ABSTRACT. To date, research has revealed that the concept of customer loyalty is tantamount to gaining strategic success during customer exchanges (Cronin et al. 2000: Wolter et al. 2017). To this end, the purpose of this paper is to determine the antecedents of enhancing loyalty outcomes associated with the service exchange. Herein, three studies are undertaken to not only propose the antecedent effect of satisfaction and mediating effect of value on loyalty outcome but to further advance understanding by identifying the moderating effect of perceived justice to service satisfaction, value and customer loyalty outcomes.

ABSTRACT. While value co-creation and S-D logic gave rise to a wide field of research, the reasons why marketing departements are adopting the new ‘dominant logic’ are unclear, and there is still no consensus about the role of co-production practices within the paradigm of value co-creation. Adopting an Institutionalist framework, and owing to 17 interviews with senior managers, our research unveils the coexistence of three diverse institutional logics pervading the field of marketing, each leading to different stance towards value co-creation. Besides, our analysis shows how the need for legitimacy induces some managers to question prevailing marketing approach, and to fully endorse the new logic of value co-creation in their marketing departement. Finally, by distinguishing two practices – co-production as an occasional technique vs extensive co-production in the logic of value co-creation - our results expand our understanding of the relationships between co-production and co-creation.

ABSTRACT. Experiences are a critical element in creating value for customers of service companies. In the tourism industry, employee-tourist encounters are particularly important as a lever for experience value creation. However, typically such encounters are based on a service quality logic that is standardised and functional (based on standard quality theory), thus missing considerable opportunities for employee-related experience creation. In this research, we seek to apply big data analytics to identify the types of customer-employee interactions that are the most influential in improving customers’ perceptions of service, value and overall satisfaction. We present the results of a study that explores customer sentiment as expressed by a massive number of reviews and different types of customer-employee interactions. The study is based on an empirical analysis of the text from a popular hotel review website. Each review is content-analysed for sentiment and interaction type in order to explore these important relationships statistically. The overall assessment of our results appears to suggest that hotel customers are difficult to please; positive employee-customer interactions receive significant positive improvements in customer perceptions of satisfaction, values and service, but customers are extremely sensitive to any problems in employee-customer interactions. Amongst the types of employee interactions, emotional intelligence and co-creation of customer experiences appeared to be the most promising for increasing the three outcome variables, whilst flexibility appeared to be a critical element of employee interactions not to get wrong. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of job stressors (i.e. role conflict and role ambiguity) in job engagement of front-line employees of law firms in the UK. We also examine whether job feedback moderates the relationship between job stressors and job engagement. Drawing on a sample of 229 B2B senior solicitors, the results of this study indicate that role conflict affect job engagement negatively. Furthermore, the results show that job feedback moderates the relationship between role ambiguity and job engagement.

ABSTRACT. Sports sponsorship has become a “mainstay of marketing communications” (Cornwell, 2008, p. 41). Indeed, sports sponsorship is considered to be one of the most effective and demanded tools in marketing (e.g., Woisetschlager, 2007). In this regard, The evaluation of sponsorship effectiveness is a major research stream in academic research provided well advances regarding the assessment of sponsorship performance (Cornwell & Maignan, 1998; Walliser, 2003). However, business practice as expressed in the Association of National Advertisers (2013) study demands more sophisticated sponsorship evaluation approaches that currently incorporates a) the application of additional measurement instruments, especially from the area of neuromarketing and b) the analysis of various customer and spectator perspectives, e.g., fan vs. anti-fan in the context of rivalry. With regard to the latter, Madrigal and Dalakas (2008) reviewed that the nature of fan behavior ranges from socially acceptable reactions to negative inappropriate reactions. However, there is only little research explaining how affective dispositions of fans and anti-fans determine the effectiveness of sport sponsorship outcomes such as association transfers from the sponsored entity (e.g., a football team) to the sponsor brand. Considering this research gap, the current research addresses the assessment of the effectiveness of team sponsorship on explicit and implicit brand-related information processing from a fan rivalry perspective

ABSTRACT. Brands are eager to create synergy by supporting sports events in 70% of all sponsorship expenditures (IEG, 2017). Yet, there is little work done focusing on those who are exposed to alcohol sponsorship despite being not old enough to legally drink it in the U.S. Underage consumers might be influenced by alcohol sponsorship in sports. Thus, we examine underage consumers (age 18-20 in the U.S.) to investigate if there are any effects of alcohol sponsorship in sport and the role of arousal of the sport on alcohol consumption choice. We focus on the the role of arousal, or “a motivational state ranging from a continuum of drowsiness, in which one feels soporific, to extreme alertness, in which one feels energized” (Batra & Ghoshal, 2017). Thus, an overall research question grounded in theories of arousal is: Among underage consumers, what is the role (if any) of exposure to alcohol sponsorship and arousal of the sport on their attitude to the alcohol brand sponsor and subsequent choice between the sponsor’s alcoholic beverage vs. a non-alcoholic drink? A lab experiment, including a pilot test and a main test are presented. Results point towards the role of arousal on brand attitude and beverage choice among underage consumers upon exposure to alcohol sponsorship in sport.

ABSTRACT. This paper identifies two boundary conditions (consumption motive and claim set-size) affecting the effectiveness of an advertisement’s creativity. We propose and find that creativity is more effective for an advertisement when the consumption motive is utilitarian (vs. hedonic). Further, using a larger claim set-size within an advertisement increases (decreases) the effectiveness of advertisement creativity for those with hedonic (utilitarian) consumption motives. Across two experiments, we find support for our hypotheses using both hedonic vs. utilitarian products (study 1) and hedonic vs. utilitarian decision goals within the same product category (study 2).

This the first research to explicitly study boundary conditions for when ad creativity matters by showing that creativity matters more (i.e., enhances persuasiveness of the ad and attitudes toward the ad) when the consumption motive is utilitarian, especially when ads have small claim set-size. Additionally, creativity matters for hedonic consumption contexts, if the advertisement has a large claim-size. Thus, our research contributes to the creativity literature by showing when creativity matters depending on the consumption motive and claim set-size. In addition, our research expands the utilitarian vs. hedonic consumption literature by highlighting another way in which these two motives differ. Finally, our research expands the claim set-size literature by demonstrating that the effects of claim set-size depend on both consumption motive and features of the ad (i.e., its level of creativity). These findings help marketers manage their advertising budget more effectively and efficiently knowing when advertisement creativity matters and thus when to invest in creativity.

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

ABSTRACT. Nostalgia has a major influence on the purchasing behavior of consumers. Drawing on construal level theory, I wish to further develop the relationship between nostalgic cultural brands and purchase intention. As nostalgia triggers positive attitudes of a consumers’ home country, I explore the influence that psychological distance has on the direct relationship of nostalgic cultural brands and purchase intentions. Significant results would not only add to construal level theory in understanding consumer purchasing patterns, but also to help refine marketing strategies created for consumers in the immigrant community.

ABSTRACT. Research acknowledges a variety of sources that can influence country image, including a country’s economic, political, and social conditions; culture and traditions; citizens; tourism; sports; and the media (Anholt, 2002; Jaffe & Nebenzahl, 2006). The recent emission scandals involving the German carmaker Volkswagen shows that even the iconic brands of a country can affect the country’s image (Löhr, 2015). According to a Brand Finance study, the value of Germany’s reputation has decreased by 4% since the Volkswagen scandal (Löhr, 2015). Our study examines the neglected area of country image formation by focusing on the role of a country’s brands. Specifically, we assess the influence of the dominant type of recalled brands (hedonic vs. utilitarian) on the affective and cognitive components of country image. Our study aims to address one of the limitations of previous research by enabling consumers to determine the brands that influence a country’s image. Theoretically and managerially, it is crucial to determine how a country’s brands contribute to shape the country’s image. Doing so should aid the development of a more discriminate and refined configuration of country image formation frameworks. Understanding the makeup of a country’s image can shed better light on the mechanisms underlying the COO effects and help identify the elements in a country’s image that are crucial to the activation of such effects. The results of this study should help practitioners improve the accuracy of the prediction of the outcome of country image building programs and better allocate resources in nation-branding campaigns.

ABSTRACT. It is clear that the United States immigrant population is large, incredibly diverse, and dynamic. Marketers have long been aware of this substantial population and have primarily tried to reach these consumers through ethnic-based segmentation methods. However, there is increasing evidence that ethnic identity may no longer be an appropriate way to reach these consumers. Ethnic identification is certainly significant in segmentation, but it may not fully explain preference for ads, products, and/or services - the inconsistencies in the research suggest a missing element. An increasingly important way to understand this large immigrant consumer segment is to study the process of acculturation of these immigrant groups. Cultures are constantly in collision, and as a result, acculturation is taking place at all times. Acculturation is when different cultures come together causing changes in one, both, or multiple cultures, resulting in something new. There can be changes in entire groups of people as well as for individuals (Sam and Berry, 2006). It has been found that people may act differently as compared to the dominant culture in a society. There are currently many scales available to measure acculturation, however, there is no scale that is able to measure consumer acculturation in the marketing environment. We propose a measure that acknowledges the theoretical possibility of acculturation into different specific segments in a consumption context that may eventually be used for all ethnic groups. Following the Churchill (1979) scale development process, we have conducted qualitative research and are currently in the item generation stage.

ABSTRACT. Researches have yet to reach a consensus on the relationship between social comparison and prosocial behaviour. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of self-construal level in the social comparison-prosocial behaviour relationship. Specifically, we propose that the personal-self person can produce upward contrastive emotions which can decrease prosocial behavior after making the upward comparison. While the social-self person can produce upward assimilative emotions which can increase prosocial behavior after one makes the upward comparison. The downward comparison can produce downward contrastive emotions which can decrease prosocial behavior when people’ personal-self is activated. However, the downward can produce downward assimilative emotions which can increase prosocial behavior when people’s social-self is activated. These findings are robust, emerging across different requested resources, and different domains of comparison.

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the literature on retrieval of childhood memories and their effects on the adult consumer behavior. The findings and analysis are based on an experimental study conducted in Mexico City within the sample population between the age group of 16 and 36 years. The extent of the influence of childhood memories on the consumption behavior among adult consumers has been analyzed using the structural equations. The study reveals that the retrieval of childhood memories has significant impact on strengthening brand loyalty and developing consumption behavior among adult consumers. Commonly, the consumption behavior is influenced by the childhood memories to regain love for brands and happiness. It was observed during the study that the childhood memories were usually retrieved by the adults while in leisure with family, friends, or in social gathering. The narratives of childhood memories over time influences adult consumers to rebuild association with the antique brands.

