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

ABSTRACT. Changes in the media landscape have made simultaneous media usage, particularly during television viewing, increasingly commonplace. However, there is limited research exploring how individuals experience media multi-tasking environments and its consequences on advertising effectiveness. Prior studies report that individuals’ self-insight on their media multi-tasking behaviour is significantly under researched, suggesting a growing need for direct observational research. A laboratory experiment was performed to observe three groups of individuals as they were exposed to a video content in which two advertisements were embedded. Of the three groups, two were forced to engage in either “relevant” or “irrelevant” media multi-tasking, whereas one group was forced not to multi-task with media in order to detect the consequences of these different media consumption patterns on advertising effectiveness, measured as visual attention and learning. The role of elements, such as product involvement and context appreciation, as potential filters in the relationship between media multi-tasking and advertising effectiveness was also analysed. Results demonstrate that individuals engaging in media multi-tasking show lower visual attention levels than non-media multi-taskers. The effects of media multi-tasking on learning were, contingent on “relevant” vs “irrelevant” condition. As was the role of product involvement and context appreciation.

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

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses healthcare innovation and how its acceptance may benefit from value expressive advertising that positions the innovation in the context of the self-image of the targeted user. Although the majority of work on value expressive advertising has been done in the product area, examining this topic further in the service context is worthwhile to pursue. A significant area to investigate in the area of value expressive advertising is its use in the health care industry. Healthcare professionals including physicians and nurses are introduced to innovations such as new technologies or new practice guidelines by the government, employers or professional organizations. The use of innovation in healthcare is intended to enhance the effectiveness of patient care or administrative efficiency when adopted. However, it is not uncommon that these technologies or practices fail to achieve the desired effectiveness because they are not widely accepted. Identifying means to influence clinician’s perceptions and attitudes towards innovations remains a challenge. Thus, advertising that aims at these individuals in a value expressive context focusing on their self-concept can prove beneficial to the acceptance of healthcare innovation. A model is developed that addresses the complex interplay between advertising, self-concept, and attitudes towards innovation.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the cognitive process leading towards franchisors’ intention to internationalize their network. It draws on data from interviews with 35 French franchisors, analyzed through the lens of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm. Data analysis reveals a large number of determinants of internationalization intention, mirroring attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control factors in the TPB model. Whereas most TPB research considers that the three components of the model are inter-correlated and that their impact on intention is direct and linear, the present work reveals different patterns of interrelationships between the determinants of internationalization intention. Based on their role in the cognitive process, determinants can be classified either as triggers or/and as moderators of the internationalization intention. While triggers initiate the cognitive process leading to the intention, moderators act either as accelerators that reinforce the impact of the trigger on the intention, or conversely as breaks that reduce this impact. After revealing the determinants and analyzing them through the lens of TPB and RBV, this research proposes an integrative cognitive model of how internationalization determinants drive franchisor internationalization intention.

ABSTRACT. With an ongoing call for research in driving sustainable shopping behaviors while maintaining retailer sales and value, this study explores the impact of communicating sustainability messages to shoppers in a fashion retail setting. Using regulatory focus theory, we argue that sending different types of messages to shoppers when they are in a choice situation may increase their choice for sustainable alternatives over regular options. In an online-based experiment, 147 respondents were exposed to text messages before they had to choose a product. The messages contained either a neutral message, a preventive-focused sustainability message, or a promotion-focused sustainability message. The results show a significant main effect on sustainable shopping behavior. Interestingly, shoppers receiving sustainability messages with a prevention-focused message were the most likely to make a sustainable choice. There were no differences in the evaluation of the retailer, products, value of the product or sense of annoyance, indicating that the messages drive sustainable choices while not hurting the retailer in other ways. The results extend regulatory focus theory in a shopping setting and open up for interesting future studies on how to help shoppers make more sustainable choices while keeping retailer perceptions indifferent.

ABSTRACT. The importance of consumer touchpoints to brands and retailers is rapidly growing given the complexity of the customer journey, which is increasingly becoming omni-channel. (Verhoef et al. 2015; Payne et al. 2017). Despite the importance of touchpoints, the issue of whether specific customer segments encounter and prefer specific forms of touchpoints is still unexplored (Lemon and Verhoef 2016; Konus et al. 2008). Among consumer attributes driving exposure to touchpoints, age has been found to be relevant. Lemon and Verhoef (2016) go beyond the mere concept of age and call for research on differences in terms of touchpoint preference at the generational cohort level. With the aim to understand customers’ attitudes and behaviours, many marketing researchers employ generational cohort segments that, however, have been identified in the U.S. context only (Bolton et al., 2013). The present study, deployed in two different countries, Italy and Japan, aims to understand how generations differ in encountering touchpoints in a retail setting and to provide an empirical generational segmentation based on touchpoint exposure across generations in two different countries. Results show that generations encounter different touchpoints and that new cut-offs based on exposure to touchpoints can be identified.

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

ABSTRACT. Our objective is to conceptualize strategic agility, a composite of flexibility and responsiveness, as a novel explanation for entrepreneurial internationalization and superior international performance. Importantly, we argue that marketing thought and practice play a prominent role in achieving strategic agility through the design and implementation of core business processes, namely the search and use of information, innovation and business development, and customer- (multistakholder)- relationship management, and agile and creative management of resources. Marketing’s contribution to strategic agility in early internationalizers means an ability to cope with time, relationship- and functional dependences which are of particular importance in an international and small firm context. We also argue that the structural flexibility of the young and small firm and its learning advantage of newness puts it into an advantageous position to compete on the dimensions of flexibility and responsiveness.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the influence of friendship on the relationship between heuristics and biases on decision-making within entrepreneurial founding teams. The research question builds on the recognition that better decision-making promotes venture success. The methodology connects characteristics of friendship from extant literature to a series of previously identified bias groups which can logically be expected to influence decision-making classified within previously identified stages of entrepreneurial venture development. The product of this work is a series of researchable propositions, as well as managerial implications to consider when entering a venture.

ABSTRACT. There are few literature that focus on the role of organization agility and flexibility in a new product development context. Additionally, external factors, such as environmental volatility, that may effect organization adaptation in the new product development domain is not often investigated. Furthermore, radical and incremental innovation performance may have diverse effects on organization agility and organization flexibility. The objective of this study, therefore, is to explore the impact of organization agility and organization flexibility on radical and incremental innovation performance. Further, the moderating role of environmental volatility on the relationship between organization agility and flexibility on new product performance is examined.

ABSTRACT. This study discusses the factors that foster and limit the use of big data analytics in marketing, as well as the positive and negative consequences of that use. The objective is to identify and classify the factors affecting big data usage and to analyze the consequences of its usage in the marketing. The empirical research deploys a qualitative method: in-depth interviews were conducted with marketing and big data analytics experts, to identify the fostering and limiting factors in the use of big data analytics, evaluate its comparative importance, and understand the consequences. The qualitative results were processed using a qualitative content analysis. An academic literature review and a synthesis of all empirical research results revealed the potential of big data in marketing and the concepts for value creation. Thus, an orientation was determined for the concept of big data analytics, including the factors of its usage. The identified factors were evaluated and classified into management factors, interdepartmental factors, organizational factors, and external environment factors. The consequences were classified into consequences for the customers, business performance, and employee responses. The conditions were also described under which the usage of big data analytics is not suitable.

ABSTRACT. Consumer behaviour on mobile devices represents a context that offers organizations multiple opportunities for interaction. This project aims to investigate the functional relationships there are among different behavioural classes, context factors, and precedent elements as well as their consequences in the mobile marketing environment. The relevance of the topic is given by the fact that the smartphone is becoming the most widely used device globally over the laptop and PC. To know how consumers respond to advertising, promotions and other marketing mobile tactics is of great interest to management science. A consumer mobile panel will be applied through a tracking app and a periodic survey will provide data on usage patterns and response to different mobile marketing tactics. Participants will include both men and women, owners of smartphone devices, with ages ranging from 18 to 35 years.

ABSTRACT. This study presents the results obtained in the application of a new methodology of customer relationship, applied to a group of Gas Company of Sao Paulo state - Comgás employees, in which the main focus was to transformer of a model of behavior service to the new relationship model with the client, using the WordCloud and Interaction Analytic (IA) tools.The main objective of this study was the implementation of a new methodology of on-demand checking of customer contact requests, called IA, in which it was possible to assign a frequency of customers keywords on the WordCloud, while the customer is still in telephone service.The study showed the changes and transformations that occur in Comgás, pointing out the factors that influence powerfully they people and their behavior towards their Customers. As a result, Comgás’s relationship area has become more developed, anticipating problems faster than when using the previous methodology, based only on reading previously defined scripts, for each problem. The tool has brought more agility in understanding the problems faced by Comgás clients and the problems was solutionated 35% faster than when script-only methodology, bringing more agility in the service and a 20% decrease in costs with incorrectly answered calls.

ABSTRACT. The concept of "family-based brand identity" has been introduced in the last decade with different shades and interpretations, but it often refers to a brand linked to values, vision and culture of a family firm. It originates from a planned or spontaneous branding process through which firms promote their nature of family business. According to the literature review proposed in this work, the family-based brand literature lacks the consumer perspective. Therefore, this paper aims to answer to the following research questions: How do consumers perceive the family-based brand strategies? Do consumers discriminate between different family-based brand strategies? How (what are the dynamics) that allow the co-creation of meanings of family-based brands? What other familiness attributes of brands are expressed by consumers but not yet intercepted by companies?

ABSTRACT. Arguing that the development of the co-creation paradigm in branding demands a recasting of brand management, this paper revisits the conventional theoretical notions of brand identity and brand image, and their reciprocal relationship. Drawing on a seminal theory on identity in sociology, and on the preliminary insights from a longitudinal case study investigating a service brand, we propose consumers as internal brand stakeholders under a co-creation context. We further suggest that brand identity management develops as a corrective process that entails managers' and consumers' co-engagement in addressing brand issues. Managers and consumers are tied to the objective of overcoming brand issues because issues are perceived as impacting the brand image and ultimately their individual identity and image. We conclude that within a context of co-creation, brand identity and brand image are reciprocally and recursively connected.

