ABSTRACT. This paper original contribution builds on examining consumers’ attitudes in periods of economic downturn, providing new insights concerning consumer decision making, the new logic of spending and saving behavior and also opening new paths for research on the psychology of choice in contexts of recession. The research was conducted in 2014 during the Portuguese recession and used a qualitative approach comprising eleven semi-structured interviews with Portuguese consumers. The results show that, during recessions, consumers pursuit for economic level-headedness, adapting and assuming new behaviors that allow them to accommodate the reduced income, which also translates into increased social responsibility. Besides switching to cheaper options, namely looking for private labels and national brand promotions, consumers revealed new strategies and new habits, such as i) more organization and planned behavior; ii) going shopping more frequently; iii) reducing stocking behavior, and iv) avoiding wasting. Consumers also referred to the learning opportunity that recessions usually engender, instigating structural changes in people’s lives.

ABSTRACT. This research examines how political advertising is operated in a volatile context, such as a state of war or instability. The study employed a self-completing cross-sectional survey to gather the data in the period of the 2016 Syrian elections for members of parliament. The research tested the hypothetical model and its equivalency related to political involvement through the use of structural equation modelling. The outcomes of the tests revealed the structure of belief as a four-dimensional variate. The four dimensions encapsulate information, veracity, sarcasm, and cynicism. In addition, perceptions during conflicts had a negative effect on attitude through sarcasm displayed by voters with low political involvement. The results also found that negative attitude had a link with lower degrees of veracity with regards to voters who are less involved but to greater degrees of cynicism highly politically active individuals. We found that less favourable attitudes to political advertising lowered the likelihoods for voters to watch political ads or announcements, support a runner, and be willing to go to the poll.  We found no relation between the fact of paying attention to political advertising and intention of voters to use their ballot.

ABSTRACT. While past research on consumer animosity suggests that individuals can be ambivalent towards a foreign country, the significance of this phenomenon is not examined explicitly. Using a set-theoretic approach to explore the configuration of causes that explains animosity in two different contexts, our analysis yields three novel insights. First, a significant segment of consumers demonstrates ambivalence by engaging in negative word of mouth and product avoidance, even though they have positive product quality perceptions. Second, a plurality of mechanisms, rather than a single overarching model, explains the key outcomes of animosity. Different causes explain the outcomes of animosity for different groups of consumers. Third, anger is a necessary component of animosity and thus should be included in all examinations of how international crises affect consumer behavior. The study raises implications for future research and for brand managers managing their offering in potentially hostile marketplaces.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the relationships between the consumer-brand identification (CBI)construct and the customers’ satisfaction, commitment, trust and loyalty toward hospitality brands. The methodology included a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) that assessed the reliability and validity of previous tried and tested measures in marketing sciences. This study has supported the scales' content validity. A two-step structural equation modelling approach was used to analyze the relationships among the latent and observed constructs. The findings have reported a satisfactory fit for this study's research model. The empirical results shed light on the direct and indirect effects on brand loyalty. This contribution implies that brand trust had the highest effect on brand loyalty, and this was followed my other determinants, including; consumer-brand identification, consumer satisfaction and commitment. In conclusion, this paper identifies its research limitations and puts forward possible research avenues.

ABSTRACT. Marketers suggest that “digitalization of luxury brands” is somewhat paradoxical, since customers of luxury brands expect exclusive access, insider knowledge, and more personalized service than online environments offer. In terms of luxury brand identity, luxury brands can create traditional or more modern images, where the two traits are viewed on a continuum. However, are they truly? Moreover, though it seems reasonable to assume that modern luxury brands are expected to modernize, even in a digital capacity, while traditional luxury brands are expected to be resilient to change, what impact does online presence and selling strategy have on consumer perceptions of the luxury brand image? The primary goal of this paper is to answer these questions. In a pre-test of forty luxury brands, we demonstrate that, for most brands (32), modern and traditional are not negatively related concepts, but can co-exist. Based on the results of the pre-test, we selected luxury brands with high awareness, to represent a more modern versus traditional brand in a subsequent experiment. The results of this experiment indicated that a modern brand was evaluated less positively when participants viewed its social media page. No differences emerged for the traditional brand. Moreover, when viewing the social media pages of the luxury brand, those who viewed the traditional (vs. modern) luxury brand reported more positive evaluations. While the results contribute to scholarship on defining and conceptualizing luxury brand identity, the findings also offer evidence to how digital strategies affect luxury brand evaluations.

ABSTRACT. This paper sought to address the gap in understanding the socio-cognitive and external factors that influence luxury purchase intentions during economic downturns and examine the role of intrinsic and environmental factors influence consumers’ luxury purchase intentions. Premium pricing, exclusivity, and uniqueness are core characteristics of luxury brands, and consumers look for such attributes to build social status when they buy luxury brands. It focuses on four socio-cognitive factors (escape, impulsiveness, self-expression, and social status), one marketing factor (promotions), and one overarching environmental factor (recession effect on society). From a company’s perspective, these factors represent both marketer-controllable and non-controllable factors that may influence luxury brand consumption in a recessionary environment. From a consumer’s perspective, these factors characterize socio-cognitive, marketing-related, and environmental factors that collectively influence consumers’ choice for luxury brands.

ABSTRACT. Transportation contributes to 15% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, 60% of which come from cars, SUV and other light vehicles. Online communication is widely used nowadays to encourage people to switch to more sustainable travel modes. This research focuses on the effects of the design of a website, beyond its content in information. We draw on the concept of virtual hospitality: a form of online social and economic exchange fostered by the warm, friendly, welcoming, courteous, open, generous behavior of the host creating the hospitable social environment. We hypothesize that virtual hospitality (navigability and sociability) will positively influence behavioral intentions (to share the information read on the website and to follow the recommendations related to the content of this information) through the mediation of processing fluency, self-efficacy and well-being. An experimentation conducted online in which the dimensions of hospitality (navigability and sociality) are manipulated shows that this hypothesis is on the whole supported by our results. Results are discussed. Implications for research and managers are displayed as well as the limitations and research avenues.

ABSTRACT. Mobile technology is on the rise, nonetheless, mobile marketing is still an under-investigated terrain. Shankar et al. (2016) point out the importance to further investigate how to design apps that would deliver rich customer experiences. One of the limits that mobile commerce faces is the extent to which the consumer can evaluate and experience the product before the purchase. A new technology that can resolve this issue is virtual reality (VR). While companies invest in costly VR applications, it is still unclear to what extent these apps are effective. In this research, we want to understand the effectiveness of the VR shopping mobile applications. To do so, we carry out a series of empirical studies on consumer shopping experience by manipulating the presence of the VR features and the type of the applications. We find that virtual reality apps allowing 3D visualization represent both a higher utilitarian and hedonic value to the consumers than a 2D representation of the products. As a result, consumers have a better attitude toward the app and are more willing to use it for their shopping activities. On the other hand, virtual try-ons were not proved as more effective and attractive for consumers. Our study makes several contributions to the literature and managerial suggestions.

ABSTRACT. Advances in digital technologies continue to transform the way that organisations conduct business, and none has been more widely anticipated than Virtual Reality (VR). Numerous academics and practitioners in a variety of industries have identified valuable opportunities that come with implementing VR technologies into various contexts. Stakeholders are actively experimenting with VR implementation to achieve objectives, but recently VR technologies have been applied in business environments to aid virtual commerce. Virtual commerce describes electronically mediated commercial transactions that originate from alternate reality technological platforms. This paper aims to provide insight regarding the technological developments and key stakeholders that contribute to the overall virtual reality ecosystem. It specifically looks at how value is created by and through the different elements in order to drive the business-to-consumer virtual reality market. The paper closes by discussing research implications and managerial prescriptions of impact for the VR ecosystem, and virtual commerce specifically, of the prospective technological trends.

ABSTRACT. Worldwide companies develop personalized websites with the aim of improving online customer experience. Web personalization enable them to learn from their online consumers’ data and adapt their websites accordingly. However, little is known about the personalized online customer experience. With an experimental approach, this research investigates how personalization influences online customer experience and investigates the role of perceived personalization.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a multidimensional analysis that investigates how hospitals’ integrated quality (i.e., conformance, experiential, and environmental) impacts hospital performance (i.e., readmission rate and patient experience). Three years of secondary data from two sources were utilized(n=2,781). OLS regression was employed to test the hypotheses. A ‘rank and percentile’ technique will be used to rank each hospital’s quality scores against other hospitals in the sample. Synergies exist among conformance, experiential, and environmental quality are expected of integrated quality’s negative impact on readmissions and positive impact on patient experience. Hospitals face trade-offs, relative to experiential quality, when attempting to increase conformance and/or environmental quality. This paper’s main implication is that it applies established theory to a model that is empirically tested to show that implementing and maintaining a systems-oriented approach to quality can positively impact hospital performance. The main limitation is that the analyses were conducted at the hospital level. Hospital administrators’ efforts should be focused on consolidating all three quality dimensions. A number of managerial implications are proposed and discussed. Prior research treats conformance, experiential, and environmental quality as orthogonal concepts. In contrast, this research conceptualizes hospital quality as the combination of the aforementioned quality dimensions.

ABSTRACT. Høgevold and Svensson (2016) identify multiple organizational directions to assess the organizational efforts and priorities of sustainability initiatives through time. This study combines and applies their developed frameworks in the service-oriented industry of health care organizations, namely both private and public hospitals. This study aims to offer a foundation to understand past and present organizational efforts and priorities of sustainability initiatives. In doing so, it seeks to provide an empirical foundation for the organizational direction of sustainability initiatives through time, as well as revealing similarities and differences between private and public sectors.

ABSTRACT. This field study addresses three objectives. First, it proposes a conceptual model of smoking attitude and intentions that expands the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) with social factors. The research identifies differences between non-smokers and smoking adolescents’ responses to physical and social threat appears. Finally, it evaluates the role of social and physical threats in changing future smoking attitudes and behavioural intentions. This study contributes to the literature by examining adolescents’ self-reported behavioural responses to both physical and social threat appeals as called for in prior research and not previously investigated. The study expands on the EPPM model to include variables from social learning (peer pressure and parental views on smoking) which is a new contribution to the literature. The results indicate that the effects of social threat appeals and social threat appeals are different for some variables tested.