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. Consumer innovators often modify, adapt, or transform existing offerings; however, these innovators are theoretically underdeveloped with respect to their diversity and research has not addressed how firms can effectively absorb the knowledge that these consumers offer. While these creative consumers are central to research on user innovation, they are theoretically underdeveloped with respect to their diversity. The purpose of this research is to enhance understanding of the firm- consumer-innovator relationship and on how firms can absorb knowledge from this diverse group of innovators. We argue that a more fine-grained understanding of creative consumers is required to determine how firms can effectively absorb the knowledge that these consumers can offer. We further argue that the characteristics of creative consumers and the innovations that they spawn have important implications for reinterpreting and advancing existing research on creative consumers and their effects on firms. These include developing a contingent and more fine-grained view of how firms should acquire and assimilate new knowledge from different types of creative consumer; and explaining that creative consumers have life-cycles in which their motivation, appropriations and impacts on firms can change over-time. We use the various characteristics to present a theoretically grounded typology of consumer innovators. This typology identifies and illustrates four types of consumer innovators based on variations in their initial motivation (intrinsic versus extrinsic) for changing an offering, and the degree to which this appropriation is loyal (faithful versus unfaithful) to the original functionality of the offering. We then use the theoretical lens of potential absorptive capacity to discuss how firms might acquire and assimilate knowledge from each type of consumer innovator.

ABSTRACT. Negative eWOM is becoming a more serious threat to brands’ reputations. Dissatisfied consumers increasingly engage in negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) by sharing their complaints in online communities. Brands in turn have been ineffective in responding to such complaints. As a result, certain consumers take it upon themselves to defend their preferred brand against those attacks. This under-researched phenomenon is becoming of high interest to both theoreticians and practitioners, as brand defense seizes to exclusively rely on the company. The first aim of this research is to examine how negative eWOM arising from customers’ dissatisfaction due to product failure can be mitigated by the collective power of brand defenders in the context of a consumer-organized brand community. The second aim is to identify different characteristics of brand defenders and their adopted strategies. By linking Jung's (1990) theory of archetypes with consumer-brand defending literature, a Multimodal Discourse-Mythological Approach is proposed to display how the negative eWOM within a Thai online consumer-organized community devoted to Samsung is mitigated. Our findings result in the reconceptualization of the existing binding expectation that companies are solely responsible for the defence and protection of their brands.

ABSTRACT. Negativity towards a brand is typically conceived as a significant problem for brand managers. This paper aims to show that negativity towards a brand can represent an opportunity for companies in the case of brand polarization. To this end, the paper reports research findings on the benefits of brand polarization. To identify possible advantages of brand polarization for any involved party data was also collected through 22 semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the interviews identified three parties that can benefit from brand polarization: the polarizing brand as an independent entity, the brand team behind the polarizing brand and the passionate consumers involved with the polarizing brand. The data reveals specific advantages of brand polarization associated with the three parties involved.

ABSTRACT. This research examines millennials’ relationship with luxury through a content analysis of 630 luxury collages to determine what represents luxury, how millennials perceive the consumer-brand relationship, and who they are as luxury consumers. Results suggest millennials represent a vibrant segment. Millennials perceive a wide variety of products and brands meeting their luxury needs. Millennials see luxury as addressing both out-of-reach or aspirational luxury as well as masstige or affordable luxury. Luxury marketers can build brand relationships with millennials with entry-level products as the millennials are current luxury consumers and see this consumption expanding in the future. Key luxury characteristics for millennials vary from other generations as they are looking for fashion, hedonic value, technology, and the need to demonstrate their extended self rather than heritage. Finally, who they see as the luxury consumer is influenced by social media, celebrities, friends, and family.

ABSTRACT. After brand acquisition, consumer perceptions about the brand’s authenticity may shift. We examine how the attributes of brand acquisition, such as the firm’s acquisition disclosure, firm size and the preservation of original brand managers, affect brand authenticity. Further, we examine how brand authenticity affects brand trust, attitude and purchase intent.

ABSTRACT. Cryptomnesia is when an individual believes that an idea that originated from an external source is actually a new, original idea. Occurrences of cryptomnesia have the potential to negatively impact marketers who are involved with creative activities (e.g., new product development or designing marketing communications). Several factors have been shown to impact whether an individual attends to the source of an idea during encoding and memory retrieval. However, there seem to be several overlooked psychological states and cultural traits that could impact the prevalence of cryptomnesia, especially for innovative marketers. The purpose of this structured abstract is to explore some of these possible antecedents by developing testable hypotheses, proposing the empirical study of these hypotheses, and discussing the implications of the hypotheses.

ABSTRACT. This research examines drivers of online shopping cart usage in the United States and China. Consistently across both countries, current purchase intent and organizational intent both positively affect consumers’ frequency of using the online shopping cart, while the motives of research/information search and taking advantage of price promotions exert no significant impact on cart usage. Interestingly, entertainment purpose negatively influences shopping cart usage in the United States, but has no significant effect in China. Possible reasons for the differences between the two countries as well as managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to empirically reveal the relationship between retailers’ integration of multiple channel operations and consumers’ multiple store usage behavior. Online channels provide opportunities for retailers to obtain detailed information through click-stream. However, it is difficult to capture consumers’ offline shopping behavior and how it is affected by cross-channel integration. This study empirically analyzes the relationship between retailers’ cross-channel integration, offline store attributes, consumers’ multiple store patronage, and their psychological traits. The results show that cross-channel integration is negatively associated with the number of stores patronized. However, consumers who enjoy shopping tend to use a greater number of stores and to be less loyal. This study contributes to the research streams on cross-channel integration and multiple store patronage.

ABSTRACT. Retailers today are in a pivotal position to help reduce increasing rates of obesity and other-diet related diseases worldwide. As the choice architects, retail managers and retail designers can shape the retail food space to better assist the shopper in a challenging obesogenic environment. Olfactory cues, a strategic health orientated store atmospheric cue has the potential to nudge shoppers to make healthier food choices. Across three multi-method studies, an observation, a lab study and a field study, this research shows that diffusion of an ambient herb scent in a retail food setting can act as a reminder or a prompt for shoppers to purchase healthier foods. The results of the three studies contribute to contemporary knowledge in two key ways. First, we advance a congruency perspective between health-related store atmospherics and healthy food choices. Second, we demonstrate an ambient herb scent can nudge shoppers to select healthier foods in both virtual and physical retail food environments. Practically, store atmospheric primes offer another approach for retailers and policy makers to change health behaviours. By implementing an ambient herb scent, retailers can achieve corporate social responsibility outcomes, as well as increase profits by targeting fresh food departments. Health professionals, policy makers, and retailers should consider the findings when trying to improve public health and profits.

ABSTRACT. Based on dynamic affect regulation theory and discrepancy/interruption theory, we posit that adding interruptions to knowledge-assessment tests may induce multitasking-like gratification and thus improve students’ mood and subsequent attention. We propose using recently described surveytainment interruptions — meant to elicit positive effects on students’ attention when taking knowledge-assessment tests—for test this possibility.

ABSTRACT. As expectations grow for students to gain “real world” experiences during their college careers, faculty members must be creative to integrate transformational activities into their curriculum to close the gap between what employers are looking for and what higher education provides. Every year, LinkedIn compiles data and survey results to report the most in demand hard skills and soft skills (business.linkedin.com). This report alone speaks to the importance of soft skills, with the 2018 report emphasizing leadership, communication, collaboration and time management. Despite a certain level of innateness, soft skills can be taught, as evidenced by the countless courses on LinkedIn Learning and Udemy. This paper advocates for a focus on soft skills in the college classroom by adding a graded course component to the class. Specific methods to implement professionalism and networking are presented and impact discussed.

ABSTRACT. With the increasing and now outnumbering growth of female and minority college and university students, it is imperative to create curriculum that provides unique benefit to underrepresented groups and establish the long-term value of a traditional setting. One potential avenue that would do well not only with the more “standard” groups of students, but benefits underrepresented groups in particular, is franchising. Data demonstrate that in the small business ownership realm, minorities and women are actually represented at a disproportionately higher rate, thanks to the assistance the franchise business format affords. This paper thus proposes a franchise class and curriculum relying on a project-based learning format to incorporate interdisciplinary subjects, designed to boost student self-confidence and self-efficacy.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to explore how value is co-created by education providers and students at college level education, and the implications of this phenomenon. This research goal is significant primarily for two reasons: i) Higher education is a big service industry, and ii) It is increasingly becoming market-oriented and customer (student)-centered. One focal concept in market orientation and customer centeredness is ‘co-creation of value’. One reason as to why co-creation, which refers to students having the same level of power and role in the design of the education, has been a popular practice in higher education is that there is fierce competition among higher education institutions; therefore, the institutions increasingly utilize marketing to attract students. Another reason - closely relates to the first one - is that students have started to perceive themselves as customers who expect to be satisfied on their own terms. This study looks at marketization as a value driver. It aims to understand how professors, who have a better understanding of ‘educational value’ due to their expertise, approach the co-creation of value process. In other words, it investigates the concept of value creation in academia in the context of marketization, and aims to understand the implications of this approach from the supply perspective. The two main research questions are; a) “What does co-creation of value mean in higher education?” and b) “What are the implications of co-creation of value in higher education?”.

ABSTRACT. Terroir is a French concept suggesting that the qualities (and quality) of products and services are determined by the physical and socio-cultural environment of their origin. In this paper, we develop a refined conceptualisation of terroir, and establish its overlooked connection to the sustainability of rural, agricultural and tourism business and regions. The proposed conceptualisation integrates and clarifies the relationship between the physical-natural and socio-cultural perspectives on terroir. Moving beyond this conceptual abstraction, we suggest that the terroir concept should be understood as emerging from actors’ everyday actions. This integrative and material approach to terroir forms the basis for examining it as a holistic approach to sustainability. Drawing on this conceptualisation, we offer seven propositions describing the relationship between terroir and business decisions, with clear implications for rural sustainability.

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to investigate whether residents’ perceptions affected their life satisfaction and support towards sustainable tourism development in three small islands in Central Vietnam. Besides, this study also examined whether residents’ life satisfaction mediated the impact of their perceptions on support for sustainable tourism development. The data have been directly collected from the residents in three small islands located in Central Vietnam. The questionnaire was established based on the previous research, using a 5-point Likert scale. 400 questionnaires were distributed, and 332 responses were usable for data analysis. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22. This study used a quantitative research method in order to examine the relationships among constructs. Specifically, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used in this research.

As a result, residents’ positive perceptions had a positive impact on life satisfaction and residents’ negative perceptions did not exert an influence over their life satisfaction. Moreover, it was found that residents’ support for tourism development was positively related to their negative and positive perceptions. There was also a positive relationship between residents’ satisfaction with life and their support for tourism development. In addition, the findings indicated that life satisfaction partially mediated the impact of positive perceptions on support towards tourism development, and there was no mediating effect of satisfaction with life on the relationship between residents’ negative perceptions and their support towards tourism development. In line with the use of the social exchange theory, this research has given important contributions to residents’ perceptions, life satisfaction, and support for tourism development literature. Furthermore, from the results found in this research, the local authorities of three islands in Central Vietnam have some practical implications to develop sustainable tourism.