ABSTRACT. Since the massification of the internet and digital platforms, printed media outlets around the world began to register what Anderson, Bell, and Shirky (2013) call post-industrial journalism. For the authors, this scenario presupposes loss of audience and relevance and, consequently, loss of revenue, especially of that obtained with the sale of advertising space. To ease the context in crisis, companies in this segment have been looking for business alternatives in areas that are often not directly related to the production of content and printing of printed products. This is the case of brand licensing, the object of study of this work, which appears as an alternative for the diversification of revenues, and also to increase the relevance of print media to their audiences. By identifying the existence of only a few studies that relate media business to SDL and value co-creation, this work seeks to contribute to the theories of Marketing, as well as to offer, from the empirical study, a model that can be adopted at the management level in printed media outlets that seek an alternative to their business.

ABSTRACT. In a highly competitive environment, the objective of many tourist sites is to reinforce the attractiveness of their visiting experience. In this way, the Augmented Reality (AR) technology is considered by many of them as a way to enrich the consumer experience. Based on the perceived value framework, this research examines the effects about the Augmented Reality device’s use (named Histopad) on the tourist experience during the visit of a castle (the Chateau de Chambord). In this perspective, 15 people are carefully observed during the visit and then interviewed at the end of it. This qualitative exploratory approach allows to better understand both the positive and negative effects of the use of this technology on the different perceived value dimensions (excellence, efficient, epistemic, hedonic, experiential stimulation, aesthetic, social, link values). The analysis of these complementary materials (observations and individual interviews) shows also that these various effects are structured around two dimensions which characterize the experience: spatial and temporal.

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

ABSTRACT. With technological advances in personalization systems, companies worldwide are increasingly able to learn from their online consumers’ data and adapt their websites accordingly. While prior research explores the development of new models to improve data collection and content adaptation, little is known about the value of website personalization experience. This paper tries to bring a deep understanding of the website personalization experience and the value creation. The results highlight website personalization experience is perceived as an extended online customer experience, which calls the consumer’s control into question. Value creation and value destruction appear as key variables to fully address the phenomenon. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Despite the rising popularity of Internet of Things (IoT), consumer acceptance continues to grow at a slow pace. For example, adoption of health and fitness wearables is still relatively low and about a half of consumers abandon their wearables within the first six months. This pattern means that firms engaged in IoT industry can not recover their development and marketing costs. Recent research offer a fragmented view of the determinants of IoT consumer acceptance and focus mainly on functional attributes.This paper aims to provide a new perspective. Drawing on the service-dominant logic, the perceived value conceptualization and the customer experience approach, our netnographic study reveals both value co-creation (gains) and co-destruction (pains) determinants addressed to different experiential dimensions. Moreover, it highlights several interactions between specific determinants of both sides of coproduction process which could lead to “compensation phenomena”. The findings of this study have key implications for IoT marketers and suggest future research directions.

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

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

ABSTRACT. Russia is unique as to its’ culture. The interaction between its’ environment, marketing, and advertising does not result in a simple transaction between economics and members of its society. No longer are political and economic conditions, either external or internal, serving as indicators of Western-style consumerism. Marketers interested in the Russian market place must listen to a population whose culture continues to significantly influence marketing’s impact and the role of advertising in the future of Russia. This study is part of a longitudinal research effort about evolving Russians’ attitudes toward advertising and marketing, consumerism, and the impact of the Russian culture on changes in Russians’ socio-economic life. This qualitative research draws upon the tenets of Symbolic Interactionism and the works of social behaviorists George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer who postured how individuals assess or assign “meaning” to things and actions through the process of interpretation. This ethnographic study, in part, describes the emerging Russian shopper in Moscow and its metropolitan region. Consider that a sign in the window of a Western jeweler in Moscow leaves some with chagrin Russian Spoken Here. This study will thus reveal the metamorphosis taking place and will develop implications for marketing strategy and tactics.

ABSTRACT. Consumers seek variety in their menu and also seek new dishes to avoid boredom. But when the marketers introduce new healthy foods, most of them fail. Especially in a country like India, where the onset of non-communicable diseases like diabetes which are related to unhealthy food choices is high, the onus is on food marketers and the government to encourage people to make healthy food choices without compromising their taste buds. This research has attempted to find out which information will influence people to try new healthy foods and whether the type of novelty of food and the variety seeking behaviour in consumers play a role. A pseudo-experiment was conducted with 385 subjects with 12 different versions of the survey where the new dish and the information presented were manipulated. Willingness towards trying the food and the variety seeking trait were measured. Results show that the variety seeking behaviour of the subjects has an impact on their willingness to try a new food. Also, the type of novelty of the food influences the willingness and also has an interaction effect with the information. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and also recommend some solutions for the food marketers.

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

ABSTRACT. That the concept of positioning in marketing strategy formulation and research is important cannot be over emphasized. Despite the reported difficulties confronting marketing managers in the application of the concept of positioning, comprehensive and generic empirically developed scales for measuring positioning strategies continue to be overlooked by marketing scholars. In two stages of empirical studies involving consumers from the general public, executives and experts, this paper attempts to develop a comprehensive scale measuring typology of positioning strategies. The findings reveal four key factors (prestigious, impressive service, cool and attractive, and value for money) reflecting a comprehensive typology of positioning strategies. Characterized by sound reliability and validity measures, this scale has the potential to serve as an instrument for the application of positioning strategies by scholars and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. Product recalls are increasing worldwide. According to recent Reuters news, U.S. automobile recalls hit record in 2016 with 53.2 million recalled products but product harm crisis communication and marketing strategies are still under examined areas of the crisis management context. Especially when this increase is considered, managing recalls gain more and more importance. Harm crisis can damage firm reputation, decrease the interest of investors and customers which could effect the returns in a negative way,etc. besides these deficiencies firms are confronted with remedy costs which could reach high amounts. An optimum communication strategy could be a less costly strategy in harm crisis communication and managing processes to help firms to minimize the negative effects and costs for the firm. The main aim of this study is to provide understanding of how a company can minimize the negative effect of an product recall on financial value by benefiting from recall message characterstics. Studies concerning with minimizing the negative effect of product recalls by applying marketing strategy is rare. Therewithal to best of our knowledge the recall message content’s impact on financial value has not been investigated. This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining this gap.

ABSTRACT. Scholarly work in the domain of strategic marketing research has extensively applied a configurational approach to representing and theorizing multiple intertwined phenomena. The current study scrutinizes 77 empirical studies published between 2000 and 2015 in strategic marketing research. The authors identify methodological diversity and pluralism of analytical techniques (i.e., cluster analysis, interaction effects, profile deviation analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis). The authors contend that there is a need for guidance on the suitability of alternative approaches for testing and explaining configurational phenomena in the domain of strategic marketing and propose future directions of research.

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

ABSTRACT. As firms encounter growing concerns about resource depletion, environmental degradation, and social inequalities, some are focusing on sustainable innovation as a promising path forward. Sustainable innovation refers to new or improved products or processes aimed at social equity and environmental integrity, without sacrificing economic prosperity. According to the most recent Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Best Practices Survey, about 50% of companies pursue sustainability when developing new products, and 20% consider sustainability extremely important. Our review of the literature indicates a significant gap of knowledge with respect to organizational capabilities for sustainable innovation. Past works have theorized about or examined a few isolated capabilities; however, largely absent is empirical research on the complex of organizational capabilities and their internal and external contingencies. Such research is needed to understand more fully the intricacies of achieving sustainable innovation, which is recognized as an involved undertaking.

ABSTRACT. Fit issue for service innovation and market orientation is not clearly examined. Market orientation can be treated as the key for enterprises to pursue creative advantages and create customer value. Service innovation is the channel for business development and usage of technology. With their consistency, firms can adopt effective responsive and proactive market orientation strategies to focus on innovative strategies that result in consistent goals and actions. Therefore, the purpose of this study focuses on service innovation and market orientation in a fit as matching analysis. Empirical data for hypothesis testing are collected from top-ranked companies in Taiwan, yielding 140 valid samples. Performance implications of fit are examined using fit as matching. The findings indicated that the hign-high fit of market orientation and service innovation plays an important role in explaining business performance.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to explore the consequences of sustainability orientation of service organization on new service development (NSD) competence and NSD performance. In other way, the study investigates the mediating role of NSD competence on the relationship between sustainability orientation and NSD performance. Building on the competitive advantage and natural resource-based view (NRBV) perspectives, a cross-sectional survey will be carried out at the NSD program level in the Finnish hotels and resorts industry context. In order to avoid common-method bias, the study applies two-stage sampling procedure in which the NSD program managers provides data related to organization’s sustainability orientation in the first stage. In the second stage, data related to NSD competence and performance are to be collected from the senior managers of the NSD programs. A number of theoretical and managerial implications as well as future research directions are offered.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the challenges and opportunities of social innovation in two multicultural societies: France and the United Kingdom. We use the Cajaiba-Santana (2014) definition of social innovation to examine how the social innovation concept fits patterns reported in the context of multicultural societies following different acculturation modes. Social innovations are brought about by different forms of collective actions (intra, inter, extra-group) and are informed by different contexts such as history and culture. The manuscript addresses a gap in the literature by exploring via a photo-elicitation methodology how social systems (inter, intra and extra-group) inform behaviour and explores the reciprocal links (actions and structures) that inform the process (Hung 2004) to show the duality effect of social innovation using the example of multicultural societies and dress. The research paper explores how perceptions of modest dress (i.e. clothing that enables a modest presentation of one’s body) differ between Muslims and non-Muslims and across geographies so as to suggest how future launches of modest fashion ranges might be positioned to appeal to a broader consumer range. It aims to capture the institutional logics that inform the processes and mechanisms for studying social innovations across national and multicultural contexts, using the UK/France comparison.

ABSTRACT. Advances in technology allowed consumers to avoid traditional advertising messages. Brands have thus sought alternative methods to place their products in media channels. The growth of the “gaming” industry called the attention of advertisers to the possibility of unobtrusively embed products and brands within games. Previous research in advergames has found mixed findings on the effects of in-game advertising on brand attitudes. However, product placements are multi-faceted and several factors in its execution can play a different role on consumers’ responses. In the present meta-analysis, we investigate three different factors (i.e. gaming time, brand familiarity and brand prominence) of in-game product placements in order to disentangle its respective effects on consumers’ attitudes toward brands. Results show that only gaming time has a significant effect upon brand attitudes.