ABSTRACT. Health warnings are one of the measures recommended by health policymakers to reduce alcohol misuse. In countries that have adopted them (e.g. US, France, Poland, UK), alcohol warnings seem not to be effective enough to influence people. This exploratory research investigates the effect of different content (short/long-term risks; health/other risks) and formats (text-only vs. combined text and pictogram) for alcohol warnings on the variables of persuasion (attention, comprehension, credibility, behavioural intentions, etc.). To do this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 young French people. This target is relevant for social marketers as there has been an increase in “binge drinking” in recent decades in many countries. The results reveal that some warning content may increase knowledge, awareness and susceptibility (social risks, short-term risks, accurate risks) among young people. In addition, larger warnings and combined text and pictogram messages increase visibility, noticeability and message comprehension. However, alcohol warnings seem insufficient to influence behavioural intentions. This research provides new insights in the field of social marketing and offers recommendations for public health actors on how to increase the effectiveness of these messages on young people, who are strongly affected by alcohol misuse.

ABSTRACT. SHARING FASHION: AN ABSTRACT

*Rachel Vieira, University of Gloucestershire, UK, rvieira@glos.ac.uk

Professor Neil Towers, University of Gloucestershire, UK, ntowers@glos.ac.uk

Dr Louise Reid, University of Gloucestershire, UK, lreid1@glos.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

The traditional fashion consumption model has evolved over the last two decades. Digital selling platforms (e.g. website, mobile applications) and pure-play retailers have allowed to consumers to engage in alternative forms of consumption (sharing) (Belk 2014).  Consumers are moving away from disposable purchasing and enhancing their social consciousness leading to fashion retailers garment recycling opportunities (Armstrong et al. 2015). Despite the success of garment exchange platforms, companies are yet to introduce sharing platforms within their retail strategy. 

Through engagement in the process of sharing fashion consumers can reuse clothing, which offers an alternative to fashion consumption as a means of projecting self-identity. Authors relating to sharing consumption themes have explored attachment ownership (Belk 1988, 2014), re-circulation through second hand markets (Gregson and Crewe 2003), sharing within a sustainable context (Botsman and Roo 2010) and the digital sharing economy (Martin and Upham 2016).  However, Choo et al. (2014) debated that there is very little research into fashion sharing behaviour from a consumer perspective. Furthermore, they suggest that the relationship between ownership, identity formation and recirculation needs further exploration to be understood in terms of relevance within this research. 

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between sharing, identity and garment ownership to allow fashion retailers to establish whether sharing platforms can be introduced in their selling strategy.  

To establish the role of ownership and identity within consumers sharing behaviour, a purposive sample of millennial females (generation y and z) (Hall and Towers 2017) was recruited.  Respondents engaged within a sharing event (e.g. a swap shop) recorded their experiences which were followed by an in-depth interview. Employing an interpretivist perspective, interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to establish the core themes presented by consumers.  This will indicate whether consumer’s experience of sharing engagement compromises individual identity and their potential use of pre-owned garments. 

The findings of this research shall develop consumption literature by providing a fashion sharing context.  This will identify the implications within the fashion industry and address the research gaps outlined.  Fashion retailers can then determine the potential of including sharing platforms within their retail channel strategy.  

Keywords: Sharing, Fashion Consumption, Identity, Ownership

References Available Upon Request

ABSTRACT. The effect of social comparison on luxury purchase intentions has attracted scant attention from researchers. Similarly, very few studies have used the construct of social comparison orientation (SCO) in marketing research. The construct has considerable potential to inform the study of social comparison driven consumer behaviour, especially in the digital era. Employing social comparison theory and using data from the UK, the study demonstrates the effect of social comparison orientation on luxury purchase intentions. It also demonstrates the mediating effect of prestige sensitivity on this relationship. Further, the study also documents the effect of prestige sensitivity on price quality schema, and the mediating effect of prestige sensitivity on the relationship between SCO and price quality schema. Novel to the marketing literature, these findings are explained using guilt reduction and justification processes. The findings lead to several managerial implications regarding social comparison oriented advertising, as well as theoretical implications, which are outlined.

ABSTRACT. Retailers in the fashion industry are constantly employing new strategies in attempts to increase demand and revenue. The premise of such strategies involves the use of scarcity perceptions which typically entail higher-end items that are rarely on sale, offered for a limited time period, and provide a sense of exclusivity that is valued by the customer. Scarcity can take on different forms, and often results in numerous positive benefits for the firm. This study reveals a potential dark side to how marketers can use consumers’ perceptions of scarcity to capitalize on consumer buying behaviors by understanding their basic needs. Lynn (1992) calls for future analyses that seek to understand scarcity from competing perspectives. Therefore, the goal of this proposed research is to analyze two competing explanations as to why manufactured scarcity works to convince consumers to make fashion purchases. Specifically, this research will focus on the core social needs of individuals to attempt to answer the following questions. First, how does the need to belong influence scarcity-based fashion purchases? Second, how does the need for uniqueness influence scarcity-based fashion purchases? A pretest experiment is currently in progress, with final data collection to follow. Theoretical and practical implications for fashion retailers is summarized.

ABSTRACT. This research examines consumers’ processing of persuasive messages as a function of their motivation to use technologies on which the persuasive messages are transmitted. Evidence from three studies across various devices shows that media use motivation affects ad processing motivation and subsequently consumers’ attitudes towards advertising.Controlling for pretest level of motivation and perceptions of platform credibility, greater motivation to use the internet resulted in greater motivation to process the ad. Results of the influence of motivation to use the internet, mobile devices, laptops and smartphones on ad processing motivation were all examined and replicated. Yadav and Pavlou (2014) offered that, “enhanced consumer visibility—increased firm’s ability to capture and manage detailed information about consumers’ activities in computer mediated environments—must be given a more central role in theory development efforts. This research contributes to this by suggesting that consumer ad processsing might inlfuenced be the level of motivation to utilize certain advertising technologies.

ABSTRACT. In view of the impact of advertisement on consumers’ response and purchasing behavior toward brands, more and more brand managers hope to communicate brand-related information and build up the connections with consumers through various advertisements. Based on reviewing the literature of the types and effects of advertisements, this study combines the view of situational continuity and transportation theory to investigate the effects of narrative advertisement on consumers’ brand experience. This study conducts two experiments to examine consumers’response while viewing a new brand’s narrative film advertisement with different combinations of situational continuity factors. The results show that, compare to the argumentative advertisement, narrative advertisements can lead to higher level of consumers’ brand experience. Subsequently, the effects of different situational continuity factors on consumers’ brand experience are confirmed. The results show that consumers’ subjective comprehension of narrative advertisement is affected by the casual and time continuity of narrative advertisements. Moreover, the effect of casual and time continuity of the narrative advertisement on consumers’ brand experience is mediated by their subjective comprehension and transportation. Finally, the implications of the research findings for brand managers to further understand consumers’ brand experience are included in the study.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to examine consumer reactions to and perceptions of cosmeceutical advertising claims. Cosmeceutical is a "hybrid" term which is composed of both cosmetic as well as pharmaceutical information. Consequently, the jurisdiction domain pertinent to such claims is unclear. Moreover, since these claims can and do contain scientific information that may be unclear to consumers, users of these products may not be receiving the background they need to make informed decisions. In order to understand further consumer understanding of such claims, we developed a classification typology of cosmeceutical claims and surveyed actual consumers of these products. We found that certain types of these claims are more susceptible to consumer skepticism while others elicit more trust. We believe these results have implications for cosmetic advertisers who develop and utilize cosmeceutical advertising claims such as ensuring that such claims are transparent and understandable to cosmetic consumers.

ABSTRACT. Despite the popularity of Instagram, knowledge of how micro-influencer endorsement contributes to followers’ behavior intention to purchase is still scarce. This study investigates what are the key factors of micro-influencer endorsement that effectively affect micro-influencers’ credibility and followers’ attitude toward endorsed brand, which in turn affects followers’ purchase intention. The results indicate that brand authenticity, economic benefits, word of mouth, as well as corporate social responsibility except self-disclosure are crucial to increase influencers’ credibility and followers' attitude toward the endorsed brand and, ultimately, their intention to buy the endorsed brand. These results contribute to better understanding how to effectively employ influencer-endorsed advertising as a sales promotion tool.

ABSTRACT. Although consumers’ awareness about the environmental impact of consumption and their appreciation of green products are on the rise, past research has shown that the adoption of green products is still relatively low.  In this research, we propose that consumers’ internal locus of control (i.e., the degree to which consumers believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives) and the attribution of human emotions to a product, termed product anthropomorphism, might jointly affect consumers’ purchase decisions. Specifically, in this research, we examine the moderating effect of product anthropomorphism on the relationship between consumers’ internal locus of control and purchase intention of an anthropomorphised green product. In this research, we used the adoption of an energy-saving electric kettle as our research context.

We conducted two studies. In the first study, using online survey data (N=120), we tested the direct effect of consumers’ internal locus of control on their purchase intention of green products. Our results revealed that consumers’ internal locus of control has a positive effect on their purchase intentions. In the second study (N=400), for the same anthropomorphised electric kettle, we examined the moderating effect of green product anthropomorphism on the relationship between consumers’ internal locus of control and their purchase intention of green products. The results of the second study revealed that consumers’ internal locus of control positively affects purchase intention, replicating the results of the first study. However, more importantly, the results of the second study revealed that the effect of consumers’ internal locus of control on purchase intention is moderated by green product anthropomorphism. That is, product anthropomorphism enhances the positive effect of locus of control of purchase intention, such that consumers are more likely to purchase green products when the product is anthropomorphised. The implications of this research are that adding anthropomorphic features to green products and communicating the idea that consumers can contribute to environmental sustainability could increase green product adoption.

ABSTRACT. Even though the adoption of responsible energy consumption behavior became a topic that has been increasingly analyzed, only few studies have focused on the opposite concept of non-adoption of environmentally responsible behavior despite its importance for firms and public policies in the energy sector. This research aims (i) at exploring the main reasons, and possibly new ones, why people do not curtail their home energy consumption despite the incessant calls for energy conservation, and (ii) at proposing a consumer typology towards saving energy. To address the lack of research on this topic, we conducted a qualitative study that revealed new oppositional motives related to consumers’ resistance to deconsumption.

