ABSTRACT. Consumers constantly engage in attributional search when they are faced with firm’s moral transgressions when using marketing tactics. We examine the interplay between perceived consumer deception, anger, and guilt, as moral emotions and attitude towards an external source. Our findings indicate when brands and retailers jointly deceive consumers, consumers will not differentiate between brand and retailer in their perception. Externalized anger arises from deception and mediates the link between perceived deception and attitude, whereas self-directed anger as a result from perceived guilt influences attitude positively. These findings stress the relevance of moral emotions and their behavioral relevance when deception occurs.

ABSTRACT. The purpose to explore the evolutionary paths of corporate efforts in connection with business sustainability in both the marketplace and society. A qualitative study was undertaken with respect to a convenience sample of reputable companies in Norway, which have implemented significant business sustainability efforts within their organisations, the marketplace and in the society, beyond the level of mere compliance. Different evolutionary paths are associated with corporate efforts in connection with business sustainability. Business sustainability efforts are not static, but dynamic and based upon continuous flexibility to changes and adaptations over time. The current study highlights the need for further research into the evolutionary paths of corporate efforts in connection with business sustainability in the marketplace and society. A key suggestion for further research is to further explore the existence of other evolutionary paths. This study contributes to seven evolutionary paths of corporate efforts in connection with business sustainability that are both relevant and potentially fruitful to both scholars and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. Founded in 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aims to protect vulnerable consumers from businesses such as payday lenders, car title lenders, subprime mortgage lenders, and other consumer financial services, whose core target market shows demographic characteristics of lower incomes and lower levels of education. While supporters of this new bureau believe that these consumers are more vulnerable than other groups (c.f., Chatterjee, Goetz, and Palmer 2009), other researchers argue that these consumers are wise about their financial situation and do not need such government regulation (c.f., Cole 2015; Cole 2007; Rhine, Greene, and Toussaint-Comeau 2006). Demographic characteristics of consumer financial services users are well-established, but psychological characteristics and attitudes of this group are not. Thus, this research seeks to examine the impact of psychological variables such as gullibility, self-control, interpersonal influence, cognition, and the ability to judge value on attitudes and behaviors of consumer financial services users.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, a novel scale for the customer’s perception towards brand greenness is evaluated using measurement invariance tests that utilize multigroup confirmatory analysis (MCFA) and administered to participants of Germany and India. A measurement model was developed from an 18-item scale, whose factor structure was determined using CFA. The model was then subjected to strong invariance constraint and it was found that the model supports full configural, full metric and partial scalar invariance. Boxplots and probability density functions help visualize and compare the data distribution of the18-items between Germany and India, eventually guiding in elucidating the reasons for the support of partial scalar invariance, as opposed to full scalar invariance. This work establishes the cross-cultural validity of the new 18-item perceived brand greenness scale, which is an important step forward in the scale development and validation process.

ABSTRACT. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections among men and women in several economically developed countries. Despite HPV indiscriminant behavior and high prevalence, some high-risk HPV types are well recognized for their role in the etiology of cervical cancer (Munoz et al., 2003). Evidence suggests that although HPV testing is clinically effective in monitoring for cervical cancer, women are still reluctant to undergo such testing. Considering that, this research aims to explore the existence of judgments and stereotypes towards women that undergo HPV test and whether those are acting as barriers to aderence on HPV test. We confirm the existence of stereotypes towards women that undergo HPV testing and receive positive results for the virus. As expected promiscuity stereotype was found, but only for women that do not know what is HPV. We highlight that other possible stereotypes can be even more influential to women attitudes towards HPV testing and those until now did not receive the deserved attention. The victimization stereotype is one strongly present and demands further investigation. By understanding the content of stereotypes towards women that do the test for HPV will allow professionals of marketing to improve the current campaigns developed to promote HPV and cervical screening tests.

ABSTRACT. The submission is a structured abstract and is attached.

ABSTRACT. In the current inquiry we add to evolving research (e.g., Merchant, Latour, Ford and Latour, 2013; Merchant, Ford, Dianoux and Herrmann, 2015) on how consumers respond to nostalgic advertising by examining the cultural differences in the evocation of nostalgia. We contend that nostalgic reverie can engage the consumer, but there are cultural differences in the types of nostalgia that are evoked among consumers. We discuss work in progress findings from three studies in India that reveal ad-evoked nostalgia has five dimensions: personal memories, positive emotions, negative emotions, physiological reactions and collective nostalgia. These findings are unique and distinct from previous research. For instance, in the U.S., Merchant et al. (2013) found that nostalgic reactions evoked by ads have a strong autobiographical memory element and are self-focused emotional experiences; elsewhere, in France, even though there is an autobiographical element to nostalgia, there is also a national heritage evocation. In this present research involving India, there is concurrent evocation of individual and collective dimensions of nostalgia. These findings are novel and useful from a theoretical and managerial perspective and should be viewed in the backdrop of a large emerging middle class in India and the predominant collective nature of the country.

ABSTRACT. We explore females' reactions to a non-explicit, but still sexually-themed, advertisement. Specifically, we consider the role of female sexual self schema (SSS) in the identification of the level of sex present in such an advertisement, and then resultant effects on attitudes and purchase intent. We find that while SSS has no effect on the perceived level of sex present, it does influence resultant dependent variables, particularly for low-SSS females. Informed by our study and extant literature, we also offer areas for further SSS-based advertising research, particularly regarding issues of females' perceptions of advertisement and brand fit with sexual themes.

ABSTRACT. Past research has manipulated ‘passive’ white space (i.e. ‘the structural space around the ad such as between the margins or borders’) and found that subjects who viewed the ads with more white space perceived the firm as a market leader with a more prestigious, high-quality brand image. However, the current research explores how active white space (i.e. ‘the space between individual logo elements’), affects brand perceptions (while keeping the passive white space constant). The study findings reveal that the presence of active white space in a logo design enhances brand perceptions through conceptual fluency (i.e. semantic or meaningful elaboration of the design), and not perceptual fluency (i.e. ease of visual processing of the logo design elements). The study results not only support the proposed model, but also pave the way for future research on active white space as more than just an impressionistic design tool.

ABSTRACT. Stimulated by the increasing flood of information in today’s modern societies as well as the recent popularity of minimalistic design, the present research investigated the influence of cognitive depletion on consumers’ preferences for varying levels of design complexity. It was proposed that preferences shift depending on people’s cognitive resources. The hypothesis was tested that high levels of cognitive depletion increase the preference for minimalistic design as compared to situations of low cognitive depletion. This hypothesis was based on an amalgamation of the fluency theory and the arousal theory. As predicted, the results demonstrate that an impairment of people’s cognitive capacities increases their preference for less complex product designs. The implications as well as limitations of this finding are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The use of erotic stimuli in advertising is a common technique in marketing communication and can be found for a wide range of products. However, when creating erotic advertising, it is important to consider the target audience because male and female consumers might react differently to different types of erotic advertising. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyze negative effects through anger and positive effects through activation of different types of erotic advertising on the purchase intentions of heterosexual female and male consumers. The results of the study show that for female consumers, the use of an erotic couple leads to higher activation and higher purchase intentions than the use of a male or female model. In addition, using a couple or a male model produces lower levels of anger. Male consumers show lower levels of anger when faced with a female model as compared to a male model, but advertising with a couple does not lead to different levels of anger than advertising with a female model. Moreover, a female model or a couple produces higher activation of male consumers than a male model. Men’s purchase intentions do not depend on the type of erotic advertising. Based on the results, the use of a couple can be recommended when targeting female and male consumers at the same time, when only targeting female consumers, and when only targeting male consumers.