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

ABSTRACT. Ingredients are the component parts or elements of something. Brands often portray a product’s ingredients, components, and parts as humanlike messengers in advertising and packaging. Nature’s Way, for example, humanizes a strawberry for their Vita Gummies by portraying it with eyes and a mouth. This study explores whether imbuing ingredients or components with humanlike features influences consumer perceptions and decisions. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that anthropomorphizing an ingredient successfully intensified consumer purchase decision in a coffee shop context. However, not all humanized ingredients were effective. The data from Study 2 revealed that anthropomorphizing a primary ingredient was more likely to increase purchase intentions than anthropomorphizing a secondary ingredient. This effect was mediated by quality perceptions. While prior research investigated the effect of product anthropomorphization on consumer responses, our study mainly focused on humanizing the ingredients that constitute a product, an important topic that has not yet been investigated in the marketing and consumer research.

ABSTRACT. In online retail, existing research of shopper reactions to product unavailability uses experimental manipulations, simulated environments, or measures of intentions. Our research surveys shoppers who have encountered unavailability in a recent online shopping experience. The study explores multiple aspects of the effects of non-availability of the desired item, with a focus on the shoppers’ switching behavior. The overall goal is to better understand what impacts switching behavior in online shopping when the item not being available to purchase interrupts the online shoppers’ customer journey.

The study examines six fast-moving consumer goods categories (hair care, baby care, shaving, oral care, laundry/fabric care, and skin care) across six countries. The results of this first global study on availability in online retail confirm that the extent of non-availability needs to be addressed and has much room to be improved. The similar levels of retailer and brand loss suggest mutual benefit from improved availability. The study also shows how shoppers’ switching behavior varies across categories, countries, the ways they encounter non-availability.

ABSTRACT. In this study, multiple consumer online and offline actions were analyzed and fused with existing and gathered in-store consumer behavioral data sets to develop a richer view of the various interactions which lead to consumer bonding to a retail chain. While the time period analyzed was limited, the richness of the data enabled a more complete view of how online consumer activities interact with and explain in-store consumer behaviors and the sales results which occur. In addition, two external variables, weather and adjacency of competitive facilities, were used to enhance the “real world” situation in which consumers operate. Based on the results of this initial study, it appears the approaches used in this analysis are transferrable to other situations and might be used around the globe. Of great importance is evidence that a grounded theory approach might be the optimal one in analyzing consumer behavior at the retail level. The authors argue that it is the combining of multiple inputs that enables the exploration of big data using a “test, evaluate, and measure” approach, which provides the greatest insights into how consumers' behaviors. They further argue that this approach likely surpasses traditional limited hypothesis testing now used in retail analytics.

ABSTRACT. Firms often extend their new business to categories that are different from their current categories. A brand’s extension success may be due to not only its own competence but also to consumers’ purchase decisions. We consider Amazon a retailer of low-fit to fashion and compare it with Macy’s as a retailer of high-fit to fashion. By utilizing product reviews from both websites, we examine whether consumers of the two retailers evaluate identical products differently. We collected the review information of 39 fashion products, with a total of 116,773 reviews, in the men’s and women’s divisions carried by both Amazon and Macy’s. Our empirical findings are that, in general, product ratings are different, the product attributes mentioned are different, and the product evaluation criteria are different between the low fashion-oriented retailer (Amazon) and the high fashion-oriented retailer (Macy’s). We provide a new application of product reviews to develop and maintain competitive advantages of both Amazon and Macy’s in the case of low-fit extension.

ABSTRACT. Consumers are becoming more and more active in interaction with luxury fashion brands via social media platforms. In the mean time, consumer addiction to brands is seen as one of the most important ways in which consumers engage with brands. Extant literature on brand addictive behavior suggests both positive and negative consequences from brand addiction. However, in the context of luxury fashion brand consumption, little is known about consumers’ brand addictive experience with social media marketing and whether social-media-facilitated brand addiction leads to negative or positive consequences. An online survey based on Qualtrics panel resulted in a sample of 570 responses from consumers in the U.S. The theoretical model was tested with structural equation modeling. The results indicate that social media marketing efforts have a salient impact on consumer engagement with luxury fashion brands’ social media contents that in turn influences highly consumers’ brand addiction. Another important finding is the significant impacts of brand addiction on both consumer pleasure and consumer guilt in the social media marketing context. Our finding supports the positive addiction theory that suggests that brand addiction does not always need to result in negative consequences.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to better understand how an experience may lead to increased relationship quality with a luxury brand, in particular when it comes to emerging adults. The findings highlight the key role of self-expansion and brand identification. We study how various dimensions of a brand experience (sensorial, emotional, behavioral, social, and intellectual) impact differently the perception of the brand experience. We then highlight the influence of both, brand experience and brand identification on self-expansion. Finally, we demonstrate that self-expansion leads to an enhanced relationship, especially for those customers with a lower self-esteem. Data were collected from ninety-six young adults (25-39 years old) in the US. Constructs were validated using LISREL and the theoretical model was tested using Partial Least Squares Path Modeling and PLS regression. We contribute to the research on brand experience and on luxury brand consumption by differentiating the impact of several dimensions of brand experience and by highlighting that relationship quality is strengthened through self-expansion mechanisms. Also, we add to the understanding of self-expansion by demonstrating how it is impacted by brand identification and consumer self-esteem.

ABSTRACT. Over the past two decades, growth in luxury product consumption has reflected the increasing strength of global and regional economies. Due to the prevalence of social media, fashion bloggers have become significant sources of influence in the fashion industry. These bloggers have become a bridge of communication between luxury brands and their consumers across all social media platforms. To encourage constant engagement with brand-related content among consumers and foster emotional connections with the products, luxury brands participate in various platforms of social media such as micro-blog sites for marketing and sales purposes. Among other emotions, envy is commonly associated with luxury consumption since such consumption behavior often stems from status-seeking motivations, materialism, and conspicuous behavior. By investigating the concept of envy as triggered by social media content, luxury firms can leverage the emotion to encourage purchases among potential luxury brand consumers. With this in mind, this study investigated the following questions in the context of luxury brand micro-blogs: 1) How does micro-blog content trigger envy? 2) Do these feelings of envy influence consumer purchase intentions? 3) If so, does envy mediate the relationship between micro-blog content and purchase intention?

ABSTRACT. The limited edition (LE) tactic with limited-quantity scarcity (LQS) messages are more and more popular for luxury brands due to the “new normal” of lower growth over the long term. The current paper argues that LQS messages may not equally effective for luxury consumers in different consumption contexts (i.e., emotional vs. cognitive consumption). This study employed a between-subjects experiment and recruited 460 eligible college students. The results confirm that LQS messages can raise luxury customers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay in the emotional consumption context. The impact of product visibility is also considered together with the contexts.

ABSTRACT. For years, the luxury goods industry has been recording very high growth rates, particularly, booming in emerging markets (EMs). Hence, the luxury market is gaining in attractiveness and importance for companies and is in need of scientific research. The Special Session should intensify the discussion among marketing experts from different fields. During a panel discussion the following tasks should be tackled: 1. Provide an overview of the state of the art in research. 2. Develop a suitable reference framework covering the relevant influencing factors (causes and moderators), interdependent influences and outcomes, and the impact on processes of socio-cultural change become. 3. Sketch an orientation framework for the practical design of a responsible and economically successful luxury marketing with consideration of the relevant challenges. 4. Define concrete research projects which, in the sense of the first robust steps, lead to the research questions raised within the frame of reference.

In the format of a moderated discussion, selected experts should provide inputs and address the issues mentioned above. Then, the floor will be opened for all participants, including these from the tracks “Marketing in Emerging Markets,” “Fashion and Luxury Marketing,” and “Cross-Cultural, Multicultural and/or International Marketing.”

ABSTRACT. A brand represents not only the relationship an organization has with its customers but also with its employees. The existence of incongruences in employee behavior during service transactions can disrupt the successful delivery of brand experiences (Clemes, Mollenkopf, & Burn, 2000) and signal the need for proper alignment of front-line employee (FLE) behavior with brand values. One such incongruence was recently identified by Du Preez, Bendixen and Abratt (2017) where the authors argued the existence of different operational worlds within the same organization that result in different interpretations of brand-oriented behaviors. As a result the two forms of brand oriented behavior, in-role and extra-role, cannot be aligned with the organization’s vision. Our results show that while the vast majority of in-role behaviors were correctly identified, extra-role behavior still came across as a gray area for the participants indicating that managers and FLES of retail organizations cannot differentiate one behavior from the other.

ABSTRACT. Corporate identity is an important phenomenon for organisations since it offers a presentation of the organisation to all its stakeholder groups and is proposed to be a significant influencer of one key stakeholder group in particular; front-line employees (FLE). FLEs work together with customers to exchange services and co-create value and in doing so, influence the financial performance of the organisation. Many models of corporate identity, developed since the mid-1980s, conceptually propose direct relationships between corporate identity phenomena such as corporate identity cues that are internal to the organisation, and the behaviour of employees. However, there is a significant lack of empirical research to support these proposed relationships. This paper presents the initial results of research examining the influence of corporate identity cues on employees who work with customers (i.e., front-office employees or, FLEs), those who do not (i.e., back-office employees), and those at the aggregate level. The research uses partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to examine quantitatively the influence of corporate identity cues on these employees’ organisational identification and its subsequent effects on employee in-role and extra-role behaviours. Results show that these cues have vastly different effects on organisational identification and role behaviours amongst these groups.

ABSTRACT. The British Crown Dependency of Guernsey is set to hold an island-wide referendum by December 2017 on the island’s electoral process. The Guernsey Government believe the outcome of the referendum will impact the way Members of Parliament [Deputies] are elected and envisage the creation of political parties, or formal alliances [political brands] in eagerness for the 2020 General Election. The creation and introduction of political party brands on Guernsey would be unprecedented to the current-historic political environment of a non-party system structured by independent, individual politicians. However, research has overlooked this proposition from the perspective of island citizens-voters. Drawing upon a qualitative approach, focus group discussions with Guernsey citizens-voters will provide insight as to whether political parties [party brands] are desired by Guernsey citizens-voters, and if so, how will new political parties be created and conceptualised. The findings will have implications on Guernsey’s electoral process and similar island communities.