Keywords: Sustainable tourism; Tourism development; Life satisfaction; Mediating role; Residents’ perceptions; Residents’ support; Small island

References Available Upon Request

ABSTRACT. The field of marketing has begun to examine the consumption of experiences as an important and growing part of both the economy and of people’s lives. This study examines people’s experiences on the Camino de Santiago – a several hundred-mile journey in Spain. Although the Camino was historically undertaken as a pilgrimage with religious motivations, an increasing number of people are now making the journey for other reasons. This research examines people’s motivations, interests, experiences, and interpretation of their journey. This study revealed that hiking the Camino was an important undertaking to most hikers. It usually involved planning, many days of effort and significant expense. Later interviews and online postings revealed that many pilgrims considered the experience to be an important part of their self-identity and even transformational, akin to other extraordinary experiences.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this research is to explore whether small firms can develop their marketing capabilities through big data deployment, over a longitudinal period. Given the volatility of the economic climate, research indicates an increasing need for small firms to develop effective responses to changing markets. This is not always easy. The dedication required by small firms to respond to this change is great, considering how small firms continually fail to seek, implement, or maximize market information available to them. This has been attributed to the traditional and product driven nature of small firms. Using the resource-based theory of the firm, this research investigates whether an increase in the level of big data possessed by small firms can generate the development and integration of effective marketing capabilities. This research will observe seven case studies selected to provide a qualitative perspective of the potential changes or developments that may or may not occur as a result of the implementation of big data.

ABSTRACT. The ultimate outcome of a marketing orientation is a corporate culture built around changing, adapting, and responding to customer needs (Jaworski and Kohli, 1993). While business level factors drive culture and policy, the attributes of the individuals employed play a role in responsiveness as well. The current project explores how procrastination and improvisation impact the firm’s project level analysis by allowing for businesses to correct course in the short term. Results indicate that intentional procrastination (vs. unintentional procrastination) has a positive impact on performance, while improvisation mediates these relationship. These attributes can be fostered by policy and culture to drive a firm’s ability to adapt and change in concert with customer needs.

ABSTRACT. Export diversification, i.e. the extent to which the firm pursues sales opportunities across different export markets, is a key ingredient of export strategy. However, existing knowledge on the export performance consequences of export diversification is limited. In this context, a critical research gap concerns the study of predictors that can affect the usefulness of export diversification for export performance. Underpinned by contingency theory and by the Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm, we address this research gap via examining the role of export marketing strategy adaptation and export human capital as moderators of the relationship between export diversification and export performance. Based on a sample of UK exporters, we find that firms get the greatest export performance benefit when they simultaneously undertake higher levels of diversification and of marketing strategy adaptation. Yet, this only verifies in the case of firms with higher levels of human capital. For firms with lesser levels of human capital, diversification has a negative impact on export performance, particularly under higher levels of marketing strategy adaptation.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to theoretically explore the mediating role of employees’ absorptive capabilities between learning orientation and market orientation. Past research asserts the interaction of learning orientation with the market orientation to gain competitive advantage but do not pay attention to the mediating role of learning capabilities. To fill the gap, this study theorizes the employees’ absorptive capabilities as a learning capability and theoretically explores the role of components of employees’ absorptive capabilities in determining market orientation activities. This paper studies the micro-level dynamic capability theory under the organizational learning theory to present a simple yet complete organizational learning framework, consisting of learning orientation, employees’ absorptive capability, and market orientation to provide a deeper understanding of phenomenon for future research.

ABSTRACT. This study considers the moderating effect of fake news disseminated in a social media context on the relationship between brand equity (brand image, awareness, perceived quality and brand associations) and consumer responses (brand preference, brand loyalty and willingness to pay a premium) in the context of premium vehicle brands.

ABSTRACT. This research documents how negative reviews, when perceived as unfair, can activate feelings of empathy toward firms that have been wronged, motivating consumer responses that provide support for such firms—for example, higher purchase amounts and patronage intentions. Results from one field study and four lab experiments demonstrate these effects towards firms receiving unfair negative reviews and their underlying mechanism relies on feelings of empathy for the firm. Individual differences in trait empathy and conditions that foster or reduce empathy moderate such responses. This research also investigates how firms using more personalized communications can facilitate empathetic reactions, subsequently leading to increased consumer firm support. Overall, this research extends our understanding of consumers’ responses to negative word-of-mouth in the marketplace by highlighting the role of perceived (un)fairness, determining the conditions under which negative reviews lead to positive consumer responses.

ABSTRACT. Fake news is one of the most discussed phenomena in politics, social life and the world of business. Recent literature has indicated that it can be a serious threat to brands and their management, for brands can be both victims of, and either unwitting or deliberate agents of fake news. This paper presents the results of a three-round Delphi study of a panel of brand marketing scholars in which they indicated their familiarity with ten major high tech brands, and estimated the vulnerability of these to fake news, and how effectively these brands would deal with fake news. The levels of familiarity with the brands vary considerably, and it also appears that lower familiarity with the brand (with one notable exception) is associated with higher estimates of vulnerability, and lower estimates of the management’s ability to deal effectively with fake news.

ABSTRACT. What sorts of trait information do people most care about when forming brand evaluations? Extant brand relationships research suggests “warmth” should be utterly important when evaluating brands. Yet, some psychological research on morality suggests information about brands’ specifically moral traits—their moral “character”—may be a primary dimension. Although warmth and character are sometimes construed interchangeably in the interpersonal domain, we argue they are separable in the consumption domain. More importantly, we show that across a wide variety of contexts, character is likely more important than warmth in brand evaluation formation.

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

ABSTRACT. How consumers value their privacy and make tradeoffs between privacy and economic and social benefits are important questions for technology firms and the government. In this research, we study consumers’ Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) adoption and usage decisions as an example to explore this issue. In UBI programs, consumers make trade-offs between their concern for privacy and the premium savings gained by allowing for their driving behavior to be monitored for up to 6 months. Once enrolled, customers can drop out at any time, but receive a lesser discount the earlier they do so. Using detailed information on insurance premiums, adoption and retention decisions of customers, and individual driving behavior for the UBI adopters, we build and estimate a dynamic structural model to examine the effect of privacy concerns on adoption and retention of UBI policy. Our model allows for the observed and unobserved heterogeneity across different group of customers. Preliminary results suggest that privacy affects the decision of consumers to adopt UBI, but that privacy costs are heterogeneous across demographic characteristics. We also use a natural experiment caused by a major, widely reported, data breach in the retailing industry to examine the effect of changing privacy perception on UBI usage by considering the UBI customers’ responses before and after the data breach event. We find that the data breach is associated with a short-term decrease in weekly retention rates among customers who are currently being monitored.

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

ABSTRACT. The association between leadership effectiveness and successful marketing efforts has been a somewhat popular area of research in business. Some studies have also investigated if those relationship hold in different regions across the world. This manuscript proposes an empirical study of the relationship between leadership effectiveness and marketing in Latin America, a region that lacks strong academic business research. Previous studies support the impact that management leadership style may have on business performance. Conflicting theories about national culture and leadership effectiveness in the region also provide an interesting research opportunity. Our main research question posits whether leadership attributes such as someone who is considerate of employee's points of view, a fair decision maker, a provider of a professional and positive work environment, a promoter of hard work, flexible and open to new ideas, and a good listener and supportive (Torres, Ruiz, Hamlin & Velez 2015) facilitate successful marketing activities.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to determine how managerial perceptions of the institutional home country profiles of exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) influence export knowledge handling and SMEs’ export performance. The managerial perceptions of the cognitive, regulative and normative pillars of exporting SMEs institutional environment emerge as key determinants for fostering export knowledge development and deployment practices in SMEs, and they also condition export performance. Our results suggest that export managers should benchmark themselves against highly successful exporting SMEs, in terms of their export knowledge absorption processes and performance. Policymakers can gain insights from our study to design more suitable support programs that enhance knowledge and information management skills, but also to enhance the image of the existing export support programs.

ABSTRACT. Considering the gaps in combining celebrity endorsement and cross culture research in studying cross-gender endorsement, we propose an exploratory research to explain the gender-specific cross-cultural differences in the effectiveness of cross-gender celebrity endorsement. Building on existing research on gender role representation and entertainment theory, we intend to identify a dual mediation model with both emotional and cognitive responses of customers. Moreover, following the cross-cultural studies, we intend to examine how cross-cultural differences in gender role attitudes and preference for soft masculinity influence the baseline dual mediation relationship. In this study, we first review the existing research on celebrity endorsement, cross-cultural differences in gender role perceptions, and aesthetic preference on masculinity. We then present our research questions, methodology and discussions.

ABSTRACT. Green marketing has been on the rise during the past decade. It is shown that green marketing practices help companies to target new segments of consumers, helps firms to offer a new point of difference. It is essential for firms to understand how to increase the effectiveness of their green marketing related campaigns with regards to green claims. In this research, we aim to show that that message framing for green claims matter, and individual differences among consumers can explain why they react differently to ad campaigns. This study focuses on the effect of using different types of green message framing (self-benefit vs. other-benefit) on consumers’ perception of the company’s social responsibility, which is known as perceived social responsibility (PSR). We hypothesize that the effect depends on consumer characteristics such as whether consumers believe that their actions can make a difference (perceived consumer effectiveness). Specifically, we aim to investigate (1) the moderating role of perceived consumer effectiveness in the message frame- PSR relationship, (2) the mediating effect of PSR on message frame- consumer response relationship. The results show that different PCE levels influence how consumers perceive green ad appeals and their responses towards the brand.

ABSTRACT. Consumers in developed countries are increasingly aware of the challenges of sustainable development. This is reflected in the emergence of new purchasing and consumption behaviors. However, recent research indicates that some categories of products are less concerned by this rise in the ethical concerns of consumers. This is the case for fashion products in France. In these conditions, should business models now be built on the principles of sustainable development? This quantitative research using conjoint analysis method and a sample of 381 French consumers seeks to answer this question. The results confirm the low sensitivity of consumers to the ethical issues in the fashion sector and challenge the assumption that ethical commitment can be a real differentiator in the market.

ABSTRACT. The guiding question of this research is what motivates individual charitable giving to distant others in need at a time when the global marketplace and technology had not only made us more aware of the dire conditions and injustices perpetrated but also more able to help to improve those conditions and restore justice.

Using the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical framework, we explore the concept of justice restoration efficacy to examine the intention to donate to distant others through the international humanitarian aid system. To our knowledge, this is the first study to specifically explore the intention to donate to distant others in the marketing and charitable giving literatures as well as the first study to connect the concepts of justice restoration efficacy with charitable giving and the intention to donate.