ABSTRACT. Since environmental degradation principally ensues from human activities, reversing its progression lies with altering consumer behaviors. Environmental concern and improved awareness about pro-environmental initiatives is essential but insufficient for generating enduring behavioral shifts. Building upon the concept of Environmental Locus of Control (ELOC)—which refers to a person’s personal efficacy and responsibility to change the environment—this research examines the intervening roles played by consumers’ perceptions of enabling and constraining contextual factors, in mediating the relationships between the two broad loci of external ELOC (“powerful others”, and “chance or fate”) and proenvironmental behaviors (PEBs). These enabling and constraining factors are classified along a continuum of objectivity vs. subjectivity (i.e., real vs. perceived), and we investigate how these constructs independently and jointly (i.e., by mediating the predictive ability of external ELOC) affect PEBs. With two studies (n1=670 students, n2=310 mainstream adult consumers), we examine the construct validity of our psychometric and behavioral measures, and test our hypothesized model. Results largely corroborate the mediating role of environmental constraints and enablers in explaining the role between external ELOC and PEBs. These mediating factors provide an important missing piece to help bridge the proenvironmental attitude-behavior gap. The task facing marketers and public policy makers is not just to understand consumers’ environmental dispositions and ascriptions of responsibility for achieving environmental goals, but moreover, to (re)engineering the context to enhance the pre-eminence of enablers (ease of being green, availability/quality of eco-options, etc.) and curtail the implied presence of hindrances (cost, effort required, quality trade-offs, etc.).

ABSTRACT. Green marketing may provide a marketer with a differential advantage. However, a great concern for green marketers is the “ethical consumption attitude-behaviour gap” sometimes simply referred to as the “green gap” – reflecting the reality that while consumers may care about the environment, they would not necessarily engage in green consumption behaviours. A plausible approach to closing the “attitude-behaviour” gap may involve relying on customers’ willingness to act as “partial marketing employees” and voluntarily assist other consumers by advocating product benefits and persuading others to make a green purchase. Customers could also provide feedback to the firm to improve its product, which may lead to further green purchasing behaviour. However, the successful investment in customers as “partial marketing employees” would require additional information on: (1) who the potential candidates are, (2) how likely they are to seek the job, (3) the candidates’ behavioural characteristics and (4) where firm investment may be needed to enhance performance. The present study aimed to provide insight into these matters. A total of 1 243 self-administered questionnaires were completed by a subset of consumers in the United States. Latent class analysis and structural equation modelling assisted in finding the required information to effectively invest in customers as “partial marketing employees”. Ultimately, the findings serve to further enlighten scholars on the role and value of green marketing practices that can also be performed by fellow customers, which may offer a more cost-effective and practical solution for closing the “attitude-behaviour” gap and obtaining a competitive advantage.

ABSTRACT. Does seeing a friend supporting a nonprofit organization on social media affect one’s subsequent Facebook or meaningful social behavior? How is it different from seeing a friend supporting a luxury or utilitarian company on social media? In three experiments, the authors answer these questions by examining the differential influences of social networks endorsement type (i.e., Facebook vs. meaningful social engagement) on one’s subsequent social behavior on Facebook or in a more meaningful way (i.e., face-to-face). Experiments 1, 2, and 3 show that for a nonprofit organization, peer-influence is more beneficial when is encountered in a more meaningful social engagement (e.g., wearing a cause pin) than viewed on Facebook. However, for a utilitarian company, peer-influence is more beneficial when happened on Facebook than meaningful social engagement. For luxury companies, there is no differential effect of peer-influence when happened on Facebook or face-to-face. Drawing on costly signaling theory, Experiment 2 demonstrates that perceived altruism is the underlying mechanism for the positive effect of meaningful social engagement for nonprofit organizations. Experiment 3 introduces the self-company connection as the boundary condition and shows that the positive effect of prior exposure to social endorsement (Facebook endorsement) for nonprofits (utilitarian companies) only emerges when the self-company connection to the nonprofits is low.

ABSTRACT. This research tests a valenced model of fit for cause-related marketing (CRM) partnerships. Specifically, the model examines two key factors: valence and commonality. Valence refers to whether the company and the cause are apparently working toward a unified purpose or cross-purposes outside of the partnership. Commonality refers to whether the company and cause appear to have something in common. Crossing these factors develops a two-dimensional space upon which three general types of CRM fit (positive, neutral, and negative) are placed and within these general types, nine different sub-types of CRM fit are placed. An on-line, scenario-based experiment with x participants is conducted to assess the utility of the proposed model. Additionally, attitude and purchase intention toward the general fit types of CRM partnerships are assessed. The model is found to have relatively good fit; however specific alterations are suggested. Additionally, positive valence and higher commonality are found to garner more positive attitudes and higher purchase intention.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the evolution of corporate social responsibility in recent years, implications for organizations that get involved in politically charged social causes, as well as their micro and macro level effects on consumers and society. The study of recent CSR events has shown a trend toward CSR 2.0, in which global corporate responsibility is completed with the involvement of business organizations in highly polarizing political causes, helped by the use of the digital platform. The qualitative analysis performed also exhibits not only a micro-level impact on consumers and their desire to support the brand, but also a social and societal level in increasing support for the cause and the brand at the same time.

ABSTRACT. None

ABSTRACT. Clothing is a powerful determinant of how others perceive us. Additionally, clothing can be seen as a strong way to express identity. While clothing is a method of self-expression, there are limited options in children’s clothing. A study was conducted to look at clothing options by gender in the top children’s clothing retailers. We find that options for children follow gender-congruent expectations. Further, a series of studies were run to look at preference for clothing based on congruency and fit. We find parents have a preference for gender-congruent clothing for children between the ages of 2-5. Further, this preference can be explained by perceptions of fit. Finally, this preference is only true for parents who score higher on an implicit gender-bias task.

ABSTRACT. Typically value is viewed as a trade-off: costs or sacrifices are subtracted from overall benefits (Zeithaml, 1988). An alternate approach, goal directed, means to an end, focuses on the outcome (Gallarza, Gil-Saura, & Holbrook, 2011), thus it is about the goal not the difficulty of the journey to get there. But what if the degree of sacrifice increased rather than decreased the overall value? Recent research has indicated that this could be the case (Scott et al., 2017). The current paper posits that this translates into changing the conventional value equation. We could possibly value something particularly highly because it is hard to obtain. This would mean the negatives enhance rather than detract from value; sacrifices could add rather than subtract to benefits, in contrast to the conventional trade-off approach to value adjudication. The current study posits that pain can have an additive effect to value; it can also lead to a positive value outcome. We explored a credence good, that of an executive MBA experience, to analyse positive and negative experiences that occurred during acquisition of the MBA. It focused on peer to peer learning vehicles, namely MBA syndicates. Making use of the critical incident technique, insights were generated on how peer groups contributed towards the value creation process. The findings indicated that syndicate interactions, while often fraught with difficulty, ultimately added more value for personal rather than academic development. Findings included implications for service design.

ABSTRACT. Wisdom has been conceptualized as an essential facilitator of well-being. Luchs and Mick (2018) developed a theoretical framework of consumer wisdom which we use as a starting point for the development of a measurement scale. Across three data sets, we refine Luchs & Mick’s (2018) conceptualization and develop a 24-item scale of consumer wisdom (CWS). We demonstrate its stability across data sets and time while situating it within a nomological network of scales that brings together a broad range of consumption related constructs. Further, our results demonstrate that consumer wisdom is a substantial predictor of well-being and, therefore, highly relevant to the practice of marketing given its focus on creating value for the consumer.

ABSTRACT. The present research relies on construal level theory to examine how a close versus distant advertised consumption experience intertwines with elaborative approach (imagining the experience versus considering ad details) to influence consumer responses to the message. Specifically, findings reveal that the consumer imagination is a more effective form of elaboration when the spatial distance of the advertised consumption experience is close for a named location because the imagination combines incoming information about spatial distance with triggered episodic memories that are more accessible when the experience is nearby. In comparison, considering advertised features is a more effective elaborative approach when the spatial distance is far (for a named location) because considering relies on a comparison of advertised features with triggered semantic details rather than creating holistic simulations based on episodic memories that are less accessible. Certainty and involvement serially mediate the observed effects. However, when distance is the only location information provided, the imagination is more effective when the distance is far rather than close. Both contributions to theory and practical implications are addressed.

ABSTRACT. Adopting the distributed cognition approach this exploratory qualitative study examines how and what brand information is created and processed among consumers through social media. With the use of a case study method, this study systematically identifies the unique characteristics of the newly emerged types of brand information in social media that become important to consumers, and how they then promote more of interactive and coordinative communication which consequently reach desirable information transparency. The contributions are as follows. First, this research reveals that in the era of social media brand information is more an emergent property of interaction and coordination than a property of the top-down projection of a branded company. Second, this study highlights the view that the conventional information processing approach is less useful in informing brand information management. Finally, social media’s unique features initiate co-construction of brand knowledge and a holistic approach to brand information through critical inquiry, self-reflection, and a shift from passively receiving and consuming brand content towards proactive activities in pursuit of authenticity, which subsequently contributes to desirable brand transparency. This paper also proposes a brand information transparency framework incorporating findings in respect to the coordination and interaction in social media.

ABSTRACT. With the rise of the Internet and the advancement of online communication technology, firm-hosted online brand communities (OBCs) have emerged as effective vehicles for organizations to establish long-term relationships with consumers and to facilitate interaction with and among consumers. Recent research increasingly focuses on consumers’ OBC engagement, which can be seen as the extent of participants’ specific interactions and/or interactive experiences. Despite an increased interest in the connections among OBC engagement, customer–community relationship, and customer-brand relationship, no empirical research has explored the important role of moderating mechanisms that enhance such relationships. Accordingly, we intend to shed light on how customer–community relationship affects OBC engagement, which in turn, leads to a customer–brand relationship. Drawing on use and gratification theory, we investigate the role of interaction-based benefits (i.e., social integrative benefits, learning benefits, hedonic benefits, and self-development benefits) as moderators of the relationship between OBC engagement and customer–community/brand identification. Moreover, according to congruency theory, we identify similarity-based factors (i.e., self–community similarity, self–brand similarity, and community–brand similarity) as key moderators of an OBC engagement and identification relationship with both the brand and the community. This study further provides managerial implications for building and managing firm-hosted OBCs.

ABSTRACT. We propose and test a model of social media use based on different sources of anxiety, including face-to-face social interaction, social media anxiety, and exposure to aggressive and non-aggressive cyber content. We survey a wide variety of respondents of different ages. Our results indicate that socially anxious individuals participate more actively in social media, possibly to alleviate anxiety. In addition, aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial content have a negative and significant effect on social media use.