ABSTRACT. There is no shortage of primary psychopaths in the sales profession. Barker (2014) suggests that the sales profession has one of the highest population of professional psychopaths; only CEOs, lawyers, and media professionals have more psychopaths in their ranks. And the general consensus is that these functional psychopaths are excelling in the sales profession. What is less understood is how psychopaths excel. In this work, we examine the effects of psychopathy on sales performance. Drawing from field studies, we not only provide empirical evidence that higher levels of sub-clinical psychopathy lead to enhanced sales performance, but reveal that salespeople high in psychopathy are particularly well-equipped to leverage advantageous social network positions to control information and gain performance advantages (study 1), accounting for their successes. We then replicate the results, while exposing the lack of affective empathy as the mechanism for the performance variance (study 2). Moreover, we show that traditionally desirable corporate culture characteristics dampen this performance advantage, and recommend managerial strategies to avoid diminishing performance.

ABSTRACT. Prior literature has shown that the acceptance of new technologies can improve the long-term performance of sales forces and firms. However, new technologies are likely to introduce obstacles to acceptance, especially for those technologies that represent a massive change for the user. Sales force members who drastically change their work processes in order to integrate a technology sacrifice both time and effort and may be distracted from their primary goals (e.g. hitting deadlines or sales goals). Thus, we investigate how perceived technological change can negatively moderate individual motives to accept a new technology via a survey of 163 sales force members. Furthermore, we analyze how managerial support can help overcome the acceptance issues caused by perceived technological change. We find that perceived technological change negatively moderates the influence of individual goal orientation on to acceptance of new technology. We also find that managerial support, as opposed to team goal commitment, will positively moderate an individual’s goal orientation on to acceptance of new technology. Post hoc analysis takes a deeper look into potential curvilinear effects and differences amongst categories of technologies.

ABSTRACT. Prior research finds that the more attached salespeople are to a brand, the more effort they extend on behalf of the brand, thus improving sales performance. However, salesperson brand attachment may also have undesirable consequences that are only evident when viewed through the customers’ lens. Specifically, we argue that brand attachment has a “blinding effect” on salespeople, leading them to adopt inappropriate sales strategies that discourage customers from purchasing the brand. We explore these ideas using data collected from 20 exploratory interviews with salesperson-customer dyads, a field study that includes 153 salespeople and 98 matched customers, and an experiment with 127 respondents. The data offer support for our ideas and reveal that while brand attachment does increase salesperson effort and sales performance, it also decreases customer future purchase intentions by damaging customer trust in the brand. This undesirable effect of salesperson brand attachment, however, occurs only when the salesperson employs inauthentic sales strategies. The study findings thus suggest that while managers should promote salesforce brand attachment to achieve short-term sales goals, doing so may come at the expense of the brand’s long-term health.

ABSTRACT. Block et al. (2011) recommend a shift from “food as health” paradigm, based on a normative vision of food, to “food as well-being”, based on a holistic vision that includes the dietary expectations and behaviour of consumers. Complementary studies have shown that mindful eating can contribute to a more balanced diet, a reduction in food disorders, an increase in pleasure and consumer, societal, and environmental well-being. It therefore appears that researchers have established strong connections between mindfulness and well-being as well as between mindfulness and healthy diet. Adopting a consumer-centric perspective, our research aims to analyze how FWB manifests itself in consumers’ personal everyday experiences and the role of mindfulness in consumers’ experience of FWB.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this project is to understand if a fun packaging can change the perceptions that children have of healthy food in terms of its sensory evaluation, and through that make children choose healthy food over other unhealthy options. We conducted two studies using an in-between subjects experimental design setting and in the snack category. Study 1 investigated the potential for the fun packaging to change the sensory evaluations of the healthy snack and was conducted with 101 children between 7 and 10 years old. Study 2 further investigated if the fun packaging would make children choose the healthy snack over an unhealthy option and used a sample of 106 children between 7 and 9 years old. Results suggest that when children are confronted with a fun packaging it can change their perception of taste and make children desire more the healthy snack. However, when given the alternative option of an unhealthy snack, the fun packaging does not improve the perceived taste of the healthy snack but increases the likelihood of it being chosen, which shows that packaging can be a powerful tool that can be used as a marketing strategy to promote healthy eating.

ABSTRACT. It is widely acknowledged that ethical consumption is increasing and ethical fashion is now extremely valued. However, it is also argued that, although consumers are able to form opinions based on ethical issues, their purchasing behaviour may not match their claimed intentions. This should, therefore, have a severe attenuating effect on the market penetration of ethical fashion, unless the purchasing decisions are really made because of other factors. This apparent conflict is the key driving force for this study. Whilst some researchers state that there is a growing awareness amongst consumers of ethical and sustainable issues, and others claim that there is a lack of knowledge and a “disconnect” amongst consumers. If this lack of awareness were a more accurate reflection of the situation, it could explain the relatively small effect of ethics and sustainability on purchasing behaviour. Therefore, this study intends to investigate consumer attitudes, by the level of commitment shown by the sample of UK consumers, to pay a premium for ethical and sustainable fashion.

ABSTRACT. Over the past fifteen years, studies have shown that consumer reviews, evaluations and opinions, have many effects, but, so far, such studies have failed to specify the boundaries of the concept. Indeed, to the best of our knowledge, no attempt to conceptualize an online consumer review (OCR) is available in any academic journal. The main objective of this study is to define these conceptual boundaries only to retain the discriminating criteria specific to OCRs. This study is based on the analysis of 48 research articles - chosen for their relevance to our purpose - and a content analysis of 70 websites. Subsequently, developing criteria specific to OCRs reveals that a review cannot be qualified as an online consumer review in the absence of (1) the Internet, (2) a consumer, (3) a consumer experience, (4) a quantitative and / or qualitative component, (5) a message that is not controlled by the company, (6) a consumer item and (7) freely accessible to all. Finally, after justifying each criterion, we propose a definition of OCRs.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, the number of online communication platforms is skyrocketing; this leads to a broadcast of information which is everyday more and more intense. In this world of crazy broadcasting, some individuals have been able to come out from the crowd, and their opinions have gained a lot of credit. These opinion leaders with an online presence are called “e-fluencers” (Blackwell et al., 2001). Thanks to their attractive power and strength of conviction, the e-fluencers would create an influence on their followers. Their influence is such that before deciding to buy a product, some consumers would always seek information and consult the opinion of the e-fluencers. Working collaboratively with them is an opportunity that private companies did not fail to notice and to take advantage of it. By establishing different partnerships, companies can insert their products in the content realized by the e-fluencers. As a consequence, the viewers are more exposed to the products and recommendation of it. This commercial practice is called product placement. It is increasingly used, also on social media but knowledge on its mechanism and its impacts through this particular media is still too little known and exploited. Through this research, we want to investigate the process.

ABSTRACT. The rapid growth of content on the Internet and the online competitive context lead companies to show a growing interest in website personalization. While prior research explores the development of new models to improve data collection and content adaptation, our research aims at understanding website personalization from the consumer’s perspective by analyzing the website personalization experience, its antecedents and consequences. This doctoral project consists in three distinct papers presenting different methods to fully address the phenomenon. Theoretical and managerial implications of the doctoral project are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Fashion blogging has been booming in the last few years, becoming an integral part of the fashion sphere. As the readership and following of fashion blogs have grown, it is important to understand their influence on consumers’ fashion purchase behaviour. Previous studies have mentioned certain important blogger’s attributes affecting consumer behaviour, but quantitative research on the topic is very limited. This study provides empirical evidence of bloggers’ influence on consumer behaviour. Using an online survey, data from a sample of Jordanian fashion blog readers (n =184) were collected and analyzed. The findings show that the large majority of respondents believe that fashion blogs are an important influence on their fashion consumption choices. Respondents value authenticity, trustworthiness and self-relevance as the main reasons influencing their behaviour. The results are discussed drawing from attitudes and self-concept theories. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, adding to the growing literature in this area.

ABSTRACT. Much of the current research interest on emerging markets has focused on the economic changes towards a market-dominant economy in various countries. Such a research emphasis has certainly helped in bringing out sharp contrasts between emerging markets and developed industrialized economies, and has been instrumental in guiding public policy as well as marketing practice. However, the processes by which such transitions occur are often ignored in favor of an analysis of whether such changes have resulted in markets that are similar to developed economies, if not to textbook ideals. In ancient societies, however, such transitions to a market economy require tremendous changes not only in the economy but also in the socio-cultural and political milieu in which such markets emerge. Using an institutional perspective, this research focuses on how popular media contributes to the necessary changes to existing institutions as well as formation of new institutions in the transition of ancient societies to modern market economies. The paper demonstrates that understanding such changes is necessary for effective marketing in modernizing societies.

ABSTRACT. This study aims analyzing what factors influence illegal obtaining/watching of movies in a country that is characterized by not high personal income and well developed digital infrastructure. Additionally, authors seek exploring the use of various neutralization techniques and their relation with the ways how a movie has been obtained/watched. A survey of 422 respondents confirmed existence of the three factors that were related with frequency of obtaining/watching pirated movies: novelty seeking, guilt and age. Several techniques of neutralization (denial of negative intent, claim of relative acceptability and claim of normality) had positive relationship with frequency of illegally obtained movies.

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

ABSTRACT. Equivocal results of prior research question marketing’s contribution to firm performance in two critical areas. First, marketing’s representation in the top management team via presence of a chief marketing officer (CMO) has been linked to superior firm value only by some studies, while other findings suggest no effect. Second, and even more fundamentally, investment in marketing (i.e., marketing spending) could not be linked unambiguously to greater firm value, with some results even showing negative effects. Using a managerial capability and resource orchestration perspective, we propose that to be effective marketing investment needs managerial marketing capability—and this capability is critically being determined by personal characteristics of the CMO. Using 701 firm-year observations of U.S. public companies from 1997−2014, our results show that CMOs’ education and experience (marketing-, industry-, and firm-related) as well as the number of marketing executives in the top management team determine CMO managerial marketing capability. Moreover, stronger CMO managerial marketing capability is related to greater firm-value benefits from marketing spending. These results can help reconcile mixed prior findings in two key marketing strategy areas and have important implications for CMOs (e.g., personal development) and firms (e.g., CMO selection committees).