ABSTRACT. In order to increase the awareness of the negative effects of smoking, warning messages were applied to cigarette packages all around the globe. As such warning messages receive high level and frequency of exposure at the point of sale, they are supposed to be highly effective in influencing both health beliefs (attitudes) and smoking related behavior. However, previous studies on the effectiveness of warning messages rely on respondents’ self-reported reactions. Reasoning the potential bias of social desirability as well as the respondents’ ability, motivation and willingness to answer such questions in a reliable manner “these answers may not reflect actual behavior and hence may not provide an objective assessment of the effect of graphic warnings ” (Azagba & Sharaf, 2013, p. 709). The present study takes a different approach by assessing the explicit and implicit (automatic) effects of different warning messages on cigarette packages. The objective is to answer two main research questions: Do smokers react differently regarding self and other-oriented warning messages and pictures on cigarette packages? Which combination of messages and pictures offers the biggest impact on attitude regarding smoking on an implicit and explicit level? Our results show that the impact on the attitude regarding the product (cigarette package) greatly differs regarding the used combination of picture and message content on the conscious and unconscious level.

ABSTRACT. In this research, we propose that babyish-appearing product designs will lead to altruism and are advantageous in promoting green products. We conducted three studies (two lab experiments and one empirical modeling) to provide evidence for the proposed effects and their underlying process. The current research extends previous work by providing a theoretical lens through which to examine consumer favorable responses to babyish-appearing product designs when the product is perceived as pro-environmental.

ABSTRACT. E-commerce sales in the U.S. are growing continuously. While overall e-commerce sales are increasing, the giant e-commerce site, amazon.com, is even outperforming all of the others in the e-commerce industry. Then, what makes Amazon more successful than, and different from, other e-commerce sites? The answer to this question is critical for the other e-tailers who would like to benchmark Amazon. Amazon aims for a higher level of interactivity with customers via live chatting, e-mail, etc. and provides proactive personalization such as a recommendation system and easy access to customer reviews on site. This study therefore examined: 1) the relevant influences of the B2C vs. C2C interactivity feature quality on loyalty intention mediated by flow and technology acceptance and 2) the moderating effect of proactive engagement in word of mouth (WOM). Participants were recruited using a US online consumer panel and were included if they had shopped at amazon.com within 12 months prior to the start of the study.

ABSTRACT. Online piracy of digital content including that of music, movies, software, games and other products continues to be a huge issue for businesses and public policy makers for a number of reasons. First, online piracy takes up significant amounts of Internet bandwidth – 24 percent globally, and 17.5 percent in the U.S. Additionally, a study from the Institute for Policy Innovation concluded that global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 lost American jobs, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues (RIAA 2014). Given the economic and social impact of digital piracy, it is important to study what factors influence the piracy rate and especially whether key marketing mix elements, such as price, affect consumers’ decisions to engage in online piracy. This study uses Equity Theory as a framework in order to analyze the impact of price, product and purchase related experiences, as well as word-of-mouth, on digital piracy rates. Equity Theory was created and popularized by Adams (1963) and is especially used in social exchange within organizations. We use Equity Theory in order to analyze how perceived inputs, such as price and information search, as well as outputs, including product quality and popularity, affect the rate of piracy for copyrighted products. This represents a different perspective compared to studies that focus only on the ethical side of consumers’ decisions and brings attention to product related factors such as price and product quality.

In order to measure the piracy rate for digital content, we downloaded the number of “leechers” (users downloading pirated content at a certain time) for the top 120 most downloaded games from Pirate Bay during a ten-day period. In order to test our model, we also downloaded data regarding the price for each game from Amazon, as well as the quality rating assigned in its reviews from Metacritic. We measured consumer interest in the digital product by using Google Insights and the search index provided for the exact name of the product. We performed a multiple regression procedure using SPSS, with piracy rate on a proxy showing the content from Pirate Bay as the dependent variable, with product price, review rating, search rating and popularity index as independent variables.

The key contribution of this study is represented by the confirmation of the relationship between the price of digital content and the online piracy rate. While until now researchers have discussed the importance of price in various contexts on consumers’ willingness to pay for a product or on perceived price fairness in the context of piracy, it was usually in a close relationship with other variables, such as risk and product functionality (Miyazaki et al. 2009; Nunes et al. 2004; Sinha and Mandel 2008). This study shows that there is clearly a positive relationship between the price of digital games and the rate of download from Pirate Bay.

Other findings also underline the impact of word-of-mouth in social media, therefore demonstrating the effect of interpersonal sources of influence on piracy rates. Nevertheless, besides just popularity in social media, including platforms such as Twitter, consumer engagement in information search on websites such as Google is also a good predictor of online illegal downloads for digital content, as that relationship was also supported.

References available upon request.

ABSTRACT. Online user reviews shape consumers’ purchasing decisions, but these reviews are influential only if consumers consider them trustworthy. Building on the three-factor trust model, this study investigates three review attributes—valence, rationality, and source—and their impacts on review trustworthiness. It examines the role of one consumer characteristic — uncertainty avoidance—when moderating the relationship between review attributes and review trustworthiness. This study also analyzes data from the United States and China to explore cultural disparities. Using scenario-based experiments, the study finds support for the impact of review attributes on review trustworthiness, which was true in both cultural contexts. However, moderation by uncertainty avoidance differed across cultures. This study provides firms with service design insights to promote trustworthy reviews, and reiterates the importance of cultural contexts.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to investigate the hedonic dimensions of service-learning that would persuade more students to participate in service learning and that alter the service learning experiences into transformational learning experiences. In-depth interviews with students participating in the Alternative Break (AB) program, as well as observations of AB group meetings prior to and after the AB trips, were conducted to develop a better understanding of how fun, feelings, and play have a role in service-learning experiences of students. Additionally, posts of the participants on AB related social media sites were followed and analyzed. The preliminary results suggest that some students participate in some service learning programs incidentally without any ideological or self-impression related motivation, and their service learning experience is changed to a transformative learning experience as a result of fun, feelings, and fantasy in addition to rational aspects of the experience. The two main factors that intensify the importance of the hedonic dimensions are community and genuineness. These findings have significant implications to attract marketing students to participate in such a service-learning context and to help them gain skills necessary for acting as socially responsible business people

ABSTRACT. Marketing faculty, as well as experts writing for practitioner audiences often exhort students in marketing to use research and make data-driven rather than intuitive or instinctive decisions. Despite this, informal observation indicates that there appears to be significant reluctance among students to purchase research reports in classroom marketing simulations. No published research appears to address the marketing research purchase question directly, creating a significant opportunity to advance scholarship and pedagogy by investigating the extent of perceived reluctance to buy research and the underlying reasons for student reluctance. The present study involves undergraduate student teams at a university in the eastern United States, participating in a commercial marketing simulation as part of an upper-division marketing management class in the 2015-2016 academic year. Quantitative research investigates the relationship between research purchase and measures of team performance in the simulation; qualitative research is drawn from (anonymized) student reflections on the simulation experience, including discussion of the purchase and use of research in the simulation. Results will be discussed and future research directions considered.

