who they are as luxury consumers. The college students created personal collages that represent their thoughts and feelings/emotions, experiences/memories, ideas/perceptions about luxury brands and who consumes them, consumption motives, product usage/shopping occasions, and/or relationships with luxury brands. Each collage includes pictures/photos/images along with a typed description/summary that explains what each collage represents. A content analysis of the collages involved three judges. The PRL reliability measure ranged from 0.72 to 0.97 indicating the categorization by the judges was reliable. The results suggest millennials are pro-luxury and represent a vibrant current and future luxury segment. Millennials see a wide variety of luxury categories and brands that meet their needs for luxury. For luxury marketers, this is a segment amenable to luxury goods, services, and experiences, and inroads have been made by luxury brand marketers as seen in the collages. Millennials see luxury as addressing both out-of-reach or aspirational luxury as well as masstige or affordable luxury. Luxury marketers can build brand relationships with millennials with entry-level products as the millennials are current luxury consumers and see this consumption expanding in the future. Key luxury characteristics for millennials vary from other generations as they are looking for fashion, hedonic value, technology, and the need to demonstrate their extended self rather than rarity. Finally, who they see as the luxury consumer is influenced by social media, celebrities, friends, and family.

Firms are increasingly engaging in acquisitions due to high competition. Acquisition as a strategy enables the firm to obtain technologies, products, distribution channels, and desirable market positions (Lee et al. 2011; Schweizer 2005). Acquisitions also have an effect on the brand being acquired. Prior research demonstrates that acquisition negatively affects the acquired brand’s culture (Rieley and Leahy 1998), is a means of talent acquisition (Galpin et al. 2012), and increases financial performance (Morgan and Rego 2009). An acquisition may also alter consumer perceptions of the acquired brand. In many cases, acquisitions involve large corporations buying out small start-up companies (Arikan and Stulz 2016). Though larger companies have the power to offer lower prices and higher efficiency, large corporations can be perceived to have a negative side riddled with perceptions of impersonality and commercialization (Kovács et al. 2013). These consumer perceptions of corporate commercialization may tarnish the acquired brand’s image, in particular its authenticity.While many facets or types of brand authenticity exist, one type that is potentially affected by an acquisition is whether brand management is “true to self.” True-to-self brand authenticity is defined as the degree to which consumers perceive a brand’s management as intrinsically motivated about the products they produce (Moulard et al. 2016). Authentic brands are perceived as being led by passion-driven individuals motivated by the pure enjoyment of producing their craft rather than by the sole purpose of turning a profit. Smaller brands are likely perceived as highly authentic, especially if they are managed by the founder. A founder’s enduring management can increase a brand’s longitudinal consistency, or the perception that a brand has not changed since its inception. High longitudinal consistency has been shown to strengthen brand authenticity (Moulard et al. 2016).The current research asks, what happens to perceived authenticity of smaller brands when larger companies acquire brands seen as discordant to the corporate image? The studies will examine how features of brand acquisition (acquired brand disclosure, acquiring firm size and brand manager preservation) affect brand authenticity. Theoretically, the piece contributes to a broader stream of brand authenticity literature by examining how the association of one brand can affect the perceived authenticity of another. Managerially, brand managers of larger companies can enhance post-acquisition marketing strategies by considering how consumers may perceive acquired brands originally recognized as authentic, as consumer perceptions about the brand’s authenticity may shift after an acquisition.

Online shopping has experienced drastic changes in the past ten years, which includes changes in the ways consumers utilize online shopping carts. The purpose of this research is to revisit the work of Close and Kukar-Kinney (2010) investigating consumers’ motivations to use online shopping carts and to determine whether the changes in the online shopping environment have led to respective changes in the consumers’ online cart use motivations in the United States almost a decade later (Study 1). In addition, we aim to establish the extent to which the same motivations can be found in China, a developing country with one of the fastest growing economies in the world and a changing consumer landscape, characterized by a rapidly growing middle-class and e-commerce adoption (Study 2). We use two surveys, one in the United States and one in China, to test a model of a conceptual framework for how specific motivations influence online shopping cart use. Motivations include: current purchase intent; taking advantage of price promotions; entertainment; organizational intent; and research and informational search. Consistently across both countries, results from both surveys demonstrate that current purchase intent and organizational intent both positively affect consumers’ frequency of using the online shopping cart, while the motives of research/information search and taking advantage of price promotions exert no significant impact on cart usage. Interestingly, entertainment purpose negatively influences shopping cart usage in the United States, but has no significant effect in China. Based on these results, we suggest that retailers should provide a convenient and easy-to-understand overview and summary of items placed in the cart and their features, including price, quantity, color, size, whether an item is on sale, etc. They should also allow consumers to easily move the items up and down the list, group them, and display their additional features without having to exit the cart.

This study aims to empirically reveal the relationship between retailers’ integration of multiple channels (e.g., e-commerce and bricks and mortar) and consumers’ offline store patronage behavior. Online retailers can obtain detailed customer information such as purchase history and click-stream. Since such data enables retailers to conduct personalized communication with each customer, many traditional retailers add online channel and conduct cross-channel integration to obtain competitive advantages (Cao and Li 2015; Verhoef et al. 2015).In traditional retail context, consumers usually use several stores for their daily consumption (Uncles et al. 1995), and purchase products, especially for convenience goods, portfolio basis, and create loyalty toward a primary store and secondary stores (Baltas et al. 2010). This type of store patronage behavior has been conceptualized as multiple store patronage (Baltas et al. 2010). Even though retailers invest on EC-based online information systems, it is difficult to obtain data of such offline shopping behavior. Moreover, it is difficult to track the customers’ channel switch behavior from online to offline channel. In other words, the impacts of retailers’ cross-channel retail services on consumers’ offline patronage behavior is unknown.Therefore, this study aims to clarify the relationship between cross-channel integration and multiple store patronage. We conducted questionnaire survey and the results show that cross-channel integration is positively associated with the store patronage. This study contributes to the research streams on cross-channel integration and multiple store patronage. This study also shows that consumers who feel higher enjoyment for shopping tend to use greater number of stores and to be less loyal to the primary store.

Retailers today are in a pivotal position to help reduce rising obesity rates. As the choice architects, retail managers and retail designers can shape the retail food space to better assist the shopper. Until recently, there has been little evidence to suggest how retailers could use ambient scents to influence the purchase and selection of healthier foods (i.e., Biswas and Szocs 2018; Lefebvre and Biswas 2019). However, to extend recent research, we suggest that an ambient situated health food scent (e.g., herb scent) in a retail food setting, that is non-consciously and subtly perceived, can also nudge shoppers to purchase healthier foods.Against the backdrop of nudging and congruency theory, the present research reveals that an ambient situated health food scent can act as a reminder or a prompt for shoppers to purchase healthier foods. We first identify, through an observation study and a pre-test, an ambient food scent that is typically present in more healthy food environments and also associated with healthier foods. We next demonstrate in a laboratory setting via a virtual supermarket, that a situated health food scent can drive purchase of a healthier basket of goods. We then question whether this can be applied in a real-world context to influence real shopper food choices. We find that in retail food stores, the scent can both increase the number of healthier items and decrease the number of less healthy items sold.Across the three multi-method studies, we advance previous research beyond cross modal influences such as sensory compensation (i.e., Biswas and Szocs 2018), and innate physiological responses (i.e., Lefebvre and Biswas 2019), to include a congruency perspective. We also show this effect in both virtual and physical retail food environments, this being key to the future of retail. From a practical standpoint, this research has important implications for policy makers, health professionals, retailer managers, and retail designers wanting to improve public health. By implementing such strategies, retailers can achieve corporate social responsibility outcomes, as well as increase profits by targeting fresh food departments.

Psychologists and pedagogy researchers suggest the way people process information has changed dramatically in recent decades. Multitasking habits may be the primary cause for some college students’ self-reports about boredom in face-to-face classes (Barnes et al. 2007; Robinson and Stubberud 2012). Similarly, students may struggle when asked to respond to a knowledge-assessment test (Beaton 2017; Castillo 2017; Zwarun and Hall 2014).Recent studies have found that attention focus is closely linked with mood (Kostyk et al. 2019). People generally prioritize affect regulation—which requires attention allocation and cognitive processing—over other mental processing (Gross 1998; Muraven and Baumeister 2000). Mental resource limitations and processing interdependencies cause affect regulation to impair memory and performance on subsequent cognitive tasks (e.g., anagram solving) (Amos et al. Keneson 2014; Bauer and Baumeister 2016; Muraven and Baumeister 2000).Students’ emotions and mood fluctuate routinely. Responding to a knowledge-assessment test demands very high attentional control that drains cognitive resources (Ochsner and Gross 2005). Concurrently, most students are likely to experience negative affect when facing a knowledge-assessment test. Attempting to regulate this negative affect will reduce the attention they allocate to answering test questions unless that affect is alleviated.Prior research suggests interruptions can modify emotional valences towards ongoing actions and induce better consumer outcomes in some contexts (Mandler 1990a, b; Nelson and Meyvis 2008; Nelson et al. 2009). Similarly, taking brief yet entertaining breaks from answering knowledge-assessment questions may increase students’ enjoyment of and attention to tests.‘Surveytainment’ is the interactive and non-interactive questionnaire elements meant to improve survey respondents’ mood and consequently enhance their attentiveness and questionnaire-related attitudes (Kostyk et al. 2019). Knowledge-assessment tests are similar to questionnaires and might elicit stronger negative affect from students. Therefore, students—through better performance—and subsequently instructors—through better student evaluations of teaching—may benefit from including surveytainment elements in knowledge-assessment tests.Results of a pretest and proposed empirical research agenda are discussed.

As expectations grow for students to gain “real world” experiences during their college careers, faculty members must be creative to integrate transformational activities into their curriculum to close the gap between what employers are looking for and what higher education provides. Every year, LinkedIn compiles data and survey results to report the most in demand hard skills and soft skills ( business.linkedin.com ). This report alone speaks to the importance of soft skills, with the 2018 report emphasizing leadership, communication, collaboration, and time management. Further, a PwC report stated that 77% of CEOs believed lack of soft skills was the biggest threat to business ( www.pwc.com ). As millennials and digital natives enter the workforce, there needs to be an increasing focus on developing the soft skills of the current generation of college graduates (e.g., Tulgan 2016). A review of the literature in marketing education reveals little if no focus on implementing soft skills into college classroom as an assessed means to prepare students for their transition to the workforce. Despite a certain level of innateness, soft skills can be taught, as evidenced by the countless courses on LinkedIn Learning and Udemy. In a survey of business executives, soft skill attributes included communication, courtesy, flexibility, integrity, interpersonal skills, attitude, professionalism, responsibility, teamwork, and work ethic (Robles 2012). In this paper, we advocate to focus on these attributes by adding soft skills as a course component and encouraging its use as displayed through attitudes, behaviors, and communications throughout the semester.

For the fall of 2017, females were the majority with about 11.5 million attending colleges and universities compared to 8.9 million males (Institute of Education Sciences 2018). In addition, the enrollment of Hispanic and black students increased from 21.7% in 2000 to 36.6% in 2015 for Hispanics, and 30.5% to 34.9% for blacks for that same time period (Institute of Education Sciences 2018). With the expanding enrollment of female and minority students in higher education, colleges and universities have to discover new ways to market to and satisfy this varied demographic in order to survive in the competitive education marketplace (Penaloza and Gilly 1991). This is a challenge for many U.S. institutions who are not accessing and understanding the needs of the diverse market (Penaloza and Gilly 1991). Institutions must work towards developing a multidisciplinary curriculum that specifically benefits not only female and minority students but also provide benefits to businesses and industry (Mikitka and Stampfl 1994). We suggest a franchising curriculum as one such way to reach this goal.This research proposes that a course curriculum dedicated specifically to the study of franchise business provides three essential benefits: P1: A franchising course is interdisciplinary, covering subjects such as marketing, management, economics, finance, and accounting—all functions that franchisers and franchisee encounter. P2: A franchising course positively impacts both minority and female students with additional education, providing greater support as they enter the field of business. P3: A franchising course positively enhances the creativity, self-confidence, and self-efficacy of students in their ability to manage their own business This paper heeds the call to develop marketing curriculum that provides comprehensive mastery over various business topics, while boosting self-confidence and self-efficacy of all students. Providing students with a real-life business scenario of running a franchisee seamlessly incorporates the major business subjects while refining their strategizing, analyzing, negotiating, and communication skills. These are skills that are essential for any career in marketing or business, not just franchising. Specifically, affording franchising courses provides an opportunity to expose underrepresented groups to avenues of small business ownership that they naturally gravitate towards in the marketplace. Students can gain great takeaways from this course curriculum that will resonate with them in boosting their confidence and self-efficacy as they embark on careers in business.

Higher education is a service that has adopted the marketing discourse. Market principles position academia as an institution that offers a professional service for payment. Yet, there might be some tensions between intellectual goals (the core academic principles) and these principles. Some believe that this process leads to sovereign and rational students who would request and attain greater educational capital. Whereas most others view this process as one that results in lower intellectualism and academic standards, commodification of knowledge, elitism, and universities as professional degree, rather than knowledge, providers.This research aims to explore how value is co-created by education providers and students at college level education, and the implications of this phenomenon. This research goal is significant primarily for two reasons: (1) Higher education is a big service industry and (2) It is increasingly becoming market-oriented and customer (student)-centered. This study looks at marketization as a value driver. It aims to understand how professors, who have a better understanding of “educational value” due to their expertise, approach the co-creation of value process. In other words, it investigates the concept of value creation in academia in the context of marketization, and aims to understand the implications of this approach from the supply perspective. The two main research questions are as follows: 1. What does co-creation of value mean in higher education? 2. What are the implications of co-creation of value in higher education? This study is exploratory in nature, it utilizes a qualitative methodology. It involves analyses of textual data. Data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with professors.The findings from initial data analysis are categorized as: (1) Control versus participation: Professors from the marketized context see their role as the facilitator, and largely mention the importance of working with students in almost every stage of a course design. Professors in the less marketized context focus on having control in the course design; (2) Marketability of students: Co-creation of value in a marketized context largely means equipping students with practical knowledge and skills that would help them get a better paying job. In the less marketized context, professors emphasize educating students to be good citizens; (3) Meaning of knowledge: In the marketized context, professors talk about the importance of performing and making learning fun. In the less marketized context, professors follow a more straightforward approach to offering information; and (4) Finding a balance between student requests versus what they should learn: In the marketized context, professors feel more pressure to help students pass the course. In the less marketized context, professors focus on what they believe students should learn.

Terroir is a French concept relating the qualities and quality of agricultural products to their physical and socio-cultural place of origin. It is increasingly used by business and policymakers as a marketing technique to provide economic benefits (e.g., Lenglet 2014; Wine Australia 2015), and to potentially preserve cultural heritage (e.g., Bauer 2009) and the environment (e.g., Bowen 2010). The rising interest in this interdisciplinary and sometimes controversial concept (e.g., Bosker 2017; Matthews 2016) presents an opportune time to consider important future directions for research and collaboration.Here, we present a preliminary consensus on future research priorities for terroir drawn from interviews with 36 academic, industry and policy experts. The experts were selected for their expertise and global recognition, while ensuring a balance of geographic regions and gender. The preliminary areas identified as priorities for future terroir studies are as follows: (1) terroir’s economic and marketing advantages for business and regions; (2) consumer views of terroir; (3) relating quality and terroir; (4) terroir’s meaning and use in different languages, cultures and places; (5) the importance and origins of terroir in different products; (6) the plant–place biophysical relationship; (7) climate change effects and adaptation, for agriculture and more broadly; (8) terroir as a dynamic concept, changing through time and (9) terroir’s connection to environmental sustainability. Following the identification of priorities including the environment, climate change, marketing advantages and cultural differences, it is clear that understanding terroir’s connection to the broad idea of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) is of critical importance. To advance this we present a revised conceptualisation of terroir, which emphasises its connection to sustainability through the integration of physical-natural and socio-cultural aspects. Using this conceptualisation, we develop seven propositions describing the relationship between terroir and business decisions, with clear implications for business sustainability.

This study aimed to investigate whether residents’ perceptions affected their life satisfaction and support towards sustainable tourism development in three small islands in Central Vietnam. Besides, this study also examined whether residents’ life satisfaction mediated the impact of their perceptions on support for sustainable tourism development. The data have been directly collected from the residents in three small islands located in Central Vietnam. The questionnaire was established based on the previous research, using a 5-point Likert scale. 400 questionnaires were distributed, and 332 responses were usable for data analysis. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22. This study used a quantitative research method in order to examine the relationships among constructs. Specifically, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in this research.As a result, residents’ positive perceptions had a positive impact on life satisfaction and residents’ negative perceptions did not exert an influence over their life satisfaction. Moreover, it was found that residents’ support for tourism development was positively related to their negative and positive perceptions. There was also a positive relationship between residents’ satisfaction with life and their support for tourism development. In addition, the findings indicated that life satisfaction partially mediated the impact of positive perceptions on support towards tourism development, and there was no mediating effect of satisfaction with life on the relationship between residents’ negative perceptions and their support towards tourism development. In line with the use of the social exchange theory, this research has given important contributions to residents’ perceptions, life satisfaction, and support for tourism development literature. Furthermore, from the results found in this research, the local authorities of three islands in Central Vietnam have some practical implications to develop sustainable tourism.

The field of marketing has begun to examine the consumption of experiences as an important and growing part of the economy and of people’s lives. In the contemporary context, people often spend a considerable amount of time and money in recreational pursuits. Consistent with the tenants of Consumer Culture Theory, leisure-time activities may provide an important means of identity and self-definition to consumers. To what extent do experiences provide a means of identity?This ethnographic study examined people’s experiences on the several hundred-mile Camino de Santiago in Spain. First, I engaged in participant-observer research in June 2018 by walking the Camino and conducting 34 semi-structured interviews with pilgrims along the 300-km Camino Primitivo and the 500-km Camino Frances. The interviews were conducted in English and I talked with pilgrims not only from the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia, but also from Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Luxembourg, Italy, and France. These interviews were conducted at many points along the trails. I began the interview by asking where they were from, how they heard about the Camino, and their motivation for the walk. I then asked about their experiences on the way. The interview took between 10 and 30 min, although I met many of the pilgrims at other times and asked follow-up questions. I also re-contacted five of the pilgrims I had met on the trail by email several months after they had returned home to ask them about their insights and if the walk altered their view of themselves or their world view. Finally, I followed several online Camino forums on Facebook for additional insights.For many the journey came at a transition point such as finishing college, “emptying the nest,” or retirement. Many pilgrims suggested that the Camino provided some draw, but one that they could not fully explain. As for their experiences, many pilgrims told me that the journey provided them a means to decelerate and simplify their hectic everyday life, and some offered that this provided an opportunity to examine their lives. For many pilgrims the journey also provided a sense of identity, a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of connectedness to nature and to other people. Many pilgrims later reminisced about the trail, their experiences, and their friendships and expressed an interest to revisit the Camino in the future.This study demonstrates that a Camino pilgrimage can provide a sense of accomplishment and a sense of identity to participants. This finding is consistent with other studies of leisure-time activities including long-distance hikes, extended international travel, and extreme adventures, and suggests that they can be important in establishing one’s identity. This is a valuable insight for Consumer Culture Theory researchers.

Researchers have recently started to explore the foundations of marketing capabilities, with the aim of identifying and understanding the mechanisms and resources required by firms to create, develop and organize their marketing capabilities (Massiera et al. 2018). Whilst interest is increasing, a gap still exists regarding how marketing capabilities develop in small firms and their potential antecedents (Qureshi and Kratzer 2011).This study addresses this deficit by exploring the relationship between big data and three types of marketing capabilities in small firms: specialized (marketing mix), architectural (market planning) and dynamic capabilities (market sensing and resource reconfiguration). Marketing capabilities within small firms have long been identified as under-developed, given their lack of resources, time and personnel (Blankson et al. 2006). A small pool of recent research, however, purports that big data can enhance small firm marketing capabilities by providing customer insights that guide them as to which value-adding activities they should undertake, and how they should be implemented (Hutchinson et al. 2015). However, extant literature in this area remains in its infancy and attention from the resource-based theory has generally focused on how large firms deploy big data to outperform competitors (O’Connor and Kelly 2017). Hence, this study offers to broaden understanding of the deployment of big data in small firms and its effect on their marketing capabilities.This research observed seven case firms from the Northern Irish agri-food industry. Using a qualitative, longitudinal approach, the change in their marketing capabilities was explored over three-stages (pre, post and during data provision). The findings show a complementarity between big data absorption and small firm marketing capabilities. In some cases, the uptake of planning processes and resource reconfiguration increased, which directed the deployment of newly informed marketing mix activities. In others, a lack of direction or commitment to learning and a nonchalant attitude portrayed by the owner-manager precipitated an indifference towards engagement with the data, with the effect that their marketing processes remained static. Therefore, a pertinent aspect of this empirical research is the influence of the owner-manager on data application. This is particularly interesting for practitioners as it indicates the potential of big data as a small firm resource, relative to the degree of empathy towards its value. It also represents a significant opportunity for government bodies subsidizing the provision of information resources, as by identifying a classification of owner-manager prior to an engagement, the likely return on public investment can be predicted and justified.