ABSTRACT. Dynamic capability literature contends that firms can gain a competitive advantage through ambidexterity (the simultaneous pursuit of exploitation and exploration). However, research in marketing and other organizational domains shows that the ambidexterity–firm performance relationship is elusive, and high levels of exploitation and exploration may not improve firm performance. To shed new light on this topic, this study examines marketing ambidexterity (MA) as the convergence between exploitation and exploration across marketing activities and tests how firm-level absorptive capacity (AC) moderates the MA–firm performance relationship. Analyzing a unique dataset that combined survey and archival financial data from 318 private firms, this study shows that MA is positively related to sales growth for firms with higher levels of AC. However, this relationship weakens and becomes non-significant for firms with lower levels of AC. The findings underscore the roles of organizational knowledge activities in ensuring that firms benefit from ambidexterity.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims at presenting and discussing the ways the Resource-Advantage (R-A) Theory can help integrate Marketing knowledge after a long period in which strategic marketing has become disentangled and fragmented. The paper trails the evolutionary periods proposed by previous authors in the examination of how strategic marketing has developed as a sub-discipline.

ABSTRACT. Knowledge is undoubtedly one of the most important factors that help organization to achieve competitive advantage against rivals. Absorptive capacity (ACAP) reflects an organizational capability that enables firms to assess, assimilate and finally applicate their knowledge within the organization. At the same time, the implementation of organizational knowledge is expressed through adoption of an appropriate organizational strategy. In this study we choose pioneering orientation (PO) to be a strategy whereby the organizations think, make decisions and act in order to advance new product development. Against this background, our study aims to advance the marketing literature by examining the impact of ACAP on new product performance (NPP) and identifying the role of PO as a mediator of the ACAP – NPP relationship.

ABSTRACT. Agency theory focuses on the use of formal contracts and explicit knowledge to address opportunistic behavior between a principal and an agent. The principal-professional perspective holds that a professional agent may use tacit knowledge to act opportunistically, making it difficult for the principal to monitor the professional agent with a formal contract alone. This conceptual paper discusses the agency theory relationship problems between the marketer (the principal) and the advertising agency (the professional agent). In this relationship, transparency is becoming increasingly important. Dawson, Watson, and Boudreau's (2010) theory of relationship constraints is used to show how opportunism in the marketer-advertising agency relationship can be dealt with. Based on a conceptual application of this theory to the marketer-advertising agency relationship, seven propositions for future research are put forward.

ABSTRACT. The paper investigates the relationship between food lifestyle and food waste intensity by considering the mediating role of food waste preventing behaviour on such relation. Based on an online survey of 1,941 UK millennials consumers, the research hypotheses were tested using PLS-PM approach to Structural Equation Model. Results reveal that both the consumption of healthy food and individuals’ attitude to eat at home, as expressions of a healthy lifestyle, negatively affect food waste. The study also finds a mediating role of actions preventing food waste on the relationship between food lifestyle and food waste intensity, by thus suggesting the importance to consider preventing actions to face the food waste issue, also when consumers’ lifestyle is driven by healthy-related values. The work provides theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical viewpoint, the work deepens the food waste management literature, by focusing on consumers’ lifestyle and by considering actions preventing food waste. Furthermore, the work focuses its attention on the causal mechanisms of consumer food waste – a topic still little explored – by confirming that preventing behaviours can improve the influence of healthy lifestyle dimensions on food waste intensity. Managerially, the study provides implications for institutions, associations, producers and retailers, by identifying possible strategies for reducing the food waste intensity (ex. organization of education programs, the diffusion of correct actions, such as good management of food purchases, attention towards foods’ expiring dates or re-use of leftovers, improvement of the labels’ readability, promotions' organization, offer of small food packages at lower prices).

ABSTRACT. This study is particularly relevant in understating consumer’s evaluation of multi-ingredient sustainable food products. Firms are in a constant demand to introduce sustainable products; thus, the authors consider product type (Vice/Virtue) implications on the perceived performance of the product. In examining this relationship, they draw from theories of attribute centrality (the degree to which the ingredients is integral in defining the food product), the authors argue that the perceived performance inferiority of product can be avoided by linking sustainability from central to peripheral ingredients of the food product. They present two studies that support the hypotheses and explore the effect of ingredient centrality on product type-perceived performance relationship of the sustainable product. The authors conclude the paper with managerial implications. It provides guidance for firms to effectively link sustainable efforts to improve consumer’s perceived performance of the product.

ABSTRACT. Although food companies increasingly refer to moral values, such as patriotism, social justice or duty, in their marketing efforts, research has yet to investigate how appeals targeted to consumers’ political leanings may affect food perception. The current paper addresses this issue and demonstrates how appealing to consumers’ political ideology increases the efficacy of food health claims. Two experimental studies show that congruent appeals decrease health risk perceptions of both healthy and unhealthy food.

ABSTRACT. Over the past 20 years, health and environmental issues have led to the reshaping of a more sustainable or resilient agriculture and to increased sales of organic and local products. However, organic food accounts for only $4 billion in Canada, barely 2 to 3% of total annual food consumption, and direct-to-consumer markets represent only 3% of Quebecers' food consumption. As sustainable consumption patterns became more prevalent, the food retail landscape had to adapt and has dramatically changed. Thus, Walmart is the largest retailer of organic products in Canada. Some other retail giants have bought chains of health food stores. In the meantime, direct-to-consumer types of retailing emerged while traditional public and farmers markets enjoyed a return to popularity. Academic literature in management, more scarcely in marketing, have focused on the process of legitimation, either of conventional grocery stores , natural food stores or “alternative food systems”. Thus, researchers used to oppose or to study separately the different types of retailing. This paper aims to propose through an ethnographic study a more integrative and global understanding of the dynamics of change in the organizational field of sustainable food through neo-institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995). It highlights particularly the lack of pragmatic legitimacy despite the institutional work of individual actors in order to influence the cognitive, normative and regulative pillars of food consumption.

ABSTRACT. Effective retirement planning positively affects the quality of life of consumers and benefits the broader society. However, financial literacy and retirement preparedness are generally low. Within an ageing population, retirees struggle to maintain their desired life-style, while fewer working-age people contribute to social security systems. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of different ways to improve consumers’ retirement planning intentions and behavior. In this regard, information provision is often seen as a key remedy, but the most effective message format and content is a topic of active debate. We perform a longitudinal online experiment with a nationally representative sample of 736 U.S. individuals to examine whether providing financial information influences intentions to learn about retirement matters and start planning for retirement and how source (government vs. peer-generated), tone (prescriptive vs. descriptive), and presence of graphical illustrations (vs. text only) affects message effectiveness. We examine the underlying process of the effect of information provision through assessing the mediating role of financial self-efficacy. We conclude with implications for policy makers and business practitioners.

ABSTRACT. The mechanism of service deliveries in the financial service industry has gradually transformed and developed over time. It has shifted from a one-way delivery of services to a situation where customers take part in the service by suggesting their desires. Such participation not only improves the service but also results in the satisfaction of customers toward the service. This study investigated the antecedents of customer participation, including interactional justice, customer education, affective commitment, and company support, and explored if customer participation strengthens customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it considered role identification and perceived benefits as moderators, depicting if these variables enhance customer participation toward customer satisfaction. The study collected data by delivering surveys to customers of financial brokerage companies. A total of 324 entries were considered as valid entries. Results show that customer education, affective commitment, and company support substantially increase the degree of customer participation. Customer participation also has a significant impact on customer satisfaction toward service delivery. Perceived benefits were found to positively moderate the enhancement of customer participation toward customer satisfaction. These results provide insights into how the Taiwanese financial service industry could increase customer participation and further enhance customer satisfaction in service delivery.

ABSTRACT. Negative events are known to damage a guilty brand and spillover and damage other innocent but close brands. To-date this spillover effect has been identified within a relatively narrow context, i.e. at a brand portfolio, competing brand and brand alliance level. This study considers the wider, business context in which firms operate and examines brand spillover within a business ecosystem. Empirical research within the UK insurance ecosystem makes the following contributions to brand spillover theory. First, brand spillover originates at different levels of the ecosystem and is not limited to close relationships. Second. the role of consumer knowledge as a moderator is identified; where consumers have a low knowledge of industry structure brand spillage is higher. Third, the role of individual ecosystem actors in advancing negative brand spillover is identified. These actors are not the source of the spillover or necessarily affected but play a key role in communication and influencing the attitudes and beliefs of others. These findings have implications for practitioners as brand spillover can only be managed if the ecosystem works together.

ABSTRACT. Service failures are an unfortunate reality in the business domain. When a service failure occurs, the customer may choose to reconcile with the service provider or motivate vengeful responses. Past research indicated consumer forgiveness as a vital factor that effects customers post-service failure behavior. Additionally, scholar has also pointed out that forgiveness will prompt reconciliation and reconstruct the relationship. In other words, forgiveness is highly correlated with reconciliation, relative to forgiveness and reconciliation, revenge has been considered as aggressive responses. However, in real life, we found some interesting phenomenon does not align with past research. For instance, when a service failure occurs, some customer chooses to break the relationship with the service provider (no reconciliation), but constantly giving positive feedback (forgiveness). By contrast, some customer claim that they already forgive the service provider and intend to maintain their relationship (reconciliation), but still spreading negative word of mouth online (revenge).

Limited attention has focused on the formation and mechanism of this phenomenon. Our research adopts grudge theory and motivation theory as theoretical basis. Hence, we provide three propositions (1) to have new insights on interpreting the phenomenon of hollow forgiveness and silent forgiveness, and to explain (2) why customers may bear a grudge but not engaging in the retaliatory behavior, or may forgive even though they still complain about the service. This research aims to clarify the contradictions of past research and fills the research gap.

ABSTRACT. As academics and scholars are increasingly recognizing customers’ active role in shaping their service experience and co-creating value, the marketing literature has witnessed a significant rise in research on customer engagement. Customer engagement denotes customers’ psychological state occurring during interactive service experiences with a particular focal object. It has ensuing mutually beneficial outcomes for both firms and customers. Existing literature is currently fragmented and ambiguous on several aspects related to the construct. These include definitions, conceptualizations, conceptual relationships, as well as notions of engagement intensity, valence and disengagement. Recent calls have been made for further theoretical advancement of customer engagement research as it is still in infancy. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critique literature on customer engagement, and present future areas of research to advance a more holistic theoretical understanding. We draw from extant theoretical and empirical customer engagement literature by highlighting inconsistencies and critiquing existent findings. The discussion leads to the identification of a number of gaps in knowledge, and subsequently a number of research directions destined to advance customer engagement marketing. Our research has positive implications for marketing theory and practice since firms are increasingly prioritizing customer engagement initiatives and fostering long-term relationships with existing and potential customers.