ABSTRACT. Learning, student motivation, and mobile technology are three components of most contemporary college classrooms, yet the academy has divided opinions as to what mix of the latter two maximizes the former. The following manuscript investigates those questions of student choice and learning in a real-world setting and offers recommendations for designing a classroom policy of use of mobile technology. A two-part field study demonstrates that student choice in incorporating mobile technology into the learning environment has a deleterious effect on intrinsic motivation and student performance.

ABSTRACT. Given the rapid growth of social media and particularly online use of video for marketing purposes, it is important to evaluate how much exposure and skill development in video development marketing students should possess upon degree completion. Nearly all marketing courses do not include a video development project despite the rapid growth of this medium in marketing. This may be attributed to the traditional discipline boundaries which position video production elsewhere. This paper provides one approach with which a marketing instructor may integrate a video creation project into a college marketing course. The project exposes students to script-writing, storyboarding, shooting and editing raw footage, and, most importantly identifying the goal of the video. Additionally, we provide insight into student attitudes regarding this experience and offer suggestions for improvement. We hope that this paper fosters discussion of this issue and potentially greater use of video development in the discipline of marketing. 

ABSTRACT. This study examines how scarcity appeals in advertising affect advertising effectiveness and purchase intention. This study uses two types of scarcity signals: limited quantity due to supply and limited quantity due to high demand. Limited quantity due to supply indicates product uniqueness and limited quantity due to high demand indicates product popularity. For limited quantity ad by supply, the results indicated that need for uniqueness affects attitude towards ad and attitude towards products. In addition, advertising effectiveness is directly affected by attitude towards ad, not attitude towards product. However, attitude towards products is positively related to attitude towards ad. For limited time ad by demand, consumers’ need for uniqueness affects attitude towards ad which influences advertising effectiveness. However, there is no effect of attitude towards products. Advertising effectiveness influences purchasing intention for both ads. For managerial suggestions, it indicates if retail stores want to promote uniqueness, they should concern the type of product that they are promoting as well as the persuasiveness of the messages that is on the ad. On the other hand, if retail stores decide to use scarcity signals that are based on demand, which also is about promoting popularity, then they need not be concerned with the type of products to promote. However, they do need to make sure that the ad is appealing and messages on the ads are persuasive.

ABSTRACT. Natural disasters are a rare, yet inevitable part of living on Earth. As a result, disaster planning and preparedness are crucial for the continued safety and wellbeing of a city or nation’s population. Planning and preparedness are also important for organizational wellbeing and success, and for the cohesive synergy of the individuals in a company.

The successfulness of the response to a disaster can be the direct result of the formulation and execution of the plan; however, poor response can also be attributed to a lack of adoption of a plan that leads to the failure of its implementation. Similarly, effective plan formulation, implementation, but perhaps most importantly, adoption are imperative for a successful response to an organizational failure.

In this paper we use a marketing strategy-implementation framework to diagnose communication successes and failures in the case of four well-known international natural disasters to provide further insight into the difficulties but also the possibilities of strong organizational preparedness and plan implementation. Using the framework, we identify four possible outcomes of the planning and implementation process and discuss the implications of each. Using literature from marketing strategy and emergency response communication, and four case studies of natural disasters, we then provide seven common reasons why plans are often not successfully implemented and present several lessons and takeaways that can be learned from these.

ABSTRACT. Different word categories in advertising have distinct impacts on consumers’ perceptions of a good or a service. This study tests the use of verbs, nouns, and adjectives among bilinguals. Study 1 examines word category use among bilinguals who speak both English and Chinese through an open-ended questionnaire. Experiment 2 manipulates the word category of advertisements, and asks participants to fill in the measurement scales. Study results indicate that (1) bilinguals prefer adjectives and nouns in general, while using more verbs when confronted with Chinese contexts; (2) bilinguals have better attitudes to noun-composed advertisements than to verb and adjective ones; (3) English advertisements are perceived as more informative than Chinese ones, while noun-composed advertisements are perceived as more informative than the ones with verbs or adjectives; (4) there is an interaction between language and word category on purchase intentions. Specifically, noun-composed advertisements are more efficient in affecting bilinguals’ purchase decisions in Chinese contexts, while adjective-composed advertisements work better in English contexts. Managerial implications for global advertisers are provided.

ABSTRACT. Considerable research has demonstrated that distinctive racial groups process advertisements differently than their non-distinctive counterparts. Much of this research reveals that perceived similarity and targetedness with the actors in a target advertisement influence a viewer’s attitude toward the ad. The current research builds on the findings of Brumbaugh and Grier (2006) by examining the attitudes that multiracial individuals have toward advertisements featuring multiracial actors. The results provide needed insight into the attitudes of the growing number of multiracial individuals in the United States.

ABSTRACT. This study proposes a brand authenticity scale based on consumer assessment considering the hierarchical structure of the scale’s dimensions. A survey was conducted (780 individuals) via online panels, in Brazil and the United States. As a result, a consistent and parsimonious scale was obtained, based on 10 dimensions, which form the construct: spontaneity, quality commitment, essence, nostalgia, values, simplicity, design, originality and origin. Also, the IRT procedure was conducted in order to analyze the hierarchical structure of these dimensions. A brand can possess a dimension with higher hierarchy without others with less impact and could be evaluated as more authentic compared with another with less important dimensions. This paper contributes to the literature of brands by developing a metric that addresses dimensions unexplored, so far. For managerial purposes, the scale is a tool to assess the brand positioning and therefore provide new strategic approaches and to keep track of the changes in brand awareness.

ABSTRACT. There is misalignment between how the brands are categorized in the literature vs. how consumers actually view these brands. The works found in the branding literature related to the antecedents of the different typologies of Brands (global, local, etc.) have been founded in categorizations based on objective criteria: the academic brand definitions, which have been formally used by academics and managers of firms or founded on diverse approaches aiming to get the consumer perceptions. On the other side, consumers do not know these academic definitions and might see the brands differently. The antecedents in relation to the determination of a specific typology of a brand should be defined by the consumers who make the purchase decision. Therefore, the logical way to classify brands would be based on the consumers’ perspective and not by the way in which the managers of firms or the academics classify them. This article relies on the results of an empirical research through a survey made among Mexican consumers based on a methodology which follows the suggested attitudinal categorization principles by . The results provide an actual categorization of leading brands commercialized in the Mexican Market into Global, Local and Glocal based on the consumers´ perspective and demonstrate that there are important differences in the categorization of brands vs. the traditional approaches found in the literature. This research work introduces a new methodology to categorize brands. Using this methodology Managers may define in a better way the Brand’s marketing strategies for current brands or brand re-launches.