Decision-making literature heavily relies on the plan first execute second framework where project employees allocate time to plan and utilize time effectively to execute the plan (Wind and Mahayan 1997). More recent studies point out today’s time-based state of market competition where product life cycles are getting shorter and market demand is changing rapidly. Consequently, firms are faced with a diminishing amount of time that can be allocated to planning. When the time gap between planning and executing shortens, decision-making is forced to become more improvisational in nature (Moorman and Miner 1998). At the same time, the personal characteristics of project employees (e.g., procrastination and perfectionism) often forbid them from utilizing their time and workload effectively.This manuscript explores how these deviations from the underlying decision-making framework influence project outcomes. Specifically, this study tests unintentional and intentional procrastination and its impact on performance. Also, improvisation is considered as a mediator of these relationships. Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT) is utilized to conceptualize the studied model. TMT recognizes time as the fundamental factor across motivational theories and the theory was designed to directly address procrastination in decision-making literature (Steel and König 2006).A sample of managers from family owned businesses who have decision-making power and were part of recently finished project were considered here. Primary data was collected using a survey and adaptation of established measures. Mediation was tested with linear regression using PROCESS in SPSS.Results indicate that intentional procrastination (vs. unintentional procrastination) has a positive impact on performance, while improvisation mediates these relationships. Moreover, perfectionism can positively affect the link between improvisation and project performance. These results offer both confirming and new insights to existing academic literature. Practitioners can benefit from these results as well. The negative stigma of procrastination and improvisation should be lifted and, instead, through corporate policy and culture, managers can unlock the potential of these seemingly negative employee attributes. Implications, future research, and limitations are offered in greater detail.

Export diversification, i.e. the degree to which the company pursues sales opportunities across different export markets, is a fundamental aspect of export strategy (Aulakh et al. 2000). However, research on the relationship between export diversification and export performance is limited. Additionally, while there have been few inroads regarding the study of the impact of export diversification on export performance (e.g. Aulakh et al. 2000), research on variables that can affect the usefulness of pursuing higher/lower export diversification levels on export performance is scant. This is an important research gap, as managers need to have information regarding factors which they can manipulate to leverage the advantages of diversification for export performance.The present study aims to address the research gaps presented above. Drawing on contingency theory (e.g. Zajac et al. 2000) and on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (e.g. Barney 1991), we develop and test a model where we examine (1) the link between export diversification and export performance, and (2) the role of export marketing strategy adaptation and export human capital as moderators of such relationship.To test our theoretical model, we use data gathered via a cross-sectional online survey of UK exporters. Our findings indicate that the link between export diversification and export performance is tied to multiple contingencies. Firms get the highest export performance benefit when they simultaneously pursue higher levels of export diversification and of export marketing strategy adaptation. However, this only applies to firms with greater levels of export human capital. For firms with lower levels of human capital, diversification is detrimental for performance, especially under greater levels of export marketing strategy adaptation.

This paper aims to theoretically explore the mediating role of employees’ absorptive capabilities between learning orientation and market orientation. Past research asserts the interaction of learning orientation with the market orientation to gain competitive advantage but do not pay attention to the mediating role of learning capabilities. To fill the gap, this study theorizes the employees’ absorptive capabilities as a learning capability and theoretically explores the role of components of employees’ absorptive capabilities in determining market orientation activities. This paper studies the micro-level dynamic capability theory under the organizational learning theory to present a simple yet complete organizational learning framework, consisting of learning orientation, employees’ absorptive capability, and market orientation to provide a deeper understanding of phenomenon for future research.This paper made several contributions to existing literature. Firstly, this paper studies employees’ absorptive capabilities with market orientation in the marketing domain. Secondly, this study uses disaggregated concepts to theoretically explore the role of operational-level employees’ absorptive capabilities in determining market orientation activities. Thirdly, theoretically explores the resource development role of dynamic capabilities in market orientation activities. Lastly, by theorizing the mediating role of employees’ absorptive capabilities between learning orientation and market orientation, this paper provides coherence in this relation.Considering the limitations, several highly cited studies on learning orientation and market orientation are reviewed to build theoretical arguments but a comprehensive bibliometric analysis is not done. Secondly, combinations of aggregated and disaggregated variables are theorized for developing propositions.

Fake news has been in existence since humans could communicate; however, the Internet and specifically social media have been significant in terms of information dissemination and fake news has gained major importance of late. The barriers to entry in the media industry have dropped drastically, making the scale of the problem grow exponentially. Furthermore, social media are conducive places for spreading fake news since information is not fact checked and verified and can easily be shared to millions of followers. This study investigated the moderating role of fake news in a social media context on the relationship between customer-based brand equity and consumer responses to premium brands.Fake news stories targeted at brands can negatively affect consumer’s perception of these brands and facilitate or impede consumers’ behaviour towards these brands. Since the growing middle class in South Africa often use premium brands as a form of creating self-identity and associating with an aspirational class by conspicuously consuming brands, this study tested whether the effect of fake news serves as a moderator between the brand equity of aspirational (premium) brands and these consumers’ response to these brands.A descriptive quantitative study was conducted using a convenience sample of 192 respondents. The upper middle class were chosen as respondents for this study as a result of their ability to afford premium brands and their increased tendency to consume premium brands, especially luxury vehicles, conspicuously in order to show their new wealth.Results indicated that brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality and brand associations are all good predictors of consumer response in the form of brand loyalty, willingness to pay a premium and brand preference. However, fake news in this case was not found to moderate the relationship between brand equity and consumer response.Marketing managers will do well to spend marketing budgets on developing strong brand equity. The results indicate that brand equity serves as a shield to defend brands against fake news and to minimise damage caused by fake news. Since premium brands are particularly vulnerable to fake news due to the status and self-identity consumers are able to convey through the display of these brands, managers of premium brands in particular should focus their energies on creating strong and consistent brand equity as a means of buffering the effect of fake news which is not in their control.

Fake news is one of the most discussed phenomena in politics, social life and the world of business. Recent literature has indicated that it can be a serious threat to brands and their management. Brands can be both victims of, and either unwitting or deliberate agents of fake news. This paper presents the results of a three-round Delphi study of a panel of brand marketing scholars in which they indicated their familiarity with ten major high-tech brands, and estimated the vulnerability of these to fake news, and how effectively these brands would deal with fake news. The levels of familiarity with the brands vary considerably, and it also appears that lower familiarity with the brand (with one notable exception) is associated with higher estimates of vulnerability, and lower estimates of the management’s ability to deal effectively with fake news.The researchers considered a large number of commercial media brand ratings with titles such as, “World’s Best Hi-tech Brands”, “100 Most Valuable Brands”, “25 Best Technology Brands” and the like. Not surprisingly all these lists are marked by their differences rather than their similarities. A handful of brands such as Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft feature in all these rankings, but behind them, there tend to be differences. For purposes of this study, the researchers then settled on and included the following ten high-tech brands: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, eBay, Facebook and Dell.The fake news phenomenon is unlikely to dissipate in the future, especially as social media technologies continue to make its spread so much easier. The risk to brands will be ever-present and will almost certainly increase. Hi-tech brand custodians do and will need to be vigilant of how they might be vulnerable and to have contingency plans in place for that day in the future when their brand becomes a target.

What sorts of trait information do people most care about when forming brand evaluations? Recent research on brand relationships (Kervyn et al. 2012) suggests “warmth” should be of prime importance in evaluation formation. Yet, some psychological research on morality (Goodwin 2015) suggests information about brands’ specifically moral traits—their moral “character”—may be a primary dimension. Although warmth and character are sometimes construed interchangeably in the interpersonal domain (Cuddy et al. 2008), we argue they are separable in the consumption domain. More importantly, we posit that across a wide variety of contexts, character is likely more important than warmth in brand evaluation formation.Study 1 asked participants to rate seven different brand targets in a random order that varied in both valence and closeness. Regression analyses revealed that as predicted, it was the moral character traits, along with the moral character–warmth traits, that best predicted variance in evaluations. Either one of these trait categories best predicted variance in evaluations for all seven target brands. In contrast, the warmth traits did not best predict evaluations for any of the target brands. Moreover, the moral character traits independently predicted variance in evaluations for all seven target brands controlling for other three trait categories.Study 2 examined whether brand moral character information exerts a greater causal impact on brand evaluations than does warmth information. Analysis revealed large main effects of both moral character and warmth on evaluations in the predicted direction. However, the overall main effect of moral character was larger than the main effect of warmth. And, of critical interest, the target brand that was of good character but cold was rated significantly more positively than was the target brand that was of bad character but warm. Lastly, Study 3 sought to extend findings of study 2 using a between-subjects design and employing behavioral intention measures in addition to the attitudinal one. The findings replicated, speaking to the robustness of the key effects.Theoretically, we contribute to the literature in at least several ways. Our first contribution to brand relationships research (Alvarez and Fournier 2016; Fournier 1998) lies in bringing a new trait (moral character) from research on social cognition and psychology of morality into the branding domain while showing it really matters in the consumption context. To this effect, showing that the influence of brand’s moral character holds while controlling for brand’s warmth and competence that are already explored in the branding domain (Ivens et al. 2015; Kervyn et al. 2012) represents a particularly intriguing finding that can boost future research in the domain. Importantly, although warmth and character are sometimes conceived of as interchangeable in the context of interpersonal relationships (Cuddy et al. 2008), our findings suggest they are separable in the consumption domain. Finally, results also give back to psychology of morality and social cognition literatures (Goodwin 2015; Goodwin et al. 2014) by establishing that influence of moral character extends to consumption/branding domain.

In the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal (New York Times 2018) and the implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (European Commission 2018), the need to understand U.S. consumers’ attitudes toward online retailers and current privacy regulations is warrant. Adopting Bandura’s social cognitive theory Westin’s privacy segment index, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the importance of consumer data rights implemented by the European Union and how right preferences differ among privacy groups. Moreover, how brand trust correlates with the different rights given to consumers under the new GDPR regulation. A total of 200 responses were collected using the Amazon MTurk platform to administer an online questionnaire that was developed in Qualtrics.The results showed that, for the privacy fundamentalist group (43.5%), they preferred the right to be forgotten and the right to object. For the privacy unconcerned group (22.5%), as expected, there were no significant relationships with any consumer data rights. For privacy pragmatists (33.5%), they preferred the right to request that decisions based on automated processing concerning their data be made by natural persons, not just computers. There was also a positive relationship found between brand trust and the right to correct any incorrect, inaccurate, or incomplete personal data that a retailer has stored on them. The results indicate that the higher the consumer’s brand trust, the more likely the consumer will want the right to correct their personal data that a retailer has collected about them.For theoretical implications, the study findings will add empirical evidence in the body of Westin’s consumer privacy-segment groups study and extending Bandura’s social cognitive theory in the context of business-consumer relationships. Moreover, understanding consumer sentiment towards what consumer data rights they would like to exercise, this study sheds light on U.S. federal privacy policies.

eWOM communications significantly affect consumer behaviour. Previous studies found that helpful online reviews affect information adoption, which results in intention to buy. As a result, large number of studies started investigating factors affecting helpfulness of eWOM communications. However, the mixed findings on the factors affecting perceived helpfulness of eWOM communications can lead to confusion for academics and marketing practitioners. Thus, the aim of this research is to synthesise findings from existing studies on eWOM communications by using weight analysis. This will help to investigate the predictive power of the independent variables on the dependent variable, by taking into consideration the number of times a relationship has been previously examined. The results of weight analysis showed that valence, emotions, length, source expertise, argument quality, rating, relevance, and source credibility are best predictors of eWOM helpfulness. There were also three promising predictors with a perfect weight of one such as volume, reputation of the reviewer, and certainty. Future steps of this study involve conducting meta-analysis, which will help strengthen results of weight analysis and develop a conceptual model for empirical evaluation of various factors affecting helpfulness of eWOM communications.

The association between leadership effectiveness and successful marketing efforts has been a somewhat popular area of research in business. Some studies have also investigated if those relationships hold in different regions across the world. This manuscript proposes an empirical study of the relationship between leadership effectiveness and marketing in Latin America, a region that lacks strong academic business research.Marketing management has acknowledged the importance of virtuous organizational functioning with elements such as leadership effectiveness and culture being at the heart of the marketing function (Deshpande and Webster 1989). As the connection between marketing success and leadership effectiveness becomes more eminent, recent sub-marketing areas have started to investigate how that association holds. Some studies are also testing how the associations might be different under different cultural contexts.On the other hand, little agreement exists about global organizational behavior determinants of leadership effectiveness. Research on leadership in a cross-cultural context is progressing and raising new questions (Dickson et al. 2009). Several of those should be reflective of marketing activities, a function that is crucial for business ventures.The proposed methodology would look into individual employees’ beliefs, assumptions, and convictions about the attributes and behaviors that distinguish effective from ineffective managers/leaders (Eden and Leviatan 1975). A sample from several Latin American countries will be collected. Findings are not available at the time of submission. Based on previous studies, it is expected that effective leaders in Latin America are perceived as someone who possesses attributes such as being considerate of employee's points of view, fair decision makers, providers of a professional and positive work environment, promoters of hard work, flexible and open to new ideas, and good listeners and supportive (Torres et al. 2015). All those traits should facilitate successful marketing activities.

According to the cosmetics industry report worldwide (Statista 2018), the annual growth rate of global cosmetic market has reached the highest number (5%) in the past ten years. Asia is the largest market, and its market share has grown from 31% to 37% from 2011 to 2017. Among them, China has the highest market value growth from 2014 to 2018. Most leading brands (L’Oréal, Unilever, P&G Co., and Estee Lauder Cos.) are speeding up their expansion into the Chinese market and frequently utilizing celebrity endorsement to pull up their sales (Winterich 2018). An emerging trend appears that male celebrities with soft masculinity are endorsing female-oriented beauty brands in Chinese market. The male idols, normally called “Xiaoxianrou” in Chinese Internet slang translated as “little fresh meat” in English. In contrast with the traditional “match-up” hypothesis supporting the effectiveness from the fit between the endorser and the endorsed product, the underlying mechanism of consumers’ response to the mismatch between product gender image and endorsing celebrity gender is yet to be enriched.Building on existing research on gender role representation and entertainment theory, we intend to identify a dual mediation model. The purpose of the study is to enrich the understanding of the gender-specific celebrity endorsement strategy by specifying the underlying mechanism of consumers’ response to cross-gender endorsements featuring male idols and cross-cultural differences in gender role attitudes. For practitioners, this study reveals both positive and negative outcomes of cross-gender celebrity endorsement and enriches brand managers’ understandings on leveraging the benefits of celebrity entertainment in their marketing strategy globally.

Both consumers and marketers have realized that natural resources are not endless, and firms’ actions can have a major impact on the environment (Kotler 2011). Consumers are more aware of the impact of the products on themselves and the environment. Consequently, firms have put more effort into green marketing strategies by producing environmentally friendly products. Consumers engage in green consumption behavior typically for two reasons: the product provides a benefit to the environment (a chance to protect the environment) or directly to the consumer (White and Simpson 2013; Green and Peloza 2014). Therefore, marketers have been using green advertising appeals while stressing the benefit to the consumer such as less chemical exposure or financial benefits (self-appeal) or the benefit to the environment such as less environmental waste (other-appeal).The notion of influencing consumers by framing the message to highlight the benefit to self and benefit to others has been investigated in other contexts such as donation intentions (e.g., Brunel and Nelson 2000; Nelson and Viela 2009; White and Peloza 2009). However, extant literature stated mixed results in the benefit of using self vs. other appeals. How consumers perceive the green appeals and their associated brand evaluations might depend on individual differences (Ellen et al. 1991). These individual differences can lead to different levels of perceived social responsibility (PSR) of the brand/company which in turn can lead to different consumer outcomes. The current research aims to extend prior research by examining the role of how consumers’ belief on whether their efforts can make a difference influences the ad appeal effectiveness.The current study focuses on the effect of using different types of green message framing (self-benefit vs. other-benefit) on consumers’ perception of the company’s social responsibility, which is known as perceived social responsibility, which then reflects on consumer response (i.e., attitude toward brand and purchase intentions). The results show that different PCE levels influence how consumers perceive green ad appeals and accordingly company’s PSR and responses towards the brand.

Faced with a negative social and environmental assessment, some fashion brands have responded to the numerous criticisms by placing sustainability at the center of their strategic planning. More than 500 large companies communicate about CSR issues on their websites (Bhattacharya and Sen 2004). Other brands such as Stella McCartney have put sustainable development at the heart of their business model (Kim and Hall 2015). However, it is much more difficult for fashion brands to build a responsible image than for other brands, particularly due to their reputation for meeting expressive and psychological needs that are considered non-essential and excessive (Kim and Hall 2015). Although the pressure exerted by the various NGOs has increased in recent years, consumers continue to show little concern about societal issues when buying fashion products. Joergens (2006) indicates that consumers are less inclined to consume ethical fashion products, despite showing a positive attitude to sustainable development issues. In this context, does CSR commitment really enable a fashion brand to stand out in the market? Is it wise for fashion brands to build their business model on a commitment to sustainable development? This study aims to provide answers to these questions. Although there has been an increasing number of studies of consumer behavior towards ethical fashion products in recent years, none (to our knowledge) have compared this behavior for products of a pioneering ethical fashion brand (proactive stance) and those of a well-reputed brand name that has implemented CSR in response to criticism (reactive posture).This study uses the conjoint analysis method and analyzes a sample of 381 French consumers. Two sports brands were tested in our experiment: Nike and Patagonia. The results obtained confirm the existence of a gap between the positive attitude of fashion consumers towards environmental and social issues and their consumption behavior. Indeed, despite the sensitivity the respondents showed to the social and environmental conditions involved in the manufacture of the shoes they purchase, they mainly preferred Nike—whose CSR reputation is worse than that of Patagonia. Their recognition of a greater CSR effort by Patagonia does not seem to change this preference. The results confirm the low sensitivity of consumers to the ethical issues in the fashion sector and challenge the assumption that ethical commitment can be a real differentiator in the market. Finally, this study provides some advices for managers of fashion companies committed to responsible policies.

We have only just begun to make progress in theorizing about the concept of giving to 'distant others', contributing to the development of knowledge in this area, and building towards a greater understanding of charitable donor behavior and the role that marketing can play in international humanitarian aid (IHA). This work represents some initial steps into investigating the role of marketing in IHA and greater understanding of donor behaviour.Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical framework, we explore the concept of Justice Restoration Efficacy (JRE) to examine the intention to donate to distant others (IDDO) in IHA. For the purpose of testing, a multiple regression analysis was used to regress IDDO onto a revised TPB model that includes the concept of JRE. In order to test an extended model, an eight-section questionnaire was designed in order to carry out an online survey. All constructs were measured using 7-point, Likert-style questions. Psychometric properties of all variables are within recommended levels. Data collection resulted in a convenience sample of 411 charitable donors from across Canada (N = 199) and the USA (N = 212).The adjusted variance explained by the model reaches 59% of IDDO. By looking at the individual contribution of each variable (i.e., standardized beta coefficients), we observe that JRE is the most important antecedent of IDDO with a 0.59, followed far behind by subjective norms with 0.20. The other three significant variables show beta coefficients no greater than 0.13 each. These results highlight what is most important to potential donors in deciding to help distant others, the ability to have an impact and restore justice. When it comes to distant others, it is no longer enough to support a cause or an organization, but the focus of the donor has become on what the donation can do and the change it can make.The findings highlight that the predictors and influences on IDDO are different than for the intention to donate. As such, IDDO represents more than just a novel context in which to examine charitable giving but a separate, albeit related, construct. This study establishes the link between JRE and IDDO. This is the first use of the JRE concept in the non-profit marketing and charitable giving literature.