ABSTRACT. This article explore possible legitimacy building mechanisms for social enterprises with difficult to measure outcomes and hostile market. Interviews were developed with managers of enterprises offering complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) services, taken as an example of social enterprises in a hostile context. Our findings indicate that CAM enterprises rely on relationship building and consumer education to establish pragmatic legitimacy; the quest for moral legitimacy is expressed through the hybrid organizational form, human capital and professionalization attempts, formalization of procedures, and strategic alliances. Building on Suchman (1995) three levels of legitimacy, we propose a mechanism through which enterprises use pragmatic legitimacy to enhance moral legitimacy and to create a feedback effect between moral and pragmatic legitimacy so that ultimately cognitive legitimacy can be achieved.

ABSTRACT. Corporate greed has received increasing attention in recent years with various stories hitting the headlines. Customer satisfaction and corporate social responsibility are known to have a positive effect on corporate reputation among customers, but perceived corporate greed is likely to impede their effect. Corporate greed, customer satisfaction, corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation are considered and a research model is proposed. Data are collected from among commercial banking customers and mediated regression analyses are undertaken. Results are reported, implications are discussed, limitations are noted and possible areas for further research are indicated.

ABSTRACT. The astronomical growth of the business intelligence/analytics field has taken off in recent years, but has been steadily growing as many as 10 years. This growth was in its infancy with the advancement of companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook who had an established data-driven infrastructure.

Now, fast forward to 2013-2014 when our college and university made the strategic decision to serve this growing BI/Analytics needs engine. Employers were and are still struggling to find skilled analytics professionals to undertake the new big data projects the companies hope will set them apart from their competition. An analysis of changes we have shared with students about job prospects have continued to grow. Examples are given here:

The use of the skill set we teach has come to bear at a time when our university needed another growth engine and direction. The use Strategic Planning Process, the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria, feasibility analysis, and being data driven is what has helped our department serve the market well to this point. However, there are other basic principles that we had to consider such as Standards, Scalability, Purpose and Vision.

ABSTRACT. Contrary to previous research that has investigated the effects of single colors on consumer’s behavior, the current study investigates the effects of using multiple colors in conjunction with each other. Specifically, we examined the effect of color harmony—the degree to which colors produce a pleasing response—on the persuasiveness of prosocial advertisements. By manipulating hue variations, we found that different degrees of color harmony induced varying levels of disfluency. Results from four studies showed that (1) moderately disharmonious color combinations heightened disfluency and (2) the path from disfluency to high construal to empathy explained the effect of color harmony on prosocial behavior.

ABSTRACT. Past research has determined that the relationship between religiosity and the strength of a company’s affiliation follow a linear pattern (Taylor et al. 2010; Alhouti et al. 2015). However, belief congruence theory highlights the importance of the strength of belief to create a positive effect. As such, the first experiment in this study finds that the relationship between religiosity and the perception of the strength of religious beliefs of a company follows a curvilinear pattern. A limitation of the first study is that it is hard to know the consumers’ level of religiosity, but a region’s religious affiliation are readily available from the census data. The second experiment addresses this limitation through a field study using Google AdWords. The experiment finds that the congruence of religious affiliation and strength of a religious message are important in low and high regions of religious affiliation but not in moderate.

ABSTRACT. Word is a crucial part of visual presentation in marketing communication. Word conveys meanings not only by what it says, but also by how it says through typeface, layout, etc. Rare research has been directed to explore the persuasive effects of typeface shapes across different language. This research aims to investigate the influences of typeface shapes (circular vs. angular) on the persuasive effects of different types of information (group-oriented vs. individual-oriented) and further to compare the influences between English, traditional Chinese and simple Chinese. Through two studies across divergent context, this research demonstrates group-oriented information induces higher persuasion when presented in circular-shaped typefaces; while individual-oriented information is more persuasive when presented in angular-shaped typefaces. Moreover, language system plays moderating roles in these relationships. The effects of the congruency between typeface shapes and information orientation on persuasion are stronger in traditional Chinese and simple Chinese than in English. This research adds to literature by showing typeface shape indeed influences consumers’ perceptions towards messages and by providing comprehensive understandings in the persuasive effects of typeface shapes. With the increasing purchase power of consumers speaking Chinese, the research findings will benefit companies that try to use written materials to communicate with their consumers.

ABSTRACT. Due to the high investments needed to implement architectural branding concepts as well as the longevity of architecture, retail stores should be carefully designed. In volatile times and ever increasing globalization of brands, retail brands have to find ways to convey a brand appropriately across different cultures and over time in their architectural branding.

This paper employs two studies in the field of architectural branding in retail, contributing to answer the following research questions: How can brands create brand recognition through architectural branding in retail across monobrand stores? What are the dimensions to classify architectural branding in retail? Which architectural branding strategies in retail exist?

In two consecutive qualitative studies, ways on how to create brand recognition through architectural branding across different stores should be identified and a classification of architectural branding strategies with a focus on implementation should be generated.

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

ABSTRACT. Empirical research on digital signage is inadequate and does not address shoppers’ experience of digital signage as mall atmospheric stimuli. This paper draws inspiration from the fields of environmental psychology and retail atmospherics to propose that when contemporary shoppers experience retail atmospheric stimuli such as digital signage as positive, they are likely to stay longer, visit a mall more often and/or spend more. The findings of qualitative interviews with shoppers confirmed that digital mall signage as atmospheric stimuli can lead to an emotional reaction that influence shoppers’ behavioral responses in malls. Specific recommendations to enhance or improve the experience of shoppers exposed to digital mall signage are made.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of higher education in general and marketing curriculum in specific is to create prepared graduates that are well equipped with knowledge and tools needed to succeed in their careers. In an attempt to match evolving needs of future employers and to keep students interested and engaged in course material, educators draw from a variety of approaches to enrich traditional lectures through real-world applications. Here, universities are increasingly incorporating "Project-Based Learning" (PBL) opportunities to help students bridge the gap between classroom learning and practical application of textbook knowledge. While PBL models can vary from institutions to institutions, the most commonly implemented approach is a course-embedded model of PBL.

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

ABSTRACT. International relationships are increasingly critical to the organisations’ survival. The associated cross-cultural challenges are present in international markets, but also in local ones, for example, when confronted by international competitors at home or when addressing local expatriate communities. Despite of the recent surge in international relationship marketing (RM) research, the role of culture and culturally fitting RM strategies are still scarcely explored, and the consideration of expatriates as target market is non-existent. However, due to the low cost of international travel, high speed of information exchange, and ease of international relocation this new type of consumer is rapidly increasing in number and in purchase power. The study aims to address this gap by on one hand, exploring the consumer profile of expatriates. On the other hand, confirming that the latest, relationship-focused paradigm of marketing can better serve expatriates than traditional marketing practice. The study argues that stable and trust-based relationship approach can overarch distinct cultural norms and distant geographical locations of the diverse and transient group of global citizens. The findings aim to provide an in-depth understanding of expatriate, and practical guidelines for marketers on how to build and maintain profitable relationship with this group of customers.

ABSTRACT. Previous research (Pol, 2017) shows that there is a significant relationship between the relational models used by customers and their customer experience in terms of consumption emotions, customer satisfaction, and recommendation intention. For example, as the relational model Communal Sharing (Fiske, 1991) is more present, customers have a better emotional experience, are more satisfied, and are more willing to recommend the organisation. Other research (Aggarwal, 2004; McGraw & Tetlock, 2005; Tuk, Verlegh, Smidts, & Wigboldus, 2009; Wan, Hui, & Wyer, 2011) has also shown that relational models are a good instrument to predict the customer reaction to communications from a person or organisation. It is therefore obvious that organisations that want to improve their customers’ experience should seek tools that allow them to activate or influence relational models. In this paper we will investigate the opportunities that organisations have to activate and influence relational models and customer experience by priming customers with specific words and images.

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

ABSTRACT. Although respect is an important topic in relationship marketing and in consumer-brand relationships, there is surprisingly limited research on the topic. This paper aims to contribute towards the conceptualisation and operationalisation of respect to a brand and towards a brand. The paper reports results from three studies that are based on qualitative and quantitative data collected. It reports a working definition of respect in the consumer-brand relationships and develops a scale to measure it.

ABSTRACT. Brand loyalty is critical to business and marketing strategy. With the shift in emphasis from marketing mix to relationships and amid diverse theoretical development in consumer-brand relationships, this study examines the impact of brand identification, brand trust, brand relationship closeness, and perceived quality on brand loyalty. A survey using a sample of 400 consumers of fashion clothing in an emerging market context reveals brand trust and brand relationship closeness are central to build brand loyalty. This study also finds that the impact of perceived quality on brand loyalty is mediated by brand trust, and the impact of brand identification on brand loyalty is mediated by brand trust and brand relationship closeness. The findings provide evidence supporting that relationship concepts, which are respectively similar to dimensions of Fournier’s (1998) brand relationship quality, are distinctive but related; and that these concepts span three phases of the attitudinal development structure in consistence with the cognition–affection–conation pattern found in psychology. The significance of this research not only lies with insights to marketers on what aspects to focus on in building consumer–brand relationships but contribute insights into emerging market research stream.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines and empirically tests whether the relationship between service brand orientation (SBO) and firm performance is moderated by relationship marketing orientation (RMO) as well as customer orientation (CO). Using moderated hierarchical regression, the empirical part of the study employs data from 584 service brands within an emerging market setting to test its hypotheses. The research results indicate that: (1) service brand orientation is a multi-dimensional construct and also has a positive relationship with firm performance at an aggregate level; (2) the core tenets of the three orientations – an emphasis on symbiotic firm-customer relationships – make them suitable complementarities, generating ameliorating effects on firm performance; (3) the effect of the SBO×RMO interaction edges that of the SBO×CO interaction in the current study data. Aside from making theoretical contributions by addressing pertinent gaps identified in the service branding literature, the study results offer practical implications for service managers on the need to embrace multiple but related orientations for synergistic results.