ABSTRACT. The literature calls for more insights into how political brands are communicated to and understood by voters beyond a western context. Further, there are explicit calls for more research on political brand image from an external orientation. Responding to this gap, this study explores the political brand image among the young voters in the context of India following the 2014 General Election.As there are very few models to understand external brand image, this study build on the work of Pich and Armannsdottir (2015) and assess the transfer potential of the ‘brand image framework’. Qualitative research was undertaken and a total of 17 Focus Group discussions (FGD) were conducted in the leading cities of India such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad. The present study has found that BJP party has a strong governance and connection with the people by customizing messages and integrating traditional and new platforms. This approach facilitated them to develop a comprehensive image among the young voters. Additionally, their leader superimposes on the party. However, voters believe that there should be proof of the performance by the party and be related to their actual life and new digital channels can be used to exaggerate the viral impact in India.This research critiques the ‘brand image framework’ and the revised model offers academics and practitioners a framework to deconstruct the external view of a political brand.

ABSTRACT. Reductions in government funding for higher education in the United States (US) and the UK (Brookes, 2003) have increased interest in the marketing of institutions of higher education (Chapleo, 2007; Mazzarol and Soutar, 2008; Jevons, 2006; Bennett and Ali-Choudhry, 2009; Joseph et al., 2012). Empirical research on the branding of these institutions, however, is still emerging, with scant research on university heritage and its impact on student choice. This inquiry examines the construct of university brand heritage. Study 1 explores the various dimensions and manifestations of university brand heritage. Study 2 utilizes exploratory factor analysis to reduce the items generated, while study 3 employs confirmatory factor analysis assess the dimensionality. Finally, study 4 experimentally manipulates university heritage, and provides a preliminarily exploration of its consequences among a student sample. The findings build on research in branding by examining the unique context of institutions of higher education, and provide practical guidelines for how and when to develop promotional materials that extol a university’s heritage.

ABSTRACT. Strategic collaboration within and between firms is consistently associated with superior performance. Balancing supply and demand so that firms have more of what customers want and less of what they do not want is also recognized as a means of improving customer satisfaction and firm performance. Recent studies indicate that internal sales and operations planning (S&OP) enables demand and supply integration. However, successful S&OP implementations are relatively rare because the process is not well understood. Extant S&OP research is primarily focused on describing stage models, technology implementation and outcomes of S&OP rather than on identifying antecedent factors like organizational orientations that may facilitate effective S&OP. Building on the VRIO version of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this paper develops a conceptual framework of organizational orientation antecedents of S&OP. Our framework proposes that a series of complementary organizational orientations (service orientation, internal market orientation, financial orientation and supply chain orientation) collectively promote organizational culture that enables S&OP.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, academic and practitioner interest in consumer-generated online reviews (OCR) has increased. One of the potential reasons for such growth in interest is their categorization as a valuable source of information for consumers making buying decisions online (e.g., Archak, Ghose and Ipeirotis 2011). Those decisions are influenced by both the negative and positive information about a product or service that is posted by their peers online (Forman, Ghose and Wiesenfeld 2008; li and Zhan 2011). The financial impact of online reviews is apparently so immense that Amazon recently even sued reviewers it claims sell fake reviews .

OCRs consist of elements dealing with review valence (e.g., number of stars), review volume (total number of reviews over the same product), a textual portion (where reviewers are allowed to openly provide further information), usefulness of the review (number of yes/no to the question “was this review helpful to you?”), and verification that the reviewer actually purchased the product. In addition to these variables, readers can also deduce the variance of the review valence, since the distribution of reviews among the different valence levels is also reported. This study reviews the predictive capability of 16 different automatic methods over the usefulness variable of OCRs, by employing just the textual portion of the review as the input data under consideration.

ABSTRACT. Acknowledging the ontological and epistemological differences inherent between formative and reflective measurement paradigms, we advocate an information processing approach in explaining the efficacy of these approaches in conceptualizing attitudinal constructs. Specifically, we focus on the measurement of corporate reputation, examining two competing measurement conceptualizations: second-order reflective model versus second-order formative model. Drawing from dual processing theories we explain the underlying theoretical mechanisms at play in the activation of reflective versus formative conceptualizations of corporate reputation contingent upon an individual’s level of ‘need for cognition’ trait. Using mobile phone customers in two countries, we provide empirical validation to both conceptualizations, and thus both reflective and formative models are plausible. However, their model fit varies across the levels of individuals’ ‘need for cognition’. As a methodological contribution, we propose a novel ‘jackknifing’ methodology in structural equations modeling to conduct statistical tests of our proposed cognitive contingency model. By this means, the study brings us one step closer in an attempt to reconcile the validity of both measurement paradigms.

ABSTRACT. Paradoxically, while researchers appear to agree that a culture represents a “complex whole” (Tylor, 1871/1920), the dominant logic in studying culture is using symmetric tests (e.g., correlation/regression analysis), that is, to deconstruct the ingredients in a culture’s complex whole and report on the “net effect” of the impact of each ingredient (i.e., each specific capability and habit). The present article proposes a holistic (“recipe” or “algorithm”) post-positivistic approach to theory and data analysis to examine the impacts of alternative cultural complex wholes on consumer tipping behavior. The study here includes substantially re-examining and extending the theory and findings by Lynn et al. (1993). The present findings support core tenets of complexity theory (equifinality, opposing ways individual ingredients contribute to the same outcome, and causal asymmetry) and offer a deeper, richer, perspective of how cultures’ affect consumer behavior than conventional positivistic tests.

ABSTRACT. For businesses operating globally, employees may be located overseas, which can affect their social identity, performance, and identification with their organization and assigned market. When offshore employees view their organization as being especially valuable, they may lack connectedness with the assigned market. In particular, when employees have strong organizational identification with the home headquarters, they may fail to cultivate an understanding of the local market. Although the current literature has highlighted such pitfalls concerning a high level of organizational identity, it cannot be assumed that a linear relationship exists between organizational identity and international business performance. There should be no consensus that an organization can achieve better performance by weakening its organizational identity. Our goal is to identify conditions under which a high level of organizational identity and identification improves or harms business performance. For this purpose, we conducted a survey of offshore employees who were currently or who had previously been posted overseas for more than one year. Our survey yielded a sample of 657 respondents. Our study showed that organizational identity has a linear positive influence on international business performance. Organizational identification with the local business unit turns out to be a negative predictor variable when overall organizational identity is perceived as weak.

ABSTRACT. Global brands profit from similar positioning strategies in different target markets to realize economies of scale and scope. Building a global image by global advertising gives a brand more power, value, and credibility. By creating identification for consumers, global brands symbolize values of global consumer culture. When purchasing global brands, consumers feel cosmopolitan, knowledgeable and modern, are part of a specific global segment and consider global brands as a common language all over the world. The objective of this paper is to examine effects of international advertising strategies highlighting dimensions of brand globalness (global myth, social responsibility, quality signal function) on consumers who have a similar culture, but differ in consumer ethnocentrism. Consequently, two countries, Germany and the USA, are chosen because these two countries are rather individualistic countries but are supposed to differ with regard to consumer ethnocentrism. The results show that consumers who have a similar consumer culture can differ in consumer ethnocentrism. The results further provide the notion that emphasizing a specific dimension of brand globalness in advertisements can have positive effects on global brand attitudes. It does not matter which dimension is highlighted when less ethnocentric and individualistic consumers are addressed with advertising for a global brand. However, when more ethnocentric individualistic consumers are targeted, ads for a global brand should use the global myth. This paper contributes to a broadened understanding of how to successfully and innovatively advertise global brands by examining advertising strategies for global brands that have not previously been analyzed.