Prior research considers various aspects of customer participation (CP) which can be defined as customers’ contribution of effort, knowledge, information, or other resources to service production and delivery (Dong and Sivikumar 2017). However, actionable guidelines for customer participation management (CPM)—i.e., organizational actions and activities that aim to affect customers’ contribution to service production and delivery—are currently lacking (Mustak et al. 2016).To fill this research gap, a fruitful approach is to take a human resource management (HRM) perspective on CPM (Mustak et al. 2016). The rationale is that, in a CP context, customers can be considered “partial employees” of the organization (Groth 2005; Xie et al. 2008) and “serve as critical human resources that must be managed so that their efforts are in line with the goals and strategy of the firm” (Halbesleben and Buckley 2004, p. 356). Groth (2005) emphasized the value of extending HRM theories to CPM and called for more research on this topic to create a more actionable understanding of CPM. However, more than 10 years later, a systematic literature review conducted by Mustak et al. (2016) revealed that prior studies on CPM offer little actionable knowledge: “Most of these studies do not discuss specific managerial tools or methods that can be applied in real life situations” (Mustak et al. 2016, p. 263). As a result, they call for research that is more directly applicable to managers since there is a clear need to translate theoretical knowledge into actionable guidelines.In light of this research call, this paper extends Psychological Capital (PsyCap) from HRM to CPM. Specifically, we investigate the value of customers’ PsyCap as a manageable driver of CP. PsyCap involves an individual’s positive assessment of circumstances and probability for success, and prior HRM studies offer several actionable guidelines for developing PsyCap. Most of these guidelines can be translated to a CP setting which allows the design of truly actionable strategies for CPM.Study 1 demonstrates the predictive value of PsyCap as a key driver of CP by examining its relative impact on CP attitude and intention compared to alternative CP drivers (role clarity, extrinsic benefits, intrinsic benefits). Furthermore, this study reveals the impact of several task-related antecedents (compatibility, observability, trialability, complexity, and perceived risk) on these CP drivers. Study 2 demonstrates the managerial value of PsyCap by translating existing guidelines for developing PsyCap from the employee to the customer domain and revealing boundary conditions for PsyCap development.

Transformative services embody a fertile domain for future service research. In particular, health care necessitates the timely adoption and compliance of a myriad of transformative health services by its customers as a pathway to enhance the patient journey. As adopting these services is paramount to enhancing individual and collective well-being, research is needed to understand how to encourage early intervention amongst customers at varying temporal phases of decision-making.There is growing demand for mental healthcare services; however, many individuals are reluctant to admit that they have a mental illness or to seek professional help. In spite of the well-documented role of perceived public stigma in influencing decision-making in mental health care, the role of self-stigma in the decision-making process is not well understood. This is largely due to fear of exposure, owing of the stigma associated with mental health disorders in many western and eastern societies. Stigma is thus aligned toward mental illnesses, as well as help-seeking behaviours associated with improving and/or maintaining mental well-being. As a response to this challenge, this research seeks to provide theoretical and empirical elaboration on the role of stigma and guilt as focal mechanisms in influencing prospective customers’ adoption of transformative mental health services.Specifically, this study aims to examine the perpetual service adoption gap in mental health care and focuses on the implications of Self-Stigma and Anticipated Guilt in determining customers’ intentions to adopt transformative health services. The proposed model encompasses an expanded view of the Theory of Planned Behaviour and is tested with data in a multi-country study setting gathered from 700 Australian and 1073 Chinese prospective customers. Results indicate that self-stigma, anticipated guilt, self-efficacy and subjective norms are major determinants of intentions to adopt. Furthermore, self-efficacy and attitude were found to play dominant roles towards self-stigma whereas subjective norms had strongest impact towards anticipated guilt. The authors conclude with managerial implications, highlighting that the importance of mental health interventions and PSAs hat foster and facilitate consumer empowerment, which in turn enhances proactive behavioural engagement with health services.

Consumers often make decisions and tradeoffs in their daily lives between pursuing pleasures or distancing themselves from these, both of which have an impact on their subsequent actions. The current research attempts to answer questions about consumption of hedonic and utilitarian products, and how individuals adapt their perceptions of these experiences by focusing on affective or cognitive processing mechanisms through changes in psychological proximity.Psychological proximity or distance is the perception that a physical entity or a mental construct is far in terms of physical distance, time, reality, and the self; considering the current place, present time, ongoing reality, and our own self, all of these comprise the zero distance points from the “here and now” (Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007). The current research employs perceived psychological proximity as “the perceived proximity of the self to an object and its associated experience based on the quality of the experience felt,” considering its accessibility as a subjective experience (Van Boven, Kane, McGraw, & Dale, 2010) across objective distance (spatial, temporal, social, hypothetical). Even though various events and decisions may happen differently across our lives, there are some which stand out due to the intensity of felt emotion and are thus perceived psychologically proximal more than others at comparable objective distances (Van Boven, Loewenstein, Welch, & Dunning, 2012). Researchers have shown that greater proximity to an object and decision at a higher construal level enhances attitudinal responses and hedonic consumption (Basoglu & Yoo, 2015; Chang & Tuan Pham, 2013; Huyghe, Verstraeten, Geuens, & Van Kerckhove, 2017).The current study which is an ongoing work relies on an innovative data collection approach called the Album On-Line (AOL), which is a projective technique based on individuals’ representations and unconscious opinions through online photo albums. The choice of this method is very pertinent to understanding consumers’ unsaid, subconsciously perceived proximity with product choices. The research questions that this study aims to address include: (1) what is the role of psychological proximity within hedonic consumption decisions; (2) understand the different processing mechanisms for product purchase decisions based on psychological proximity; (3) assess the factors which affect psychological proximity and product preference within the context of hedonic consumption.The significance of demystifying perceived psychological proximity has greatly increased with the advent of digital marketing and consumers’ online presence. Several businesses are now targeting consumers via online media across large distances. An understanding of psychological proximity perceptions around hedonic product decisions would be helpful for hedonic behaviors as well such as impulsive spending, drugs and substance abuse, eating and drinking behaviors.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a common form of activity, which involves a company’s promise to donate a certain amount of money to a nonprofit organization or a social cause when customers purchase their products/services (Varadarajan and Menon 1988). Researchers have suggested that a CRM campaign that promotes a cause for a longer period of time increases spending on a product or service (Brink et al. 2006; Drumwright 1996; Varadarajan and Menon 1988; Webb and Mohr 1998). However, evidence from practice and research appears to be inconsistent that some companies are found to support causes over a short period of time.We propose that the decision of time duration should depend on cause type (primary vs. secondary) and product type (utilitarian vs. hedonic). Results from three studies show that a long time duration works when pairing a utilitarian product with a primary cause or a hedonic product with a secondary cause. On the other hand, a short time duration is advantageous for a hedonic product with a primary cause. This research further demonstrates the attributed company motives as the mechanism underlying consumer purchase behavior.Our findings make several theoretical contributions. First, this study makes important contributions to the extant CRM literature by considering the time factor. Second, going beyond simple demonstrations of how short and long durations affect CRM effectiveness, this research clarifies the conditions under which each time duration is likely to be effective. We do so by considering two factors that influence CRM success: product type and cause type. Third, the current research also adds to the literature on sponsorship. Examination of these advertising cues adds to our understanding of sponsorship effects.This research has important managerial implications for marketers. Companies planning to engage in CRM may choose the time duration of a campaign. If a company decides to implement tactical CRM on a short-term basis, the company should pair a hedonic product with a primary cause. The nonprofit sector and social marketers can also benefit from our research. The findings provide specific guidelines to help nonprofits maximize the impacts of cause–brand alliances, based on time duration, product type, and cause type.

Marketing practitioners have long recognised the importance of non-transactional customer behaviour (Sashi 2012). In line with this, the industry introduced the ‘engagement’ metric in strategic marketing and branding to assess corporate and brand performance (Van Doorn et al. 2010). Prospect and trend reports from the industry indicate that advances in digital technologies continue to shape the business landscape. In line with that, a shift towards engaging consumers through implementations of new technologies can be observed throughout a broad range of different industries. Arguably, one of the most prominent new technologies is virtual reality (VR), which can be defined as a real-time, immersive and interactive multisensory experience situated in, and artificially induced by, a responsive three-dimensional computer-generated virtual environment—usually paired with advanced input and output devices (e.g. head-mounted display and haptic motion feedback controllers; de Regt and Barnes 2019). Various brands are currently experimenting with virtual reality technology and incorporating it into their marketing strategies in order to create more profound connections with their target audiences—i.e., by increasing awareness, promoting engagement and generating unique brand experiences. Although VR technology is moving towards widespread adoption, the possibilities and impact of how VR can best be implemented to enhance both product and brand marketing have not been investigated fully.This research aims to contribute to this knowledge by investigating how VR experiences are perceived by consumers, specifically focusing on how they influence brand perception and the consumer’s intention to engage with the brand. The research is based on a series of semi-structured focus group interviews with a purposeful sample of English-speaking participants. Prior to taking part in the focus groups, all participants experienced VR through head-mounted displays (HMDs). A semi-structured interview framework was implemented to generate the in-depth and actionable brand insights. The paper rounds off with recommendations for practice and future research.

A number of high-profile recalls of food, medical, and consumer products have raised public awareness and media attention on product safety. The 2008 powdered milk scandal, in which powdered baby’s milk was contaminated with melamine, injured hundreds of thousands of babies, at least six fatally (Huang 2014). Children’s product safety is a particularly vital concern. Children are considered vulnerable consumer groups and the products they use affect their health, growth, and well-being. Children’s product quality and safety in China have become a complex issue in need of further study (Zhao et al. 2013).This study employs an event study methodology to analyze the financial impact of children’s product safety incidents in China. Our analysis focuses on the Chinese stock market and children’s product industry. Based on a sample of 87 product safety incidents from 2009 to 2016, we first examine the stock market reaction to announcements of children’s product safety incidents. Second, we examine factors that could affect the magnitude of the market reaction. Our study focuses specifically on incident features (information source) and firm characteristics (outsourcing strategy and focus strategy).We find significant negative abnormal returns on the incident day when the announcement is published. Our findings further reveal that the market will react more negatively to the announcements associated with the public media as information disclosure source. Moreover, the negative market reaction will be amplified when the involved firm fabricates its own product than taking an outsourcing strategy. However, our results suggest that the market will react indistinctively to the firms whether they mainly operate in the children’s product industry or not.Our study has several managerial implications. First, our study provides investors with better support for investment decisions. Historical data provide an important guide to investors when they make decisions. Investors need to be prudent especially when the firm’s product has been previously involved in a product safety incident. Second, our study sheds light on the better understanding of the influence of product safety incidents and the importance of crisis management for children’s product safety incidents. Third, our study helps enterprises make better crisis management decisions, which could reduce the loss of the enterprise and the impact of the crisis.

Celebrity endorsements have been a long-standing fixture in advertising and marketing strategies. In recent years, however, more and more celebrities have transitioned from merely endorsing a product for a third-party brand, to creating their own product lines by leveraging their personal brand. However, despite an abundance of research on celebrity endorsements, there has been very little research on celebrity-branded products. The focus of this study is on how celebrity-branded product lines influence shoppers’ evaluations of retailers. Partnership arrangements between celebrities and retailers (e.g., Jennifer Lopez line at Kohl’s, Victoria Beckham line at Target, Shaquille O’Neal line at JCPenney) provide celebrities with access to retailers’ merchandizing and marketing expertise, while providing retailers with the ability to leverage celebrity products to differentiate themselves from competing stores and enhance their appeal to chosen target markets. Specifically, this study develops and tests a theoretical framework of the transference effects of celebrity-branded products on shoppers’ evaluation of retailers. Drawing from the brand resonance model, this study postulates that shoppers’ awareness and evaluation of the salience of celebrity-branded products sold in a retailer influence evaluation of the retailer, judgments about the retailer, and retailer resonance (i.e., active, intense loyalty toward the retailer). Data collected using an online survey of 443 adult shoppers show support for the transference effects of celebrity brands on retailer resonance and provide empirical validation of the brand resonance model. Specifically, results indicate that shoppers’ assessments of celebrity-branded products (i.e., celebrity-product fit, celebrity-store fit, and brand alignment) lead to higher derived performance evaluation (i.e., store attractiveness), which lead to positive judgments of the store (i.e., store uniqueness), and ultimately, active shopper–retailer relationships. Overall, this study demonstrates that, if properly designed, the partnership between celebrity-branded product lines and retailers can be mutually beneficial to both entities and can enhance shoppers’ engagement with retail stores. Based on the findings, implications are offered for theory and practice.

The issue of food waste has received increasing public and research attention in recent years. Food waste refers to food items ready for human consumption but not consumed. In contrast to food loss, which occurs in early parts of the supply chain, food waste occurs at the end of the food chain and generally relates to retailers’ and consumers’ behavior. Between 30% and 50% of the world’s annual food production never reaches consumers. Thereby, fresh food is often excluded by retailers, as it does not conform a particular aesthetic standard (e.g., shape, color, or size) that is believed to be demanded by consumers. In particular, it is believed that consumers associate food abnormalities with lower product quality and thus avoid purchasing such products. For these reasons, the present study aims to understand consumers’ perceptions and intentions toward food shape abnormality. By gaining a deeper understanding of product-related quality characteristics of abnormally shaped food (e.g., taste, visual appearance, or convenience), insights will be generated on which attributes drive customer-perceived value and purchase intention of abnormally shaped vegetables. Our results show that the dimensions of customer perceived value are mainly driven by the quality characteristics health benefits, environmental friendliness, visual appearance, and taste. Furthermore, the individual value has been identified as the most important customer-perceived value dimension regarding the influence on purchase intention. These findings provide valuable insights for organizations and companies, by identifying dimensions that can help to reduce consumers’ avoidance toward abnormally shaped vegetables.

In their interactions in the business environment, consumers are placing an increased importance on the social actions with which firms are involved. Typically, research has focused on the positive benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or how consumers respond to negative CSR. Negative CSR involves the presence of a transgression, usually some violation of what is generally acceptable in terms of ethics, society, and the consumer–firm relationship. It occurs when a firm engages in activities that are damaging to communities, customers, employees, and/or the natural environment. These failures are often accompanied by positive CSR declarations and activities, creating inconsistent or contradictory information (Wagner et al. 2009). However, little research exists that investigates how consumers react to contradictory CSR information and what firms can do to mitigate its effects. Therefore, this study seeks to understand the impact of contradictory CSR information on consumers and identify communication strategies firms can employ to promote their positive CSR outcomes to alleviate any negative effects from CSR failures.Drawing on research that demonstrates the influence of primacy and recency effects on the success of a firm’s CSR strategy (Wagner et al. 2009), this study explores how a consumer’s experience with the firm and the firm’s CSR reputation impact the consumer’s response to contradictory CSR information. Using a longitudinal design, this study tests the impact primacy and recency effects have in three different ethical failures. The findings show that multiple past experiences with the firm facilitates a “primacy effect” so that when negative CSR occurs, the prior positive experiences mitigate negative consequences. Moreover, a well-known and positive reputation causes a primacy effect to occur, as the strong reputation works as a signal for how the firm will behave in the future. Thus, the results suggest that firms benefit most from a proactive CSR communication strategy with their current customers and a reactive CSR communication strategy with consumers who have little to no experience with the firm (general public).

More than 99% of the businesses in North America are private firms, and they account for nearly 59% of sales and nearly 49% of aggregate pretax profits (Biery 2013). A small percentage of these firms grow rapidly and are called gazelles (see Birch et al. 1989, 1994). Gazelles are those firms that have achieved a growth rate of 20% or more for at least three consecutive years. Private firms have been largely neglected in both the public press and academic literature. What has been uncovered represents a fragmented body of work (Gabrielsson et al. 2011). Typical explanatory variables for rapid growth that have arisen out of the extant research include founder characteristics, ownership type, firm size and age, strategic orientation, market environment, partnership development, customer orientation, innovation and new product development, and human resource practices. The research, therefore, was driven by two questions: (1) Why are some private firms highly successful in terms of rapid growth of their revenues, profits, number of employees and markets and (2) Are there common characteristics among the successful, fast growth firms that differentiate them from their less successful peers?These questions were explored using elite interviews and secondary data from 40 private fast growth companies. One of the unexpected findings from the study was that the most successful private firms are values-led firms when compared to their less successful counterparts. The most common values among the successful firms were care for employees, customer obsession, fairness, respect for diversity, collaboration, and sustainability. Having a values-led orientation served to engage, motivate, and retain employees who in turn provided superior service and innovative products to a clearly defined set of customers in a differentiated niche marketplace. Values were also used to guide and sometimes control growth and market entry. Although there is an extensive literature related to firm performance, none could be found that link being led by a specific set of values with superior performance and growth. Thus, it is believed that this work makes a novel contribution to the literature.

This paper reflects the conference theme regarding the evolution of the global marketplace, specifically, in China. Factors such as the rising middle class in China and transformations among the Chinese that instill more Westernized values shape how fashion brands and retail firms do business in China. It is necessary for marketers to consider the most effective means in targeting Chinese consumers and driving their purchasing behavior of fashion goods. This study explores the efficacy of “face-saving,” materialistic, and ethical values in predicting Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward Western and Chinese fashion brands.In the last year, China has become the largest marketplace in the world. As discretionary income growth and the demand for high-quality goods among Chinese consumers continues to surge, there is a sizable opportunity for growth in China’s marketplace for Western fashion brands and retailers. Yet, there are numerous cases in which Western brands have failed in their pursuit of consumers in China. This is most often due to a failure in catering to Chinese consumers’ predilections.An online questionnaire (with a specific URL address) was utilized to collect data related to the purposes of this study. The questionnaire was translated from English to Chinese then back translated to English. The sample included 1199 Chinese men and women between the ages of 18 and 64 living in China. Overall, participants were found to hold strong “face-saving” and materialistic values and a moderate level of ethical values. Likewise, a comparison of the computed mean scores revealed that participants perceived Western fashion brands more favorably than Chinese fashion brands.Using a multiple linear regression analysis, it was found that the higher the participants’ “face-saving” and materialistic values, the greater their attitudes toward Western fashion brands. The lower the participants’ ethical values, the greater their attitudes of Western fashion brands. In a similar vein, the higher the participants’ “face-saving” and materialistic values, the lower their attitudes for Chinese fashion brands. The higher the participants’ ethical values, the lower their attitudes toward domestic brands.Given these results, future research should examine other moderating variables in predicting Chinese consumers’ attitudes of Western vs. Chinese fashion brands. Complimentary inquiries should investigate the relationships between additional cultural, social, and individual values as often applied in consumer psychological research.

This study attempts to examine how online search data related to the change of MNE’s performance. By using both cross-sectional and longitudinal panel studies, a positive relationship between online search interest related to an MNE’s product and corporation names and its financial performance is hypothesized and tested, and its managerial and theoretical implication is discussed.As a result of the extensive use of search engines, consumers and managers increasingly rely on online information in decision making. Information about search frequency reveals consumer interest and intention to make a transaction. Search data serve as a predictor for future demand, which means data from search engines not only reflect a different degree of interest of a product or corporation but also indicate a fundamental change in how to explain the present and predict future business (Wu and Brynjolfsson 2015).This study attempts to reveal the relationship between Google Trends data and MNEs financial performance, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. These findings have theoretical contributions and invaluable managerial implications as well. The established correlation between Google Trends data and business performance reassures managers of the importance of aggregate consumer interest. The present study extends findings by Du et al. (2015) who highlight the importance of feature keyword search in the automobile industry in the United States.This study adds a new perspective on existing MNE performance predictive model. Online search data represented by Google Trends provide a promising research avenue for International business. Krugman (2009) argues that social science has focused on developing complex statistic models to make business predictions. Even so, all the models have shown limited predictability of disruptive economic fluctuations. Simon (1984) advises that developing tools to explain and observe economic phenomena is better than focusing on models and noisy data in social science research. Search engine technology represented by Google Trends answers this call and provides useful aggregate data reflecting invaluable information such as consumers’ interest in a product feature and that feature’s importance as well as their buying intentions (Du et al. 2015). Analyzing search data helps researchers explain consumers’ intentions and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of predicting future economic activities (Wu and Brynjolfsson 2015).