ABSTRACT. ABSTRACT The purpose is to measure the Anchoring Heuristic in the context of Premium Brands and Private Labels prices. Furthermore, to identify the antecedents and the consequents of this Anchoring Process.

The study uses a structured questionnaire to gather data. Furthermore, a Structural Equation Modelling is used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Consumer Behaviour has a positive impact on Brand Equity. Such as antecedents, Price Sensitivity has a negative impact on Anchoring, Hedonistic Behaviour has a positive impact on Anchoring, Brand Equity of the Premium Brand has a positive impact on Anchoring, Brand Equity of the Private Label has no impact on Anchoring. Such as consequents, Anchoring has a positive impact on Purchase Intention, Anchoring has a negative impact on Switching Intention.

The findings allowed the better understanding of the impacts of the studied variables on Anchoring process. The overall results demonstrate the uncertainty towards the Private Labels compared to the Premium Brands. In addition, to understand that the consumer usually may use judgmental heuristics to solve their tasks.

This work is a new approach of Anchoring Index measurement, identifying how an individual may do estimations in an uncertain environment.

ABSTRACT. Social responsibility has become cornerstone marketing policy, enabling brand differentiation in a high growth market. By distinguishing between symbolic and utilitarian associations of social responsibility, our study identifies two levers for consumer commitment. Utilitarian associations strengthen consumer trust in a context imbued with fear and skepticism about consequences of consumption for health. Brands can also encourage consumer commitment through their environmental and philanthropic engagements by conveying values with which consumers can identify. This second commitment lever is particularly effective for consumers with strong social/environmental values.

ABSTRACT. As access-based consumption continues to grow, from a $15 billion industry in 2014 to over $300 billion by 2025 (Zhou 2015), understanding the impact on businesses and consumers is of paramount importance. The impact of access-based consumption can be felt on all parts of the economy from transportation, retail and consumer goods, to hospitality and media. Consumers are accessing more goods and services than ever before, which is impacting the type and number of interactions that an individual is able to have with a brand. Access-based consumption is allowing for individuals to access products that they previously would have never had access to due to time or money constraints. Just as consumers who share similar characteristics participate in access-based consumption, consumers who share similar feelings of admiration or loyalty for a product can develop into a brand community. Given the prevalence and growth of access-based consumption across so many product categories, it is likely that members of brand communities have been, or will be, impacted in some way. Thus, this research seeks to investigate the relationship between access-based consumption and brand communities.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to examine how different segments of consumers evaluate online reviews written in narrative form. Drawing on marketing and decision science literature, it suggests that consumers’ decision making style (e.g. maximizers and satisficers) explains their information usage behaviour and evaluation strategy. Video recording techniques are used to capture the behaviour of consumers while interacting with online product reviews. For this purpose, 95 participants were recruited and exposed to a number of reviews in a laboratory environment. Findings revealed that decision making style of consumers has a significant effect on their information processing behaviour. The relation between decision making style and information processing behaviour is mediated by the evaluation strategy adopted by these individuals. That is, satisficers are more prone to adopting a holistic approach to product evaluation which leads to analytical information processing, whereas maximizers tend to focus on product attributes in details that can lead to narrative processing behaviour.

ABSTRACT. In this work, we examine the countervailing long- and short-term impacts of homophily, specifically racial homophily, between advisor, dissertation committee, and doctoral student on doctoral student performance during their program of study, first academic placement, and subsequent publication success. Specifically, we conceptualize the doctoral advisory committee as a project team, with the chair of the committee as a project team leader, and committee members and doctoral student as team members, working toward a common goal. We combine social resource and social learning theories with knowledge sharing concepts to guide the development of hypotheses, and utilize social network and partial least squares structural equation modeling to model and test the hypotheses.

ABSTRACT. Marketers are in the business of communicating and delivering value to customers, and organizations invest substantial amounts of money into the copy, design and presentation of collateral to promote their products and services. A great deal of study and testing has been conducted by industry and academia to determine the most effective formats to communicate with customers – including color, images and copywriting. Yet, when developing syllabi to create the same level of communication with students, most marketing educators create dull, difficult-to-read textual documents. Two exploratory studies into the use of graphic-designed syllabi incorporating color, images and call-outs indicates that a colorful, well-designed syllabus not only improves student comprehension and engagement with the material contained within the syllabus, but also results in better attitudes toward the class itself.

ABSTRACT. The general acceptance of globalization and free trade across most national governments has led to the massive proliferation of foreign goods across the globe within the past few decades. As a result, the consumer adoption of imported products has been researched extensively; however the majority of these studies have focused on developed countries, leaving less developed and emerging countries vastly unexplored when compared to their developed counterparts. Key determinants, such as consumer ethnocentrism and foreign animosity, also warrant further investigation into how and where these determinants exert the most influence during the purchase decision process of imported goods.

This research examines the effects of consumer ethnocentrism upon the attitude formation stage of this process. Using Mexico to represent an emerging market with high levels of consumer ethnocentrism, this study examines Mexican consumers’ attitudes toward domestically produced products, imported products from China (another emerging market), and Italy (a developed market). The results show that Mexican consumers had favorable attitudes toward domestic products and Chinese products, but harbored negative attitudes toward Italian goods. Aside from a preference for domestic products, these findings also suggest that ethnocentric consumers prefer imported goods from countries that have a similar level of economic development.

ABSTRACT. Immigration and immigrants have driven the United States culture and economy for over 200 years. This is not subsiding, as over 1,000,000 foreign-born individuals call the US their new home every year. The most common native country of these new residents of the United States is India, with over 13% of all US immigrants coming from India. However, adjusting to life in the US – the acculturation process – is not always simple. These new residents face differing societal attitudes and fundamentally different ways of living. Often, this results in symptoms of culture shock, such as feelings of loneliness or being mildly depressed, irritable, or wanting to withdraw, and feeling homesick. In this study, we empirically examine how an electronic technology widely used by Indians, WhatsApp, assists in overcoming these feelings during the acculturation process. Using a sample of Indians residing in the US, we find WhatsApp mediates aspects of acculturation – specifically Cosmopolitanism and Identification with Global Consumer Culture – and multiple aspects of personal well-being. In other words, WhatsApp appears to be a method of coping with the acculturation process in maintaining the well-being of Indians immigrating to the United States.

ABSTRACT. This research contributes to the literature in tradition by providing an integrative framework of traditionscapes and global consumer culture to understand how consumers use tradition in fostering identity in an emerging market. We propose that traditionscapes are important elements of consumer identity construction in emerging markets and that this is not necessarily oppositional to global consumer culture. In particular, we shift the discussion involving tradition versus globalization to explore the traditionscapes, that is, a fluid consumer’s appropriation of certain traditions as a resource to build their identity in emerging markets. Using a multi-phase research approach, we observe how global resistance and tradition attachment are antecedents of tradition value and how different dimensions of identity (regional, social, cultural) mediates the effects. Results emphasize the role of tradition attachment – despite global resistance – in identity construction in emergent markets. Findings also show that global resistance is more related to social identity and that tradition attachment is more related to cultural identity. The findings provide novel insights to marketers and local governments to understand traditionscapes in emerging markets.

ABSTRACT. Customer citizenship behaviour (CCB) has received little attention in the electronic banking environment, and its links to technology adoption models are unknown. This study proposed that customers with positive electronic banking service beliefs may develop positive attitudes and, in deliberation of the benefits, engage in CCB. Five belief factors from the Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model were considered. Customer satisfaction and affective commitment were explored as cognitive backward- and affective forward-looking attitudes respectively. Advocacy and helping behaviour were studied as sub-dimensions of CCB. The explanatory, quantitative research design entailed a survey of 538 mobile banking application users in South Africa. The measurement model and structural model encompassing two second order factors (post-usage beliefs and CCB) delivered acceptable results and all research hypotheses were accepted. From a theoretical perspective, the research findings offer insight into the interrelationships between belief factors and attitudes that may ultimately contribute to CCB in the post-usage stage. From a practical perspective, the findings offer strategic direction to other emerging markets and serve as foundation in the investigation of initiatives that will facilitate greater adoption of digital financial services among the unbanked population, such as using cell phones to conduct financial transactions.

ABSTRACT. The process of defining the business has been seen as synonymous with developing a mission statement—a short statement of an organization's purpose, identifying the scope of its operations, including what kind of product or service it provides, its primary customers or market, and its geographical region of operation. This process is argued to have originated from Marketing Strategy and organizations prone to myopic thinking of their businesses have suffered. This study follows an exploratory design to uncover the differences between mission statements to understand how organizations successfully or unsuccessfully differentiate themselves from one another. Using content analysis, we analyze the mission statements of three different kinds of Fortune 500 companies. Results show considerable variation in mission statements across several characteristics of large Fortune 500 companies. The results are discussed and theoretical and practical implications are presented.

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

ABSTRACT. This paper looks at brand engagement in the context of employees and B2B firms, two areas that are largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement in social media, two key drivers of employee brand engagement are identified using the content analysis tool, DICTION, namely optimism and commonality. Employees of top ranked and –rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media. This allows the construction of a 2X2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations, and offers human resources- and marketing managers different strategies in each case. This paper demonstrates how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on how stakeholders engage with brands.

ABSTRACT. Marketers often depend on third parties to do work for them, such as advertising or research agencies and distributors of goods and services (Bergen, Dutta & Walker, 1992). Agency Theory provides a strong and apposite conceptual framework to understand and explain these associations. In these relationships, a party called the principal assigns work to another party called the agent, who then does the work (Eisenhardt, 1989). For example, salespeople and their managers share an agency relationship, where the manager is the principal and the salesperson is the agent. As agency relationships prevail in real-world marketing issues (Bergen et al., 1992), a better understanding of the role of Agency Theory in marketing is important to marketing scholars and valuable to practitioners. 25 years have elapsed since Bergen et al. (1992) published their work on Agency Theory in marketing. However, since 1992, there has been no other thorough update of the literature on Agency Theory in marketing-related contexts despite the various developments in marketing, such as the advent of the internet. In this paper, I provide an updated review of the literature on Agency Theory in marketing-related contexts. I also identify new avenues for research on Agency Theory in marketing.