ABSTRACT. Customer experience is the essence of what constitutes the interaction of a service with a customer. It is “comprised of the cognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial, and social elements that mark the customer’s direct or indirect interaction with a (set of) market actor(s)” (De Keyser, Lemon, Klaus, & Keiningham, 2015, p. 1). Fundamentally, customer experience is a phenomenon which occurs at the heart of service logic. However, as important as it is, customer experience is also “widely used, and abused”, and at the risk of being “dismissed because of the ambiguous manner in which it has been applied” (Palmer, 2010, p. 196). There are many definitions of customer experience and its constituent dimensions or elements, which adds another layer of complexity in constructing comparable studies across the board. Moreover, the previously mentioned complexity creates barriers for new researchers and research techniques alike due to this fragmentation.

To this extent, the aim of this work is to (i) explore the definitions of customer experience and its dimensions, (ii) analyze conceptual and empirical studies relating to the dimensions of customer experience, and (iii) from the previous two objectives incorporate a bottom-up approach, producing a unified dimensional mapping framework to enable a more integrated and holistic manner in which customer experience is studied in both academia and practice.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to enrich the retail service marketing literature by exploring management response strategies from the perspective of prospective consumers. Specifically, we investigate how different types of recovery messages (warmth-based vs. competence-based messages) influence prospective consumers’ service recovery perceptions and attitudes. Drawing on two fundamental dimensions of social perception (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008), this study focuses on warmth and competence as distinctive forms of online retailer responses which could affect consumer audiences’ service recovery perceptions and impression in a different manner. Results from an experiment revealed that two management response types have different effects on prospective consumers’ perceptions of service recovery. Generally, warmth-oriented responses to online complaints lead to stronger perceptions of diagnosticity and sincerity than competence-oriented responses do. Such perceptions of service recovery in turn influence attitude toward retailer.

ABSTRACT. This work-in-progress study presents a team-building activity that has been successfully employed in delivering the concept of the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in business courses in two universities. The study is largely built on the ideas of Kolb's (1984) holistic approach to learning whereby the students go through a cycle of activities that takes them through the stages of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Data are collected via self-administered online questionnaire distributed to students who took part in marketing and business courses as well as via instructor's observation of students' actions during the activity and students' post-course survey feedback. The final sample for this particular report is comprised of 41 participants. The preliminary results suggest that the activity is not only useful in delivering the concept of IMC, but also positively impacts the students' satisfaction with the enrolled course. The activity is useful in motivating students to partake more actively in in-class discussions and contributes to students' engaged reflective observations and relevant conceptualization. Hence, the activity is strongly recommended for marketing courses, in particular, and business courses, in general.

ABSTRACT. In 2010, the Market Research Advisory Board at our school strongly suggested that we added a course on marketing metrics/analytics to our curriculum. From their perspective as business practitioners, a course in marketing metrics/analytics would strengthen our approach to market research and strategic marketing. By integrating the critical thinking, mathematical, and analytical aspects of marketing we could add depth to our curriculum in a way that competing programs do not.

Acknowledging that the marketing decision making is being significantly impacted by metrics and analytics, our department decided to engage in the process of designing and then implementing an undergraduate course in marketing metrics. This presentation recounts the painstaking process of designing the course and then teaching it over two cycles in experimental fashion before adding the course to our curriculum, student reactions to the new course, and the eventual addition of the course into the marketing curriculum.

ABSTRACT. For a discipline to move forward, it is important to explore its evolution. As the history of marketing is seemingly disappearing from doctoral marketing education, there is a need to capture the evolution of marketing channels in the literature. This paper presents an overview of impactful events and developments from 1850- present in North America that have shaped the way the creators of products and services connect with users of the same. We present a timeline of these developments in technology, transfer of ownership and value, and the evolution of wholesaling and retailing as value added functions in the context of the marketing concept. Today’s advances in internet retailing and artificial intelligence and driver-less cars and other technology are important in advancing marketing channels. Similar advances in transportation and technology advances in the past were just as important in advancing marketing channels.

ABSTRACT. Theory and theoretical contributions are important both for advancing the collective body of knowledge in marketing and for achieving individual success in academic marketing careers. Our paper provides guidance on how marketing educators can approach the instruction of theoretical contributions in marketing. Specifically, we discuss how to understand what a theoretical contribution in marketing is and offer practical advice to marketing educators on how to teach it to aspiring marketing scholars. In addition, we provide guidelines for marketing educators to share with students as they develop works to be submitted for peer review.

ABSTRACT. Salespeople frequently face the predicament of wanting to protect their market information from colleagues while not appearing recalcitrant. Considering the choice of 1) disclosing information, or 2) refusing to disclose at the risk of being perceived as uncooperative, they may choose a third option: 3) appearing to share knowledge while actually concealing substantive information, which we call evasive hiding. Using social exchange theory, we examine the relational antecedents and customer-directed outcomes of evasive hiding as well as the conditional effects of pushover manager and environmental dynamism. The empirical findings reveal that the antecedents’ effect on evasive hiding are conditional upon the managerial-actionable construct of pushover manager. Evasive hiding was subsequently found to have a negative impact on customer-directed outcomes, particularly at low levels of environmental dynamism.

ABSTRACT. China’s banking industry has undergone important changes since the Chinese economic reform and its admission into the World Trade Organization. An increasing competitive market has revealed that Chinese banks face important challenges and that using managerial relationship behaviours can be instrumental in helping Chinese banks implement relational strategies with their customers and be more successful in the marketplace. Given the importance of CO and AS in sales areas, and the potential synergy that managerial coaching can have in helping salespeople improve their relational behaviors and increase their performance, we decided to test the effect of a relational managerial behavior (i.e. managerial coaching) on frontline employee performance (i.e. sales performance) and the mediating effect of employee’s relational behaviors (i.e. customer orientation and adaptive selling) in a Chinese environment. Results indicate that managerial coaching has a positive and significant impact on customer orientation, customer orientation on adaptive selling, and adaptive selling on salesperson performance, suggesting a full mediation model: CO fully mediates the effect of managerial coaching on AS and performance, and AS fully mediates the effects of coaching and CO on performance. The study makes some contributions concerning the similarity of results with other studies using Western samples, the importance of CO and AS in a credence service – that might even mask the effect of other mediators - and the implications for companies expecting to implement a successful customer oriented strategy.

ABSTRACT. Sales managers’ leadership styles have changed in response to developments in the marketplace, technology and workplace structures. Participative leadership has become the norm where the leader acts as a coach to set clear directions and orchestrates company resources and actively seeks salespeople's suggestions and ideas in his/her decision-making process. This study explores the relationships between the salespeople's perceptions of their sales managers' participative leadership style on their own motivation and performance as well as the moderating effect of a sales manager's decision-making indecisiveness. Hypotheses are tested with a sample of 255 banking salespeople in a large metropolitan city in India. Participative leadership was found to positively influence intrinsic motivation and job performance. Indecisiveness moderated the relationship between participative leadership and job performance where the relationship was weaker at higher levels of indecisiveness. The study's model, results and discussion are provided.

ABSTRACT. The research question is whether the sequential logic of quality constructs tested and retested across multiple contexts and through time in buyer-supplier business relationships also applies to seller-customer business relationships. The research objective is therefore to test the sequential logic of quality constructs in seller-customer business relationships. The aim is to establish a foundation to assess the relationship quality of all the firms’ inbound and outbound business relationships.

ABSTRACT. The academic literature on gambling has tended to focus on problem gambling, highlighting concerns for health and addiction (e.g., Gainsbury, Suhonen, & Saastamoinen, 2014), this research focuses on understanding relevant drivers to gambling intention among online recreational gamblers.

One of the key motivators of gamblers is the enjoyment they derive from the gambling activity and their social interactions while gambling (Griffiths & Wood, 2008; McCormack, Shorter, & Griffiths, 2014). However, the practices and procedures of online gambling firms are increasingly being checked and found to be unfair towards the customers. In May 2017, for instance, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) fined a gambling operator for misleading advertising for the first time, arguing that it was not fair on the customer (UKGC, 2017a), and in June of the same year, the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a press release highlighting their concern with the fairness of promotions offered to internet gambling customers (CMA, 2017).

This research builds on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003) to propose a modified model for the online gambling context, termed UTAUT G, encompassing anticipated enjoyment and perceived fairness as additional drivers to online gambling intention. Data for each of UTAUT, and UTAUT G, are collected from 593 customers of an online gambling firm and analysed using PLS SEM via Smart PLS 3 (Ringle, Wende, & Becker, 2015). Results are reported, implications are discussed, limitations are noted and possible areas for further research are indicated.

ABSTRACT. This research examines recreational consumer experiences in the form of long-distance thru-hikes. Two studies examine how people become aware of, become interested in, prepare for, consume, and interpret these outdoor adventures. The first study analyzes published hiking memoirs. The second study examines online discussion groups and hikers on the John Muir Trail. These studies reveal that the idea of a long-distance hike often arises as a result of accidental exposure. People add the idea to a mental “bucket list” which may incubate for months or years. Often an event or events trigger the motivation to actually attempt the hike. Information is gathered, often from online sources, and preparation is a high-involvement process. The hike itself is a time of self-discovery. Importantly, many hikers report these journeys as transformational experiences and afterwards serve as evangelists to other potential hikers. This study has implications for theories of consumer decision making and self-identity.

ABSTRACT. Virtual reality is receiving increasing attention from marketers. Head mounted displays (HMDs), a type of automated virtual environment, use a reality-based environment to promotes user control, eliciting telepresence, the feeling of being in another world. Recently, brands have attempted to up the consumer experience in virtual reality. One way that this can be accomplished is through sensory modalities. Virtual reality tends to focus on vision, as vision is an important sense in involving consumers in an experience and increasing brand desire. Integrating sensory experiences in VR contributes to a brand’s potential positioning, storytelling, and differentiation. The customer experience must involve cognition, affect, emotions, social dimensions, and physical responses. It seems logical that integrating sensory input propels the consumer-brand experience. Therefore, the goal of this research is to examine how HMDs involve cognition, affect, and emotions to shape the consumer experience. In two experiments conducted in a university behavioral lab, we find that HMD’s incorporation of varying sensory stimuli positively influences purchase intentions of a brand, with feelings about this experience underlying this effect. Future research is also planned to examine multisensory effects in HMDs, and how this impacts cognitions and experiences. Notably, this research provides implications to sensory marketing literature within VR and provides implications for practice.