Since the digital revolution, the internet and mobile communication now play a crucial role in marketing. Consumers are both more informed and more skeptical than before, which has transformed the way a company implements its marketing strategies and the patterns used to study consumer behaviors. These behaviors took shape under the influence of traditional marketing tools, such as offline advertising, promotional activities, and personal selling (Kimmel and Kitchen 2014). Because of the advancement of technology, mainly social media’s role in marketing communication, marketers can reach consumers more easily, but they are less influential to those customers (Kimmel and Kitchen 2014). The level of trustworthiness improves dramatically for unknown consumers if the information’s source is from a trusted website. Because eWOM is written, it is more permanent than traditional WOM, which explains why an increasing number of firms now use social networks as their marketing platforms (Brown et al. 2007; eMarketer 2012).People store a previous response to a stimulus as a cognitive representation that can be retrieved for subsequent decisions. The available information at the moment that people decide to pursue their goals determines how people process information, including processes such as information encoding, organization, storage, and retrieval (Wyer and Srull 1986).This study argues whether or not previous marketing communication theories hold dependent upon specific contexts. The negativity effect of eWOM will be illustrated in the early and late majority consumer groups; however, negativity effect is inconsistent in the old adopter groups, which gives the weight that the negativity effect is context- and product-specific. The study demonstrates that the effectiveness of eWOM varies among different groups of people over various timelines, congruous with the elaboration likelihood theory. This finding also indicates that marketers should employ different marketing strategies at different stages of the innovation diffusion process to maximize the efficiency of their marketing investments.

Our special session combines four papers that offer fresh, new, directions in business-to-business (B2B) research. Our first paper, “Emotions in B2B Multi-Million Dollars Sales Proposals: A Qualitative Examination of the Buying Process in Large Value Key Account Sales,” focuses on the B2B buying process with large value, key accounts. The authors, Carolyn Curasi and Jim Boles, track the specific steps within the buying cycle (Curasi et al. 2018) and offer a modified framework of the B2B buying cycle, examining drivers of sales performance (Samli et al. 1988; Verbeke et al. 2011).“Opportunistic Utilization and the Salesforce Potemkin Village: The Self-Destructive Cycle That Can Result from the Misuse of IT in Salesforce Management,” investigated and authored by Robert Mayberry, examines the interface between sales management, corporate analytics, and the behavior of the sales force within one large corporation. This research explores the intentional misuse of the Sales Force Automation (SFA) system among the sales force, with serious and far-reaching consequences.In “Story Type, B2B Advertising, and Decisions Making,” Nwamaka Anaza, examines stories and their influence in organizational decision making, an area that has been largely overlooked in B2B research (e.g., Huang 2014). B2B firms are increasing their advertising budgets (eMarketer 2017) and are using stories as part of their internal organizational messaging, however, little empirical research exists that examines story-based advertising in organizational decision making.Our special session is rounded out by Avinash Malshe’s paper, “Thinking Beyond the Sales-Marketing Interface,” which takes a novel look at what a successful sales process entails in our dynamic, fast-paced, and hypercompetitive business world (Hartman et al. 2018), and suggests that selling can no longer be viewed as a linear process (Dixon and Tanner 2012), but that instead, the sales process is supported by contributing processes often involving multiple individuals and parties within the buying and selling organizations (Bolander et al. 2015; Friend and Malshe 2016).

Although marketing research seems to hold a positive bias toward the future and making predictions, the concept of heritage has been successfully developed, at a corporate brand level (Urde et al. 2007), and then extended for the study of product brands (Hudson 2011; Merchant and Rose 2013; Pecot and de Barnier 2017). Recent work considers the perceptions consumers hold of brand heritage, both qualitatively (Rindell et al. 2015) and quantitatively (Pecot et al. 2018; Rose et al. 2016). Although some studies look at China (Balmer and Chen 2017) and North America (Hudson 2011; Rose et al. 2016), it remains mostly European.The aim of this special session is to discuss ongoing research looking at perceptions of brand heritage in empirical contexts that had not been considered before. Varsha Jain and her colleagues look at how residents construct stories in the context of a heritage UNESCO site in India. Mei and Greg Rose also look at destinations, but using a scale development approach in order to identify the dimensions of a destination brand heritage, which is a new area. Finally, Greg Rose and his colleagues present the results of a refined measurement for brand heritage perceptions, validated in the United States, France, and South Korea.This special session therefore extends existing knowledge on brand heritage perception from different perspectives. For the first time, it includes insights from India and South Korea. It also explores the heritage dimension of destination brands. Altogether, this session will significantly advance research on brand heritage perception from a cross-cultural perspective.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that companies tend to charge women a “gender tax” and women’s products often cost more than comparable men’s products. An important question arises: Is charging women a price surcharge conducive to higher revenues? In five studies, this paper shows that charging women price premiums could backfire and lower companies’ revenues and profits because on average women are more price-sensitive than men. This paper used diverse sources of data and myriad statistical analyses to make several substantive theoretical and practical contributions. First, using the population data set of 184,216 unique products, study 1 offered unambiguous evidence that Amazon.com charges men higher prices than women for selling them comparable products. Study 2 utilized a longitudinal sample of 424,000 products/day observations to show that Amazon’s gender-based price discrimination is likely to be the product of women’s higher price sensitivity. Studies 3 and 4 provided evidence that men are more likely to associate higher prices with higher levels of quality and value, and this is the likely underlying reason for the effect of gender on price elasticity. Finally, study 5 investigated the gender differences in thinking style as an alternative reason for gender differences in price elasticity.To our knowledge, this paper is the first paper that offers empirical evidence that women are more price-sensitive than men. This finding has profound and expansive practical implications. Additionally, this paper provided further evidence that price creates a “placebo effect” on men that transcends their expectations and affects their experience of products. Finally, this paper offers an in-depth look into the pricing practices of the world’s largest online retailer. Therefore, we believe that the findings of our studies could serve academics, companies, and consumer organizations.Future research should further examine the underlying reasons for the effect of gender on price elasticity. Study 1 showed that in beauty and personal care industry women’s products were generally more expensive than comparable men’s products. This could be the result of the level of involvement of consumers in the shopping process of these products. Nevertheless, more research is needed to establish (or refute) this postulation. Furthermore, future studies should investigate the moderating effect of hedonic/utilitarian, purchase frequency, and symbolic value of products in the relationship between gender and price elasticity of demand.

Although some studies (e.g., Drèze and Hussherr 2003; Yoo 2008) reveal that online ads can affect consumers even when they are trying to avoid them, there are no guidelines about communicating price information in online display ads as they are seen by consumers in a real online environment. Along with our interest in studying the effects of price anchor in online ads, we also study the effects of ad repetition. We focus on this attribute because ad repetition is one of the common strategies used to increase the effectiveness of the online advertisement (Malaviya et al. 1999; Yaveroglu and Donthu 2008). Again, to the best of our knowledge, the effects of ad repetition on price anchoring have not been studied in the context of incidental ad exposure in online environments.Results of an eye-tracking study show that the magnitude of price stimuli can affect consumers’ attention toward online display ads that consumers are exposed to incidentally. That is, consumers’ fixation duration (pupil size) is longer (larger) for ads that contain high-value price stimuli than ads that contain low-value price stimuli. Moreover, when ads are displayed repeatedly on the same web page, the fixation duration is increased as a function of the order of placement only when ads contain high-value price stimuli. For ads containing low-value price stimuli, the gaze behavior did not change. We suggest that the observed different gaze behavior is due to a different price-processing mechanism for incidental price stimuli: When ads contain high-magnitude price stimuli, consumers process them through the elaborative selective accessibility mechanism (Strack and Mussweiler 1997); but when ads contain low-magnitude price stimuli, consumers process them through the more direct priming mechanism of anchoring and adjustment (Tversky and Kahneman 1974).

Experts guide consumers’ preferences and purchase decisions because they are often perceived as unbiased and trustworthy. Countries spend billions on marketing their agricultural industries to not only their own citizens but also foreign citizens all over the world, including these experts. The wine industry is a high-value agricultural industry from the standpoints of both the main raw agricultural products (i.e., grapes) and the value added in the finished products. This paper explores the role of country image in expert ratings and reviews (i.e., expert eWOM) using large data sets from the global wine industry and the automated text analysis DICTION. We find significant differences between countries regarding price, rating, and all of the DICTION content dimensions using ANOVA tests at p < 0.001. Furthermore, using regression analysis, we find significant effects for the price, all five review content dimensions, all major countries with the exception of Australia and France. The “France” variable was significant until we controlled for the influence of price. The Australia variable was nonsignificant in all regression analysis indicating that the Australian wine ratings were not statistically different than minor wine-producing countries. This paper makes several contributions to the expert eWOM and country image literatures. Producers in prestigious wine-producing countries (e.g., Italian or German) can extract a price premium related to the image of that country that is perceived by the experts as high quality. However, producers in less prestigious wine-producing countries (e.g., South African or Chilean) can signal quality through a higher price that can help them overcome their country image bias and aid the perception by experts of high quality. Producers can also manage expert eWOM by priming these reviewers to write reviews that use more active, certain, and optimistic language to increase quality ratings. Thus, governments and industry associations can build country images that encourage experts to write reviews with active, optimistic, and central language to influence quality ratings.

With the rapid adoption of mobile technologies among different consumer segments, mobile commerce (m-commerce) has become a promising growth market for online retailers. Evidence exists that consumers adopting mobile channels to make online purchases increase their overall order rate and size with the retailer (Wang et al. 2015). However, there is sparse knowledge regarding the factors determining adoption. Owing to the unique characteristics of mobile online channels (e.g., ubiquitous use opportunities), knowledge cannot be directly transferred from research on electronic commerce. Hence, this research develops and empirically tests a value-based adoption model to elucidate consumers’ usage of mobile channels for online purchasing (i.e., mobile purchasing or m-purchasing). In detail, this work contributes to the literature in the following way: (1) the present study considers value enablers and inhibitors that occur at different steps of the m-purchasing process (i.e., from the product evaluation to the transaction); (2) this study additionally encompasses consumer characteristics and, more specifically, shopping styles to predict value creation. The analysis of the interactions between individual characteristics and the value determinants offers scholars a nuanced explanation of the consumer adoption of m-purchasing; (3) this study provides a differentiated view on the determinants and consequences of consumer perceived value by additionally uncovering the role of the purchasing situation (i.e., type of product category) in the formation of value perceptions.The findings of a scenario-based online survey among German smartphone users (n = 882) support that the greater the perceived value is, the greater the usage of mobile channels for online transactions. Consumers create the value by balancing costs (i.e., the security risk of transactions, the effort involved in product evaluation) and benefits (i.e., control over the shopping process, flexibility). Both, the purchasing situation and consumer characteristics, moderate the strength of value determinants. The latent moderated structural equation method revealed that consumers’ brand consciousness dampens the negative effect of effort on value. The multigroup analysis showed, among others, that the indirect effect of flexibility on the usage of m-purchasing is significantly stronger when buying jewelry than buying electronics or clothes. By contrast, the analysis demonstrated that the effect of the perceived effort of evaluating products via smartphones has a stronger effect on value formation for apparel and electronics than for jewelry. The findings offer scholars a nuanced explanation of the consumer adoption of m-purchasing. For retailers, the findings provide differentiated implications for how to promote m-purchasing.

To save costs or to target bilingual populations, internationally operating companies use double language labeling, which is the usage of a foreign language next to a domestic language to advertise, e.g., ingredients or use instructions. Companies catering on a national level might also benefit from this approach as their products can profit from a spillover effect of a positively perceived foreign language. Negative effects are also possible as a second language might make the product appear in a less positive light. As we concentrate on mainstream (# bilingual or bicultural) consumers, we assume that decoding information in a foreign language can be perceived as more challenging, resulting in negative effects. Our study seeks to clarify the impact of double language labeling of products on product perceptions and behavioral intentions in the context of food and beverages.We applied a somewhat new approach by manipulating languages according to their comprehensibility. Languages can be classified as comprehensible and noncomprehensible languages, depending on people’s language proficiency. Cross-cultural communication research suggests that language choice can be connected to ad effectiveness through the ease of processing (Noriega and Blair 2008). Luna and Peracchio (1999) conclude by their research that it is recommendable to advertise consumers in their native language. We postulate that in case of a noncomprehensible language, the negative effects should be even more prominent as measured in the level of significance due to people not being able to understand the information. We conducted two between-subjects online experiments with one manipulated factor: language labeling (single: German; double and comprehensible: German + English; double and noncomprehensible: German + Spanish), using peanuts (orange juice) as test stimuli partially based on a company cooperation. A total of 88 (135) participants; Mage = 25.8, 55.7% female (Mage = 25.5, 56.0% female) completed the study. Both language labeling approaches harm the product, measured in perceptions and behavioral intentions. The effects are negative, however, they are statistically significant only with regard to the noncomprehensible language. A qualitative explanative approach was used to better understand language labeling. By varying product categories and interviewing 15 participants, we detected constructs related to culture, e.g., the context-specific quality signaling role of the German language. At this stage of research, we suggest that companies—those catering on a national level to mainstream consumers—should refrain from using an additional foreign language. Our findings need to be backed up with the help of our identified cultural constructs to understand their (possible) influence as moderating effects.

Through the employee lens of business-to-business (B2B) firms, we explore word use through brand engagement and social media interaction to understand what makes the difference of those employees who rate their employer brands highly on social media, and those who do not. This content becomes a valuable source of information for marketing decision makers, as well as an interesting and rich new source of data for B2B marketing scholars.Fortunately, the recent past has not only seen a significant rise in the amount of unstructured textual data available to researchers, but also a noteworthy increase in the number and sophistication of tools available to perform textual content analysis using computers. One of the major computerized text analysis tools in use today is LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count), the development of which is described by Pennebaker and his colleagues (Pennebaker et al. 2001). We conducted a textual content analysis of social media job evaluation site glassdoor.com using the LIWC software package to analyze 30 of the top 200 B2B brands listed on Brandwatch using four variables, namely, analytical thinking, clout, authenticity, and emotional tone.The results show that employees who rate their employer’s brand low use significantly more words, are significantly less analytic, and write with significantly more clout because they focus more on others than themselves. Employees who rate their employer’s brand highly, write with significantly more authenticity, exhibit a significantly higher tone, and display far more positive emotions in their reviews.Brand engagement drives brand equity. Brand equity is not only a significant indicator of marketing effectiveness, it is also a fundamental driver of firm value. This research demonstrates that B2B brand managers and B2B branding scholars should treat social media data disseminated by individual stakeholders, like the variables used in this study (tone, word count, and frequency), as an opportunity to tap a rich source of data with powerful automated text analysis tools to better understand and manage brand insight, brand engagement, and brand equity now and over time.

Student samples are uncommon in professional sales research, but are useful for studying sales education. Because adaptive selling is a core concept of personal selling, it may be useful to measure the adaptive selling behaviors of sales students. However, in order to measure adaptive selling behaviors as a single construct, items contain a high level of abstraction that may be difficult for students to fully comprehend. One of the most commonly used measures of adaptive selling behaviors is the shortened RMML ADAPTs scale. That scale contains the phrase “selling approach” in four of the five items. Sales students could interpret “sales approach” as referring to a variety of sales behaviors such as influencing tactics, service/product offerings, communication channels, verbal communications, and nonverbal communications. If students lack a stable understanding of the “sales approach,” it may be difficult for them to accurately respond to items containing that concept. Due to the complexity of such estimation, students may rely on their self-rated performance. Students are typically asked about their adaptive selling behaviors based on specific class activities, role-plays, and/or sales simulations. It is likely that students find it easier to rate their performance than their adaptive behaviors because performance often has objective outcomes such as class grade, instructor feedback, and/or activity success. Students may then base their ratings of adaptive behaviors on their perceived self-rated performance. Adaptive selling behaviors items are worded positively so that if the salespeople have high performance it is logical that they must be engaged in positive behaviors. Hence, previous performance is likely to influence response to adaptive selling scales.The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which past performance influences student self-ratings on the RMML ADAPTS scale. The research consists of a qualitative study and an experiment. In the qualitative study, students discuss their interpretation of several items used in the RMML ADAPTS scale. The findings show that students have an inconsistent understanding of the items. In the experiment, students participated in a sales simulation. Their performance was randomly predetermined to be high or low regardless of their choices in the sales simulation. Then RMML ADAPTS and other related behaviors were measured. The findings show that the manipulated performance condition is a stronger predictor of RMML ADAPTS ratings than the actual adaptive behaviors observed in the simulation. Consequently, sales researchers should not use the RMML ADAPTS rating scale with student samples.

Research demonstrating that color red can signal dominance is extensive (Braun and Silver 2007; Labrecque et al. 2013). The effect drawn on the evolutionary perspective shows that subtle changes in facial redness convey emotional states (e.g., anger, arousal) that serve as cues to dominance (Khan et al. 2011; Stephen et al. 2012). This research contributes to the literature by exploring the impact of using the color red in the healthcare context. Auerbach and colleagues (2002) found that the tension dominance–submission directly influences health outcomes, as patients of less dominant physicians demonstrated greater engagement with medical recommendations (DiMatteo 1994). However, considering that under situations of uncertainty, individuals strongly rely on extrinsic cues as forms to facilitate information acquisition (Schifferstein and Desmet 2007) and the role that color red plays into performance appraisals, by its perceptual dominance (Hill and Barton 2015; Wiedmann et al. 2015), we propose that the dominance attribute of color red will uplift judgments of physician expertise, increasing the patients’ health behavioral intentions.Hence, through two experiments, we demonstrate the color–dominance association in the healthcare context. Study 1 shows that participants (51 MTurk workers, Mage = 43.9, 52.9% females) have higher intentions to follow the recommendation when the physician was portrayed in the red (vs. white) coat (Mred = 5.870, Mwhite = 4.159, F(2,48) = 8.297, p < 0.01). Further analysis ruled out the influence of color originality, and a correlation analysis demonstrated that color served as an indicator of the physician’s level of expertise (Mred = 5.430 vs. Mwhite = 4.581, r = −0.314, p < 0.05). In study 2, participants (185 MTurk workers, Mage = 39.01, 54% females) imagined selecting a physician through an online database, seeing the physician’s picture (red vs. white coat) and resume (high-expertise vs. low expertise), and assessing physician’s traits afterward. Despite not revealing a significant interaction effect (F(4,158) = 0.368, p > 0.05), results demonstrate that both coat color (Mred = 5.216 vs. Mwhite = 5.685, F(4,158) = 4.781, p < 0.05) and physician expertise (Mhigh = 5.707 vs. Mlow = 5.194, F(4,158) = 9.261, p < 0.01) influence perception of physician’s dominance. Interestingly, mediation analysis shows that the coat color affects participants’ intention to engage in medical treatment intentions mediated by perception of dominance [ab = 0.3174, CI95% = 0.0648; 0.6252]. Altogether, the results provide initial evidence to our proposition that the dominance intuition of color red does not hold in the healthcare context. Specifically, we demonstrate that in the health context, the red color can serve as a compensatory cue indicating physician expertise affecting the intentions to act.

The Service Profit Chain (SPC) establishes that value creation emerges from the interactions among the company, employees, and consumers. The rationale is that employees’ satisfaction influences consumer satisfaction, affecting the company’s performance. In this study, we rely on the general rationale of SPC connecting to the notions of value co-creation (VCC) and customer behavioral outcomes. VCC entails resource-integrating actors and promotes the customization process, affecting service development, processes, and production. In VCC, value is co-created, delivered, and evaluated in a dialogic way by consumers and service providers. The way employees and customers interact and liaise with each other is core to transform and facilitate the co-creation of value. A central aspect of VCC entails resource-integrating actors. Based on SPC insights transposed to the VCC process, we propose a model to investigate the customer co-creation process and its outcomes. In particular, the model advances that VCC dimensions (Dialogue, Access, Risk assessment, and Transparency) affect Satisfaction, Trust (affective and cognitive), and Customer Loyalty. We conducted a survey among Brazilian consumers in the following services: education, banking, and mobile communications. The questionnaire was administered using the electronic platform Survey Monkey. The sample produced 1012 valid questionnaires. The sample entails 45.6% male and 55.5% female respondents, with a mean age of 35 years. Data analysis included structural equation modeling conducted through the analysis of the correlation matrix. Findings revealed a positive impact of all VCC dimensions on Customer Satisfaction. Findings further revealed a positive relationship between the VCC dimensions of Dialogue, Risk, and Transparency and Affective Trust. The results reinforced satisfaction and cognitive trust as important drivers for Loyalty. Multigroup analysis revealed nuances in the findings related to the different services. Relevant differences were found between banking and education services and between education and mobile services. The study further reported managerial implications and avenues for future studies.