ABSTRACT. While extant research has devoted considerable attention to seller-buyer relationships during the development sub-phase, the implementation sub-phase has received considerably less attention. In particular, the study of post-installation interactions has been very limited. Seller-buyer interactions during the post-installation phase can facilitate marketplace success by generating positive word-of-mouth effects which hastens the diffusion process. Against this background, we investigate the determinants of sellers’ post-installation knowledge generation through interactions with buyers and the effect of such interactions on expectations of relationship continuity. The results of an empirical study suggest that sellers consider both the buyer’s ability, signified by perceived buyer knowledge, and their motivation, based on prior relationship engagements, before seeking post-installation product related feedback. Further, such relationships are more likely when technologies change rapidly because they can dissuade buyers from switching to competitors offering newer technologies. We also find that engaging in such interactions enhances expectations of relationship continuity only when technological uncertainty is higher. Once again, stemming the potential loss of buyers to competitors with newer technologies provides the underlying logic. Thus, because sellers have to be judicious in expending their relationship resources, our results offer useful guidance on appropriate situations for undertaking such post-launch interactions.

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

ABSTRACT. In a study of 241 firms of varying sizes across 14 different industries, we investigate the effect of customer participation on new product development performance. We confirm that overall customer participation is positively related to new product development performance and that the effect is mediated by innovativeness. We also demonstrate that these effects are contingent upon absorptive capacity of the firm in question such that firms with high absorptive capacity stand to gain more from engaging their customers in new product development than firms with low absorptive capacity, especially at the later stages of the NPD process. The results are robust to alternative estimation techniques, measures employed to operationalize key concepts, and the industrial makeup of the sample. Post hoc analyses provide non-trivial managerial implications for the decision makers at the firm level.

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

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to the influence of perceived value to customer satisfaction and of customer satisfaction to store loyalty during periods of economic crisis. By taking into account the notion that unstable economic conditions may alter these relationships, the study examines data for two periods in Greece, 2012 the year when the first austerity measures were implemented and 2016 when stricter measures had to be taken and all consumers were influenced by them. Data was collected through a telephone survey targeting those responsible for the household grocery shopping with a total sample of 2,000 and 2,200 respondents respectively for the two years. The model was estimated using Partial Least Square Equation Modeling and the hypotheses were tested using multigroup analysis. The findings revealed that during periods of economic crisis the effect of perceived value to customer satisfaction as well as the effect of customer satisfaction to loyalty is greater. Thus, the study reinforce the need for grocery retailers to develop strategies that will help them enhance their value offering and customer satisfaction rather than to rely on just price-driven sales promotions. Monitoring how customers reassess priorities, allocate their funds, and redefine value during economic downturns is critical for retailers.

ABSTRACT. The current study aims to explore if Information/Content, Interactive Features, and Design-Visual appeal influences consumers emotional states of Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance (PDA), leading to brand advocacy as an outcome. Therefore, our goal is to understand which stimuli of experience exercises more effect on the three emotional states (PDA) and which of these three better influence Brand Advocacy.

Data from 183 users of CGM were analysed through structural equation modelling (SmarthPLS2.0) and the findings show that all the aforementioned stimuli influence online PDA. Findings also suggest that all PDA dimensions influence Brand Advocacy.

ABSTRACT. Previous research has examined customer shopping behaviors, however, the relationship between various types of shopping behavior, customer value, and resulting customer satisfaction with the store have not been investigated. The purpose of this research is to comprehensively identify the relationship between shopping behaviors, perceived customer value, and store satisfaction in a discount retail setting. Three shopping behaviors are examined in this research; price conscious, recreational conscious, and impulsive-careless. Three forms of perceived customer value are also considered; emotional value, price value, and social value. The study is based on a survey of 308 Target and Wal-Mart customers and is analyzed using Partial Least Squares path modeling. The results indicate that all three types of shopping behavior had a positive impact on at least one form of perceived customer value. Emotional and price value were found to have a significant relationship with store satisfaction, however social value did not. The results of the research can be used by retailers to better understand and manage their customers’ shopping experiences to maximize perceived value and satisfaction.

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

ABSTRACT. Companies often consider using consumer collaboration or crowdsourcing in lieu of target marketing or segmentation. In fact, crowdsourced ideas are closely linked to a variety of marketing innovations. Consider Google’s recent update in India, which allows TV shows and movie reviews from web users- right within Google search results (Perez 2017). However, consumers may have contradictory goals between each other. We explore this phenomenon, referred to as co-competition (Hiler, Cook, and Northington 2017), in a variety of product and service contexts. The unintentional destruction of value can occur when the requests of one consumer group (i.e., in the development of a new product or service) conflict with, or are at the expense of, another consumer group’s requests. Our study considers this important co-creation caveat in a qualitative exploration of everyday consumers who have experienced co-competition in the marketplace.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research is to contrast sustainability initiatives between public and private hospitals. The study consider three temporary stages, past, present and forthcoming future and compare the sustainability initiatives development over time.

The promoter and scope of sustainability actions differ between public and private hospitals over time. This study contributes not only to explain the importance of temporal stage (past, present or future) in the sustainability development, but also to show the differences between public and private healthcare sectors, an issue which has not been addressed in previous research.

The reported comparison of empirical findings between private and public hospitals, as well as the subsequent discussion contrasting these findings, yield various managerial implications in terms of the scope and promoter of sustainable actions.

ABSTRACT. This paper has the purpose of conceptualizing and analyzing the decision process regarding brand equity in internationalization processes and the implications of the associations with the country brand. The internationalization process to emerging markets companies is a critical variable to increase brand equity. Despite the importance of the subject there are still few papers theoretically approaching both subjects simultaneously to help managers and scholars understand the country of origin effect on the effort of increasing brand value in international markets. Based on the case study of two emerging market multinational enterprises (MNE), it is suggested a new approach for the internationalization process of emerging markets brands. The two Brazilian companies assessed in this study had different approaches to the country of origin (COO) effect, with antagonist strategies to country of origin associations.

ABSTRACT. Globalization has the center of attention for many companies as they see the need to expand their product offerings to consumers of a different geographical location as well as of a different culture. Effective international market segmentation (IMS) is an indication of a clear understanding of the what, where and how products are being promoted and sold worldwide (Cleveland et al., 2016). The strategy chosen for a market segment varies accordingly across different cultures. The purpose of this research is to examine whether consumers national identity, national animosity and ethnocentrism have an effect on attitude when consumers’ perceived product and country image are added as mediators. Research has been circling around the concept of country-of-origin (COO) for years. There are also several other variations of COO which includes Product-Country image (PCI), country image, product and brand image. COO is widely known as the “Made-in” label, and this COO effect is often overlapped between how a consumer perceive a country image and a product image. Consumers’ perception of a country affects their perception of the quality of a product or brand that is originated from that particular country. In this research, the COO concept was beyond where a product was made-in. Consumer ethnocentrism was used to examine the relationships between national identity and consumer’s perceived product image and country image (respectively). The results show consumer ethnocentrism has an effect on product image but not on country image when national identity is used an independent variable. In other words, for Americans, a “made-in USA” label is more important than portraying an image of USA. This result suggest that American’s have a strong national identity which means that the image of their country (i.e. USA) is positive and thus will not have an impact on how they perceive their own country. This study used a bags as a stimuli. Although it is a study to determine young consumers’ ethnocentrism, its effect on COO labeled products, and its impact on their purchasing intention, it may not be elaborative enough to measure a general mentality of the general American community. In many promotional ads, there are many situations where different types of products are used and different market segments were targeted. Thus, for future research, different product types will be used to determine the effect of consumer ethnocentrism and national identity on “Made-in” labels.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the relationship between product innovativeness and the process of technology switching. Research centres that specialise in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are the lead users of the MRI market. In this market, the technology switching process was tracked using a secondary source over a 20-year period, whereas the product innovativeness was measured using interviews. The initial findings reveal that technology switching is occurring in the MRI market, where product innovativeness has a significant influence on technology switching.

ABSTRACT. Cross border collaborations are becoming increasingly important for innovations in an interconnected world. We know from the international marketing, business and cross-cultural literatures that, in practice, research projects demand a degree of local adaptation. A key challenge for marketers is to create methodological constructs that capture these local differences. In this regard, the success of future innovations will be dependent upon the research collaborations that we set up and the capabilities that they foster through global innovations. The session presents a number of specific research methodological topics that relate directly to cross-cultural market and innovation research, in the context of how understanding the challenges of achieving metric equivalence can create greater impact of our research and the collaborations that we set up. Using a combination of topical themes, the panel members will share insights from their own experiences and will invite the audience to contribute so as to create a forum for discussion. The panel members for this session are experts in their fields and have extensive experience of working with a range of marketing journals.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to identify segments among French households that should be targeted to increase fish consumption. Marketers need to prioritize and decide which segments to focus their marketing efforts towards in order to be most successful. Households that consume enough fish should not be a priority group and focusing on households that do not eat fish might not be a vice priority, since it is likely to take more effort and resources to get people to change their behavior completely than to get them to increase frequency of a behavior that already exists. It is therefore our aim to gain information on the characteristics of French households that eat fish, but not enough fish. We also intend to identify segments within that market (the market of households eating fish, but not enough) in order to increase the likelihood of a more successful targeting towards those households.

The findings will be beneficial for health authorities in France so they can realize whom they should target their social marketing efforts towards to influence fish consumption behavior with the aim of influencing the health of the population and thereby possibly lower the cost of health care.

ABSTRACT. The study’s aim is to develop and empirically validate a theoretical model which represents a holistic and longitudinal view of destination image development in tourists’ minds. It aims to achieve this through combining a pre-visit, during-visit and post-visit phases in a single framework. Next, it measures moderating impact of personal determinants: motivation, culture, age and education. Finally, the study conducts pre-visit and post-visit survey with the same pool of respondents. To support the framework, the study relies on theories of stage, attitude and expectancy-confirmation.