Using regression, the adjusted variance explained by the model reaches 59% of the intention to donate to distant others and we observe that justice restoration efficacy is the most important antecedent of this intention with a standardized Beta coefficient of 0.59, followed far behind by subjective norms with 0.20.

ABSTRACT. Prior research considers several aspects of customer participation (CP), which refers to customers’ contribution of effort, knowledge, information, time or other resources to service production and delivery. However, actionable guidelines for customer participation management (CPM) – i.e., organizational actions and activities that aim to affect customers’ contribution to service production and delivery – are currently lacking.

To address this research gap, this paper extends Psychological Capital (PsyCap) from human resource management to CPM. Specifically, the authors investigate the value of customers’ PsyCap as a manageable driver of CP. PsyCap involves an individual’s positive assessment of circumstances and probability for success, and the human resource management literature offers several actionable guidelines for developing PsyCap. Most of these guidelines can be translated to a CP setting and, as such, allow the design of truly actionable strategies for CPM.

Study 1 demonstrates the predictive value of PsyCap as a key driver of CP by examining its relative impact on CP attitude and intention compared to alternative CP drivers (role clarity, extrinsic benefits, and intrinsic benefits). Furthermore, this study reveals the impact of several task-related antecedents (compatibility, observability, trialability, complexity, and perceived risk) on these CP drivers. Study 2 demonstrates the managerial value of PsyCap by translating existing guidelines for developing PsyCap from the employee to the customer domain and revealing boundary conditions for PsyCap development.

ABSTRACT. Transformative services embody a fertile domain for future service research. In particular, health care necessitates the timely adoption and compliance of a myriad of transformative health services by its customers as a pathway to enhance the patient journey. As adopting these services is paramount to enhancing individual and collective well-being, research is needed to understand how to encourage early intervention amongst customers at varying temporal phases of decision-making. For this reason, this study aims to examine the perpetual service adoption gap in mental health care and focuses on the implications of Self-Stigma and Anticipated Guilt in determining customers’ intentions to adopt transformative health services. The proposed model encompasses the Theory of Planned Behaviour and is tested with data from a multi-country study gathered from 700 Australian and 1073 Chinese customers. Results indicate that self-stigma, anticipated guilt, self-efficacy and subjective norms are major determinants of intentions to adopt. The authors conclude with managerial implications, highlighting that the importance of mental health interventions and PSAs that foster and facilitate consumer empowerment, which in turn enhances proactive behavioural engagement with health services.

ABSTRACT. Consumer-centric services companies demonstrate brand attributes and build brand image to a certain brand quality through effective brand communications to develop brand awareness among consumers. This study has been conducted with 272 consumers using telecommunication services in Mexico City. It has been conducted in two phases - development of scale, and analysis of data. The scale indicated as ‘BASInd’, based on critical examination of five research studies conducted between 2011-2018, was developed generically for this study. The study aims at analyzing the role of brand awareness as a driver to determine brand value through brand communication, brand attributes, brand quality, and brand image. The study reveals that effective brand awareness helps in developing brand value among consumers. Brand advertisements and inter-personal communications imparted by service promotors not only enhance brand awareness among consumers, but also help them in making appropriate buying decisions.

ABSTRACT. The composition of a person’s identity and its juxtaposition within the social world is a central tenet in marketing, psychology, and sociology (Cherrier & Belk, 2015; Friedman, 1990; Hall, 1994; Wilk, 1997). Consumers often make decisions and tradeoffs in their daily lives between pursuing pleasures or distancing themselves from them, both of which often have an impact on the subsequent actions. The current research attempts to answer questions about consumption of hedonic products and experiences, and how individuals strive to adapt their perceptions about them through varying mental construals of the psychological distances with these experiences. The current study which is an ongoing work would rely on an innovative data collection approach called the Album On-Line (AOL), which is a projective technique based on individual representations through online photo albums. The research questions that this study aims to address include: 1) what is the role of psychological distance within hedonic consumption patterns; 2) how do individuals perceive their psychological distance with brands/products/experiences within the context of hedonic consumption; 3) how could psychological distance be employed by individuals in hedonic experiences involving self-control; 4) what is the categorization of products/brands within the context of hedonic consumption.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the link between beer bar consumers’ self-rated attractiveness and the time at which they respond to such an evaluative judgment. Moreover, the study investigated whether the consumer’s relationship status and gender could moderate this potential relationship, and whether self-reported alcohol intoxication and the number of beers consumed would play a role in such an assumed association. In total, 475 consumers (67% male) participated in the study, which was conducted at a beer bar. A bartender asked consumers to fill out a brief survey, including measures of which time it was when they completed the survey and how many beers they had consumed as well as their gender and relationship status (single vs. in a committed relationship). Next, the consumers rated how physically attractive and drunk they perceived themselves at that point in time. The results revealed a positive relationship between time and self-rated physical attractiveness, with consumers perceiving themselves as more attractive, the later they completed the survey. However, this link was moderated by the consumer’s relationship status, and only applied to consumers who were currently single. Interestingly, this interaction was further moderated by the consumer’s gender. Male consumers rated themselves as more attractive, the later they completed the survey, regardless of their relationship status. For female consumers, however, such a “closing time effect” was only apparent if they were single. Controlling for the number of beers consumed and/or how drunk the consumers felt did not change the nature and significance of these findings.

ABSTRACT. Organizational frontlines have evolved to include a growing list of frontline interactions that occur outside of the traditional face-to-face (f2f) frontline interaction. However, traditional f2f consumer interactions still occur, and for those tasked with these roles, a new approach is required to offset/validate the myriad of additional interactions that take place prior to a f2f interaction. In these pre-f2f interactions, new technologies and avenues are driving consumer informedness. Consumer informedness is defined as the degree to which consumers perceive themselves as being knowledgeable about products or services in the marketplace in regard to a specific purchase decision before the purchase process and/or interaction with a frontline employee formally begins. The current research focuses on how consumer access to large amounts of information from nearly limitless sources, that occur pre-f2f, requires new approaches to frontline f2f interactions. To this end, the theoretical basis of regulatory focus theory is employed to develop new approaches to understanding the needs of high informedness consumers. The result, new approaches for frontline employees to effectively communicate scarce knowledge that aids in improving consumer purchase decisions.

ABSTRACT. We propose that the decision regarding the time duration of a cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns, we propose that the decision of time duration should depend on cause type and product type. Results from three studies show that a long time duration works when pairing a utilitarian product with a primary cause, or a hedonic product with a secondary cause. A short time duration is advantageous for a hedonic product paired with a primary cause. Consumer attributions regarding the company’s motives for making the donation provide process-level evidence that explains why people favor the above combinations. Companies can maximize the success of their CRM by choosing the time duration that best suits their product-cause bundle.

ABSTRACT. Marketing practitioners have long recognised the importance of non-transactional customer behaviour (e.g., Sashi, 2012). In line with this, the industry introduced the ‘engagement’ metric in strategic marketing and branding to assess corporate and brand performance (e.g., Van Doorn et al., 2010). Prospect and trend reports from the industry indicate that advances in digital technologies continue to shape the business landscape; a shift towards engaging consumers through implementations of new technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), can be observed throughout a broad range of different industries. Various brands are currently experimenting with virtual reality technology and incorporating it into their marketing strategies in order to create more profound connections with their target audiences – i.e., by increasing awareness, promoting engagement and generating unique brand experiences. While VR technology is moving towards widespread adoption, the possibilities and impact of how VR can best be implemented to enhance both product and brand marketing have not been investigated fully. This research aims to contribute to this knowledge by investigating how VR experiences are perceived by consumers, specifically focusing on how they influence brand perception and the consumer’s intention to engage with the brand. The research is based on a series of semi-structured focus group interviews. The paper concludes with recommendations for practice and future research.

ABSTRACT. A number of high-profile recalls of food, medical, and consumer products has raised public awareness and media attention on product safety (Marucheck et al., 2011). The 2008 powdered milk scandal, in which powdered baby’s milk was contaminated with melamine, injured hundreds of thousands of babies, at least six fatally (Huang, 2014). Product safety incidents, also known as product-harm crisis, involve public knowledge of branded products found to be defective, unsafe, or responsible for injuries or deaths (Dawar & Pillutla, 2000). Hence, public product safety incidents affect companies across virtually all industries (Vassilikopoulou et al., 2009), and they can result in brands being critically damaged with deleterious consequences for the firm (Griffin, Babin, & Attaway, 1996; Chen et al., 2009; Lin et al., 2013).

Given the relevance of children’s product safety in a Chinese context, the study examines if and how a public children’s product safety incident affects a firm’s stock market performance. What factors might influence the magnitude of financial impact of a children’s product safety incidents? Based on a sample of 87 product safety incidents from 2009 to 2016, we first examine the stock market reaction to announcements of children’s product safety incidents. Second, we examine factors that could affect the magnitude of the market reaction. Our study focuses specifically on incident features (information source) and firm characteristics (outsourcing strategy and focus strategy).

ABSTRACT. This article examines whether and why organizing product categories according to the consumption goal they serve (i.e., complement-based assortment organization) may increase purchases, compared with organizing product categories according to their attributes or physical characteristics (i.e., substitute-based assortment organization). Across two field experiments, a virtual reality experiment, and a lab experiment, the authors show that a complement-based assortment organization, compared with a substitute-based assortment organization, leads to increased numbers of purchases and increased expenditures. Ease of visualization of the consumption process mediates the results. The impact of the complements-based organization on is purchases is more pronounced for less involved consumers or for consumers with a less specific shopping goal. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications.

ABSTRACT. Celebrities are no longer confining themselves to being the face of a brand, but are leveraging their personal brand to create their own product lines. Although extensive attention has been afforded to celebrity endorsements in the marketing literature, there has been very little research on the popular phenomenon of celebrity-branded product lines per se and, more specifically, on how celebrity-branded products enhance retailer-related outcomes. Responding to calls for research on transference effects of celebrities on retailers and drawing from Keller’s (2013) brand resonance model, this study addresses the abovementioned gap by developing and testing a theoretical framework of the transference effects of celebrity-branded products on consumers’ evaluation of retailers and the formation of retailer resonance, i.e., active , intense loyalty toward the retailer.

ABSTRACT. Despite the increasing use of gamification mechanisms to engage customers in firms’ activities, the understanding of these mechanisms remains limited. To address this knowledge gap, this research examines the impacts of winning and losing a contest, which is a phenomenon experienced by all customers involved in gamified settings but underexplored in literature. We investigate the context of co-creation communities by combining two key characteristics of gamification mechanisms, perceived uncertainty and control. Results from three laboratory experiments and one field experiment provide strong empirical evidence that participants attribute their lost to the contest-related degree of uncertainty and their win to the control they have on their performances. We also point out that the impact of win/lose decision is moderated by participants’ prior level of engagement. This research questions the effectiveness of gamification mechanisms, identifies their limits, and provides guidelines on how to properly implement them.