Living in a materialistic world that values and encourages possession can easily lead to a form of dissatisfaction related to the frustration of not being able to buy what is desired. Probably, for this reason, financial deprivation has become a significant topic within the marketing literature in recent years. The concept of subjective financial deprivation is rooted in the theory of relative deprivation. Building on this theory, Sharma and Alter (2012) define perceived financial deprivation as “an unpleasant psychological state in which consumers feel financially ‘inferior’ or ‘worse off’ relative to a salient comparison standard because they perceive a deficit in their financial resources.” Thus, consumers can feel financially deprived when they compare themselves to referent others even when they do not face an actual income decrease. Alternatively, consumers may feel deprived when they perceived a deterioration of their financial position in time.The distinction between Social Financial Deprivation (SFD) and Temporal Financial Deprivation (TFD) is rarely made explicit in the literature. It is like considering that financial dissatisfaction related to a decrease in purchasing power and dissatisfaction related to the social comparison result in similar effects. This is not to say that consumers cannot feel both socially and temporally deprived. However, we advocate that it is not always the case and, anyway, the two forms of deprivation involve different compensatory mechanisms. Based on compensatory consumption theory and self-signaling theory, this article aims to show that these two forms of deprivation lead to different budget allocation preferences.Two similar online quantitative studies were carried out in France on large samples, the first one studying the budget allocation preferences between “daily food and grocery products” (“FOOD”) and “clothes and fashion accessories” (“CLOTHES”), the second one studying the preferences between “FOOD” and “holidays and leisure activities” (“LEISURE”). Choice-based conjoint analysis was used to measure the utility consumers attribute to different budget allocations.We find that, strictly speaking, SFD is not associated with the preference for increasing the CLOTHES budget at the expense of the FOOD budget. However, this relationship is moderated by status consumption: only consumers who seek status demonstrate a preference for increasing clothing budget at the expense of the food budget. TFD is associated with a preference for maintaining budget allocation between the CLOTHES budget and the FOOD budget. TFD is associated with a preference for increasing the FOOD budget at the expense of the LEISURE budget.Our results show that SFD and TFD do not have the same effect on consumer behavior. Our findings have several implications for marketing and public policy. Future research needs to specify which type of financial deprivation is studied.

In general, past research on identity focuses on group identity and the self as it relates to group identity (Belk 1988; Sheriff 1936; Thompson and Loveland 2015). There is relatively less focus on the distinction between the self and consumption per se and the self and consumption as mediated by identity. In this research, we ask the question, as to whether in the context of consumption, there is a self that is distinct from group identity. We explore how this self may be conceptualized and identify future directions in which this exploration may take place. According to Social Identity Theory, the individual identity “I” is a composite of many group identities “We.” Group identities are the result of categorization processes wherein the individual begins to view her (him) self as a category representative based on a similar perception by other members of the group. An individual typically perceives themselves and is perceived by others to belong to multiple categories and a particular category may be highlighted in a particular consumption context.The individual “I” is essentially a composite of many group identities “We.” The I and the WE are related in as much as almost all our consumption is related to our perceived group membership. In a market economy with particular emphasis on market segmentation and supply-side catering to the needs of groups of consumers, any individual consumption act whether it be a travel destination, hotel room, restaurant visit, purchase of a car or home has been performed in a similar way by many other consumers. The market economy has influenced human interaction in such a manner as to lead to individual behavior that consumes to satisfy the internal norms of the many “We.” Given the large influence of “We” and its impact on “I,” the question arises as to whether the “I” is truly distinct and if it even exists in the consumption context.The “I” and “WE” are distinct in that the “I” in general is not expressed in a particular good or service, but more so in the process of aggregation by which a consumer creates a basket of goods. A series of consumption decisions based on group effects results in a basket of goods that is individualistic. The basket of goods produced by the many identities constituting the composite identity of an individual forms the basis for individual expression. In the consumption context, individuality in effect arises out of the combination of group identities and there is no individuality outside of group identity.

Consumers rely on nutrition ingredient names in their food evaluations. Food companies could announce an ingredient name by using its common name focusing on the effects of a food component familiar to consumers (i.e., the name of the compound) or its specific and academia-based name (i.e., scientific name). Ares et al. (2009) indicated that displaying ingredient name affected consumer’s food evaluation. Drawing from construal level theory (Trope et al. 2007), we propose that consumers will look for advertising cues, which are congruent with high or low construal level that will facilitate or eliminate the effectiveness of ingredient name. Two moderators are proposed: food types (vice vs. virtue) and regulatory foci (promotion vs. prevention).Two experiments show that a common name works better than a scientific name when vice food is promoted with promotion focus. On the other hand, a scientific name is more persuasive when virtue food is presented with prevention focus. The choice of ingredient name does not matter when vice food with prevention focus or food virtue with promotion focus is promoted. This research further demonstrates that perceived guilt and perceived efficacy respectively serve as the underlying mechanism for vice and virtue foods.The current research makes theoretical contributions. First, it expands the knowledge and usage of food label in choosing the compatible ingredient name. The right combinations lead to higher product evaluations. Second, construal level theory explains how the different psychological construals will influence the effects of ingredient names. The results support the notion that a common (scientific) name is associated with high (low) construal level. Finally, the underlying mechanisms of perceived guilt and perceived efficacy enhance the knowledge and understanding behind the interaction effect.The usage of presenting ingredient name offers important implications for both brand managers and marketers. First, marketers should consider how to eliminate the weakness of the product attributes and strengthen the benefits. Second, marketers should try to lower the perceived guilt of consumers vice consumption and increase the perceived efficacy of the virtue food by varying ingredient name and regulatory focus. Finally, vice and virtue are not always bipolar. Advertisers are able to frame their product in more vice or virtue by focusing hedonic attributes (e.g., taste or eating enjoyment) or utilitarian attributes (e.g., health goal or freshness).

The study incorporates psychological and emotional factors of user experiences with the Internet to test their potential spillover effect on IoT acceptance. Behavioral spillover may be explained by two psychological mechanisms. Firstly, behaviors manifested in one domain may be generalized into knowledge and habits that, in turn, influence behaviors in other domains. Secondly, when situational cues in two domains are highly similar, spillover can be direct without intervening processes. The positive emotions experienced in an originating domain, i.e., the Internet in this study, may increase the users’ self-efficacy and motivation in the receiving domain, i.e., IoT. Users’ emotions can be classified into four types, namely, achievement, challenge, loss, and deterrence emotions. Well-being (defined as the degree of users’ needs fulfilment and quality of life enhancement by using the technological platforms) is another potential psychological factor that influences the user adaptation to the transition. Following the above, this study tests the role of emotions and well-being in IoT usage. An online questionnaire was administered in the United States to 615 respondents and Structural Equation Modelling was employed for the analysis of the data. The results suggest that only challenge emotions have is a statistically significant influence on IoT usage behavioral intention. Achievement and challenge emotions are aroused when the users can benefit from the Internet, achievement emotions are more likely to occur when the users feel a lack of control over the Internet. Achievement emotions do not significantly enhance the intention of using the IoT. Perceived enjoyment is influential at the post-adoption stage. Challenge emotions also showed a significant positive effect on the users’ intention of IoT usage. As the users experience challenge emotions when using the Internet, they are more likely to try the IoT and more capable of enhancing their efficiency and effectiveness by using the IoT. Loss and deterrence emotions are evoked when users feel unsatisfied with the performance of using the Internet. The effect of the perceived value of the Internet on the intention of using the IoT suggests that the overall assessment of the prior IS/IT significantly influences the transition. The perceived value is also confirmed as an expected outcome of IoT usage. Perceived well-being was confirmed to be both an antecedent and an outcome of IoT usage.

In today’s online landscape, many retailers focus their home pages, not on the products that they sell, but on the environment in which their products are used. For example, The North Face, Inc. shows an image of a user wearing their product in front of an image of a mountain range, indicating to potential buyers that these products would be suited for the worst weather. Patagonia, Inc. shows their products being used by mountain climbers in a similar fashion, while Hot Hands® places a snowy mountain behind their product to indicate a popular scenario to use them. This raises the question, why would a manager want to focus their home page design on the environment within which a product is used, rather than on the details (e.g., benefits, technical specs) of the product itself? Put in a broader scope, how do online environment–product interactions affect consumers’ purchasing habits?This research contributes to our understanding of the complex online landscape. Theoretically, we provide evidence that prior product experience moderates the relationship between product–environment congruence and conceptual processing fluency, and that product consumption types moderate the relationship between conceptual processing fluency and product liking. Furthermore, by providing evidence for the process by which product–environment congruence can impact product liking, managers can better present their products to improve product liking. When displaying a hedonic product online, it is important to take into consideration the display of the product within the environment it is used and consumers’ experience with the product.The findings from this research have implications for website and display ad designs. For example, a hedonic product would benefit from being displayed on a background image, which shows an environment in which the product may be used. A brand-like Razer, which focuses on the gaming peripherals (e.g., a computer mouse), should present their products on a background image showing their products in an environment they may be used (such as a desk) and target consumers with experience using their products. On the flip side, for a brand like Logitech, which sells mice known more for their user’s comfort and convenience, a product’s background and users’ prior experience with the product is less important.

Despite growing interest in the sharing economy, research has predominantly focused on the relationship between sharing platforms and renters in a traditional business-to-consumer context. In peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing, however, consumers share their own product with other consumers via a sharing platform. Thereby, they take a hybrid role as the buyer and provider of an asset. Further, previous studies position sharing as an alternative to acquisition and ownership. However, P2P sharing requires consumers’ ownership, according acquisition, and consequent temporary disposition of assets. Thereby, P2P sharing contradicts the notion of completely substituting ownership with access-based consumption through including acquisition and relativizes the imposed threat.The objective of this paper is to link purchase behavior to the temporary disposition in P2P sharing and thereby investigate how sharing affects consumer’s willingness to purchase products. Due to the lack of existing research on P2P asset sharing, we applied a mixed-methods approach. We first conducted three focus groups to support the development of our hypotheses. Throughout the focus groups, consumers mentioned the financial burden of owning an asset as one of the key factors in their purchase decision. P2P sharing, however, was perceived as an option to economize on the costs of ownership and thus to reduce the burdens. Subsequently, we tested our hypotheses using two experimental studies with 673 consumers. The objective of the first study was to test the effect of sharing on consumer’s purchase intention as well as the mediating role of burdens of ownership. The objective of the second was to test the effect of sharing on consumer’s purchase decisions by implicitly manipulating the economic benefits of sharing. Specifically, we manipulated whether renters’ preferences are shown prior to the consumer’s decision regarding which asset brand and type to buy.Contrary to the threat that sharing decreases product purchase, this study illustrates the positive effects of P2P sharing on peer providers’ willingness to purchase products. We show that the option to share a product not only increases consumers’ purchase intentions but also increases purchase intention for more expensive products, driven by the reduction of burdens of ownership as it enables consumers to economize their purchase by sharing it. Marketers aiming to increase units sold could provide consumers with an option to temporarily dispose of their product as it allows consumers to integrate losses with future gains. Interestingly, we also find that providers will take renters’ preferences into account when making a purchase decision. They are more likely to buy a brand they do not prefer if it enables them to earn more. Our findings illustrate that the sharing economy is not only a threat to traditional product manufacturers but also an opportunity to increase purchases.

Shopping through direct-to-consumer channels has been found to be appealing to consumers who like the convenience of in-home/office shopping. The use of direct channels to shop for non-digital products (i.e., material products that can best be assessed for quality through tactile inspection) has been shown to be most rewarding to consumers with high levels of confidence in their ability to make product decisions without physical tangible experience. However, for direct channel retailers using multiple shopping modes, some important challenges have been in projecting distinctive images and identifying appropriate target markets. In particular, retailers dealing with print catalog- and online-shopping modes have had difficulty in designing programs, in part, because of a lack of research on the effects of cues of quality and the role of personality traits and consumer’ motivations in processing shopping modes.Signaling theory provides an explanation for the effects of cues of quality or signals. According to the signaling theory, retailers have a good idea about the quality of shopping experiences, but consumers might have doubts. Different degrees of signal importance have been found, with easily available cues, such as physical store size, recognizable storefronts, and store designs and layout, being some of the more important ones. This research draws on signaling theory and examines the influence of one of the most conspicuous signals, that is, affiliation with well-known local brick-and-mortar stores. It is the first to explore the effects of affiliation across print catalog- and online-shopping modes.Studies on personality traits and consumer’ motivations in processing different types of shopping modes have indicated that the need for cognition variables can play an important role. In the direct channels’ literature, the need for cognition has received some consideration about its influence on online shopping. But, there have been minimal efforts at examining its effects on print catalog shopping. Moreover, the literature has largely ignored whether it has any influence on the way consumers process the combined effects of the signals of quality and direct shopping modes.The purpose of this research is twofold. First, in the context of a consumer shopping for non-digital products through print catalog- and online-shopping modes, it aims to shed light on the impact of affiliation as a signal of quality. Second, it aims to help clarify the role of the need for cognition variables. This research uses a series of between-subjects experimental designs to test hypotheses. Several findings are new to the literature and offer insights for designing direct-to-consumer programs.

Research is clear that (1) social power is an important part of understanding the relationship between parties in an exchange (French and Raven 1959); (2) digital technologies have shifted more power into the hands of consumers (Füller et al. 2009; Labrecque et al. 2013; Pitt et al. 2002); and (3) there are a range of crowdsourcing activities in which consumers are able to exercise their power (Wilson 2018; Wilson et al. 2018; Prpic et al. 2015). Yet, there exists no research, which provides insight into the consumer perception of power in the context of crowdsourcing, nor there exists a measurement instrument for understanding consumer perceptions of their own power. Enhancing the understanding of these areas is the goal of this research. In this work, we utilize French and Raven's (1959) theory of social power. Specifically, we adapt the Perceived Social Power Scale by Imai (1989) for measuring consumer perceptions of power in the context of crowdsourcing and present the results of an experiment designed to test how individuals in consumer collectives perceive their position of power when engaged in digitally enabled crowdsourcing activities.In this exploratory research, we focus on crowdvoting and idea crowdsourcing. Based on Wilson’s (2018) paper, we compare consumers’ perceptions of expert and coercive power when engaged in either an idea crowdsourcing or a crowdvoting activity. Participants reported their perceived social power in response to hypothetical scenarios in which they engage in specific forms of crowdsourcing. Participants were given a scenario that describes participation in a crowdsourcing endeavor. They were requested to imagine that they are participating in the described crowdsourcing initiative themselves. After this, the participants completed the adapted perceived social power scale.Subjects in the idea crowdsourcing scenario displayed a higher level of coercive power than subjects in the crowdvoting scenario. Contrarily, subjects in the idea crowdsourcing scenario displayed a lower level of coercive power than subjects in the crowdvoting scenario. Our study offers contributions to both the academic literature and to practice. For academics, this research adopts and validates a scale for measuring consumer power in the context of crowdsourcing. For practitioners, our findings provide insights into the power dynamics at play during crowdsourcing activities.

Gamification, the use of game designs and mechanics, has been used to enhance marketing effectiveness. Over the past decade, advertising in games and persuasive advergames have been the two types of engaging technologies for promoting brands. However, it is becoming difficult for researchers in various disciplines to evaluate the impacts of gamification. Researchers and marketers have thus called for research that can provide well-thought-out gamification strategies as well as a thorough review of the state of the literature. The authors answer that call by proposing a bibliometric approach, which offers quantitative analytical tools to provide a more comprehensive overview of the literature. We particularly intend to go above and beyond a simple counting of publications or citations. The present study aims to map out the meaningful citation-based links between and among gamification research documents, and we hope to provide a visual representation of complex, networked, scholarly works.To clearly reveal the intellectual structure of gamification research, the authors compile bibliometric data using the ISI Web of Science, and identified 94 scholarly documents that were published in 32 different scholarly sources by 202 authors within the time period 1995–2018 (1697 citations and 3543 cited references), mostly from advertising and business fields. The authors first used a bibliographic coupling to measure a relationship between citing documents. The result shows the existence of five distinct clusters based on the coupling strength (e.g., research on gamification and cognitive reactions as marketing outcomes), which helps us detect different topical areas and identify new directions of research. The authors further map the intellectual tradition of gamification by assessing the relationship between cited documents. The co-citation analysis allows us to see the existence of six different thematic classifications and their theoretical foundations (e.g., research on gamification in the context of advertising literacy and consumers’ use of persuasion knowledge). The present research is among the first to apply both bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis in exploring the forefront of gamification research and its intellectual heritage.

The paper focuses on online consumer–brand relationships and explores how perceived value can be conceptualized and measured in social media brand pages, by identifying the benefits and costs consumers–members of Facebook brand pages perceive. Data were collected from consumers who follow popular brands on Facebook, with the use of a questionnaire that was uploaded on the Facebook fan pages of two leading companies in Greece. The results indicated that the perceived value in social media brand pages can be conceptualized as a second-order construct consisting of seven relational benefits, i.e., social, special treatment, self-enhancement, enjoyment, functional and advice benefits, and three relational costs, i.e., privacy concern, information overload, and ad irritation. Further, this value had a significant impact on fan page relationship quality. The study proposes social media practices toward the enhancement of perceived value, through a balanced delivery of relational benefits and costs.

Success in new product development (NPD) is elusive. Going to the market with radically differentiated, superior quality products that capture the desires of many consumers is the goal of most companies, yet it is achieved by few. Despite the plethora of research that has considered the “radicalness” and product quality that result from cross-functional NPD interactions, and a lesser set that has considered the role of creativity in driving these outcomes, there has been a lack of research on how cross-functional NPD efforts drive both creativity and the emerging concept of design value to lead to desired product outcomes. This research explores these phenomena and tests our model using 401 responses collected from three countries: the United States, South Korea, and Japan.In considering the organizational dynamics of NPD, this study considers two factors, cross-functional integration (CFI, defined as the extent to which different functional groups can work effectively together, Song and Parry 1997) and superordinate identity (SI, defined as the extent to which organization members can identify with the team to which they belong, are committed to its overarching goals, and feel a stake in its success and failure, Mackie and Goethals 1987) as essential antecedents to drive desirable NPD outcomes. We expect these factors will influence two mediating factors—new product creativity and design value—which lead to traditional product outcomes. New product (NP) creativity is defined as, “the degree to which new products are perceived to represent unique differences from competitors’ products in ways that are meaningful to target customers” (Im and Workman 2004). Following Im and Workman (2004), we consider this construct as a combination of dimensions of NP novelty and NP meaningfulness. In addition to creativity, we also consider the design value generated by the cross-functional effort of the NPD team. As the value of design has not been studied effectively thus far, we adopt a distinction between functional and emotional design value (Kumar et al. 2014) in this study. We examine how the design value and new product creativity, driven by CFI and SI, eventually influence important product outcomes of product radicalness and product quality superiority. The results from maximum likelihood (ML) estimation in a structural equation model in AMOS suggest that CFI and SI must be managed as positive team factors to enhance different dimensions of NP creativity and design value in general which, in turn, differentially influence product competitive advantage. Our findings further suggest that product managers should look carefully at dual routes to gaining product competitive advantage—product radicalness and product quality superiority. Theoretically, we expand thinking in achieving new product success through product competitive advantage to incorporate a combined view of both creativity and design excellence as intertwined and necessary concepts, setting the stage for future work in the area.

Businesses need to innovate in order to perpetuate their survival and existence on the market. However, companies that could not deal with the continuously fast-moving economy ended up by disappearing, such as Kodak who “missed the digital photography revolution” (Lucas and Goh 2009, p. 46). Thus, new innovative offerings can cause obsolescence and the rupture of the previous ones. However, we can witness that some companies are talking about innovation and the fact that, nowadays, ‘doing’ innovation is important, but only a few actually succeed (Tajeddini and Trueman 2008). Companies fear that the brand loses its brand aura, brand personality, and its core values (Morhart et al. 2015). In a branding context, innovation is gaining interest in marketers and researchers’ discussions. In fact, when we aim to provide real examples of luxurious and authentic brands turning their products to innovative digitalized products, we found that the market does not contain much. Although the concept of digital transformation in general has for a long period attracted lot of interests, digital transformation applied to brands and products is yet a recent research path. Thus, from a research perspective, we ignore the impact of products’ digital transformations on consumers behavior related to luxurious and authentic brands.Our study contributes to brands’ challenges of launching innovative offerings by shading light on consumers’ behaviors toward luxurious and authentic brands in the digital era. As it was demonstrated in previous research, consumers are seduced by luxurious and authentic brands because of their perceived added value to their interior selves (De Barnier et al. 2012; Morhart et al. 2015). Thus, our research investigates on the impact of a product’s digital transformation on the perceived luxury level and brand authenticity. However, we examine the watch industry not only because of the watch added symbolic meaning on consumers (Kessous et al. 2017), but also because such an industry, globally known for its handcraft, high precision, and quality (Tajeddini and Trueman 2008), is a threatened industry by digitalization (Glasmeier 1991).