ABSTRACT. Touch is one of the five senses, which plays an important role in the evaluation of product and purchase decision. This paper tried to see, how need for touch is a barrier in an online shopping context, where it is not feasible to touch a product. This study tried to identify two factors which may acts as compensatory mechanism for inability to touch a product during online shopping. The factors are return policy and e-tailer’s image. Through this study we proposed that need for touch is likely to moderate the relationship between these factors and consumer response. Through a scenario-based experimental design, the study tried to propose the role of return policy and e-tailer’s image as a compensatory mechanism for inability to touch a product while shopping online. Potential contributions and directions for future research have been discussed in detail.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines how the displacement performance (i.e., a positive or negative change from the prior time period) of service quality attributes influences customers’ service experiences. Random effects GLS regression is applied to analyze this effect in a sample of over 50,000 observations from the post transactions surveys of a Fortune 500 rental car company. Results confirm that displacement performance has a significant effect on customer experience evaluation, even after controlling for the influence of attribute positional performance (i.e., the static performance levels) and the customers’ prior overall service experience evaluation. Further analyses indicate that the displacement performance effect is stronger for some service quality attributes when there is a short time interval between service deliveries. Finally, the study shows that negative displacement performance has a greater influence on experience evaluation than positive displacement performance. The results imply that managers should manage displacement perceptions in order to enhance customer experiences.

ABSTRACT. What is the firm’s role in influencing their customer’s experience? Despite its prominence and popularity in practice, it is unclear what customer experience management (CEM) as an overall business focus means or entails. To establish what is known about CEM and conceptualize a construct for it, we systematically and critically review existing empirical evidence. This study identifies 37 studies with empirical CEM evidence that explicitly discuss CEM within a business-to-consumer (B2C) context, and from a firm’s point of view. The authors find 31 CEM practices, each falling within three types of CEM: (1) strategizing (2) operating and (3) enabling the customer experience. Emerging from our study is the emphasis on studying and designing more holistic customer journeys, fostering more unified organizational behavior, and having more strategic front-line employee involvement. Implications for marketing management strategy emphasize the need to focus on experience quality and not just product, channel or service quality.

ABSTRACT. Purpose – The research objectives of this paper are to a) define a sub-category of consumer misbehaviors—the trivial but paradoxically impactful misbehaviors we call social irritants—and b) empirically test for their existence. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses scenarios presented in online instruments to gather cognitive ratings of social norms and affective ratings of personal responses to 18 different consumer misbehaviors, grouped by an a priori assignment of each misbehavior into social irritant or non-social irritant group. Calculating a ratio of affective response over cognitive norm for each misbehavior, we test for differences between social irritants and non-social irritants. Student’s t-test was used to confirm these two forms of misbehavior in both sets of tests. Results were statistically discriminatory in both sets. Findings – Findings support the Region–ß paradox and proposed definition of social irritants. We found significantly higher ratios of affective over cognitive in social irritants than in non-social irritants. In addition, we found much higher affective scores for social irritants than anticipated. Implications – For researchers, we propose that social irritants are an important and overlooked phenomenon within consumer misbehavior and set the stage for future research into the antecedent and consequential attributes surrounding social irritants. For service marketers, the evidence suggests that apparently trivial infractions of social norms (e.g., rancorous behavior in a restaurant or texting in movies) by one customer could have significantly more impact to other customers’ affective response to the service experience, possibly similar to the impact experienced in situations perceived as more serious.

ABSTRACT. Experiential consumption represents a unique, and exceedingly popular, type of marketing behavior. Existing theory and research in the field of psychology suggests that one of the primary drivers of experiential consumption could be the concept of self-expansion. However, self-expansion as a factor in experiential consumption research has yet to be fully explored. The present research examines the following questions, what type of experiences lead to higher levels of self-expansion? What factors lead to self-expansion and how does self-expansion influence outcome variables such as evangelizing, price consciousness, and repurchase intention? Using a scale adapted from social psychology, self-expansion, as it relates to experiential consumption, is explored, levels of self-expansion stemming from different experiential categories are compared, and the influence of self-expansion on outcome variables is examined

ABSTRACT. This article investigates the movement of customer demand across private labels and national brands according to a gain-and-loss analysis. To account for these shifts, we also differentiate among price tiers: low-, middle-, and high-price segments. We seek to close a research gap by analyzing purchasing behavior according to 2010 and 2011 German panel data that reflect reports by more than 35,000 households.

In this abstract, we present the data and methodology, then describe the results of our gain-and-loss analysis of how low-priced national brand buyers have moved to low-priced private labels. We also outline some important implications for manufacturers and retailers.

ABSTRACT. Continuous supply of innovations is important for firms to remain profitable in a rapidly changing technological and market environment. This paper, first, builds on the notion of persistent innovation with reference to approaches to learning about and tracking customer needs, the development of new market offerings, the development and implementation of internal processes, and the development and implementation of specific marketing programs. Second, characteristics that reflect a strong marketing and R&D interface, that is, connectivity, cooperation, knowledge exchange, and knowledge integration are identified. Third, recognizing that firm orientations, that is, internal customer orientation, market orientation, learning orientation, technology orientation, and entrepreneurial orientation, are important for firms focused on persistent innovation, a conceptual framework that synthesizes relevant literature streams is developed. The framework reveals empirical potential for better understanding of how organizations can continuously innovate for competitive advantage in the marketplace. Discussion and future research directions are provided.

ABSTRACT. Ambidexterity has been suggested to be an important organizational mechanism through which two contradictory types of learning – exploration and exploitation can be simultaneously pursued and balanced, in order to ensure both current and future organizational viability. Given the tensions that exist between exploration and exploitation research has focused on how organizations can attain ambidexterity and the important antecedents to organizational ambidexterity. In this paper we suggest that strategic orientations, specifically entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation could be important antecedents to ambidexterity based on the firm-wide guiding principles that these orientations apply in order to guide firm behaviors and actions. Further, we study the influence of prior stock of knowledge on these relations, as well as the relation between ambidexterity and firm performance. Results indicate that both strategic orientations enhance an organization’s ability to be ambidextrous, and that certain types of knowledge stock can be an advantage or a detriment to both the influence of strategic orientations on ambidexterity, and the influence of ambidexterity on firm performance.

ABSTRACT. Committed employees lead to a better long-term performance of organizations. Thus, managers and scholars have a strong interest in enhancing organizational commitment. Research on the effectiveness of commitment-enhancing measures report mixed effects based on employee-specific differences, creating a need for individual packages of commitment-enhancing measures (PCEM) for each employee. Long ago, customer-oriented marketing faced a similar challenge, resulting in the development of customized marketing activities. Against the background of internal marketing, which treats employees as “internal customers,” this conceptual paper argues to extend the strategy of customization from the customer-oriented to an employee-oriented perspective. The subjective nature of organizational commitment and perceived organizational support pleads for an application of customization in this new context, although studies note individual differences in perceived value of customization activities. Viewing organizational commitment through the lens of customization suggests a positive effect of customizing PCEM on organizational commitment because customization considers employee-specific differences and creates a feeling of having made a contribution. As a consequence, future research should empirically test the effect of customizing PCEM on organizational commitment.