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

ABSTRACT. A longstanding challenge for marketers is assessing and acting on discontinuities that can occur when demographic segmentation does not align with need-based segmentation. We investigate this phenomenon in the context of the macro-segment most often referred to as millennials. More specifically, we investigate millennials’ aspirational and actual preferences relative to product buying decisions, given a number of product and firm attributes including corporate social responsibility behavior by the firm, product quality, price, and country of origin. Results suggest that when aggregated as a segment, millennials aspire but do not ultimately favor CSR behavior over price. However, further segmentation cluster analysis reveals sub-segments that may be more likely to act on CSR aspirations.

ABSTRACT. Drawing on research that demonstrates the influence of primacy and recency effects on the success of a firm’s CSR strategy (Wagner, Lutz, & Weitz, 2009), this study explores how the consumer’s experience with the firm and the firm’s CSR reputation impact the response to contradictory CSR information. This research analyzes a longitudinal study to examine consumer-firm relationships exposed to positive and negative CSR information. Looking at the impact of primacy and recency effects, a proactive versus reactive CSR communication strategy is explored, and results suggest that firms benefit most from a proactive CSR communication strategy with their current customers and a reactive CSR communication strategy with consumers who have little to no experience with the firm.

ABSTRACT. Structured Abstract submitted. See below.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the efficacy of ‘face-saving,’ materialistic, and ethical values in predicting Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward Western and Chinese fashion brands. The findings of this study are valuable as marketers consider best practices and strategies in targeting Chinese consumers and driving their purchasing behavior. In the next year, it is anticipated that China will supersede the United States becoming the largest retail marketplace in the world by total sales. An online questionnaire was utilized to collect data. Scales measuring participants' 'face-saving,' materialistic, and ethical values were included in the research instrument, in addition to, measurements of participants' attitudes toward Chinese and Western fashion brands. The sample included 1,199 participants between the ages of 18-64 residing in China. The findings indicated that the higher participants' 'face-saving' and materialistic values the greater their attitudes for Western fashion brands; the lower participants' ethical values the greater their attitudes for Western brands. Conversely, the higher participants' 'face-saving' and materialistic values the lower their attitudes for Chinese fashion brands; the higher participants' ethical values the lower their attitudes for Chinese fashion brands.

ABSTRACT. This study attempts to examine how online search data related to the change of MNE’s performance. By using a both cross-sectional and longitudinal panel studies, a positive relationship between online search interest related to an MNE’s product and corporation names and its financial performance is hypothesized and tested, and its managerial and theoretical implication are discussed.

ABSTRACT. This paper examine the impact of eWOM on the product diffusion process and finds the negativity effect of eWOM will be illustrated in the early and late majority consumer groups; however, negativity effect is inconsistent in the early adopter groups, which gives the weight that the negativity effect is context- and product-specific. The study demonstrates that the effectiveness of eWOM varies among different groups of people over different timelines, congruous with the elaboration likelihood theory. This finding also indicates that marketers should employ different marketing strategies at different stages of the innovation diffusion process in order to maximize the efficiency of their marketing investments.

ABSTRACT. Social media have indisputably changed the way consumers and brands interact. Nowadays, many users generate contents and share their opinions with other consumers from all over the world (Smith, et al., 2012). In this environment, some content providers have been able to come out of the crowd, and their opinions have gained a lot of credit among their peers. Called “social media influencer (SMI)”, their influence is such that before deciding to buy a product, some of their followers, i.e. consumers who demonstrate a particular interest in the SMI’s contents and “follow” their posts, would systematically consult the SMI’s opinion (Moon & Han, 2011). Brands did not fail to notice this opportunity and a vast majority of them develop partnerships with influencers to see their products praised by the SMI, which increases followers’ positive exposure to the marketing communication. The practice, called Product Placement (PP) is largely unscrutinised in the context of Social Media. This particular context presents several differences with that of traditional PP which suggest an original persuasion process that deserves scholar and managerial attention. The objective of this work is to investigate the persuasion process at play in the very specific context of SMIs’ PP and to provide a better understanding of consumers’ responses and empowerment. In order to do so, we will focus on the relationship between SMI and their followers; followers’ attributions of SMI’s motivations; the impact of the repetitive dimension of the practice, also at different levels of satisfaction and factors of consumers’ empowerment.

ABSTRACT. Our research project ambitions to better understand the processes explaining how digital technologies (mobile apps, social media…) influence consumers’ behaviors and how those technologies permit consumers’ engagement toward proposed behaviors considering social marketing context. The purpose of our research is to theoretically contribute to the social marketing literature, providing a better understanding of the processes explaining how digital technologies may act as facilitators fostering the engagement in the behaviors promoted by social marketing. More specifically, relying on qualitative and quantitative methods (experiments), we will analyze the role of consumer experience and social norms play in the processes. We also aim at offering managerial contributions to various stakeholders such as public policy makers, non-for profit organizations, … This research indeed ambitions to be part of an on-going effort made by social marketers to encourage positive behavioral changes for the welfare of society, although more challenging than commercial marketing.

ABSTRACT. Salesforce Automation (SFA) and other information systems have given managers an unprecedented visibility into their firm’s sales pipeline. While most literature on SFA dichotomizes the reaction of a salesforce into use and non-use of the system, there is a third option: “opportunistic utilization”. Should intentional misuse of the system become commonplace among the salespeople in a company, the consequences can be serious and far-reaching. The author observed this first-hand in the B2B salesforce of a large multinational.

Opportunistic utilization occurs when the user of an IT system provides incomplete, misleading, or false information to gaming the system’s and firm’s decision-making process to achieve a desired outcome. Salespeople manipulated their representations of a deal’s progress to justify additional resources. Combined with escalation of commitment to failing deals, this behavior resulted in investments being made wastefully despite policies intended to prevent it.

When this kind of misuse becomes common in a salesforce, the insights derived from the data become suspect, leading to unrealistic and ineffectual salesforce policies. Opportunistic utilization became a norm of behavior throughout the sales force in the company studied, resulting in a vicious cycle. It is not enough for senior managers to enact IT systems and mandate their use; the system must be used correctly, policed for accuracy, and managers must apply a reality check before issuing data-driven mandates.

ABSTRACT. Today’s hypercompetitive business world requires sales scholars to rethink their perspective on what successful sales processes may entail in a B2B context. Selling is no longer viewed as a linear process occurring between a buying center within the customer organization and the salesperson that represents the vendor. Growing evidence suggests that selling and the associated contributing processes may involve multiple individuals/parties both within the buying and the selling organization. Thus, it is not a stretch to suggest that gaining a deeper understanding of the sales processes and what makes it successful in today’s world requires that we gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between the buyer’s and seller’s intra-organizational ecosystems.

In B2B selling contexts, the seller’s (intra-organizational) ecosystem must play a crucial role in ensuring sales success for today’s sales organizations to be successful. They must look beyond the typical sales-marketing interface and interface with many more intra-organizational functions so that they can draw upon their collective resources during the sales process. In other words, sales success for firms today may be contingent upon their sales organization’s ability to manage their multiple interfaces simultaneously.

We do not have an adequate understanding of how sales organizations may interface with other intra-organizational functions (e.g., customer service, or operations) as they try to draw upon their resources. This investigation begins to explore the idea of sales function’s multiple and simultaneous intra-organizational interfaces, their facilitators and impediments, and how they may contribute to the firm’s strategic outcomes.

ABSTRACT. Stories in business-to-business advertising though rare, have become a topic of mainstream discussion. With less than a handful of exceptions (e.g. Huang, 2014), academic researchers have ignored stories and its influences in organizational decision making. This is a major omission and inferences drawn about stories in the consumer context cannot be assumed nor transferred to business-to-business (B2B) markets due to the stark differences in who, how and why decisions are made across both contexts (Lilien, 1987).

The absence of B2B advertising research in marketing journals was so pronounced that in 2017 the industrial marketing management journal made this topic a priority by dedicating an entire issue to it. Although most practitioners would agree that B2B firms are increasing their advertising budget (eMarketer, 2017) and using stories as part of their internal organizational messaging, little empirical research exist that scratches the surface or delves deeper into stories-based adverting in organizational decision making. Accordingly, in direct response to this gap, the present proposal intends to explore B2B decision makers’ perspectives on story-based ads by their suppliers. In this proposal, we intend to focus on executives at the C-suite who are decision makers within their organizations. Of particular interest is the prediction of decisional changes as a function of advertising story type. This study attempts to address this omission with the goal of providing a dedicated understanding of the influences of story-type in B2B markets.

ABSTRACT. We examine the B2B buying process with a sample of Fortune 500 Companies, focusing on the emotions discussed and the behaviors of the key account sales force that initiated those emotions from the buying center. This work builds on the recent research stream in which emotions have received renewed interest. We will draw research attention to the actions and behaviors which drew the attention of members of the multi-million dollar buying team.

Our qualitative sample is drawn from the verbatim transcripts of the depth interviews with multiple members of 40 different buying teams tasked with determining which supplier would be awarded a multi-million dollar sales contract, collected from multiple individuals in the buying center at the buying company.

We build upon previous B2B sales research, and focus specifically on the steps in the buying process with the goal of building on current B2B sales theory to examine similarities and differences between the buying process for the final consumer as compared to the key account, business-to-business customer.

We expect to find that several activities in the buying process loom large in the decision process of the members of the buying center, suggesting that there are additional steps in the B2B buying process for very large key account sales proposals. From these findings we offer a modified framework for the B2B buying process, for high dollar amount sales proposals presented to key accounts.

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

ABSTRACT. Please see the attached file.

ABSTRACT. Granting discounts is a prominent monetary pricing tactic employed to boost sales. Extant research, however, provides contradictory results on the effectiveness of varied degrees of discounts and emphasises the role of the product category. Better-performing, non-monetary promotions have become the focal point, while the possibility of enhancing discount strategies has moved into the background. We suggest a new format for reinforcing discount promotion which builds on the idea of empowering consumers (i.e. they get involved in creating a price discount). These “empowered price discounts” have various positive effects on consumers’ perceptions of products and services, as well as their willingness to buy – as we show empirically in two studies with 866 participants in total. These positive effects result from how consumers view increasing authority over the promotional feature “discount”. Companies that implement empowerment features can boost the promotional effectiveness of discount strategies across product categories, even at lower discount levels.