Building on the resource-based view, this research aims to examine how marketing and technical resources impact new product advantage when product design (i.e., product modularity) and process design (i.e., process modularity) capabilities vary. Compared to firm-level resources, project and program level resources are more detailed and less obvious to firms’ competitive advantage. As a result, there have been limited insights on how such resources influence NPD projects in different contexts. Yet, selecting and allocating resources for NPD projects are complicated, challenging, and critical for managers to advance the projects.In this research, modular design in both products and processes is examined as capabilities that impact NPD resource allocation. Product modularity represents a design capability that creates complex products from smaller and independent subsystems functioning together as a whole, while process modularity reflects a capability of reducing the complexity of production process design. Capabilities per se indicate the utilization of resources, but the dual dimensions of resources (marketing vs. technical) and design capabilities (product vs. process) call for knowledge on exactly how they interact to maximize new product advantage.To examine the influence of different resources and their interactions with modular design capabilities, the authors conducted a survey study of managers involved in new product development (NPD) from multiple industries in the United States. Overall, findings show that marketing resources, rather than technical resources, improve new product advantage. However, when product modularity arises, technical resources exert a more positive influence on new product advantage, but the role of marketing resources is constrained. On the contrary, when process modularity increases, the influence of technical resources is indistinct, but marketing resources are more positively related to new product advantage. These findings advance the understanding of resource allocation during NPD projects and uncover that product and process design capabilities are contingency factors for resource allocation. This research also provides implications for managers to distribute resources for developing superior new products.

Although previous research has investigated the impact of sexual objectification portrayals of women on receivers (Peterson and Kerin 1977), there is a dearth of research that examines the impact of females portrayed in a sexually powerful manner. The current research intends to fill this gap by studying these effects and identifying their underlying mechanisms. Sexual power has been identified as one of the dimensions of female power portrayals in contemporary advertisements (Kordrostami 2017). Female sexual power in advertisements is defined as the power of exercising sexuality and attractiveness in such a way that males view women as “alluring” and “seductive” (Kordrostami 2017).Previous research has shown that portrayals of power express the pride of the powerful person (Tiedens et al. 2000). Two types of pride are identified in the previous literature (Tracy and Robins 2004), hubristic and authentic. Tracy and Robins (2007, p. 507) describe these types of pride as follows: “Specifically, authentic, or beta, pride (I’m proud of what I did) might result from attributions to internal, unstable, controllable causes (I won because I practiced); whereas, pride in the global self (I’m proud of who I am), referred to as hubristic, or alpha, pride, might result from attributions to internal, stable, uncontrollable causes (I won because I’m always great).” This study proposes that when female audience views sexual power portrayal in ads, the female’s reaction depends on the type of pride displayed by the female model. If the model displays authentic pride, the audience is expected to respond with benign envy rather than malicious envy (H1), a more positive attitude toward the female model (H3), and more positive attitudes toward the brand (H5). On the other hand, If the model displays hubristic pride, the audience will respond with malicious envy rather than benign envy (H2), less positive attitude toward the female model (H4), and less positive attitudes toward the brand (H5).To explain responses of the female audience to female model portrayals in ads, previous research has been couched within two distinct theoretical frameworks: social comparison theory and self-referencing. We propose that social comparison and self-referencing work in an interconnected manner. Female receivers are likely to compare themselves with the female models in the ads because of the general tendency of comparison to maintain an acceptable level (social comparison theory) (H6). However, this effect is enhanced if they can relate to the female models (H7).Two experiments are conducted to investigate the proposed hypotheses. Our results show that reactions to power portrayals were dependent on the type of pride that is shown by the female model. Furthermore, our data suggest that social comparison increases when viewers engage in self-referencing.

In times of increased connectedness, research gradually starts to unveil the potential side effects of high social media usage (Forbes 2017). Paradoxically, people with higher reported social media usage seem to feel more socially excluded than those who make less use of those platforms (Primack et al. 2017). Social exclusion has been recognized as a growing epidemic, increasingly linked with physical, mental, and emotional consequences (Valtorta et al. 2016; Mourey et al. 2017). By definition, social exclusion is the feeling of being lonely, rejected, isolated, or ostracized (Su et al. 2017). Although a lot has been shown about the causes and the existence of this phenomenon, a recent and growing concern is how the experience of social exclusion affects people’s judgments and decision making.Research shows that social exclusion threatens people’s need to belong (Aydin et al. 2010; Gardner et al. 2000). Specifically, feeling socially excluded leads to a greater interest in making new friends and improves the desire to work with others (Maner et al. 2007). Additionally, social exclusion leads to higher fixation and attention to positive social cues (e.g., smiling faces; DeWall et al. 2009). Therefore, regardless of the specificity of the effects of social exclusion, the reaction is related to an attempt to cope with the self-threat and restore the shaken self.This research sheds light on the role of social exclusion on peoples’ interpersonal judgments. As our studies show, participants have a higher purchase intentions toward a product that was pre-owned by a senior (vs. young) seller (Study 1) and demonstrate more positive attitudes toward an overweight (vs. thin) seller in a selling context (Study 2) when primed with feelings of social exclusion. This research provides several contributions. First, the findings provide initial evidence on the effects of social exclusion on approaching behavior toward stigmatized social groups. More specifically, we argue that feeling excluded might reduce stereotypical behavior, as in our studies people in the social exclusion condition had approaching responses toward commonly stigmatized groups. Contrarily, in the control condition, this effect dissipates.

This research explores authentic ethnic advertisements from the target consumers’ perception of what authenticity in the ethnic advertisement is and how it is constructed. Newman and Bloom (2012) have stated that the higher the perception of authenticity within a product/service, the higher positive attitudes and outcomes toward the product/services. Thus, when advertisements are deemed as authentic, consumers have an overall positive response toward the advertisement itself (Miller 2015). The objective of this research is derived from the lack of literature surrounding authenticity within the ethnic advertisements and the increasing ethnic immigration, which generates a great added capital (Census 2011) for marketers to target.Previous studies have explored authenticity within advertisements (Beverland et al. 2008; Tang et al. 2015; Freathy and Thomas 2015) and ethnicity within advertisements (Appiah and Liu 2009; Zungia 2016) in regard to consumers’ perceptions and attitudes in combination with their ethnic backgrounds. However, many of these studies and replicas came back incoherent with contradicting findings (Cui et al. 2009; Zungia 2016). Authenticity in ethnic advertisement is a topic area that has yet to be explored, which may be the reasoning for the inconsistent findings and a new justification to what consumers look for in ethnic advertisements.Semi-structured interviews took place with the use of photo-elicitation, where respondents brought a few adverts that they felt were authentic to their ethnic background. A construct definition developed of AEA. Additional factors that heighten notions of ethnic authenticity emerged from the data; behavioral, body language, dress code, and social settings. These factors of AEA increase recall, purchase intention, and the overall success factors of the advertisement. These additional factors are more embedded in the consumer’s cultural knowledge of the ethnic background and their overall life experiences, which have been highlighted within the findings. Consumers with heightened cultural knowledge criticized ethnic adverts to a higher standard than consumers with low cultural knowledge, and, their standers to what constituted authenticity was higher. Moreover, notions of ethnic identity play a role on how consumers perceive authenticity within the ethnic advertisement and how consumers self-reference themselves. Consumers with higher ethnic identity and self-referencing perceived authentic ethnic advertisements more positively and increased positive behavioral outcomes toward the advert. This study also shows there are added factors to be considered when developing an authentic ethnic advert such as consumers self-referencing, levels of ethnic identity, location of the print advert (platform), and use of emerging factors of authentic ethnic advertisements, as notions of embedded cultural and ethnic knowledge are presented within these factors.

Online recommendations could be consumer-generated (Park et al. 2007) or personalized recommendations (West et al. 1999). Irrespective of the source, these recommendations help in improving choice satisfaction (Pu et al. 2012). In this study, we explore the moderating role of trust and review valence on the relationship among recommendation source, product price, offer attractiveness, and purchase intention.The primary objective of this paper was to examine the effect of product recommendation/review on offer attractiveness and purchase intentions. The present research extends previous work on online reviews, trust, and review valence. In two studies, we demonstrated how the effectiveness of product recommendations on consumer purchase intentions is dependent on trust, valence, and price level. In study 1, we found that automated recommendations are perceived as more attractive when the product was expensive and the trust in the website was low. On the other hand, this effect was reversed when the trust in the website was high. For lower priced products, lower risk is involved, and the consumers are attracted to the consumer recommendations even when the trust in the website is low.In study 2, we explored the effects of recommendation source and we also added review valence on offer attractiveness and consumer participation intentions and found the only effect was a three-way interaction with the price level. In particular, we found that for low-priced items and when the reviews were positive, consumer-generated recommendations were significantly more attractive than automated recommendations. The same effect was there at higher price levels and when the reviews were negative. When asked about their likelihood to purchase the item, consumers preferred the automated recommendation to the consumer recommendation when the prices were high and the review was positive.Results from this research shed new light on how consumers are influenced by online recommendations. Businesses may use these results to improve their online recommendation system to its full potential.

Unlike non-luxury brands, luxury brands thrive on the principles of rarity associated with a high-quality product, premium pricing, controlled distribution, and personalized communication. Despite such unique characteristics of luxury branding, luxury brand managers lack guidance on how to utilize their social media to engage and influence consumers through the targeted use of social media. Although previous researchers have documented the effect of luxury brands’ social media marketing efforts on customer engagement, most research relies on case studies or self-reported survey data that measure behavioral intentions instead of capturing actual behaviors of the customer. Furthermore, research to date has focused only on a limited number of luxury brands and utilized cross-sectional data collection. Today, big data are available from both firm and consumer activities, making it possible to investigate firm–consumer interactions in social media. Luxury brand managers may benefit from utilizing big data to obtain a more accurate understanding of customer engagement on social media and consequently formulate more effective customer engagement strategies. The purpose of this research is to utilize big data in investigating the impact of a luxury brand’s social media marketing activities on customer engagement. In particular, applying the dual perspective of customer engagement, this research examines the influence of focusing on the entertainment, interaction, trendiness, and customization dimensions of a luxury brand’s social media activities on customer engagement with brand-related social media content. Using big data retrieved from a 60-month period on Twitter (July 2012 to June 2017), this paper analyzes 3.78 million tweets from the top 15 luxury brands with the highest number of Twitter followers. Our results suggest that a luxury firm’s social media engagement to enhance entertainment, interaction, and trendiness pays off in terms of increasing customer engagement with brand-related social media content. An unexpected finding of our analysis is that customization efforts as part of luxury brands’ social media activities did not increase customer engagement with the brands’ social media content. The findings have important implications for the design, delivery, and management of social media marketing for luxury brands to engage customers with social media content.

Globalization has resulted in globally dispersed suppliers (Blackhurst et al. 2005). These disperse suppliers are exposed to multiple unforeseen natural and manmade risks and vulnerabilities (Simchi-Levi et al. 2014; Zsidisin et al. 2004). One of the consequences of exposure to manmade and natural risks is supply chain disruption (Schmidt and Raman 2012; Zsidisin et al. 2004). Therefore, the risks and vulnerabilities faced by the supply chain of large enterprises have made them to focus on monitoring supply chain risks and preparing their organizations to be resilient enough to come back after a significant disruption.Supply chain risk is defined as “any risks for the information, material and product flows from the original supplier to the delivery of the final product for the end user” (Jüttner et al. 2003), and resilience is defined as “the capacity for an enterprise to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of turbulent change” (Fiksel 2006). Based on the systems theory, two types of resilience are identified. They are inherent resilience and adaptive resilience (Buikstra et al. 2010). But the third type of resilience, anticipated resilience, is also recognized as essential, which is the company’s ability to continually innovate and be prepared for any adverse effects (Hamel and Valikangas 2003). All three resiliencies are necessary for the continuity of business after a disaster. Apart from this, companies have also realized the importance of transparency or visibility of inherent vulnerabilities of the firm to which a supply chain is exposed to (Kleindorfer and Saad 2005).This work-in-progress paper is based on the data collected from a major supplier in the United States. It focuses on addressing the question, “how does anticipated, inherent and adaptive resilience, as well as supply chain visibility, influence business continuity programs?” The contingent resource-based theory (Brandon-Jones et al. 2014) is employed to establish and explain the relationship among inherent resilience, anticipated resilience, adaptive resilience, supply chain visibility in performance, and business continuity.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of moral foundations on US consumers’ boycotting intentions against the US company, which is involved in an alleged sweatshop issue at a supplier’s factory in a developing country. Drawing from moral foundations theory, the current study tests six hypotheses that showed the roles of blame attributions and anger in mediating the effect of consumers’ moral values on their boycott intentions. A survey using a representative sample of 1124 was conducted to test the proposed model. The results of a structural equation model analysis showed that individualizing foundations with a special focus on the fairness/care values turned out to be a stronger predictor of boycotts.The causal impact of moral foundations was not so much direct as indirect, since the effect was mediated by blame attributions and anger. Notably, the current research showed that blame attributions and anger were important in mediating the effect of moral foundations on boycott intentions. In other words, the current study demonstrates that US consumers’ anti-sweatshop boycotts are most likely to occur among individuals of high individualizing moral values when they have the capacity to appraise the situation and identify who deserves blame, or when they are angered by the unfair treatment of employees overseas. The current study’s findings are consistent with the results of the consumer revenge model of Zourrig and his colleagues (2009) who identified theoretical linkages between the cognitive appraisal of moral values and revengeful behaviors mediated by blame attributions and negative emotions. When it comes to the influence of anger on boycott intentions, we confirmed that consumer anger could play a crucial role in triggering consumer boycott behaviors. The results are consistent with previous research (Braunsberger and Buckler 2011; John and Klein 2003; Lindenmeier et al. 2012; Makarem and Jae 2016; Xie et al. 2015).The effects of binding foundations on blame attribution, anger, and boycott turned out to be nonsignificant. A plausible explanation is that individuals upholding binding foundations tend to be more harmonious with social order and conform to norms. Haidt and Graham (2007) noted that political conservatives have levels of ethical sensitivity differing from those of liberals. That is, conservatives are more concerned about community-oriented and duty-based morals, such as in-group/loyalty and authority/respect, than liberals are. Therefore, intuitively and promptly, individuals who possess high binding foundations would perceive boycotting behaviors as something against the current social system.

Though counterfeit consumption occurs in various product categories, luxury is the main target for counterfeiters. Marketing researchers revealed that consumers search for “products” within a brand in the nondeceptive counterfeit context (Eisend and Schuchert-Güler 2006; Gentry et al. 2001). This indicates that the genuine brand’s attraction plays a pivotal role in the context where consumer intentionally purchases the counterfeit product. Although previous research has indicated that the purchase intention of luxury brand counterfeits is largely dependent on the consumers’ desire of the genuine brand, it is still unclear how genuine luxury brand affects the consumers’ purchase decision of the counterfeit.Drawing from social power theory and signaling theory, we extend the current research on nondeceptive counterfeit consumption by demonstrating that genuine brand’s social power directly influences the purchase intention of luxury brand counterfeits. Specifically, we propose that the brand social power impacts luxury counterfeit consumption, given that (1) buying counterfeit luxury can be an economical way to gain social status (Perez et al. 2010; Wilcox et al. 2009); (2) status is one basis of power (Rucker and Galinsky 2009); and (3) brand social power is considered as a perceptual concept that links the consumer with the brand (Aaker 2012). Further, based on the consumers’ perceived social gain that leads the counterfeit consumption, we argue that the effect of brand social power on counterfeit consumption is dependent on the consciousness of social face because of positive or negative social evaluation. We draw upon past research (Zhang et al. 2011) to conceptualize face into two correlated dimensions—desire to gain face versus fears of losing face, and propose that when consumer feels a need to gain face by associating with a powerful brand, they will be more interested in purchasing a counterfeit high social power brand; however, when consumers try to avoid losing face, they will be less interested in purchasing a counterfeit high social power brand.While the prior research mainly focused on the positive role of brand in consumer consumption, this study explored the “dark” side of the consumer–brand relationship. It is the first to introduce the brand social power into counterfeiting consumption research. Further, by dividing the face consciousness into two dimensions, this study not only enriches the social identity theory but also helps researcher and brand managers better understand the Chinese consumers’ complex psychological mechanism of buying luxury counterfeits.

In service markets, customers are often uncertain about future service outcomes. To resolve this uncertainty, customers update their expectations of what is to come and use the updated expectations to generate responses or judgment (Hintzman 1988). Accordingly, firms make efforts to deliver free service upgrades to meet or exceed customer expectations (Schneider and Bowen 1999). Such efforts, however, may not necessarily improve the firm’s profitability as customers elevate their expectations over time and become strategic to “cherry-pick” the offers.This paper provides empirical evidence on such strategic choice behavior via the use of individual-level cross-sectional and time-series data from the auto rental industry. Given that customer strategy is driven by their expectations based on the past events retrieved from memory (Bettman 1979), we also investigate the extent that time-dependent forgetfulness, the similarity and recency effects (Bordalo et al. 2017; Murdock 1967), affects customer expectations and the subsequent strategic choice over time.To model the bounded customer expectations, we follow the adaptive expectation framework where customers recursively update their expectations based on prior service experiences. To describe the unobserved customer expectations and their impact on strategic choice behavior in a single framework, we adapt a state-space model based on the Kalman filter algorithm (Hamilton 1994), which allows us to separate out the effect of (recalled) service encounters from that of prior expectations accrued through service usage over time (Akçura et al. 2004).The results suggest evidence of bounded customer expectations. First, memories similar to the current event facilitate customer recall and recent experiences are more easily remembered than remote ones. Further, we observe the presence of positive expectation carryover and its considerable decay. We also find the presence of customers’ strategic choice behavior followed by free upgrades, that is, customers tend to strategically request a car-class lower than or equal to the one that previously resulted in a free upgrade.Building on the theoretical literature in memory, our research provides an empirical framework that accounts for customers’ bounded rationality in customer expectations, which has received less attention from the previous research. Further, our empirical findings via a series of counterfactual analyses provide managerial insights such that free upgrade offers can hurt the firm’s profitability. With no bounded rationality in consideration, however, the firm is likely to be misled to provide more free upgrades in order to increase its profitability.

Answering survey questions can require significant cognitive effort and ability and cause difficulties to many respondents. This difficulty can lead respondents to adopt strategies to reduce the “task difficulty” of answering a questionnaire. Task difficulty has been widely researched in the educational and ergonomics literatures (e.g., Bittner et al. 1989; Hendy et al. 1993; Paas 1992). In the marketing area, there is work to investigate how metacognitive difficulty enhances the evaluation of consumption (Pocheptsova et al. 2010). However, the topic has been neglected in the marketing and market research areas. This research aims to introduce task difficulty and to illustrate its effects using work on brand imagery measurement, specifically on employer branding.An online survey was made with employees as respondents where they were asked to evaluate the image of the company that they worked for using either a projective or direct means of questioning, where the former should involve lower task difficulty. Two dimensions of the brand image were used, warmth and competence. A convenience sample of 440 respondents from a nationally representative consumer panel was randomly assigned to one of four groups in a 2 × 2 factorial, between-subjects design: (Personification (n = 222, 50.5%) vs. Direct (n = 218, 49.5%)) × (Warmth (n = 223, 50.7%) versus Competence (n = 217, 49.3%)).When looking at the responses of people who are given “warmth” questionnaires, the personification approach is rated higher on Task Difficulty. Conversely, when looking at the responses of people who are given competence questionnaires, the non-personification approach is rated higher on Task Difficulty. The results show that the personification approach has a lower task difficulty score only when the competence dimension is used. However, the outcomes are not statistically significant. The expected lower scores for task difficulty when respondents used a projective technique to assess brand image were not found. Task difficulty did, however, vary as expected with respondent demographics, but not as some prior work suggests (e.g., Pressley et al. 1989; Salthouse 1991). Here, task difficulty was significantly higher for younger and for more qualified respondents. The age and education of respondents correlated negatively (p < 0.001). Employers, in particular, might be interested in an explanation, implying a need for further research for employer branding. Prior work in market research has emphasized task difficulty in the context of making sure a survey is well designed (Krosnick 1991). The findings here suggest that there may be a wider issue and that researchers may wish to add a measure of task difficulty as a control variable in a survey questionnaire in general, and in brand image surveys in particular.