ABSTRACT. This study develops and tests a framework of brand-related and identity-related antecedents of brand evangelism or intense brand-directed supportive behaviors. The framework proposes brand attractiveness, brand-self connectedness, and brand salience as antecedents of brand evangelism. In addition, the framework contends that these antecedents explain additional variance in brand evangelism, while controlling for brand trust and brand identification, and a battery of additional control variables such as brand usage, extraversion, income, social economic status, and gender. Although results and conclusions are preliminary, it can be ventured that brand attractiveness and brand-self connection are important drivers of brand evangelism

ABSTRACT. While conventional wisdom suggests that a product’s promotional environment must be aligned with the design elements embedded in the product, there is a lack of empirical research investigating the interactive effects of product design and the design of its promotional environment on consumer responses. In an attempt to fill this gap, this work investigates the interactive effects of product design (an intrinsic cue) and environment congruence (an extrinsic cue) on consumers’ aesthetic, affective, and behavioral responses. A lab experiments with a 2 (high-quality design cues vs. low-quality design cues) × 2 (congruent environment vs. non-congruent environment) between-subjects, full-factorial design was conducted to test the hypotheses using a digital camera as the stimulus. The results overall support the notion that product design visual cues elicit more positive aesthetic and affective responses. Environment congruence, on the other hand, plays a moderating role; design cues elicit stronger consumer responses in a congruent environment, whereas no such effect was found in a non-congruent environment. In other words, for products with low-quality design elements, the congruence of promotional environment may not be instrumental in eliciting more favorable consumer responses.

ABSTRACT. In response to the conscious consumer movement, brands are communicating about their fair labor initiatives through their marketing messages to create a niche for themselves and to show that they are doing their part for social improvement. In this study, we particularly focus on how how framing of brands’ fair labor-related messages, particularly using regulatory fit, can influence consumers’ message evaluations through three measures of message effectiveness, namely, perceived message credibility, attitude toward message, and perceived message persuasiveness. Adult participants, (n = 199) were recruited using a national research firm, Qualtrics for an online experimental study and data was subjected to univariate ANOVAs. The findings are encouraging for the hypotheses that regulatory fit can enhance consumers’ perceived message credibility, attitude towards message, as well as perceived persuasiveness of fair labor message from a brand. Detailed implications based on the effect of ‘fit’ on each variable are discussed below. The study provides implications for brands to design effective fair labor messages. It also lists limitations and future research possibilities.

ABSTRACT. Online retailing continues to gain importance. However, online retailing for groceries lags behind other product categories. This article focuses on a psychological explanation for this development: the absence of haptic diagnostics in online grocery retailing. In two studies, consumers’ rate their perception of produce offered in an online shop. Specifically, they assess their quality concerns of online offered produce, their affective evaluation of the products as well as their willingness to pay (WTP) in online vs. offline retailing contexts. Results demonstrate that high need for touch (NTF) consumers possess high quality concerns and low affective evaluation. Moreover, they are less willing to buy produce online. Furthermore, NFT influences WTP differences between offline and online retailing at the level of individual consumers. Overall, the influence of NFT is stronger in the absence of a direct touch input interface. Online retailers should therefore find possibilities to reduce the uncertainty that high-NFT consumers experience when shopping online.

ABSTRACT. As human population continues to rise there is a growing demand for resources to feed the planet. One solution is to introduce edible insects into human diets. Entomophagy – the practice of using insects for human consumption – is a sustainable practice that is currently being engaged by various cultural groups around the globe. Despite its many advantages, entomophagy is barely accepted in Western cultures. Ingesting insects is unappetizing to the majority of western consumers who show a strong implicit negative association and attitude towards all insects. This study uses the knowledge-attitude-behavior model as a framework to understand how – based on their subjective knowledge about entomophagy – consumers develop value perceptions of entomophagy (attitudes) and, eventually, intentions to consume (behaviors). In order to evaluate the complexity of value perceptions towards entomophagy, we used Sheth et al’s theory of consumption values and market choices. Results suggest that subjective knowledge positively affects four value perceptions (functional, social, emotional and epistemic value) explaining high percentages of their variance. Support was also found for the positive effect of emotional value and epistemic value on intentions to use and for functional and epistemic value on positive word-of-mouth.

ABSTRACT. One of the main challenges confronting food labelling and consumer behaviour researchers is the presence of subconscious behaviours and thoughts which go unreported and unexplored by traditional self-reported measures. However, these subconscious processes can have a profound impact on consumer information processing, decision-making, and purchasing. Consequently, there is a need to capture and account for these subconscious, unreported behaviours in order to obtain a more holistic understanding of consumer decision-making. This paper proposes a means of supplementing traditional self-reported introspective techniques, such as a qualitative interviewing, with ‘objective’ behavioural measures that guide probing and offer new insights to food labelling and consumer behaviour research.

ABSTRACT. In view of the growing coffee consumption market in Taiwan and the environmental impact of coffee production, this study focuses on the sustainable coffee labels to explore Taiwanese public’s attitude toward purchasing sustainability labeled coffee and their purchase intentions. People's perceived moral obligation and pro-environmental self-identity are included in the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model to increase the model's explanatory power. The moderating effect of people's skeptical attitude toward climate change is also considered in this study. A nationwide and self-reported questionnaire was distributed in Taiwan. The collected data was analyzed by moderated regression analysis. The research results revealed that as expected the original three components in the TPB model (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) have influences on people's purchase intentions of sustainability labeled coffee, the additional two factors (i.e., perceived moral obligations and pro-environmental self-identity) also have influences on people’s purchase intentions of sustainability labeled coffee. Moreover, the moderating effect of climate change skepticism on the positive relationship between pro-environmental self-identity and purchase intentions of sustainable labeled coffee was verified. The empirical research findings facilitate a better understanding of Taiwanese public’s attitude toward purchasing sustainability labeled coffee and their purchase intentions.

ABSTRACT. Researchers have studied relationship marketing in a variety of subdisciplines of marketing including service marketing, channel relationships, and business-to-business marketing. However, prior research has predominantly focused on interpersonal relationships between service providers and customers and business-to-business relationships, as opposed to relationships between firms (or marketers) and consumers, even though the existence of such relationships has been explicitly acknowledged. In this light, the current study examines the possible impacts of relationship quality (as a consequence of relationship marketing efforts) on the likelihood of a consumer’s new product adoption.

ABSTRACT. The management of customer switching barriers has been an important issue on customer retention because switching barriers deter defection. Similarly, psychological inhibitors can act as negative drivers to customer defection. However, there has been little research investigating the role of customers’ psychological mechanisms in relation to switching behavior. This study aims to explore such a mechanism by incorporating customers’ anticipated regret into existing switching barrier research. Extant research from various research streams was reviewed to develop a framework exploring the mediating and moderating role of anticipated regret in switching-barrier-based customer retention. We surveyed customers of a health club chain, and tested our model using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results indicate that switching barriers have influence on both customer anticipated regret and behavioral intention, while anticipated regret also affects behavioral intention. Behavioral intention was further found to affect customer’s actual purchase behavior as well. Anticipated regret actually mediates the switching barrier-retention relationship, while moderating the relationship between behavioral intention and actual purchase behavior. This study suggests a mechanism by which customers evaluate various switching barriers and simulate anticipated regret from alternatives to make a decision that results in the least future regret. Consequently, firms should manage to increase customer expectation of future regret through various switching barriers in marketing activities.

ABSTRACT. While the increased importance of value co-creation both in practices and academia, the extant literature seems to have its focus on its conceptual development, and thus the empirical studies on value co-creation are rarely reported and under-explored. This study thus fills up this research gap, and empirically tests this value co-creation theory, by using related constructs, i.e., experience co-creation, employer branding, employee engagement, employee loyalty, customer loyalty, intensity of co-creation, and by illustrating both customers and employees as interactive actors in the co-creation processes. By doing so, this study has its importance, because it presents one of few studies, empirically test the value co-creation theory, particularly in the customer-employee relationships. This study will use survey as its research method, by collecting 262 to 524 questionnaires, from across several service industries, such as restaurant, hotel, financial service, and medical service. Data analysis will be conducted via. Partial Least Squares. This study is important for the following reasons: 1. Departs from prior studies focusing on customers only, and further proposes an innovative & interactive model of customer loyalty, mutually co-created between customers and employees, particularly in the service contexts; 2. Demonstrates the mediating roles of employees’ psychological processes, i.e., employer branding, employee engagement and employee loyalty, in developing customer loyalty, and thus proposes a process model of customer loyalty with a focus on employee, ignored by prior literature; 3. Empirically demonstrates the validities of three theories, i.e., encounter processes, JD-R (Job Demands-Resource), value co-creation, applied in the customer loyalty model.

ABSTRACT. Sustainable development implies closing a gap between two points in time. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) defines sustainable development as inter-generational well-being, highlighting transformational and long-term change, rather than short-term planning cycles and strategies. Similarly, in the business management literature, sustainability denotes business practices and related efforts referring to organizational economic, social and environmental actions that evolve through time. There is a need to complement the evolutionary determinants reported by Høgevold and Svensson (2016) and Høgevold et al. (2014). The research objective is therefore to frame the sustainable development in private hospitals based on descriptive determinants of orientation and organization from the past to the present.

ABSTRACT. Gender equality has received increasing attention, yet women’s limited presence at the senior management level suggests women still face lack of support in their career advancement. One of the major reasons has to be the lack of development opportunities for women within organizations. The authors show that the organizational culture becomes more gender supportive when the number of women managers achieves a critical mass. Moreover, women managers influence their organizations to attain a higher performance-oriented culture with less power distance. Data gathered from Peru, Mexico and USA shows how a critical mass of women in management changes their organizational cultures and attains significantly higher gender egalitarianism scores.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates international marketing activities between firms at the relational level; specifically, how perceived institutional distance influences the relationship between the psychological contract and aspects of commitment in an exporting context. Data was obtained from a sample of 127 exporting SMEs. In contributing to the international business-to business marketing literature, this study highlights the influence of managerial predispositions in the form of a psychological contract on exporter-distributor relationships. Additionally, we demonstrate the boundary conditioning effect of institutional distance on micro-level relationships (single exporter-distributor). The results show the differentiating effect of the psychological contract on two dimensions of commitment (affective and calculative commitment). The findings also show the moderating influence of institutional distance on a psychological contract’s two separate relationships with commitment.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how international tourists’ cosmopolitan values change due to the restraining fear of terrorism, and how this change affects their worldview, destination perception and travel preferences. Initial results of 27 in-depth interviews conducted with international travelers from all five continents suggest that tourists’ personal values are changing due to the increased risk of terrorism (or the perception of it), prompting them to act less according to their cosmopolitan values of stimulation and open-mindedness, and more for their need for security when traveling. The relevance of this research is rooted in the notion that change in personal values are relatively permanent, and thus, this observed value shift might have long-term consequences for the entire tourism industry through radically altering the nature of tourism demand. Opposing the current view that terrorism risk perception universally and significantly restrains the willingness to travel, this study suggests that the extent terrorism risk is acted upon depends on the strength of the travelers’ cosmopolitan orientation. Exploratory findings indicate that the more the travelers’ cosmopolitan conviction the less they seem to be affected by the fear of terrorism. This study sets to empirically validate these findings, and with that it addresses a long-standing gap in tourism literature. It aims at identifying the tourist type that is less concerned with potential travel risks and react less negatively in troubled times, representing a valuable market segment for the entire tourism industry in the face of terrorism.