ABSTRACT. Anecdotal evidence suggests that companies tend to charge women a “gender tax” and women’s products often cost more than comparable men’s products. An important question remains: Is charging women a price surcharge conducive to higher revenues? In five studies, this paper shows that charging women price premiums could back-fire and lower companies’ revenues and profits because on average women are more price sensitive than men are. Studies use a combination of primary and secondary data, static and longitudinal data, student sample and adult sample, and a host of robust statistical analyses to show the reliability and generalizability of the findings.

ABSTRACT. Results of an eye-tracking study show that the magnitude of price stimuli can affect consumers’ attention toward online display ads that are displayed incidentally on a web page. That is consumers fixation duration (pupil size) is longer (larger) for the ads which contain high-value price stimuli than ads which contain low-value price stimuli. Moreover, when ads are displayed repeatedly on the same web page, the fixation duration is increased as a function of the order of placement only when ads contained high-magnitude price stimuli. For ads contained low-magnitude price stimuli the gaze behavior did not change. We suggest that the observed different gaze behavior is due to different price processing mechanism for incidental price stimuli: When ads contain high-magnitude price stimuli consumers process the ads through more elaborative selective accessibility mechanism, but when ads contain low-magnitude price stimuli consumers process the ads through more direct priming mechanism of anchoring and adjustment.

ABSTRACT. Experts guide consumers’ preferences and purchase decisions because they are often perceived as unbiased and trustworthy. Countries spend billions on marketing their agricultural industries to not only their own citizens but also foreign citizens all over the world, including these experts. The wine industry is high value agricultural industry from the standpoints of both the main raw agricultural products (i.e., grapes) and the value added in the finished products. This paper explores the role of country image in expert ratings and reviews using a large dataset from the global wine industry and automated text analysis. It finds evidence of country image bias despite the influence of product price.

ABSTRACT. Academic research emphasizes that consumers adopting mobile channels to perform online purchases increase their overall order rate and size with the retailer. However, there is sparse knowledge regarding the factors determining adoption. Hence, this research develops and empirically tests a value-based adoption model to elucidate consumers’ usage of mobile channels for online purchasing. The findings of a quantitative survey among German smartphone users support that the greater the perceived value is, the greater the usage of mobile channels for online transactions. Consumers create the value by balancing costs (i.e., the security risk of the mobile channel, the effort involved in product evaluation) and benefits (i.e., control over the shopping process, flexibility). The purchasing situation and individual characteristics moderate the strength of value determinants. The findings offer scholars a broad explanation of the consumer adoption of mobile channels for online purchasing. For retailers, the findings provide differentiated implications for how to promote mobile online purchasing.

ABSTRACT. To save costs or to target bilingual populations, internationally operating companies make use of double language labeling, that is usage of a foreign next to a domestic language to advertise e.g., flavor, ingredients, use or consumptions instructions. Companies that solely cater on a national level might also benefit from this approach as their products can profit from a spillover effect of a positive-ly perceived foreign language. However, negative effects are also possible as a second language might make the product appear in a less positive light. Research has mostly focused on bilinguals, contrasting effects of the respective two languages. As we concentrate on mainstream consumers, we assume that decoding information in a foreign language can be perceived as more challenging, which might result in negative effects. Our study seeks to clarify the impact of double language labeling of national products on product perceptions and behavioral intentions in the context of food and bever-ages by conducting two experiments. We applied a somewhat new approach by manipulating the chosen languages according to their comprehensibility. Using an explanatory approach, qualitative interviews were conducted to identify and outline moderators related to culture.

ABSTRACT. This research explores how employees engage with their firms through social media rather than how firms engage with their employees. The literature is extensive on brand engagement and social media. However, while brand engagement is about a brand’s interaction with all stakeholders, two observations are clear on the extant research. First, the research focuses almost entirely on consumers rather than on the industrial and organizational customers of business-to-business (B2B) firms or their stakeholders. Second, the emphasis is almost exclusively on customers, rather than other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, and investors. The research presented in this paper focuses first on brand engagement in B2B firms rather than B2C. It also focuses on a stakeholder group other than customers, namely, the employees of B2B firms. Moreover, it does this through the employee lens, rather than the lens of the firm; in other words, we explore word use through brand engagement and social media interaction to understand what makes the difference of those employees who rate their employer brands highly on social media, and those that don't.

ABSTRACT. Sales scholars occasionally use student samples for research about sales education/training. To know whether students are engaging in adaptive selling behaviors, educators would typically use a measurement scale, such as the ADAPTS scale. However, adaptive selling behavior items often contain abstract concepts such as “sales approach” and “not working” which may be difficult for students who lack professional sales experience to interpret. This research investigates the use of the shortened RMML ADAPTS scale for use with a student sample. Two studies are conducted, a qualitative assessment of item meaning and a two-part experimental study. The qualitative assessment shows that students do not interpret ADAPTS items consistently. The experimental study shows that student self-ratings of the RMML ADAPTS scale are strongly contaminated by past performance. These results strongly suggest that educators avoid using the RMML ADAPTS scale with student samples. Alternative measures are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Physician dominance is a strong predictor of patients' decision to abandon health treatments. In this study, we explore how subtle changes in physicians’ coat colors influence subjective impression formation, affecting behavior intention. Interestingly, we show that adopting white-coats (vs. red-coats) negatively affect patients’ behavioral intentions (e.g., taking a pill). Through two studies, we demonstrate that the high (vs. low) dominance perception associated with color white is driving the effect. Moreover, we show that physician's expertise moderates the effect. When the physician is low in expertise, coat color serves as a compensatory cue to assess if physician skills. That is, white-coat (vs. red-coat) increases dominance perceptions. However, when the physician is high in expertise, the effect is mitigated.

ABSTRACT. This study presents a test of both convergent and discriminant validity that considers networks of relationships between variables rather than just pairs of measures. We illustrate the efficacy of the newly proposed procedure by revisiting two propular studies from prior research. Our analyses of the models suggest that the discriminant validity problems in these studies are more severe when taking the entire nomological network into account compared to mere pairwise assessments.

ABSTRACT. Service Profit Chain (SPC) is a model that involves the service encounter as well the creation of value. Service encounter promotes a relationship between employees and consumer. This is the basis of Value Co-Creation (VCC). This study evaluates from the consumer’s perspective the VCC process, addressing the behavioral consequences like satisfaction, trust and loyalty. We used the DART Model’s (Dialogue, Access, Risk and Transparency) dimensions as predictors of Satisfaction, Affective and Cognitive Trust. We developed a survey and collected 1012 valid questionnaires from users of mobile, banking services and education in Brazil. In agreement with the proposed hypotheses, findings revealed a positive relationship between VCC and Consumer Satisfaction; Satisfaction and Consumer Loyalty; Cognitive Trust and Consumer Loyalty. Findings also revealed a positive and significant relationship between Dialogue, Risk and Transparency with Affective Trust. Access, Risk, and Transparency have a positive and significant relationship with Cognitive Trust. The relationships between Access and Affective Trust, and Dialogue and Cognitive Trust were negative but significant. When conducting a multigroup analysis the results revealed differences among the type of service. There are differences between some of the established relationships and Banking Service vs. Education, Mobile Service vs. Education, and Mobile Service vs. Banking.

ABSTRACT. Subjective financial deprivation is an unpleasant psychological state emerging from social ascendant comparison and/or from the perception of a loss of buying power in comparison with a salient period in the past. This distinction is mostly overlooked in the existing literature in Marketing. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the origin of financial deprivation matters. Through two online quantitative studies and a Choice-Based-Conjoint analysis, we show that financial deprivation due to social comparison is not associated with the same budget allocation preferences as financial deprivation due a perceived deterioration in the financial position.

ABSTRACT. Identity as it relates to consumption has been an important part of marketing thought and conceptualization. Theories of identity in marketing focus on understanding the impact of group identification on individual decision-making, the dynamic nature of identity, and the interactive effects that identity and consumption have on each other. In this paper, we explore the concept of identity, and its effects on consumption and the potential distinction between individual “I” and group “WE” influences on individual consumption choice. Based on a theoretical conceptualization, and drawing on social identity theory, contextual and goal driven categorization processes, market segmentation, and Identity Investment Theory (IIT), we argue that all individual choices are affected by group identities and that an individual is essentially a composite of multiple group identities. Consequently, from a market economy point of view there is no individuality in the choice of a specific product or service. Rather, individuality is expressed and manifests itself in the basket of goods and services that an individual consumes. In the consumption context, individuality in effect arises out of the combination of group identities that an individual possesses and there is in effect no individuality outside of group identity. Additional theoretical development is however necessary to identify moderating conditions for the notion that in the market economy of consumption, there is no individuality outside of group identity.

ABSTRACT. Drawing from Construal Level Theory, this research examines the choice between common and scientific names for food ingredients under different food types (vice vs. virtue) and regulatory foci (promotion vs. prevention). Two experiments show a common name works better than a scientific name when vice food is promoted with promotion focus. On the other hand, a scientific name is more persuasive when virtue food is presented with prevention focus. The choice of ingredient name does not matter when vice food with prevention focus or food virtue with promotion focus is promoted. This research demonstrates that perceived guilt and perceived efficacy respectively serve as the underlying mechanism for vice and virtue foods. The findings provide important insights for marketers to choose the right nutrition ingredient name to promote their foods.

ABSTRACT. Despite the large number of studies on consumer shopping for non-digital products, little is known about the impact of direct-to-consumer channels and signals of quality and the role of need for cognition. This study investigates shopping for clothing using two (print catalogs and online) shopping modes. It examines the effects of affiliation with well-known local brick-and-mortar stores as a signal of quality and the influence of the need for cognition variable. It draws on principles derived from signaling theory and need for cognition to put forward four research hypotheses. To test the hypotheses, it uses a 2 (print catalog- and online-shopping modes) x 2 (affiliated- and unaffiliated-signals of quality) x 2 (low- and high-need for cognition) between-subjects experimental design. Key findings show strong patterns of interactions. Several findings are new to the literature and offer insights for designing direct-to-consumer programs. Implications are discussed and ideas for future research are given.

ABSTRACT. A large body of research suggests that consumer are empowered by digital technologies, and have more power over marketers than ever before. One context in which consumers utilize their increasing power over marketers is that of crowdsourcing. This research explores consumer perceptions of power in the context of crowdsourcing. In doing so, this research adapts and validates the Perceived Social Power Scale by Imai (1989) in order to measure consumer power in the context of crowdsourcing. Experiments test differences in consumer perceptions of power based on the type of crowdsourcing they are engaging in: idea crowdsourcing vs crowd-voting. Implications for practitioners, future research, and study limitations are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Gamification refers to the use of game designs and mechanics in non-gaming contexts. Over the past decade, advertising in games (in-game advertising) and a persuasive game (advergame) have been an important way to promote brands. The present research examines how scholarly research on gamification of advertising has evolved over time. The study compiles bibliometric data using the ISI Web of Science, creates a citation-based knowledge map, and explores the current state of gamification research. In particular, the authors employ a bibliometrics approach to systematically investigate gamification research streams. The authors particularly visualize how scholarly articles on gamification relate to or build on each other using a bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. As a result, the study shows the most influential documents and contributing sources in this domain. The findings also help visually illustrate the intellectual structure of gamification research and provide a robust roadmap for future research in the field.