Automated driving functions are gradually entering individual mobility markets. First studies on consumer acceptance show that parts of the classical innovation acceptance models can be applied to autonomous driving, but others do not work in this context. As it is expected that perception and evaluation of automated driving functions are correlated with the behaviour of the driver, we investigated if eye-tracking data as an implicit behavioural measurement could indicate the acceptance of automated driving. We developed and conducted a user experience study with a pre- and post-questionnaire, a standardized test track, and 98 test drivers with eye-tracking glasses using level 2 driver assistant systems either with a Mercedes-Benz E-Class or S-Class. The study refers to the Consumer Acceptance of Technology model and adds eye distraction from forward road scenes as an antecedent indicator, while activating the automated “Lane Keeping” function in separated 1-minute slot. Results of structural equation modelling show that despite a lack of significance, our general line of argument is largely confirmed according to which a longer eyes-off-road-time indicates a higher acceptance of automated driving technology. It is assumed that the effects could become more apparent when participants use the automated driving function within a longer period.

The purposes of this study are to explore the effect of consumers’ asset specificity sensitivity (CASS) on mobile payment adoption, to explain this effect by the mechanism of switching costs, and found the moderating effect of product compatibility on the relationship between switching costs and mobile payment adoption.Based on our research purposes, we conduct our survey in a mobile payment service setting. We adopt the in-person questionnaire survey. In order to raise respondents’ motive, we give them 100 NT dollars (around 3.5 USD) as incentives. The total sample size is 352 respondents returned questionnaires. After eliminating incomplete questionnaires, the final effective sample is 325 respondents. We found that the first CASS is negatively related to mobile payment adoption, and switching costs are a partial mediator, which conjunct CASS and mobile payment adoption. Moreover, product compatibility weakens the negative effect of switching costs on mobile payment adoption.Based on our empirical evidences, we apply Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) into the consumer behavior field, and extend the concept of asset specificity to the consumers’ concern before adopting mobile payment service. Moreover, we also combine product compatibility from innovation diffusion, and it gives us a hint on how to reduce consumers’ holdup concern when they tend to adopt mobile payment service. According to the theoretical implication, the current study suggests that mobile payment services providers should enable consumers to perceive lower switching costs. As long as consumers with high CASS perceive high switching cost if they adopt mobile payment services, their adoption intention will be low. Fortunately, increasing the compatibility of mobile payment services will reduce the negative effect from switching costs. Therefore, mobile payment service providers should add more stores, which can apply their services to enhance consumers’ adoption intension of mobile payment service. Future studies can employ the two-stage survey method to collect data and to solve this problem. Further, since we found the partial mediating effect of switching costs on the relationship between CASS and adoption behavior, future studies should take a further step to explore other mechanisms in this relationship.

The modern retail environment is experiencing a shift in how retail service is conducted (Rafaeli et al. 2017). Increasingly, technology is integrated into the retail service, such as Kroger’s new shop and scan program, which encourages shoppers to use scanners while they are shopping to streamline the checkout process (Forbes 2018). Implementing retail technologies can save retailers money by requiring less employee involvement and can also improve the shopper’s experience as shopper data are collected and utilized to create a more personalized offering (Inman and Nikolova 2017). However, personalization alone may not be enough to persuade shoppers to adopt a new shopper-facing retail technology. The shopper’s dependence on technology and their feelings about the invasiveness of the technology may also influence the relationship between personalization and retail technology adoption. This study uses parasocial interaction theory to look at the relationship between personalization perceptions of retail technology and the adoption of that technology using the mechanisms of dependency upon the technology and perceived invasiveness.As shoppers perceive offerings to be more personalized to their specific needs, a level of dependency is developed based around the parasocial relationship with the technology. This dependency negatively influences the level of perceived intrusiveness tied to technology. Without the development of dependency, the perceptions of intrusiveness can limit the shopper’s intentions to adopt the technology. By limiting the perceived intrusiveness through the development of dependency, the service provider can act to limit the issues associated with shopper-facing retail technology. When personalized campaigns increase the dependency associated with the offering, negative effects on intrusiveness and intentions to adopt can create a positive indirect path from personalization to adoption intentions. Moreover, this indirect path provides a better explanation of the influences of adoption intentions than personalization alone.These results will begin to provide academics with a better understanding of how shoppers develop parasocial interactions with technology and perceptions of personalization in shopper-facing retail technology. Additionally, the study attempts to provide recommendations to practitioners on how to effectively implement personalization in the experience for the benefit of their shoppers.

E-commerce companies experience increasing challenges related to the global nature of markets and general economic turbulence. Under such conditions, it is relevant to understand the factors of non-price product competition on the Internet. In particular, e-commerce product policies may considerably influence e-commerce companies’ performance levels. Although existing research has highlighted the landscape and effectiveness of online marketing structures, studies have overlooked a more detailed understanding of the effectiveness of product policies employed by e-commerce companies. This study looks at the effectiveness of product policies generally employed by e-commerce companies. We develop and test a model that captures dimensions affecting the choice of paid versus free e-commerce products, assessing the effectiveness of e-commerce companies’ product policies. The model entails the following constructs: opinions of critics, opinions of users, level of competition, advertising, brand, and paid/free product. For the empirical analysis, a data set was withdrawn from an online platform containing information about the downloads from global firms offering software products. The sample entails software products from firms associated with brands with large name recognition and market cap, such as Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Macromedia, Blizzard Entertainment and Capcom, as well as little-known firms, with small market cap, such as ES-Computing, Bohemian, and Felt Tip. There are 540 observations related to 18 different types of software (e.g., audio, browsers, desktop enhancement, developer tools, digital photo, education, entertainment). Findings supported the general idea that consumers prefer free products and consider various existing alternatives for the solution of their specific needs. Among the factors influencing software download, the largest positive associations with downloads of both free and paid software were reflected in the variables advertising and branding. Users and critics’ reviews and assessments also produced a significant association with the rate of software download for both free and paid software. The study allows establishing implications for managers and drawing avenues for future research.

Marketing is a central business function, and because marketing strategy affects decisions central to generating and sustaining competitive advantage, it plays a significant role in the firm’s overall business performance. Further, marketing’s boundary-spanning nature results in marketing strategies playing a major role in the business-strategy formulation. However, in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, many firms have questioned the value of marketing as evidenced by reduced marketing budgets, less executive time allocated to marketing, marketing increasingly being perceived as a cost, and the reduction in the tenure of marketing executives on top management teams (TMTs). In recent times, from a position touted to be in great peril, marketing executives on TMTs are slowly growing into the role of being significant contributors to firm strategy. In this research, drawing on upper echelons theory and silo-spanning communications research, we investigate how integration of marketing knowledge can go a long way in facilitating strong firm performance. Specifically, we investigate how top management emphasis, silo-spanning communication through formal and informal cross-functional interface mechanisms, knowledge valuation, and knowledge-oriented culture influence marketing knowledge integration and, in turn, marketing and financial performance. The results of our research support our premise that organizations that facilitate the integration of marketing knowledge are more likely to reap the positive influence on firm performance. Specifically, by not facilitating effective marketing knowledge integration, it is firms that fail the marketing function and not the other way around. Overall, modern-day marketing strategy is inherently complex and dynamic, and the ever-changing bundles of knowledge about customers, competitors, technologies, strategies, policies and procedures, and other environmental forces demand continuous integration of marketing knowledge. This research is one of the first to empirically examine the role of the marketing function in impacting firm performance. Specifically, on the foundations of upper echelons theory, this research demonstrates the valuable role that the marketing function can play in contributing to firm performance.

The digitally empowered world has introduced new branding rules that must be acknowledged if managers are to build and manage brands in the digital age (Erdem et al. 2016). Brands are being consolidated into fewer stronger power or mega brands, distant brand extensions are being introduced, and there is a proliferation of multi-category brands (Hill et al. 2005; Keller 2016; Parker et al. 2018). The transformation of brands in the context of the digital environment presents an opportunity to understand how to manage complex brand structures as broad brands. This study investigates the architecture of broad brands as perceived and implemented by managers in the context of digital transformations. The problem centres on discussions in the literature that focus on traditional “static” models of brand architecture. A case study of media brands, specifically broadcast television brands, provides a dynamic context in which to study how changes to the digital media environment are shaping brand management perspectives and practices. The case study investigates a brand in transition that struggles with digital disruption to be established as a broad brand. The brand is a critical case—a leading operator in an industry undergoing transformation. In addition to archival data, field notes and company documents, informants in charge of strategic planning or implementing branding policies from disparate departments in an organisation were interviewed. Forty-three face-to-face and phone interviews of approximately 40–60 min were conducted. Observations from the data include challenges of the broad brand architecture in terms of changing boundaries of the brand and the complexity of relationships between brands. This study develops three insights into managing brand architecture in the digital age and in the context of broad brands. First, it investigates complex brand architecture, which is an unexplored research topic. Second, it identifies brand architecture as a flexible framework. Finally, it identifies a brand platform as a strategy to manage brand architecture complexity and leverage opportunities in the digital environment.

Managerial practices of consumer empowerment are increasingly used by companies from consumer goods sector. Since Fuchs and Schreier’s (2011) foundational works on customer empowerment as a critical strategy for new product development, numerous features have been advanced by scholars to help managers deploy effective empowerment campaigns. These authors have distinguished two types of strategies: empowerment-to-create, which enables customers to submit ideas for new products; and empowerment-to-select, which relies on consumers’ votes to choose products, which will ultimately be marketed. Although academics addressed strong results about conditions of consumer empowerment strategies effectiveness, market research has yet to fully assess relative efficacy (create vs. select) of empowerment strategies on brand variables (word of mouth, brand attitude, etc.). Furthermore, identification of critical situational variables (e.g., the introduction of the rewards effect) remains incomplete and therefore deserves further study. Our empirical findings suggest that managers of consumer goods should refine their empowerment strategies characteristics while implementing them. When companies’ objectives behind empowerment strategies are an enhancement of word-of-mouth toward the brand, performing empowerment to create designs appears more advantageous for companies than empowerment to select. However, coming up with empowerment to select contests is more interesting for companies that want to improve the other behavioral indicators (brand attitude, purchase intention) as they are less expensive and easier to implement as empowerment to create strategies. Then, we show that losing or winning the campaign (and therefore financial reward) for participating customers who take part into empowerment managerial practices does not make a significant difference in terms of impact on brand performance metrics. Our results that did not conclude about dependent variables enhancement in the case of gain suggest that the communication of the outcome of the campaign to the consumer whether it is favorable or unfavorable does not significantly improve the effectiveness of these innovation challenges. Extending recent developments, this research is giving directions for an effective crafting of crowdsourcing strategies and a sustainable contests participation.

The amount of user-generated content (UGC) in the hospitality industry has exploded. Much of it exists in crowdsourced social media, forums, blogs and review sites. Schuckert et al. (2015) did a study on the role of online customer reviews in the hospitality industry and found that reviews can be a strategic tool and have a crucial role in hospitality and tourism management. By investigating user-generated material more thoroughly, the firms can better align their social media messages to the different and unique needs of their social media users (Zhu and Chen 2015). In doing this, they can better leverage the increasingly important social media. Although the predominant strategic perspectives, including the resource-based view, transaction cost economics and positioning tend to ignore the ultimate objects of strategy, the customer, the advent of social media may lead to a change. With the growth of social media and other UGC, there is a significant opportunity to use the views, thoughts, ideas, attitudes and so on from the actual consumer to help build a strategy from the bottom-up, rather than just top-down. Unsurprisingly, a focus on bottom-up or demand-side strategy is appropriate, especially in marketing strategy, where the customer plays such a crucial role. As this UGC is a source of customer intelligence, firms should be able to improve their market research resulting in better strategic decision making. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to understand whether a firm strategy can be enriched by using demand-side insights generated by customers.Resulting in the primary question—How can user-generated content help firms make strategic decisions?In sum, in this research, we argue that the crowd through its production of online content can aid firms in their demand-side marketing research, particularly concerning strategic decision making. Furthermore, as the amount of user-generated content continues to grow, new tools and techniques allow firms and managers to explore consumers more deeply and to create value, new products and services and new business opportunities. This study uses qualitative data from TripAdvisor and computer-assisted content analysis. From this overall sampling frame of user comments using a custom application, we collected customer reviews and comments from three restaurant segments in New York State—steakhouses, Italian restaurants, and seafood restaurants for an overall total of 282,087 comments. The results confirm that accessing consumer insight directly can be valuable in assisting marketers in making decisions, especially demand-side strategic decisions. It further found that crowdsourcing through the use of user-generated content can be a valuable technique in conducting market research. This study contributes to the theory in a number of ways including giving empirical support for the idea by using user-generated content from customers.

Online product reviews have become the single, largest depository of supplementary information that customers use in their product search, evaluation, and purchase process. The innate value of online reviews lays in the valuable information they provide to prospective customers in their decision making. This has inspired researchers to identify the characteristics of helpful reviews. Extent research suggests that helpful reviews are often of certain numeric features, such as lengthy details and unequivocal rating (Karimi and Wang 2017; Mudambi and Schuff 2010). However, these numeric features do not reveal the nature of the review content. Recognizing the importance of review content, recent studies gear toward examining review content, with a focus on sentiment, using text analysis techniques (Cao et al. 2011; Salehan and Kim 2016). Apart from sentiment, the impact of other content characteristics of online reviews is largely unknown.This research explores online review content by decomposing and comparing three fundamental information components that a review may contain: sensory information (i.e., reviewer’s observation), cognitive information (i.e., thoughts/analysis), and affective information (i.e., emotions). These components are directly associated with three fundamental psychological processes (observation, thinking, and emotion) that people experience to interact with and make sense of the world. When writing a review, reviewers tangle various types of information together to construct narratives and express opinions, creating a complex review content. Readers, on the other side, retrieve and evaluate the information of all types to form an opinion on the quality and helpfulness of the review. Distinguishing these different information components and analyzing their direct and combined effects can significantly enhance our knowledge of consumer’s information needs and online search behavior.This research performs text analysis to capture the three types of information in online product reviews, analyze their patterns and effects on perceived information value. Results from analyzing a sample of 56,752 reviews from Amazon.com indicate that sensory information in online review content has a significantly positive effect on online review helpfulness; whereas, this effect is insignificant for cognitive information, and significantly negative for affective information. This indicates that review readers highly value reviewer’s observations and their expression of sensory experience, are indifferent toward reviewer’s thoughts and analysis, and dislike expression of emotions in review content. This pattern is more salient in reviews of search goods than those of experience goods.

Historically, brands have not engaged in social and political conversations for fear of potentially alienating customers. However, in today’s postmodern culture, corporate neutrality has been subject to criticism. Remaining ambivalent on contentious issues is now more of a failing than a virtue, especially in the eyes of certain consumer groups (Beverland 2009).Engaging with sociopolitical issues is not necessarily new for companies. This has often been seen in cause-related marketing and advocacy advertising. However, the emerging concepts of corporate social advocacy (CSA) and corporate political advocacy (CPA) differ in terms of the polarizing nature of the cause. Consider the controversial Nike advertisement featuring NFL football player Colin Kaepernick, the first athlete not to stand for the U.S. national anthem. Nike’s message delivered by Kaepernick was “believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything,” which raised brand awareness among their target demographic. As brands engage in more corporate social activism, however, motives underpinning this activity are increasingly scrutinized (Holt 2002).Prior research has established the relationship between corporate societal marketing and brand equity, in part through building brand awareness and enhancing brand image (Hoeffler and Keller 2002). Our research is concerned with how this variation of corporate social activism impacts brand equity. Particularly, we are concerned with brands that are perceived to be inauthentic in their “wokeness.” “Woke,” added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2017, is defined as being well-informed and alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice. Consumers may react negatively because they question the authenticity of a corporate social initiative and the brand’s follow-through to concretely improve related social issues. We argue that whether affiliation with a political or social cause has a positive effect on brand equity crucially depends on the authenticity of this gesture. Brand equity for social activism marketing thus hinges on whether the brand engages in practices that match its message.The contribution of this research thus is twofold. First, the authors martial the disperse literature around the marketing dimensions of CSR and corporate sociopolitical advocacy to inform the concept of brand activism. Second, this paper draws on an exploratory study to produce a typology of brand activism. In particular, we investigate issues of authenticity (Wettstein and Baur 2016) raised by brand activism efforts when contrasted with brand practices. The resulting typology reveals when brands are more likely to be perceived as “woke washing” or inauthentic in their marketing, as their practices may not clearly align with their messaging. As such, this work produces a clear and theoretically grounded set of implications drawn from the fast-evolving attitudes of consumers toward brands that signal their activism via marketing communications.

In today’s globalized world, geographic locations have emerged as hubs of cultural influences, historic uniqueness and economic development. Each geographic location possesses distinct characteristics, emanating from the cultural, historic, community and people traditions, which can be moulded into a brand experience. Hence, the concept of place branding is garnering attention from academic as well as governments and industry experts. Place branding refers to the development of geographic locations as a unique brand with distinctive traits, given the national and cultural identity aspects. However, unlike the product/service brand, the place brand is a multilevel concept. The growth prospects of tourism, competitive ecosystem and the multilevel experiential dimensions make place branding an important research area.The existing academic research analyses place branding based on functional–utilitarian, cultural–subjective and community–experience related aspects as distinctive elements. However, the current research landscape on place branding is beleaguered with challenges arising from the lack of a commonly acknowledged description, issues related to considering a place as a branded entity and lack of a common framework. Henceforth, this paper aims to develop a framework for place branding, highlighting the interactions across the subjective, utilitarian and experience-based elements, and the vital role of brand heritage by putting people and their intangible living heritage at the center. The study was conducted in the context of the historic city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India (UNESCO recognized First Heritage City in the country). The rich legacy, multiethnic communities and multiple-religious (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Jain, Sikh etc.) dimensions of Ahmedabad were the important criteria for selection.The study adopted a qualitative approach—the methods employed were in-depth interviews of 34 selected city residents, and multi-sited ethnography covering 18 sites that have high historic and heritage legacy. Content and thematic analysis of the data collated from the study resulted in four vital themes: the meaning of heritage, place as an element of brand heritage, people as an element of brand heritage and enablers of a heritage place brand. The study resulted in a cohesive model for place branding, with a clear dynamic of the subjective, utilitarian and experience-based elements. The insights of the study contribute significantly to academics, industry and future research avenues.

U.S. retailers lose in excess of $350 billion in sales per year due to returns (Appriss 2017). The area of product returns continues to be an under-researched area, despite its significance to manufacturers and retailers (Yon Seo et al. 2015). To date, a large amount of the research on product returns seeks to identify personality traits of customers, which can be used to pinpoint and predict who will return products (e.g., age; Daunt and Harris 2012), or to provide evidence that strategically increasing the stringency of return policies will reduce returns (e.g., Petersen and Kumar 2010; Powers and Jack 2013). In contrast, the current research investigates whether a strict return policy is always in the best interest of the retailer. We investigate whether a lenient return policy can have a positive long-term impact on retailers by favorably influencing brand image and other related brand outcomes.Drawing on cue utilization theory, we study the influence of return policy stringency on retail brand image and consumer behavioral outcomes, such as willingness to pay and intentions to revisit a retailer. We test our hypotheses in an online experiment with 80 participants. We find empirical evidence that a lenient return policy was effective in increasing consumers’ brand image and trust, and that brand trust mediates the relationship between return policy stringency and brand image. As consumers’ brand trust increases, a lenient return policy improves brand image faster than a strict return policy. Further, a lenient return policy increased consumers’ intentions to purchase from the retailer, but may have no impact on the amount of money consumers spend, only increasing their likelihood of purchasing the brand when they know it is easy to return. For supply chain and brand managers, the results of this study reveal that the strictness of the return policy impacts more than the effort consumers exert to return products and the firm’s bottom line—the return policy also directly influences brand image, brand trust, and purchase intentions.