ABSTRACT. Brand community identification is an important aspect of brand community membership, which conveys the feeling of belongingness that exist among its members. Despite the fundamental nature of this concept in brand community research, recent research on brand communities, especially online, tends to focus on the participatory and behavioural aspect of brand community membership. This study puts brand community identification back in the front stage, and uses the Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) to explicate its formation, also seeking to verify whether brand community identification generates higher levels of brand loyalty. The study involved qualitative interviews with 22 brand community members on official Facebook Pages to refine the research hypotheses, followed by an online survey of 448 Facebook Page members. The results reveal that informational and human-related benefits contribute to the formation of brand community identification, supporting the value of UGT as an explanatory framework. Interestingly, brand community identification leads to higher levels of attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty, supporting the idea that active community participation is not the only way to reap benefits of a brand community.

ABSTRACT. Although online reputation has attracted significant attention among marketing practitioners, research in this area is still limited. In this paper, the authors examine the antecedents and consequences of online reputation from the customer’s perspective. A structural equation modeling approach is used to test the model based on data from a survey of 1100 French online buyers. The results show the impact of trust and heritage on online reputation, as well as how online reputation affects customer commitment and word of mouth. Several implications either in terms of conceptual or managerial insights are then discussed.

ABSTRACT. Consumers expect greater involvement in the product and service offerings of firms. In response, the integration of collaboration in product development (CPD) is growing in importance. Collaboration can be viewed as a “looking glass” technique, which fosters an enhanced sense of shared identity by promoting a “we” versus an “us-them” orientation. Drawing from social identity and exchange theories, the current research shows how collaboration influences perceptions as new products are developed. Earlier studies in this context suggest that CPD may be useful in enhancing consumers’ relationships with companies. Extant research devoted to consumer-firm identity shows the importance of collaborating with consumers, yet little empirical evidence exists to illustrate how CPD will influence consumer outcomes. Of specific interest in the present research, then, are the implications of CPD across specific temporal occurrences in the product development timeline. Importantly, results show how CPD can favorably influence product evaluations as collaboration becomes more embedded (i.e., occurs earlier) in development. Additionally, the effects of CPD are delineated by manipulating its presence in the rudimentary phases of idea creation (Stage 1) and selection (Stage 2), through the advanced stages of creation (Stage 3), and to the point of product promotion (Stage 4). CPD has a pivotal role in decreasing social distance and informing consumers of a firm’s relationship efforts. Since the conditional indirect effects of CPD vary, these results have important implications for consumers, marketers, and brand managers.

ABSTRACT. The current research examines the varying effects of different message forms in advertising— whether the ad message is depicted in a pictorial or text format—on advertising persuasiveness, as measured by brand attitude and purchase intentions. Building on construal level theory, we find that, when the product consumption is to happen in the distant future (Study 1A) or the seller of the products is geographically located far from the consumer (Study 1B), the advertising that uses text messages is more persuasive than the advertising that uses pictorial messages; however, such differences do not emerge when the product consumption is to happen in the near future or the seller of the products is geographically located close to the consumer. In Study 2, we extend these findings by identifying another variable—product purchase cycle—that alters the psychological distance of consumption: we find that pictorial messages are more effective than text messages for the products that have short purchase cycles, while the reverse was true—that is, text messages are more effective than pictorial messages—for the products that have long purchase cycles. We rule out alternative explanations for the findings such as consumer familiarity, hedonic/utilitarian consumption, and durable/non-durable goods. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study evaluates the impact of specific words in the textual portion of online customer reviews (OCRs) on their perceived usefulness, as assessed by readers. The importance of online consumer reports has been highlighted by previous research, as well as by recent law suits. This research implements Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), a natural language processing method that allows for the automatic analysis of large amounts of text. Results show that both low-level information in the consumer reviews relating to user experience and high-level information that confirms sellers’ claims regarding product features and characteristics, contributed equally to increased perceived usefulness. The impact of different measures of the length of the text portion of the review over the variable usefulness was tested. The applicability of this method to assess online reviews and the related practical implications are discussed as well as why based on trust theory low level and high level types of information what have this impact.

ABSTRACT. Using text mining and sentiment analysis in a user-generated context (Twitter sentiment), we attempt to better understand the value and implications of using text mining and sentiment analysis for promotion strategies and new-product development. Additionally we offer new insights into competitive analysis and real-time knowledge extraction by examining the introduction of a critical discontinuous technology (iWatch) and its impact on different competitors when the technology is far from mature. This research demonstrates that ignoring social sentiment may be costly for firms, that social media contexts of various brands differ vastly and insights extracted from social media have potential implications for new product development, and that firms should invest more on product service instead of product promotion if there has been little buzz generated on social media.

ABSTRACT. Social Media adoption is ubiquitous by both consumers and businesses. Recent studies have provided much insight on the role of social media in B2C processes but little is known about its function in B2B. Given that knowledge of B2C markets is not always transferable to understand B2B markets, this highlights an important research gap. Through the lens of Uses and Gratification Theory, this study aims to explore the uses and gratifications (U&G) of social media from both the perspective of the business consumer and the perceptions of these from the viewpoint of marketers. Nine in-depth interviews with professionals in the IT industry provide data to understand and contrast U&G from the standpoint of the two samples. Findings show that social media is used primarily for validation of important factors in the decision-making processes, although nuanced differences exist between decision-makers and marketers. Furthermore, decision-makers emphasize the value of community rather than content. Practical implications are provided.

ABSTRACT. In recent years politicians and political parties in both the US and the UK have utilized social media in order to engage with the electorate. Research on traditional media suggests political campaigns promote using positive, negative or mixed messages, with an emphasis on negative advertising leaning towards political success, and differences in linguistic style have been identified. However, with social media comes the ability to conduct sentiment analysis on the text posted by political parties and the electorate, yet little academic literature has addressed the presentation of political parties on social media and therefore the underlying composition of ‘sentiment’ with which to search. Using Twitter and the UK General Election 2015, we present a breakdown of the linguistic and tonal differences in political party messages, and discuss the opportunity to utilize these markers for real-time analysis during election periods. Implications for campaign marketing are discussed.

ABSTRACT. In recent times, experiential design has become prevalent in tourism services to enhance consumer engagement (Ritchie, 2009). Well-known examples in the US, on a large scale, are Disney theme parks and the Las Vegas Strip and, on a smaller scale, are American Girl Stores and Cabellas Stores. In this paper we seek to explore how consumer’s interactions with art works contribute to experiential tourism design. We refer to these interactions as consumer metaphoria, meaning how the deep metaphors of consumer experiences are revealed in their engagement with art. The study uses the fact that consumers interact with artworks in a symbolic expressive way, guided by deep metaphors. We extend the view of art in experiential tourism design as a resource, a connection and balance and transformation. These are the metaphorical representations of deep consumer metaphors observed of participants in our study.

ABSTRACT. An emerging challenge for sport event organizers is to convince the city council to grant licenses for hosting events. One effective means is to empirically show how events could add value to the host city. Based on the brand architecture framework, this study proposes a conceptual model to investigate the relationship between consumers’ perception of an event, as a sub-brand, and the image of a city, as the master brand, in the context of a regional sports event. Using structural equation modeling analysis, this study confirms that the perception of a sub-brand event would influence the perception of the city brand image. The results reveal that perceived service quality and atmosphere affect how the participants perceive the host city brand, which is mediated by event involvement and the perceived contribution of the event to the city. The implications have merit for academic researchers and sports event organizers. It adds knowledge to the brand architecture framework in that the image transfer does not happen only from the master brand to the sub-brand. Therefore, sub-brand events could provide good value to the city brand especially when event organizers embrace this brand architecture marketing concept.