ABSTRACT. In this qualitative study, indications of positive and negative motives, perceptions, associations and attitudes towards fish/seafood, were identified with a focus on salmon, trout, seabass, seabream, herring and cod. In-depth interviews with both high and low frequency consumers were carried out in France, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain. The selected species were recognised by participants in all five countries although participants’ knowledge of the species varied by country. Salmon and trout were generally familiar to the participants, but herring was the least recognized, except in Germany. Freshness, taste, health, production method and origin were a common denominator for important attributes, while main barriers covered partly the same attributes, such as bad farming practices and taste but also bones, poor availability, and price. The participants in most of the countries were conscious about negative press, which was most often related to fish farming. Origin of the fish was also expressed as a concern. This did affect the consumption behaviour of the respondents to some degree, but differently between the five countries. The main barrier for fish consumption, was price. In addition, lack of skills to prepare fish was mentioned and bones. Health and taste were the main drivers for fish consumption.

ABSTRACT. Quality assessment, analyzed according to various approaches, is a recurring topic in marketing literature. The purpose of this work is to contribute to the understanding of the consumer’s ability to distinguish different levels of quality of a product compared to a previous rational measurement, within the ground roasted coffee category. Furthermore, this paper aims to explore the moderating effect of level of education on this ability to discriminate qualities. Using the Brunswik model (1955) and a multi-attribute performance approach, perceived and objective quality are compared through a group of product attributes to identify the one having the greatest effect on overall performance measurements. Findings help to realize the extent to which the perception of quality derives from particular cues and tend to confirm the way these cues are used differently by experts to assign a more objective value of quality than by consumers to express an overall sense of perceived quality. Consumers may use certain cues that do not necessarily correspond to the objective measurements of the attributes. Educational level may not be relevant in making a significant distinction between high achievers and low achievers.

ABSTRACT. The marketing research industry is experiencing a digital disruption due to the prevalence of DIY software (i.e., Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Tableau). DIY marketing research software is shifting the way the marketing research industry operates. The current trend is that marketing research firms are more likely to handle data mining, text analytics and storytelling rather than write surveys. Novices at small to mid-sized firms, using DIY software, will be writing, administering and analyzing the surveys themselves. This trend suggests that marketing research courses must rethink the topics and time spent on each, if they want to prepare students to succeed in this DIY world. In this article we conduct a content analysis of marketing research undergraduate syllabi from multiple countries. At the time of writing, our data collection was still in process. Preliminary findings indicate that most undergraduate courses spend only one week writing surveys and that few include DIY software in the course. The authors believe that one week is too short of a time period to master the topic. Recommendations and suggestions regarding this digital disruption are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Corporate branding is a significant topic for universities as the global marketplace is becoming increasingly competitive. Corporate branding can be used to highlight unique selling points (USPs) to improve league table positions, which is particularly relevant for those universities operating in a global marketplace where a competitive edge needs to be more than outstanding teaching. Within the corporate branding and Higher Education (HE) literature, few studies explore university brand identity and its relevance in more specialist university departments.

The originality of this empirical study was a survey conducted with students studying at an international university to investigate the relationship between corporate brand identity and corporate brand values. In particular, this study aims to investigate the mediating role that emotional values play in the development of a corporate brand.

It is proposed to develop a model that demonstrates how a university identity can be perceived more positively which in turn contributes to a strong brand image more readily understood in broader terms and wider markets. This model can be applied to different academic disciplines within universities, where there is a mix of sub-cultures and specialisms, and support the process of developing appropriate branding strategies.

ABSTRACT. Given that the importance of technical and soft skills may differ by specific context, the goal of this study is to identify the skill set that marketing undergraduates need for employability and to develop into a successful professional. While the marketing education literature has contributed to our understanding of the skills that may be important for marketing undergraduates to possess, there are two important gaps in the literature that this study seeks to address. First, there has been only a limited effort to study both technical and soft skills together and second, their relative importance. We address these gaps by conducting a Delphi study with a panel comprising of 12 human resource managers and 15 marketing managers. Among the list of 51 skills identified, the panelists selected 20 skills as being the most critical for entry-level marketing jobs and then ranked them on their relative importance. Followed-up interviews were further conducted with selected panelists to gain insights into the top five skills identified in the Delphi study. We further compared our results with three different industry studies and discuss their implications for marketing education.

ABSTRACT. This research addresses the differential impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions on business performance, looking at the nature of these relationships in the context of the emerging economy Brazil. The study further considers the contextual role of technological turbulence in the business landscape. We surveyed Brazilian managers and inquired about their organizations’ EO. Findings revealed that EO’s dimensions innovativeness and proactiveness have a positive effect on performance, whereas risk taking effect was non relevant. When considering the interactions between EO’s dimensions in different contexts of technological turbulence, the impact in business performance produced varied results with positive and adverse effects.

ABSTRACT. This work-in-progress study examines the attitudes and motivations of tourists choosing Armenia as an ecotourism destination. The study is largely built on the premises of the theory of planned behaviour that treats attitudes as predictors of behaviours. Data are collected over summer months (i.e., high ecotourism season) to capture the impressions, motivations, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions of tourists choosing nature-based activities and attending eco-festivals. The current sample of 114 participants is largely comprised of local tourists (51.8%) pointing out to the potential to improve Armenia's positioning as ecotourism destination among foreign tourists. The preliminary results suggest that tourists differentiate between destination and service-tour satisfaction, which then in turn impact their behavioural intentions for revisit and recommendation.

ABSTRACT. This research seeks to determine how existing research methodologies should be adapted to suit the constraints faced in Bottom of the Pyramid (hereinafter referred to as BoP) markets. Using an unconventional approach, examining the first-hand experiences of eighteen researchers, this article identifies the constraints faced by those attempting to research BoP markets. The thematic analysis identified eight first-order themes, which were further categorised into two second-order themes, namely theoretical and practical considerations. The eight first order themes relate to the research approach, the measurement instrument, the evaluation of abstract concepts, social desirability concerns, language and literacy, the collection of sensitive information, physical location concerns and trust issues. Researching the researcher is novel in that it utilizes an existing methodology in a new context, allowing for insights to be gleaned from constraints faced throughout data collection amongst BoP consumers, providing recommendations to impact best practice research within this field.

ABSTRACT. All the service actors increasingly behave offensive, destructive and hostile with intentions to harm other actors, service provision processes, the well-being of the organization and its brand (Fisk et al., 2010; Grandey et al., 2007; Kähr et al., 2016). The skyrocketing number of negative experiences with service providers within service environments led to more destructive and offensive hostility as a new phenomenon (Kähr et al., 2016), previously observed in intra-organizational relations (Analoui, 1995). Authors introduce the concept of “targeted dysfunctionality” as a bridging construct that indicates “intended to harm” oriented service actor behaviors. This study employed a systematic literature review of the harm-motivated dysfunctional behavior studies in organizational behavior and marketing literatures. As a further stage of systematic review, a meta-analytic review was employed for testing the validity of suggested typology in a service context. In the systematic review, authors concluded that 4 of 17 constructs (aggression, sabotage, incivility and production deviance) can clearly explain “targeted dysfunctionality” with two dimensions (ambiguity of harm intention and humanization in service contexts. Based on these dimensions we defined targeted dysfunctionality as “(Un)ambiguous dysfunctional actions of service actors that are dominantly motivated by causing harm to other actors and processes in service ecosystems”. One of the main dimensions that define a meaningful distinction between sub-constructs is “ambiguity of harm”. Aggression and sabotage constructs have clear relations with “intent to harm” motivation but it is hard to determine harm motivation behind incivility and product deviance. The other dimension, which is critical to dissociate the sub-constructs, is the person-targeted/process-targeted dichotomy. Aggressive and uncivil behaviors are clearly directed at a person or a group of people (like teams). On the other hand, the main goal of sabotage and production deviance behaviors is harming organizational processes (for instance, service providing processes), rather than harming people or organizational members. In meta-analytic review, it is found significant relationships between employee-targeted dysfunctional customer behaviors (customer mistreatment) and dysfunctional employee behaviors (aggression, incivility, service sabotage and production deviance). Supporting our typology, authors found significant differences between the effects sizes of employee aggression, employee incivility, service sabotage and production deviance. The relationship between aggression and customer mistreatment was trivial (ρ=.058). On the other hand, it is found that there were strong positive impacts of customer mistreatment on incivility, sabotage and production deviance in different levels (ρ=.403; ρ=.359; ρ=.275; respectively)

ABSTRACT. The United States serves as a hub for international commerce and has attracted businesses from countries all over the world. However, many companies complain about the high litigation costs and the rampant lawsuits in the United States. Could there be a “win-win” situation where companies can still do business in the United States without fearing expensive law suits? This study draws on literature in marketing and field interviews to provide a framework through which the consumer co-production concept (Lovelock and Young, 1979) in services marketing could be extended to the legal system in the United States through Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). I argue that although the ADR option currently exists in the United States it is not widely used because it has not been properly marketed to the public, thus many people are still unaware of its existence. By extending the co-production concept to the legal system, I am not only providing a theory-based framework by which further studies could be conducted in the area, but I am also providing a vehicle by which the public could sold on the advantages of the ADR process over the traditional adversary method of resolving disputes.

ABSTRACT. There have been changes in thinking when it comes to the way business interact with customers, as it is now believed that face-to-face interaction is not the only way to enhance customer loyalty, but using mobile channels as an interface with customers can still give that sense of personalization. This study will advance the existing body of knowledge about mobile banking and customer loyalty by proposing a model that investigates the influence of mobile banking services on enhancing customer loyalty in the banking industry. Mobile banking plays an imperative role in relationship marketing strategies, which several applications have developed into central services distribution channel with substantial studies dedicated to predicting customers’ adoption. Nevertheless, it has been seldom addressed how mobile banking influences customer loyalty. Therefore, this study proposes a framework which explores multi-dimensional influences of mobile banking services on enhancing customer loyalty. The results indicate that efficiency (via perceived value) and ease of navigation (via satisfaction) are the most significant factors contributing to customer loyalty. This study makes suggestions to digital marketing managers to focus on designing safe and secure, useful, and reliable mobile banking applications to further add value and enhance customer trust which leads to loyalty.