ABSTRACT. BOP market includes over 4 billion consumers who live on less than $2 a day. These consumers together hold nearly $5 trillion in purchasing power. In 2004, Prahalad’s (2004) research highlighted the substantial buying power this market and argued that the market could serve as a source of radical and responsible innovations. Since then, many practitioners and researchers offered tailored innovations, in the form of new products and services, that meet the needs of the BOP market. In addition to innovations, researchers also developed frameworks, typologies, and models that help create the 4 A’s (awareness, access, affordability, and availability) for BOP consumers (e.g. Koku, 2005; Prahalad, 2009). Although the call of Prahalad (2004) led many researchers to examine BOP markets, research has been limited to the perspective of academicians and practitioners. The present research fills this void by examining the impact of service innovations on the BOP market from the consumers’ perspective. It has been 13 years since Prahalad’s call to study BOP markets, yet there is scarce research centered around how BOP consumers perceive the usefulness of service innovations.This research only focuses on service innovations, because service innovations has been neglected in the literature when compared to product innovations. In addition, this paper examines service innovations in one important BOP market – Nigeria. Nigeria was chosen as the context of this study because it has the highest population and the largest economy in Africa. However, this large BOP market has not received enough attention given its potential.

ABSTRACT. No abstract

ABSTRACT. Research of the quality of life (QOL) has been studied in various ways. one research is that various factors associated with QOL. The other researchers focus on the how to improve the QOL. It is difficult to figure out how to improve the Quality of Life in the different economic situation. However, the capability is one of the important elements of Quality of Life (Sen, 1993). Many previous types of research show a result associated with capability and QOL. In this study, we focus on a capability related work. According to the capability theory, there are many different capabilities when people are in QOL. The first objective involved testing the poverty association using many types of capability variable data. The second purpose was to evaluate the relation between the QOL and capability. The third objective contained Grit as a mediator between capability and QOL. The last objective that figures out poverty as a moderator in the previous model. According to the SEM, capability variable can influence the QOL, in the first model. However, in the comparing model, under poverty model does not have significant effect between capability and QOL. With mediation variable, can figure out fully mediation model in the under-poverty model in this research paper. The results of the mediation between two models are a unique finding of this paper.

ABSTRACT. In attempting research inquiries that aim to explain front-end of innovation performance, scholars often face difficulties in appropriately capturing or measuring front-end of innovation performance. Particularly, researchers face limitations due to the lack of self-report measures available to measure front-end of innovation performance reliably and validly. The current study presents the results of a preliminary, though thorough, scale development and validation study that attempts to establish a subjective measure of front-end of innovation performance. (By subjective, we mean a scale meant for key respondents such as innovation managers.) In doing so, we offer two separate multi-item scales that are effective in capturing front-end of innovation performance; one being an overall assessment measure and the second being an attribute-based scale. The scales offered are intended to aid those scholars looking to further examine front-end of innovation performance in a manner that allows them to offer normative recommendations to managers.

ABSTRACT. How new products are effectively generated and adopted is an issue that scholars and practitioners alike deem to be an issue of high relevance. A key question facing firms is should they integrate customers into the innovation process to co-create new products. This research examines how strategic change (e.g. closed to open innovation strategy) impacts the attitudes of the periphery of customers (i.e. customers that were not involved in the innovation process) and how a firm's current innovation reputation impacts strategic change. The results of two studies show that firms will experience an improvement in consumer attitude towards the brand by moving from closed to more open innovation strategies. This relationship is contingent on a firm's current innovation reputation. When a firm has a high reputation for building innovative products, it should continue with its current strategy for innovation, regardless if that strategy is open or closed. Conversely, having a low innovation reputation suggests that any change of strategy is good in order to overcome previous negative perceptions of the firm's reputation.

ABSTRACT. Ineffective relationship management with potential buyers is an important contributor to new product failure in technology-based, industrial markets. However, empirical research on the topic remains underdeveloped. We address this deficiency by investigating if sellers can enhance NPD success by tailoring their relationship approach to match the situational context. Given the considerable relationship-specific assets required by such relationships, we rely on transaction cost analysis (TCA) to develop our conceptual framework. We find that sellers use three relationship approaches during NPD, i.e., bilateral, bidirectional information exchange, and unidirectional information exchange approaches. Four situational characteristics are associated with these approaches: perceived buyer knowledge, prior relationship history, product customization, and technology uncertainty. High levels of NPD success are associated with all three approaches which shows that sellers accurately “read” these situational characteristics to optimize their relationships with buyers during NPD.

ABSTRACT. Using the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, the current study aims to investigate how role conflict and role ambiguity affect job engagement in professional front-line employees and how job feedback can influence these relationships. For this purpose, we collected data from 229 senior solicitors who worked on business cases. The results show that job engagement of solicitors is affected by role conflict negatively. In addition, the analysis depicts that job feedback moderates the relationship between role ambiguity and job engagemen.

ABSTRACT. With the difficulty in evaluating some types of services, peripheral cues within the servicescape or as part of the service encounter are used by consumers to help evaluate the service. This evaluation however, is exacerbated where the service exchange is not undertaken face to face or within the servicescape of the firm. Situations where the customer interacts with call center representatives is such a case in point. In these cases, the customers’ perception of the service is solely based on the phone encounter.The continuing growth of outsourcing customer service call centers to low cost countries adds an additional layer to the evaluation difficulties of customers as service providers may speak with accent different to the customer’s accent. However even were firms do not outsource phone based customer service to ‘foreign’ countries the customer may still encounter an accent that is different to the standard spoken English of their home country. This is especially likely in countries, like Australia, with a large immigrant population. This study examines how three service-related extraneous factors, service criticality, service type and service-accent congruency, affect the extent to which service employees’ accents influence service evaluations. We report on three studies utilizing between-subject experimental design to uncover the when service providers’ accents are likely to affect service evaluations and when they do not.

ABSTRACT. This work explores the point collection and redemption behavior of users in a large gamified fitness program. This project utilizes data from a university-wide fitness program that is intended to encourage improved fitness levels in student and staff from a large European university. Our findings reveal that prizes (i.e. point redemptions) are in general associated with collecting more points. However, our results also reveal that all prizes or point redemptions are not equally effective in motivating further physical activity. Implications for practice are discussed.

ABSTRACT. For multinational mobile retailers, one of the greatest challenges lies in carefully managing their websites across multiple national markets, which often vary in their stage of readiness and motivation for m-commerce usage. However, catering to the unique preferences of customers in different markets generally proves challenging for firms (Morgeson et al., 2015), resulting in m- retailers often offering standardized online platforms across these markets. Such cross-national standardization allows m-retailers to lower costs and easily manage their websites (Batra et al. 2017; Katsikeas et al. 2006). However, it can also reduce local market relevance by creating a misfit between shopping experience offered and what consumers want (Torelli et al. 2012). This is may be a possible cause for the relatively low mobile conversion rates of 1.4%, compared to 4.1% for desktop shoppers, and could explain why consumers may still be reluctant to use m- commerce across different countries (Xu, Thong and Tam 2017).

ABSTRACT. Recently, the term "quarter-life crisis" (QLC) has become a "buzzword" in the media and is often used to describe a particularly difficult period of life in one's 20's or early 30's that typically involves anxiety about one's future, identity meltdown, feeling of inadequacy and failed expectations. The present working paper aims to introduce and uphold the importance of the phenomenon under investigation and briefly present findings from 10 in-depths exploratory interviews that shed light on the role of SNSs in the QLC and subsequent online compensatory behaviours the QLC may cause. The research broadly based upon self-concept theory and particularly draws upon self-discrepancy theory.

ABSTRACT. The proposed paper addresses the impact of self-disclosure by social media influencers (SMI) on consumer behaviour in the context of the tourism industry. Little is known about self-disclosure’s impact on consumers beyond the traditional relationship between a salesperson and a consumer. Specifically, no studies have addressed this in the context of social media influencers and consumers relationship. This paper addresses this gap, through an experimental design drawing from well-established knowledge of self-disclosure and consumer behaviour. In the context of Instagram travel influencers, the experiment examines the mediation effect of appropriateness, trust (cognitive and affective), and product attitude on the relationship between self-discloser’s depth, breadth and gender of discloser impacting Purchase intention and EWOM.

ABSTRACT. The Millennial generation exerts a peculiar fascination on both managers and academics. Millennials can be distinguished from other cohorts in their intense exposure to the Internet and heavy use of social media platforms, which affects their identity formation, engagement with brands and firms, brand loyalty and purchase behaviour. Yet, the way Millennials engage with brands in social media is an area meriting more research attention. Are they mainly passive observers, or are they actively engaged with and loyal to their loved brands? What are the real benefits brands can reap from Millennials avid use of social media? In order to answer to these research questions, this study focuses on this generational cohort and develops a holistic model of social media engagement, validated across different social media platforms, that includes brand love, brand experience, self-brand identification/connection as direct and indirect antecedents, and brand loyalty as an outcome. Data was gathered using a self-administered online survey, answered by 343 social media users (all belonging to the Millennium generation), based on self-selected self-expressive, loved brands. Findings suggest a disconnection between online and offline brand relationships: though Millennials love and are very loyal to their favourite, self-expressive brands, they are not very active or engaged online. Moreover, brand experience was found to play a major role in developing brand love, which in turn is positively related with engagement and brand loyalty. Managerially, this study provides insights to brand managers who wish to successfully use social media to stimulate engagement and build relationships with Millennials.