In solution business, solution providers use boundary resources (i.e. the individuals/boundary spanners who span interorganizational boundaries and the interfaces that help coordinate interfirm relationships) to coordinate their networks. However, due to modularization and digitalization of solution process, these interfaces may have taken over or complemented the functions of boundary spanners. Boundary spanners may also have new functions due to these changes. Thus, this research aims to explore how solution providers can utilize diverse boundary resources simultaneously to orchestrate large and diverse solution networks. A multiple case-study approach studies three companies with digital platforms that orchestrate solution networks in the LED and ICT industries. In this research, 37 semi-structured interviews have been conducted with employees at different levels in the companies and with their customers. Documents and archival records have also been collected and analysed. Thematic analysis has been applied to analyse the data. The research findings reveal the functions of interfaces, which include module providers’ categorization and ranking, module reconfiguration, module standard testing, network communication and responsibility specification. Boundary spanners also develop new functions, including capability examination, resource mobilization, network representation and strategic planning. The functions of interfaces offer the infrastructure for boundary spanners to reconfigure networks. For example, boundary spanners mobilize resources among network members through the supports of interface functions, such as module categorization and ranking as well as network communication. On the other hand, boundary spanners’ function of capability examination complements the interface function of module provider categorization and ranking. Some traditional functions of boundary spanners, such as communication and module reconfiguration, have also been taken over by interfaces. This research contributes to the boundary spanner literature by extending boundary spanners’ functions. It also contributes to the B2B network literature broadly by pointing out the use of boundary resources to orchestrate a large and dynamic network with diverse business partners.

Value proposition and business ecosystem are well-established concepts in business literature. However, further delineation is needed about their relationship and drivers. This study examines the moderating role of customer’s business change for the development of value proposition and its relevant business ecosystem. We applied case study research strategy with analysis methods of the inductive theorizing and the abductive reasoning. Therefore, four different customer cases of a small-sized software firm were examined. The results revealed that the level of customer’s anticipated business change affects the value proposition’s complexity and the required business ecosystem, as complementary resources and capabilities are needed to fulfill the changed customer needs. Based on our analysis, we introduce four empirically testable propositions about the causality between the elements of business change, value proposition, and business ecosystems for further research.

Customer mistreatment of frontline employees (FLEs) is a widespread phenomenon and is detrimental to employee well-being driving increased job stress, work withdrawal, and employee incivility (Wang et al. 2011). To date, research in this field has focused on exploring the antecedents and conditions that trigger customer mistreatment of FLEs, mapping the reactions and consequences of customer mistreatment of FLEs. The role of supervisory interventions in managing the immediate impact on FLEs from such disruptive experiences has yet to be addressed, despite constituting the only proximal resource that can be enacted to help FLEs cope with in-progress episodes of customer mistreatment (Zhan et al. 2014). Drawing on the premises of the job demands–resources (JD-R) and conservation of resources (COR) frameworks, the current research employs an experimental methodology and explores how two of the most common forms of customer mistreatment toward FLEs (verbal aggression and demand for untenable service levels) affect FLEs’ psychological and behavioral reactions. In addition, the buffering effect of three supervisor leadership styles on FLEs’ psychological reactions and behavioral intentions following customer mistreatment is investigated.Through scenario-based experimental designs, two studies were conducted. Study 1 draws on full-time FLEs working in hotels and its results confirm that FLEs’ psychological and behavioral responses to customers’ display of verbal aggression and excessive demands vary significantly. Customer verbal aggression is associated with higher FLE retaliation intentions and role stress, the display of excessive demands from the customers’ side is associated with higher FLE rumination and stronger withdrawal intentions than verbal aggression. Study 2 adopts a 2 (customer incivility: verbal aggression/excessive demands) × 3 (supervisor leadership style: empowering/directive/laissez-faire) between the subjects’ experimental design, and draws on full-time FLEs working in hotels. Results of study 2 suggest that empowering and directive supervisors reduce the depleting effects of excessive customer demands on FLEs’ psychological and behavioral responses significantly more in comparison to laissez-faire supervisors. Also, supervisory styles differ concerning the extent to which they can reduce the depleting effect of customer verbal aggression on FLEs behavioral responses, with directive leaders reducing FLEs retaliation intentions significantly more, compared to both empowering and laissez-faire leaders.

With technology increasingly integrated into the retail experience and a decrease in the availability of retail employees, the responsibility for initiating service encounters in a retail setting has shifted from employees to customers in many situations. However, as many as 90% of shoppers will leave without making a purchase rather than asking for help from an employee (Businesswire 2014), adversely impacting perceptions of service quality. This paper uses signaling theory, which is primarily concerned with differential access to information (Connelly et al. 2011), to look at the process through which shoppers create impressions of an employee. Employee apparel is proposed as a primary signal regarding anticipated service quality, which may act as a predictor of their wiliness to approach an employee.Although employee apparel has been conceptualized as a potent atmospheric cue, little work has been done on the relationship between employee apparel and service expectations. A conceptual model is proposed with perceived expertise mediating the relationship between employee apparel and service expectations.This study provides evidence that formal attire increases consumers’ perceptions of expertise and, through expertise, perceptions of service quality in a retail setting. Employees in formal attire, such as a lab coat, were perceived as having more expertise than those dressed in less formal attire, such as a white polo and khakis. Additionally, consumers’ perceptions regarding expertise were positively and significantly related to service expectations. Expertise significantly and fully mediated the relationship between apparel and service expectations. This suggests that the formality of consumer apparel can influence the ways in which shoppers view a retail employee and may impact the way in which they evaluate the retail service. Therefore, in services where expertise is of substantial importance to customers (e.g., genetic testing, salons, etc.) using more formal employee apparel may signal expertise to customers as well as raise their expectations of the service being provided.This study is the first step in exploring the complicated relationship between customer perceptions of employee apparel and their evaluation of the retail service. Although much work needs to be conducted to fully understand the influence of employee appearance, these findings help to fill several gaps by showing why the outfit is important as well as showing the ways in which apparel impacts service expectations in a retail environment.

As they shop and consume, individuals spend time with friends and significant others. As generalized as joint consumption is thought, most studies to date focus only on its consequences. Research has paid little attention to its antecedents and neglected the possibility that both being with others (companionship) and shopping may provide consumers with distinct but, crucially, related benefits.We model the utilities of the activity and companionship during the activity as two endogenous dependent variables. This allows determining whether companions enhance shopping or impair it, and vice versa, what shopping does to companionship. A random-effects model with instruments is calibrated on data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS; United States Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016).Overall, in the total sample, the utility derived from sharing time with companions ( u i sharing $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{sharing}} $$ ) and the utility of performing or doing an activity ( u i doing $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{doing}} $$ ) tend to synergize; people enjoy being with companions, and even more so if they also enjoy what they do, that is, u i sharing → u i doing > 0 $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{sharing}}\to {u}_i^{\mathrm{doing}}>0 $$ and u i doing → u i sharing > 0 $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{doing}}\to {u}_i^{\mathrm{sharing}}>0 $$ . This changes dramatically by activity subsamples. When shopping for groceries both u i sharing → u i doing < 0 $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{sharing}}\to {u}_i^{\mathrm{doing}}<0 $$ and u i doing → u i sharing < 0 $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{doing}}\to {u}_i^{\mathrm{sharing}}<0 $$ , a situation we call antagonism, which implies that enjoying the company and accomplishing shopping goals are opposed. The mechanism by which companionship promotes shopping seems to be that companions improve social utility to a sufficient degree to reverse the negative effects that shopping has on the enjoyment of companionship. Thus, promotions for physical shops should make salient the presence of specific roles—spouse, children, and/or friends—during shopping in order to motivate potential shoppers. Importantly, children positively contribute to both u i doing $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{doing}} $$ and u i sharing $$ {u}_i^{\mathrm{sharing}} $$ only when shopping or when hanging around at a mall. In experiential consumption, for example, dining out or sharing drinks, the signs reverse and both companionship and activity tend to build each other, with the endogenous utility estimates being one order of magnitude larger than for the total sample.

Consumers often sample products sequentially when shopping. Haptic information influences consumers’ evaluation of a product (Biggs et al. 2016; Kampfer et al. 2017; McDaniel and Baker 1977; Schifferstein 2009). This research draws on the literature on how people differ in their need for touch (Peck and Childers 2003a, b) and how they are influenced by order effect in their product evaluation (Biswas et al. 2014; Li and Epley 2009; Mantonakis et al. 2009; O’Brien and Ellsworth 2012; Quigley-McBride et al. 2018).The Need-for-Touch (NFT) scale is divided into two dimensions: (1) instrumental and (2) autotelic (Peck and Childers 2003a). Consumers’ preferences and motivations on using haptic information differ, and some are more chronically inclined to use touch as an information source (Peck and Childers 2003b). Autotelic touch is about unplanned examination of multisensory product relationships and no purchase goal is required, just an interest to examine product via touch (Klatzky and Peck 2012; Peck and Childers 2003a). High autotelics, due to larger exposure to haptic information and using haptic sense more, are leaving out haptic information of the evaluating process when it is not diagnostic for the task (Krishna and Morri 2008). Therefore, we hypothesize that autotelic need for touch has a significant effect on product evaluation (H1).Sequential sampling leads participants to compare samples against one another, using the first sample as an anchor. We suggest that anchoring leads to perceived wins and losses when samples differ. Kahneman and Tversky (1979) find that subjective gains are perceived smaller than subjective losses. Schifferstein et al. (1999) find this asymmetry in consumer evaluations of an experiential product. Following the diagnosticity-based model that, for example, Krishna and Morrin (2008) use, high autotelics are capable of leaving the haptic perception out when evaluating a beverage, whereas low autotelics involve the haptic information into their taste evaluation. We hypothesize that when sampled in a sequence, sampling order moderates the effect of autotelic need for touch on product evaluation (H2).We tested our hypothesis in two separate studies where participants evaluated coffee. Participants were divided into low and high autotelics based on the autotelic NFT scores (Peck and Childers 2003a). When haptic information was minimal, low and high autotelic groups did not differ in their evaluations. However, when sequential sampling and haptic information (flimsy/firm cup) were introduced to the test setting, the results show that autotelic need for touch has a significant effect on product evaluation, but only if the firm cup is sampled first.Order effect moderating autotelic need for touch, and thus, influencing product evaluation needs to be kept in mind when designing tactile products and experiences as there is no “one size fits all” solution.

This paper investigates the effects of shopping center value dimensions on customer satisfaction and loyalty and the moderation effect of distinct levels of university education (Bachelor vs. Master/PhD) in Morocco, Africa. A shopping intercept survey generated 244 usable questionnaires. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. The findings show that utilitarian and hedonic values significantly affect customer loyalty, but not customer satisfaction. The socialization value significantly influences customer satisfaction, it does not affect customer loyalty to a shopping mall. Utilitarian and hedonic values affect customer loyalty to the mall.Further, the university education level moderates the effects of utilitarian and nonutilitarian value dimensions on satisfaction and loyalty. In particular, the effect of shopping mall utilitarian value is stronger for higher than for lower educated customers. The effect of shopping mall hedonic value on satisfaction is stronger for higher than for lower educated customers. Its effect on loyalty to the shopping mall is also stronger for higher than for lower educated customers. Shopping mall relaxation value significantly influences only the satisfaction of lower educated customers. It has no significant effect on loyalty to the shopping mall. The effect of shopping mall socialization value on satisfaction is stronger for lower than for higher educated customers. Finally, the effect of shopping mall socialization value on satisfaction is stronger for higher than for lower educated customers.Mall managers interested in Morocco and similar African countries should focus on factors that enhance the socialization value of the mall, especially when they target highly educated customers.

Car manufacturers offer a wide variety of driver assistant systems. Each system is a technological development bringing us closer to fully autonomous vehicles. In this specific constellation of an innovation process, the total disruptive potential of an autonomous car can already be imagined by consumers, but will be reached only after years of incremental developments. Our study focuses on the usability measurement of existing automated driving functions by using the System Usability Scale (SUS). Compared to most of the studies dealing with automated or autonomous driving in general, this work is based on a real driving experience. We conducted a user experience study with a pre- and a post-questionnaire, using 207 test drivers who took part in a 1-hour standardized driving assignment on a defined driving route within Stuttgart (Germany) using either Mercedes-Benz E- or S-Class. Results indicate that the usability of automated driving functions is already in an acceptable range even if functions are still far from full automation. We could not find any group-specific differences in usability assessment. The data analysis also shows a significant correlation between a positive usability evaluation and an intention to purchase corresponding vehicles with automated driving functions.

The proliferated use of different types of social media has greatly influenced various aspects of people’s lifestyles around the world. Consumption is one of the important areas affected by social media usage. More specifically, nowadays we see more and more people uploading photos or videos and even streaming their consumption experiences on social media. For example, today it is quite common to see photos or live videos of eating in restaurants and attending concerts shared and streamed by Facebook or Instagram users. The aim of this research is to develop and test a conceptual model explaining this phenomenon and suggest implications for the affected industries, as no research to date has examined the impact of social media usage on status consumption. Two main research questions we address in this paper are: how do social media usage impact the motivation for product or experience consumption? And how does involvement in social media can affect the way that people consume the products and experiences motivated by social media involvement?In the conceptual model developed in this research, by using uses and gratifications theory, we show how tools and features of social media facilitate and motivate self-presentation. Moreover, social media usage offers more visibility for the users, which is the main factor determining the social value of products. Additionally, in the model, with support from literature, we hypothesize that both the encouraged self-presentation by social media usage and the social value resulted from the visibility provided by social media increase the tendency for status consumption. This status consumption stimulated by social media usage would take place in public. However, here this public consumption is presented to online audiences in social media through uploaded photos or videos. Therefore, we call it “online public consumption.” In other words, involvement in social media can turn consumption of experiences such as eating in restaurants or attending concerts into public consumption or more accurately saying, into online public consumption. We would test the model through a survey study and offer managerial implications to those industries in which consumers’ motivations and behavior have been influenced by social media usage.

Worldwide, companies should give due care to managing stakeholders’ perceptions and reactions to business practices pertaining to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). A basic belief underlying this sea change in corporate action and thinking is that if done right, CSR can generate “win–win opportunities” for companies, the environment, and stakeholders (Carvalho et al. 2010). Employees, not only considered as internal stakeholders but also as credible spokespersons to and for other stakeholder groups, have gained increasing attention in the marketing literature in the past decade (Diehl et al. 2015; McShane and Cunningham 2012). In particular, there is a dynamic stream of research analyzing the outcomes of CSR practices on employees (Roeck and Maon 2018).Using social identity to guide our research, we build on and extend the growing body of literature exploring how companies profit internally from business practices and policies pertaining to CSR. In particular, our overall objective was to develop and empirically test a CSR-Outcome-Model. A cross-departmental investigation with the employees from a national division of a global company selling fast-moving consumer goods is reported (n = 135). In order to test the conceptual model, the data were analyzed with Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using smart PLS 3.0 software.We tested employees’ evaluation of perceived CSR as well as CSR authenticity as it is related to employees’ organizational pride and to firm-beneficial as well as individual-beneficial outcomes in the workplace. Firm-beneficial outcomes are directly linked to the company’s performance and prosperity. Individual-beneficial outcomes are linked to the employee’s personal welfare. The firm-beneficial outcomes include loyalty to the company, trust in management, and positive word-of-mouth, whereas individual-beneficial outcomes include job satisfaction and emotional well-being. Furthermore, employees’ involvement in CSR is regarded as a moderator that intervenes in the relationships.Our results suggest that employees’ evaluation of perceived CSR and perceived CSR authenticity strongly impact their sense of organizational pride. In turn, outcomes beneficial to the firm (trust in management, positive word-of-mouth) as well as individual-beneficial outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional well-being) are enhanced with an increase in organizational pride. Finally, employees’ involvement in CSR has a moderating role in the perception–social identity mechanism. Implications for internal CSR management, directions for future research, and limitations are discussed.

This research focuses on the sustainability approach of the public healthcare industry, functioning as a service network. This present study particularly considers time as a guide for research, in view of the fact that in service businesses, long-term relationships really must consider time as a core issue (Hedaa and Törnroos 2008), since sustainability efforts not only evolve through time but even vary through time (Høgevold and Svensson 2016).The research objective is threefold: (1) to frame the foundation of healthcare organizations’ past and present sustainability efforts; (2) to frame the direction of a healthcare organizations’ sustainable development; and (3) to reveal and characterize what determines the foundation and direction in a public healthcare sector. This study aims at providing the basis for a consistent and organized comprehension of sustainability and time, as the result of an ongoing process over years of accumulative insights and experiences from fieldwork, research, and relevant literature.This study is based on the public Spanish healthcare industry, which enabled avoiding the contextual bias because the research team could control the potential influence of other industry characteristics (Hartline and Jones 1996). Public hospitals depend on public funding. The central government in Madrid has a sustainable development strategy. In this respect, it is important to emphasize that Spain consists of 17 autonomous regions, which implies that local governments can take independent decisions in relation to the central government. The studied public hospitals were therefore selected on the basis of judgmental sampling (Fischhoff and Bar-Hillel 1982).The findings indicate that the leadership of the healthcare organizations had a higher involvement of top-level management in the past, and the organizations were more committed to sustainability efforts than in the present. The findings also indicate that the healthcare organizations also planned and provided some funding in the past to support employees’ desires to engage in sustainability efforts.

Comparative advertising (CA) has been used in the United States for decades, with the time the United Kingdom being less. Excepting Chang (2007), little is known about gender differences in responses to comparative ads and little attention has been devoted to regulatory focus and CA (see Higgins 1997; Kao 2012). This study contributes by examining the role of ad format (direct vs. indirect CA—DCA and ICA, respectively), gender, and message framing for UK consumer response in the context of Regulatory Focus Theory predictions.The product used in this research is analgesics because they are often a target for CA. Direct and Indirect Comparative Ads were pretested for the Internet survey (N = 153 final sample). A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial between subjects’ design was used, with ad format (DCA vs. ICA); promotion versus prevention framed messages (Regulatory Focus Theory) and gender.Results revealed that claim believability and brand beliefs for the Direct Comparative Ad (explicit comparisons between named brands) were stronger than for the Indirect Comparative Ad treatment level (with no ad format differences for attitude certainty). Promotion message framing produced the highest claim believability and strongest brand beliefs. In addition, males were more certain of their attitudes than were females.The strength of comparison (direct or indirect), the framing/regulatory focus of the message (promotion or prevention) and gender matter in consumer reactions to a message. Further, these variables interact to impact message response. DCA with a promotion message framing produced the highest attitude certainty. Males were impacted more strongly on claim believability and brand beliefs when exposed to promotion message framing. In addition, females respond with stronger claim believability and brand beliefs to prevent framing. Framing, Gender, and Comparative Ad Type combine to impact attitude certainty, with the highest certainty resulting from a DCA ad with framing promotion and when exposed to males.This study shows that the effects of comparative advertising format, gender, and message framing for attitude certainty do not mirror the effects on conventional outcome variables, such as brand beliefs or claim believability. Except for attribution theory, research, belief, and/or attitude certainty are often not measured in advertising research, especially comparative advertising. Future research should measure the combined audience impact of message framing and processing styles for argument strength and expand the range of outcomes to elaborate on belief and attitude certainty, given these interesting results. Insights need to be revealed for other products, comparative advertising formats, and metacognitive variables.

Blockchain was first described in 1991 by Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta as a methodology to timestamp documents and became popular with the introduction of cryptocurrency in 2008. A blockchain can be both public and private and is often described as a special ledger (like a spreadsheet) with five distinctive features. (1) It is distributed, with no central database that if a copy is corrupted others can replace it. Although each participating member on the blockchain has access to the database, there is no single controller of the information. Every member can verify transactions directly without involving intermediaries. (2) Transactions are peer to peer. There is no central node for transactions. Each peer stores and forwards transactions to all other peers. (3) It is transparent, with all transactions visible in the blockchain. Members are given access to the blockchain and all nodes of the transaction. (4) It is immutable. Once a transaction is created in the chain and the accounts are updated, it cannot be altered. (5) It is based in cryptography, the connection of the blocks is cryptographically secured, and the last line of the block is added as the first line in the next block. Each block is connected to the preceding chain making the record chronological and permanent. Furthermore, the blockchain can be programmed to include rules that activate transactions between nodes. Blockchain technology expedites and solves many business challenges. For example, blockchain technology can be used for payment processing, fraud detection, supply chain management, and verification of ownership.Blockchain technology continues to gain recognition by consumers and companies promising to disrupt existing centralized establishments while improving transparency and increasing accountability. This special session has several objectives. First, we will discuss blockchain technology and how it functions. Second, we will introduce cases of how industries are using this technology. Finally, we will propose a research framework that corresponds with four distinct exchange relationships: consumer-to-consumer, firm-to-firm, firm-to-consumer, and consumer-to-firm.