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

ABSTRACT. Success in new product development (NPD) is elusive. Going to market with radically differentiated, superior quality products that capture the desires of many consumers is a goal of most companies, yet one that is achieved by few. Despite the plethora of research that has considered the “radicalness” and product quality that results from cross-functional NPD interactions, and a lesser set that has considered the role of creativity in driving these outcomes, there has been a lack of research on how cross-functional NPD efforts drive both creativity and the emerging concept of design value to lead to desired product outcomes. This research explores these phenomena and tests our model in three different international markets: the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

ABSTRACT. Brands are constantly challenged to provide innovative offerings, but they must predict consumers’ behaviors toward novelty. By applying frameworks which integrate brand luxury and brand authenticity in the digital era, this study uses online questionnaires to provide evidence on, first, a positive effect of perceived luxury level on brand authenticity (H1), second, an insignificant effect of a product’s digital transformation on perceived luxury level (H2a) as well as brand authenticity (H2b), in the watch industry. Thus, companies are encouraged to digitalize their products. Luxurious and authentic brands can adapt their products to the 4th industrial revolution trend, without being threatened of losing their brands' image and personality.

ABSTRACT. Built on the resource based theory, we aim to compare how market and technical resources are related to new product advantage when product design (i.e., product modularity) and process design (i.e., process modularity) capabilities change. Our findings show marketing resource helps new product advantage, but the role of technical resource is unstable. When product modularity rises, technical resource is capable of exerting more notable positive influence, but the role of marketing resource is constrained. More interestingly, when process modularity increases, the influence of technical resource is indistinct, but marketing resource is more positively related to new product advantage. Our findings advance knowledge on new product development project resource management. Our research also integrates product and process modularity into the resource based theory.

ABSTRACT. The user innovation literature has largely focused on understanding how, when, and why users engage in developing product improvements to satisfy their own unmet needs (i.e., product focus), and underemphasized the important role that acquiring rich insights into customer’ needs (i.e., customer focus) may play in facilitating user innovation’ success. Using multi-source data from an open-source software development context, we found that customer focus had a greater impact on user innovation success than product focus. The results indicated that neither of these user innovator mindset influences product improvement activities or product adoption directly, customer focus has a significant and positive effect on both the volume of input that innovators receive as well as the diversity of the feedback that innovators receive from customer. The current research contribute new knowledge by comparing the relative impact of two distinct user innovator mindsets on customer input and subsequently, two NPD-relevant performance.

ABSTRACT. Previous research studied the impact of female portrayals on consumers. Majority of research that studied female models in ads investigate the effect of stereotypical female portrayals such as sexual objectification of women. The current research aims to understand the impact of female sexual power portrayals on the female audience. Female sexual power is defined as women being in charge of their sexuality and “calling the shots.” Power is likely to portray the pride of the powerful person. Therefore, it is likely that female models in the ads that portray sexual power also show pride of the model. Since pride is likely to be answered with envious responses by receivers, in this research it is posited that female models who show authentic pride are likely to be admired (benign envy) by female audience, whereas, hubristic pride shown by female models is likely to lead to malicious envy. Moreover, this research proposes that female audience will respond to ads with female sexual power model as part of their tendency to assess their status in their social environment (social comparison), they will compare themselves with models even more if they can relate to the models in the ads. Two experiments are conducted to test the hypotheses proposed in this research.

ABSTRACT. In times of increased connectedness, facilitated by the era of online social networks, social exclusion has been recognized as a growing epidemic. Research shows that social exclusion threatens people’s need to belong, consequently its effects are often an attempt to cope with this self-threat. In this research we focus on belongingness to understand the effects of social exclusion on stereotyping behavior. We test whether social exclusion can alter interpersonal judgments and behaviors relative to often stigmatized, stereotyped groups (e.g. elderly and overweight people). We predict that social exclusion will increase individuals’ attention to positive social acceptance cues, which will consequently lead to less stigmatization.

ABSTRACT. This research explores perceptions of authenticity with regards to ethnic advertisements and it aims to provide insights into how these perceptions are constructed in the minds of consumers. Understanding the effects of authenticity in ethnic advertisements is needed to uncover its effects on consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and purchase intentions. Identifying the success factors of creating an authentic ethnic advertisement. The research’s objective is derived from a gap within the literature regarding consumers’ perceptions of authenticity of ethnic advertisements. Previous studies have explored authenticity within advertisements and ethnicity within advertisements in regard to consumers’ perceptions and attitudes in combination with their ethnic backgrounds, however, many of these studies and their replications produced incoherent and contradicting findings. It is argued that these two streams of literature need to be merged and that has yet to be explored, concept of authenticity in ethnic advertisements will meaningfully advance the current body of knowledge in this respect. Exploratory methods are implemented for this study, as little knowledge is present about the notion of authentic ethnic advertisements, how consumers perceive them and behaviour outcomes. Qualitative methods are used for this study, as more information is required to better understand the phenomenon in depth. Findings shows that there are added factors to be considered when developing an authentic ethnic advert such as consumers self-referencing, levels of ethnic identity, location of the print advert (platform) and the use of secondary factors of authentic ethnic advertisements, as notions of embedded cultural and ethnic knowledge is presented within these factors.

ABSTRACT. Consumers have been relying greatly on eWOM (e.g., online reviews and online recommendations) to help with decision when they purchase products or services online. Several factors could influence how consumers process this information. This paper explores a moderating role of two moderators on the relationship between recommendation source, product price, offer attractiveness, and purchase intention. The authors found that recommendation sources (automated recommendation system vs consumers) affect a perception of offer attractiveness and purchase intention when being moderated by trust and valence. The results from this study could provide addition evidence to the online WOM literature and useful insights into a better and more effective online recommendation system created by businesses.

ABSTRACT. The rise of influencer marketing and ‘social media influencers’ have helped shape consumer purchase decisions through engagement on blogs, tweets, pictures and other social media uses. Influencers are able to establish strong relationships with consumers, presenting them living their ‘best life’ to followers. Consumers can engage with influencers and their posts through two usage typologies: consuming (viewing) and contributing (liking/commenting/ sharing) and the motivations behind this engagement can stem from concepts extracted from Self Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan 1985); in combination with new motivations that have not been explored in relation to social media engagement. The motive to avoid feelings of missing out or fear of missing out (FOMO) has been explored in previous studies surrounding engagement but little focus with brand-related content. This paper shows that FOMO, along with engagement with brand-related posts used as stimulation to eliminate feelings of boredom, are some of the most prevalent motivations of post-millennial consumption with influencers’ brand-related posts. Further to this, the motivations of remuneration and helping the influencer through contributing to their brand-related posts are significant to post-millennials. The penultimate section of this paper introduces a coherent conceptual framework, synthesising the motivations behind post-millennials engagement with influencers’ brand-related posts and offers a platform for further research into the new motivations identified.

ABSTRACT. Unlike non-luxury brands, luxury brands thrive on the principles of rarity associated with high quality product, premium pricing, controlled distribution, and personalized communication. Despite such unique characteristics of luxury branding, the management of luxury brands in social media remains largely unexplored. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of luxury brands’ firm engagement on customer engagement in social media. Using big data retrieved from a 59-month period on Twitter, this paper analyzes 3.78 million tweets from the top 15 luxury brands with the highest number of Twitter followers. The results indicate that a luxury firm’s social media engagement efforts to enhance entertainment, interaction, and trendiness increase the word of mouth (WOM) aspect of customer engagement, while customization efforts do not increase WOM. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The risks and vulnerabilities faced by the supply chain of large enterprises have made them more sensitive to supply chain risks and preparing their organizations to be resilient enough to come back after a significant disruption. Based on the systems theory, two types of resilience are identified. They are inherent resilience and adaptive resilience (Buikstra et al. 2010). But the third type of resilience, anticipated resilience, is also recognized as essential, this is the company’s ability to continually innovate and be prepared for any adverse effects (Hamel and Valikangas 2003). All three resiliencies are necessary for the continuity of business after a disaster. Apart from this, companies have also realized the importance of transparency or visibility of inherent vulnerabilities of the firm to which a supply chain is exposed to (Kleindorfer and Saad 2005). This work-in-progress paper is based on the data collected from a major supplier in the U.S. It focuses on addressing the question, “how does anticipated, inherent and adaptive resilience, as well as supply chain visibility, influence business continuity programs?” The contingent resource-based theory (Brandon‐Jones et al. 2014) is employed to establish and explain the relationship between inherent resilience, anticipated resilience, adaptive resilience, supply chain visibility in performance and business continuity.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential effect of consumers’ moral values on consumer boycotts against the US company that is involved in an alleged sweatshop issue at a supplier’s factory in a developing country. Drawing from moral foundations theory, the current study tested six hypotheses that showed the roles of blame attributions and anger in mediating the effect of consumers’ moral values on their boycott intentions. A survey using a representative sample of 1124 was conducted to test the proposed model. Results of structural equation modeling showed that individualizing foundations with a special focus on the justice/care values turned out to be a stronger predictor of boycotts. As predicted, the effect of individualizing moral foundations on boycott intentions was fully mediated by the blame attribution and anger, while the binding moral foundations did not have any significant effect on boycott intentions.

ABSTRACT. Protecting the brand from counterfeiting has never been more important than it is now for the global business. In this study, we extend the current research on non-deceptive counterfeit consumption by demonstrating that genuine brand’s social power directly influences the purchase intention of luxury brand counterfeits, and these effects are mediated by the dual-facet of face (desire to gain mianzi vs fear of losing lian). Specifically, the desire to gain mianzi positively mediate the effect of brand social power on the purchase intention, while fear of losing lian has the opposite effect. The findings provide new insights for luxury brand managers to proactively combat counterfeiting.

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the of use Information Theoretic model selection criteria to derive model probabilities in model comparison tasks, and assess the suitability of model averaging in partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). We present the results of a large-scale simulation study to analyze the behavior of Akaike weights and evidence ratios under different model setups and experimental conditions. Specifically, we (1) document how model selection uncertainty varies with sample size, measurement model loadings, and structural model effect size, and (2) assess the use of Akaike weights, evidence ratios, and model-averaged estimates in PLS-SEM.