ABSTRACT. There has recently been a marked increase in the number of reported cases of corruption in international sport. As such, a growing number of sponsors have taken remedial action in order to protect the reputation of their brand. This study has been designed to analyse how sponsors respond to the threat of corruption in sport and to identify the contextual factors that influence such a response. Maennig (2005) identified two forms of corruption – ‘management corruption’ and ‘competition corruption’. It is the latter, defined by Gorse (2014) as “any illegal, immoral or unethical activity that attempts to deliberately distort the outcome of a sporting contest (or an element within the contest) for the personal material gain of one or more parties involved in the activity” that provides a focus and context for this study and includes such behaviour as doping, tanking, match fixing and spot fixing.

ABSTRACT. Sport teams not only compete with other teams but also for a share of customer mindspace. For winning fan loyalty, economic success and creating a team’s brand equity, management of sport teams cannot take team-branding lightly and developing and measuring team’s brand-equity becomes essential. The current study develops a reliable and parsimonious sports team brand-equity index and found that the sports team brand-equity index (STBE) having eight indicators can capture the full domain of brand-equity and can be easily used by marketers and researchers. The STBE index can be used by both sport managers as well as marketing managers who want to associate their brands with sports teams. Overall, the STBE index can provide a snapshot about the ability of a team’s administration to create strong emotional bonds with its fans.

ABSTRACT. Spurred by the advent of many new media platforms for viewing, consumption of entertainment has become easier and viewership is rapidly growing. These new technologies not only offer more ways to consume live entertainment, but they also enable viewers to take control and shift viewing times to adjust to one’s schedule. Consumers are frequently faced with decisions of whether to time-shift their television viewing and, if they choose to do so, must also wrestle with the dangers of learning the outcome of the program prior to watching. In this paper, we explored under what circumstances such outcome knowledge reduces enjoyment. We find that outcome knowledge reduces enjoyment only in situations in which outcome suspense and process suspense are highly correlated, a situation which characterizes many sporting events. Further, we showed that concerns about spoilers are one reason why many consumers choose to watch sports events live and that the impact of spoilers on felt suspense provides an additional explanation for the decision not to time-shift viewing, beyond that offered by indeterminacy.

ABSTRACT. Research on motion picture success has considered a multitude of different factors that influence the success of a movie. Nevertheless, one of the most prominent characteristics of a movie has been widely ignored: the title of a movie. Movie titles, which are considered equivalent to brand names, can give an idea of how a movie will look or feel like, so consumers could use a movie’s title as a first reference point to inform their purchase decision. Although managers reportedly have the feeling that a brand name alone can influence sales, empirical evidence for this influence is limited.

In this research, we apply a unique two-step procedure to investigate the influence of movie titles on motion picture success. First, we introduce a consumer-level model to analyze the role of the movie title on the consumer decision-making process. Second, we extend the consumer-level model to the market level, incorporating behavioral data on actual product sales. Specifically, we link the individual title ratings of consumers to the economic success of the movie, i.e. its box office revenues. We thereby shed light on the question whether a title influences the generation of sales when other information cues such as advertising and existing brands are available.

ABSTRACT. The market for Hollywood movie sequels has boomed in the last decade with sequels in every possible genre of movies. There are instances where a sequel has earned more box office revenues than the original movie (e.g. Harry Potter) and vice versa (e.g. Amazing Spiderman 2). Given the background, oddly enough, there has been very little academic interest in investigating why consumers watch sequels. The limited research in this area has either investigated the prediction of revenues for a sequel from a modelling perspective (e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al. 2009) or explored characteristics of sequels (such as name) (e.g. Sood and Dreze, 2006) and how they lead to consumer choice. To the authors’ knowledge, there is not study that explores the consumer’s perspective and what leads them to select and watch sequels. Based on this premise, we undertake a qualitative exploration of the consumer side factors that lead to sequels choice, viewing and its consequences. Based on 3 focus group discussions and 24 depth interviews of frequent movie goers in India, we develop a conceptual model of sequel consumption behavior. The model identifies the antecedents, moderators, the consumption process and the post consumption behavior of consumers with respect to movie sequels in India.

ABSTRACT. This study’s objective is to understand how incumbents are dealing with opportunities deriving from new media from a company’s perspective, analyzing the case of a young and innovative sports media group: Esporte Interativo. The theoretical background of this article is based upon two major lines of research: Innovation studies, and Platform and Ecosystem Analysis. This choice reflects the authors’ belief that the major changes in TV industry have two sources: innovation within the industry and a redefinition of the industry boundaries. In order to address the research questions we employed an exploratory and qualitative approach – the case study. The selected case is Esporte Interativo, a Brazilian Sports Media Company, recently acquired by Turner, a subsidiary of Time Warner. Esporte Interativo was a pioneer in interactive transmissions in Brazil. Data was collected from two kinds of sources: primary - the interviews; secondary - websites, internal documents and press coverage. The case analysis shows how innovation is created within a challenging environment and provides a deep understanding of the pitfalls facing companies in the emergency of new disruptive technologies. From a theoretical perspective, the research contributes with the understanding of the key factors that drive and limit disruptive innovation development in business ecosystems, showing how a established successful business model can sometimes be a major issue in the pursue of innovation. From a managerial perspective, the case can help media executives to understand the key role of innovation and how companies can respond to that.

ABSTRACT. This study fills extant gaps in the cause alliance literature by (1) identifying the effects of the congruence and reliability of a sport organization’s cause alliance campaign that are vital to generating favorable consumer attitudes toward the campaign, and (2) showing the effects of consumers attitudes toward the campaign on their responses to the sport organization as well as the sponsoring brand in the cause alliance campaign. Via survey study (N=740), the results show significant effects of the congruence and reliability of a sport organization’s cause alliance campaign on consumer attitudes toward the campaign. The results of this study also find that consumer attitudes toward the campaign impact their responses to both the sport organization and the sponsoring brand. The results shed light on the positive impact of a sport organization’s cause alliance campaign on various consumer responses. While sport organizations commonly support social causes for largely the organization’s own brand reputation, our research brings new understanding as to how a cause alliance campaign activates via congruence and reliability in customers’ minds and suggests that a sport organization’s cause alliance campaign not only benefits the sport organization that initiates the campaign but also indeed benefits the sponsoring brand that supports the campaign.

ABSTRACT. A mismatch is becoming apparent between academia and leading marketing research practitioners in their use of mixed methods research (MMR). Very few marketing papers in leading journals report MMR. Conversely, despite typically greater time pressures in commercial settings, MMR are becoming the norm in major companies and agencies. This raises questions regarding the validity and effectiveness of some academic research, also instruction in methodologies for market(ing) researchers and future practitioners.

Through multiple qualitative stages involving consumer insight managers/directors, the project examines industry use of MMR, including how it is defined, practiced, sequenced and evaluated. An emerging framework addresses drivers of MMR use, challenges, and measures of effectiveness. The work has strong relevance for validity and rigour of industry research, thus the quality of marketing decisions and consumer satisfaction/welfare. Understanding contemporary best practice in industry research is also fundamental both for marketing education and for conduct of research that is robust and relevant.