ABSTRACT. The relationship between place attachment and its behavioural consequences has attracted considerable interest among researchers since this affective bond that people have with the place leads to behaviours that generally benefit that place. In particular, place attachment and its dimensions have often been documented as good predictors to explain people’s intention for pro-environmental behaviours. However, the literature shows that the effect size regarding the impact of place attachment on pro-environmental intention varies across different studies. This meta-analysis synthesizes empirical findings in order to better understand the magnitude of the effect of place attachment on pro-environmental intention, and assess to what extent various operationalizations of place attachment and contextual factors such as type of place and culture contribute to the variations in the reported effects of place attachment on pro-environmental intention. Our results indicate the presence of a positive effect of place attachment on pro-environmental intention, and the effect size is small to large. Furthermore, we find that the attachment-intention relationship is context dependent. The effect of place attachment on pro-environmental intention is stronger for tourists in a tourist site than for residents in their place of residence, and that the effect of place attachment on pro-environmental intention is stronger in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. We do not find any evidence of the effect of the operationalization of place attachment on the relationship between place attachment and pro-environmental intention.

ABSTRACT. Despite the extensive body of literature on country-of-origin and its significant impacts on consumers’ perceptions and behaviors, it is important to observe that this literature excluded dimensions related to environmental and social aspects. The country ecological image is still an emerging construct even with the effect it could have on consumers’ evaluations (Dekhili & Achabou, 2014). In effect, countries vary in their seriousness in treating environmental and social issues and thus project different ecological images (Shrivastava, 1995; EPI, 2016). Hence, this study aims to explore this emerging construct by investigating its various dimensions and facets. To fill this objective, we conducted a qualitative study with a sample of 24 professionals in the field of sustainable marketing (15 in France and 9 in Australia) and 3 focus groups with consumers (1 in France and 2 in Australia). Findings of the study suggest that the COO ecological image construct is composed of eight dimensions: political, technological, economic, historical, natural, climatic, people’s characteristics, and the eco-product dimension. Consequently, theoretical and practical implications of the findings are also discussed.

ABSTRACT. Despite it’s importance, the mechanism behind a digital nudge is understudied (Weinmann, Schneider and vom Brocke, 2015). Specifically, this study explores the working mechanism of a digital nudge and to what extent can the feedback nudge be used to reduce carbon footprint by influencing the transit behavior and debunk misinformation on climate change.

To influence an individual’s behavior to traverse by public transportation as a daily medium of the commute this study investigates the use of social proof and social norm in digital nudges. This study explores the effectiveness of planning prompt nudge to close the intention and behavior gap. Also, the mediating role of processing fluency is studied as well as the moderating role of online social support and credibility of the source.

ABSTRACT. This research focuses on the sustainability approach of the public healthcare industry, functioning as a service network. This present study particularly considers time as a guide for research, in view of the fact that in service businesses, long-term relationships really must to consider time as a core issue (Hedaa and Törnroos, 2008), since sustainability efforts not only evolve through time, but vary through time (Høgevold and Svensson, 2016).

The issue of making healthcare services more ‘sustainable’ has been discussed in the literature (e.g. Olsen, 1998; Sibthorpe, 2005), given that sustainability has altered business relationships and how they are managed (Linnenluecke and Griffiths, 2013). Moreover, the service context is nowadays understood as a network.

In all, sustainable development in the health care industry needs to be explored through time. The research objective is threefold: (i) to frame the foundation of healthcare organizations’ past and present sustainability efforts; and (ii) to frame the direction of a healthcare organizations’ sustainable development; (iii) to reveal and characterize what determines the foundation and direction in a public healthcare sector.

This study aims at providing the basis for a consistent and organized comprehension of sustainability and time, as the result of an ongoing process over years of accumulative insights and experiences from field work, research and relevant literature.

ABSTRACT. Sustainable tourism development in emerging economies has been examined through the lens of social value creation that eradicates poverty and enhances quality of life for the rural poor. Given that growth in tourism requires disassociation of indigenous people from their traditional economic activities organized around utilization of resources tied to the land, sustainable tourism development may pose a social hazard in emerging economies. Our qualitative analysis of the development trajectory of a popular recreational park in an emerging economy reveals that major share of value created by development of tourism is consumed by wealthy investors and hoteliers leaving an insignificant share for local communities. We propose an inclusive model that initiates and nurtures linkages among various stake holders involved as a pathway to mitigate inequity in wealth distribution. The paper concludes with policy implications for tourism development that is more inclusive of local communities.

ABSTRACT. This study sheds light on ways online guests’ rating in the hotel review website TripAdvisor differ between Chinese- and English-speaking groups. The dual analysis with 800 online reviews of 8 hotel brands that considered as a representative of its category located in Bangkok city, Thailand identified both quantitative and qualitative aspects of text mining. Results from quantitative analysis revealed that 2-star hotels were rated positively than 3- to 5-star hotels. English-speaking guests gave higher ratings than Chinese-speaking guest in all the hotel service attributes (e.g. Service, Cleanliness, Room, Sleep Quality, Location, Value, and Overall). From qualitative aspect, 10 service attributes that impacted on traveler satisfaction were identified. These attributes were then classified into three broad themed categories known as Intangible Service, Tangible Service and Staying Experience. The result further sheds the light on the most frequently used words when cross-cultural travelers give online reviews on the sites. Implications of the divergences in themes abstracted are discussed.

ABSTRACT. With the prevalence of community-based recreational and tourism activities, this study first proposes three facets of leisure social capital, including social interaction ties (structural capital), community social norms (relational capital), and community shared value (cognitive capital). Furthermore, this study examines the influence of social capital in leisure communities by drawing upon the perspectives of social capital and leisure involvement. The results show that three social capital facets positively affect a consumer’s leisure involvement, which in turn to positively affect his or her behavioral intention toward a leisure activity. Finally, this study provides several implications for leisure and tourism marketing.

ABSTRACT. A growing interest in corporate philanthropy in the Western industrialized countries as well as in Eastern emerging economies calls attention to the specific conceptualizations, motivations, influencers and impacts of such philanthropy. This paper reviews the sparse literature on corporate philanthropy in emerging markets and identifies some key aspects of how corporate philanthropy is conceptualized and also how the institutional context affects it.

ABSTRACT. We explore the effects of CSR rankings inclusion on stock market performance by considering Ethisphere’s annual announcements of companies the independent rating institution deems the World’s Most Ethical Companies® (WME). While Ethisphere provides a third-party confirmation to firms’ ethical behavior, participants in the index are self-selected. By requesting to be evaluated by Ethisphere, firms send signals about how they want to be perceived. The index may be perceived as an additional marketing tool rather than a credible ranking of global firms’ ethics. Prior studies have claimed that from investors’ perspective, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index is the most rigorous and the most credible in terms of CSR information. Consequently, Ethisphere’s list appears to be of little value to investors from a purely informational perspective. Consequently, we investigate whether Ethisphere listings provide any value and what kind of value might that be. Our findings indicate that companies entering the WME list register abnormal returns, which are robust to the specification of the estimation window. In addition, we observe that companies with stronger brands and consistency of repeatedly appearing on the list are rewarded with higher abnormal returns. Further, we observe an inverted-U relationship with the popularity of the list and abnormal returns pointing to decreasing marginal returns.

ABSTRACT. The results from two studies suggest that valued characteristics are critical in the evaluation of sustainable product’s performance. Despite the popularity of sustainable product the sales represent a small percentage of the overall product category. A study indicates that out of 30% of the consumers who preferred to do ethical shopping only 3% of them end up in doing so (Futerra, 2005). Most of the consumers avoid sustainable product with belief that they have to incur some amount of inconvenience and cost for an inferior product. Therefore it becomes important to identify conditions under which sustainability enhances the performance of the product rather than preference as done in past research (Refer: Luchs, Naylor, Irwin & Raghunathan, 2010), specifically when expressed preference is not leading to sales. In this study, we have demonstrated that consumers perceive the performance of the sustainable product to be superior when gentleness related characteristics are valued and inferior when strength related characteristics are valued. Contrasting to product preference (Study-2; Luchs et al., 2010), the performance of the sustainable product is perceived inferior when strength related features are valued. In addition, we have specified ways to overcome the performance inferiority of sustainable product by linking sustainability from central to peripheral attributes of the product.

ABSTRACT. Culture is one of the most important factors affecting different areas of human behavior including consumer behavior. To empirically study the impact of culture on human behavior, an important step is to conceptualize and measure the cultural values of a society. Hofstede’s cultural framework is one of the most widely used frameworks for this purpose. It consists of six dimensions: power distance, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, long-term orientation, and indulgence/restraint. Hofstede’s framework has originally been developed at the national level, but individual-level measurement is also important for researchers. Unfortunately, Hofstede’s scales do not properly measure the individual level differences regarding cultural values. Despite recent attempts to measure the first five dimensions of Hofstede’s framework at the individual level, there is no individual-level scale for the sixth dimension; indulgence/restraint. This research develops a valid and reliable individual-level scale for measuring indulgence/restraint.

ABSTRACT. Reflecting the growing academic and practitioner interest, the service internationalization literature has grown in significance over the last decade. However, the literature is in early stage of development (Rajshekhar, Javalgi & Martin, 2007; Knight, 1999) and largely exploratory and descriptive (Knight, 1999,) with lack of theoretical and empirical rigor of existing studies (Rajshekhar, Javalgi & Martin, 2007). However, the services represent the new frontier in international business (Knight, 1999) in spite of the challenges presented by the unique characteristics of services making the services internationalization process more complex than marketing of physical products (Cici, Patterson & Shoham, 1999; Javalgi & Martin, 2007).

ABSTRACT. Retail brand competition is increasing, global competition coupled with the economic crisis of 2008 has impacted on the UK high street; many well-known retailers went into administration and others are streamlining with store closures and redundancies. The expansion of discount retailers may appeal to price sensitive consumers, but this has incurred allegations of exploiting producers. In the past, research has found that consumers consider that workers in developing countries cannot expect the same salaries and working conditions as western-workers but more recently there have been allegations that UK employees are exploited with low pay and poor working conditions. With discount retailers appearing to grow their market-share in this price sensitive climate, it seems that retailers who have attempted to install stronger brand identity through better quality products, superior customer service and stable employment are suffering from applying integrity to their business practice. However, there also seems to be a backlash against businesses that focus on the ‘race to the bottom’ and the impact this has on society. This research seeks to explore how consumers perceive the integrity of retail brand identity and how that translates into a buying decision. To do this, focus groups that target Baby Boomers and Generation X will examine consumers interpretation and perceptions of four retail brands will be considered: middle-market retailers John Lewis and M&S that communicate customer service, product quality and enhanced employee conditions will be contrasted against Primark and Sports Direct, which both focus on low pricing.