ABSTRACT. A modern management of user experience in the current digital age requires a profound knowledge of its main elements and consequences. With regard to the measurement of user experience, science and business practice often refer to conventional, explicit measures such as self-reports. However, social psychology and neuroeconomics argue that most mental processes are so-called implicit nature, taking place hidden in the unconscious mind. With that said, the current research focuses on the explicit and implicit impact of user experience on brand-related behavior. For that reason, a conceptual model integrating explicit and implicit information processes of hedonic and pragmatic user experience is derived. Furthermore, a new measurement instrument incorporating explicit and implicit measures of user experience is developed. The empirical results of the conducted online study provide evidence for a satisfying performance of the presented conceptual model and the related user experience measures. In detail, findings indicate significant effects of user experience on brand attachment both on an explicit and implicit information processing level.

ABSTRACT. The Marketing area traditionally was built in the positivist perspective, as the methodological main background makes evident. Althought appropriate for the general market perspectives, the quantitative technics fail in the identification of very sensitive and specific details in the context that sometimes matter. The field details are poorly perceived in some service settings. This academic research, positioned in the interpretive perspective mentioned in the Burrell and Morgan (1979) scheme, proposes the phenomenological and the ethnomethodological procedures as a way to explore in a qualitative perspective the understanding of service details related to consumer behaviours, specially in the notions of relationship marketing, service co-creation and service failure recovery. As mentioned by Edvardson, Tronvoll and Grueber (2011), the social service systems deals strongly with the notion of value-in-social-context, indicating that to exploring phenomenological and ethnometodological research consists in a way to contribute to service marketing context (specially related to phenomena details).

ABSTRACT. Growth among multilingual consumers in the United States requires service marketers to consider service language use. While the limited research to date asserts that multilingual consumers prefer service in their native language, these studies do not consider contextual factors, including social influence. The current research investigates the moderating role of the presence of a friend whose native language differs from the language of the focal consumer on the relationships between service language and service satisfaction. In contrast to prior research, we find that minority language (i.e., Spanish) speakers prefer service in the majority language (i.e., English) when their friend’s native language is different from their own. This negative effect of minority service language occurs for majority language speakers as well, even in the presence of a minority language-speaking friend. We further examine the boundary conditions of this effect, including cultural symbolism and self-reward vs. other-directed consumption focus. Finally, we provide theoretical and managerial implications.

ABSTRACT. Cultural product such as televisions programs have been an important area of international business. In this paper, we employed concepts from the country-of-origin literature and develop a model to identify factors influencing Taiwanese viewers’ decision to consume South Korean soap operas. Our study used a questionnaire survey method to collect data from 553 respondents in Taiwan. Regression analyses found that, except for cultural proximity perceptions, Taiwanese viewers’ country-of-origin perceptions significantly predicted their decision to consume television programs from South Korea. We also employed hierarchical regression analyses to explore if COO perception factors continue to predict Taiwanese consumers’ viewing intention, when taking into consideration program quality perceptions and judgement. The results showed that, while some COO perceptions remain to be predictive, program quality factors turn out to be stronger predictors. Discussions and implications were included.

ABSTRACT. This study seeks to provide managerial perspectives on intercultural service encounters involving immigrant customers, including the key issues, challenges and characteristics that service providers face. Interviews with 13 frontline and marketing employees of a large Austrian financial service provider revealed that service encounters involving immigrant customers differ from those with domestic customers. Several challenges (e.g., coping with different cultures, lack of role clarity in co-production) and even more opportunities (e.g., more trust in the service provider, higher word of mouth, provision of information) arise. Interviewees expect that in the future, intercultural service encounters with immigrant customers will develop into daily routines and not be viewed as exceptional.

ABSTRACT. In Peter Pan, all the world is made of faith, trust and pixie dust. Words that could perhaps be equally applied to the world of financial services marketing, particularly Islamic banking where trust and compliance with the Islamic faith is considered to be important to consumers. But do customers trust Islamic banks to comply with the Shariah principles where money cannot be made from money? Trust is multi-layered and dynamic, changing according to context and culture. The aim of this study is to explore how and in what form trust, in this case in an Islamic bank’s compliance with Shariah, occurs in two distinctly different contexts and cultures, namely England and Pakistan; and how in turn this influences banking behaviour. The results identify similarities and differences in cognitive, affective and behavioural trust between the two countries and suggest that not all consumers, and particularly those in non-Muslim countries, trust the promises Islamic banks make to them. Perhaps a little bit of pixie dust can help them try.

ABSTRACT. The ever increasing immigration worldwide compels marketers to understand how a new mainstream culture that embeds immigrant consumers might shape their consumption behavior. Specifically, this study examines whether minority groups of the same cultural heritage, living in different countries, vary in their cultural orientations (i.e., mainstream vs. heritage cultural orientations) and consumption outcomes (i.e., desire for unique products and fashion consciousness). A proposed model and hypotheses were tested in two samples of Russian-speaking adults from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who migrated either to Israel or to Germany. Results from a survey indicate that FSU immigrants show a stronger orientation to their heritage culture in Israel and stronger patterns orientation toward the mainstream culture in Germany. In turn, these cultural orientations affected immigrants’ consumption preferences. These results confirm that the cultural orientations of the same immigrant group can differ across countries, which can be explained by contextual factors such as the differences in the immigration history and policies of the receiving countries. Theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we argue that independent self-construal influences the willingness to purchase foreign products through the degree of consumer cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism. To test these arguments, survey data (N=444, TR=234, US=210) was collected from Turkey and the United States. Results of a parallel multiple mediator model show that independent self-construal has a positive effect on the willingness to purchase foreign products, and furthermore, consumer cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism mediate this relationship. In addition, consumer cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism are positively and negatively affected by independent self-construal. Moreover, we show that consumer cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism affect willingness to purchase foreign products, differently. 

ABSTRACT. In recent years marketers have shown a high interest in tackling with multicultural markets by providing differentiated appeals to ethnic consumer segments, such as including ethnic congruent models, cultural symbols and languages in targeted marketing communications. Some extant theories (e.g., the Theory of Accommodation and the Revised Hierarchical Model) provide support for using vernacular languages in marketing communications. However, using a vernacular language can be criticized as employing a mono-ethnic prime, a sign of multiple identity blindness (Kang & Bodenhausen, 2015). This approach to ethnic consumers is based on the assumption that ethnic individuals have a mono-ethnic identity that comes from association with a mono-ethnic group (Demangeot et al., 2015; Visconti et al., 2014). It is argued that in today’s society ethnicity is situational and an ethnic individual can have multiple, parallel ethnic identities (Stayman & Deshpande, 1989). The contradiction in these theories raises an important question: Is it effective to use vernacular languages in marketing communications to multi-ethnic consumer markets? To address this question, this paper reports on a qualitative study (part of a larger project) of ethnic consumers in the UK. The current study makes an important theoretical contribution to the literature on cross-cultural consumer behaviour and international marketing, using rich narratives to emphasize the crucial role of language in achieving consumers’ wellbeing and marketing effectiveness in the multicultural markets.