ABSTRACT. This paper provides empirical evidence on the extent that dynamic customer expectations affect strategic purchase behavior. Unlike most previous customer expectation research that considers rational customers, our research investigates irrational customers susceptible to forget their past experiences due to the limited memory and thus form expectations based on restricted information. To achieve our research goal, we use individual-level cross-sectional and time-series data from the auto rental industry where frequent mismatches between demand and supply often result in strategic customer behavior followed by free upgrades. We describe the formation of dynamic customer expectations by adapting a state-space model based on the Kalman filter algorithm. Within this framework, we take into account the effects of both similarity and recency on customers’ recall and, with the bounded customer expectations being controlled, model customers’ product switching behavior. We find empirical evidence of bounded customer expectations that is consistent with the theoretical predictions. First, customer expectations are directly affected by prior service experiences and the effect is reinforced by their similarity and recency to the current service experience. Also, we observe a considerable decline in expectation carryover, suggesting customers’ time-dependent forgetfulness. Importantly, ignoring the dynamic nature of expectations and customers’ imperfect recall misleads customers’ strategic product switching behavior.

ABSTRACT. The study is conducted to understand the role of task difficulty in market research and specifically in the context of brand image measurement. In order to understand the influence of task difficulty, several variables such as the age and education level of the respondents are considered. An online survey was made with employees as respondents (N=440) to evaluate their companies’ brand image using a 2 (Personification vs. Direct) x 2 (Warmth vs. Competence) factorial, between-subjects design. An adapted version of the TLX measure of task difficulty scale (Hart and Staveland, 1988) was used. Task difficulty did not vary as expected by image dimension or by whether a projective or direct method was used to measure image. Task difficulty was however found to vary with respondent age and education, but not in ways implied by existing literature.

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

ABSTRACT. The purposes of this study are to explore the effect of consumers' asset specificity sensitivity (CASS) on mobile payment adoption, to explain this effect by the mechanism of switching costs, and found the moderating effect of product compatibility on the relationship between switching costs and mobile payment adoption. We used 325 valid respondents as our sample through the survey. We found that first CASS is negatively related to mobile payment adoption, and switching costs is a mediator which conjunct CASS and mobile payment adoption. Moreover, product compatibility weaken the negative effect of switching costs on mobile payment adoption. Based on our empirical evidences, we provide some theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for future researches.

ABSTRACT. The modern retail environment is experiencing a shift in how retail service is being conducted (Rafaeli et al., 2017). Increasingly, technology is being integrated into the retail service such as Kroger’s new shop and scan program that encourages shoppers to use scanners while they are shopping to streamline the checkout process (Forbes 2018). Implementing retail technologies can save retailers money by requiring less employee involvement and can also improve shopper experience as shopper data is collected and utilized to create a more personalized offering (Inman and Nikolova, 2017). However, personalization alone may not be enough to persuade shoppers to adopt a new shopper-facing retail technology. Shoppers dependence upon a technology and their feelings about the invasiveness of the technology may also influence the relationship between personalization and retail technology adoption. This study uses parasocial interaction theory to look at the relationship between personalization perceptions of retail technology and adoption of that technology using the mechanisms of dependency upon the technology and perceived invasiveness. Results and implications for theory and practice are discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study looks at the effectiveness of product policies generally employed by e-commerce companies. To this end, we gathered relevant information concerning not only theoretical but also methodological guidelines for assessing the effectiveness of product policies utilized by the e-commerce companies. Our findings revealed highly significant relationships between all variables and downloads. A number of coefficients are characterized by their signs in line with the hypotheses. Critics’ and users’ reviews, in addition to advertising and branding, all have positive impacts upon downloads, while the price is inversely related to the number of downloads. The degree of competition is also positively associated with downloads. The factors are essential for strategy and marketing policies of companies which promote their products through the Internet.

ABSTRACT. The study examines whether the Internet’s acceptance can have a spill-over effect on the acceptance of IoT. We incorporate psychological and emotional factors of user experiences with the Internet to test how these affect IoT acceptance. The study employed a quantitative approach. The participants were Internet users in the United States. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypotheses. The findings suggest that Challenge Emotions significantly influence the Behavioral Intention of using the IoT. The effect of Loss and Deterrence Emotions is significantly weaker than the positive emotions. Moreover, the Well-Being experienced when using the Internet has the strongest effect on the Behavioral Intention. Using the IoT is expected to arouse two positive psychological outcomes, namely, the Perceived Value and the perceived Well-Being.

ABSTRACT. The main objective of this paper is to explore the process by which congruence between a product and its environment impacts product liking. This research contributes to our understanding of the complex online landscape by finding support for a first and second stage moderated mediation model. We provide evidence that experience moderates the relationship between product-environment congruence and conceptual processing fluency and that product consumption type (hedonic/utilitarian) moderates the relationship between conceptual processing fluency and product liking. Consumers who see congruent product-environment advertisements process the product as less conceptually fluent when they have less experience with the product. Furthermore, when a consumer is evaluating a hedonic product, conceptual fluency has a greater impact on their product liking.

ABSTRACT. We explore the experience of suspense and its connection to the enjoyment of watching sporting events across three studies. For the most part, consumer research has failed to capture the momentary characteristics of a hedonic experience motivated by pleasure (Alba & Williams, 2013). We address this shortcoming by exploring how different manipulated patterns of differences favoring one competitor over another affect consumers’ moment-to-moment (MTM) experiences of suspense (study 1a & 1b). In addition, we investigate how certain key characteristics of MTM suspense affect viewers’ retrospective judgments of actual sporting events (study 2). Consistent with Alba and Williams’ (2013) call to examine how experiences bring consumers pleasure “in the wild” (p. 13), an important contribution of our research is a nuanced description of consumers’ MTM experience of suspense and how these feelings affect their retrospective assessments of the overall experience.

ABSTRACT. The sharing economy has evolved into a crucial priority for managers and researchers alike. Initially sharing services were provided by firms, which own and share the assets with consumers for a fee. However, this traditional business-to-consumer (B2C) model has changed with the advent of peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing services, which are increasingly gaining the attention of manufacturers and consumers. In P2P sharing, consumers own and share products they acquired with other consumers via a sharing platform. Despite growing interest in the sharing economy, research has so far focused on the relationship between sharing platforms and renters in a B2C context (e.g., managerial studies to increase the participation of renter’s in the sharing economy). Yet, an understanding of consumer behavior in P2P sharing services is absent. Hence, there is little guidance when it comes to the role of consumers as providers and how the ability partake in P2P sharing affects their purchase decisions. The objective of this paper is to investigate how sharing affects consumer’s willingness to purchase products. We apply a mixed methods approach, first conducting three focus groups to support the development of hypotheses, subsequently, testing our hypotheses using experimental studies. Contrary to conventional wisdom that sharing decreases product purchase and ownership, we find that P2P sharing increases consumer’ purchase intentions, particular for more expensive products. We show that this effect is driven by the reduction of burdens of ownership that P2P sharing provides, as it enables consumers to economize their purchase by renting out their products to other customers.

ABSTRACT. Marketing is a central business function, and because marketing strategy affects decisions central to generating and sustaining competitive advantage, it plays a significant role in the firm’s overall business performance. Further, marketing’s boundary-spanning nature results in marketing strategy’s playing a major role in the business-strategy formulation. However, in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, many firms reduced marketing budgets, devoted less executive time to marketing, increasingly started perceived marketing as a cost, and started reducing the tenure of marketing executives on top management teams (TMTs). In recent times, from a position touted to be in great peril, marketing executives on TMTs are slowly growing into the role of contributing significantly to firm strategy. In this research, drawing on upper echelons theory and silo-spanning communications research, we investigate how integration of marketing knowledge can go a long way in facilitating strong firm performance. Specifically, we investigated how top management emphasis, silo-spanning communication through formal and informal cross-functional interface mechanisms, knowledge valuation, and knowledge-oriented culture influence marketing knowledge integration and, in turn, marketing and financial performance. The results of our research supports our premise that organizations that facilitate the integration of marketing knowledge are more likely reap the positive influence on firm performance. Specifically, by not facilitating effective marketing knowledge integration, it is firms that fail the marketing function and not the other way around.

ABSTRACT. Scholarly work in the domain of strategic marketing research has extensively applied a configurational approach to representing and theorizing multiple intertwined phenomena. The current study scrutinizes 77 empirical studies published between 2000 and 2015 in strategic marketing research. The authors identify methodological diversity and pluralism of analytical techniques (i.e., cluster analysis, interaction effects, profile deviation analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis). The authors outline an agenda that can potentially guide further research in making the best possible use of these available techniques.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates the architecture of broad brands as perceived and implemented by managers in the context of digital transformations. A case study of media brands, specifically broadcast television brands, provides a dynamic context in which to study how changes to the digital media environment are shaping brand management perspectives and practices. The case study investigates a brand in transition that struggles with digital disruption to be established as a broad brand. The brand is a critical case—a leading operator in an industry undergoing transformation. Informants in charge of strategic planning or implementing branding policies from disparate departments in an organisation were interviewed. Forty-three face-to-face and phone interviews of approximately 40 to 60 minutes were conducted. Observations from the data include challenges of the broad brand architecture in terms of changing boundaries of the brand and the complexity of relationships between brands. The brand architecture is perceived as a flexible and dynamic structure. This study develops three insights into managing brand architecture in the digital age and in the context of broad brands. First, it investigates complex brand architecture, which is an unexplored research topic. Second, it identifies brand architecture as a flexible framework, and third, it identifies a (flexible) brand platform as a strategy that broad brands follow.

ABSTRACT. Managerial practices of consumer empowerment are increasingly used by companies from consumer goods sector. Two types of strategies have been distinguished empowerment-to-create which enable customers to submit ideas for new products and empowerment-to-select which rely on consumers votes to choose products that will ultimately be marketed. Although academics addressed strong results about conditions of consumer empowerment strategies effectiveness, market research has yet to fully assess relative efficacy (create vs. select) of empowerment strategies on brand variables (word of mouth, brand attitude etc.). Furthermore, identification of critical situational variables (for example: the introduction of the rewards effect) remains incomplete and therefore deserves further study. Focusing mainly on participating consumers, this experiment aims to highlight that empowerment to create strategy is more efficient when deployed to increase word of mouth and engagement towards the brand whereas when brand attitude and purchase intention need to be enhanced, empowerment to select technique is more suitable. Secondly, we show that losing or winning the campaign (and therefore financial reward) for participating customers that take part into empowerment managerial practices doesn’t make a significant difference in terms of impact on brand performance metrics.

ABSTRACT. The development of Internet communication platforms has made positive and negative product and company-related statements made by potential, actual, and former customers an increasingly important source of information for consumers. Previous research shows that online reviews affect sales, purchase intentions, and product choices. Online reviews are, therefore, a type of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) with a great potential to engage and impact the consumer. Modern technology allows consumers and companies to upload rich multimedia data on products and services, such as photos and videos. Existent research has not paid attention yet to the effect of multimedia enhanced online reviews on consumer responses. Nonetheless, prior studies have shown that the format of a content can impact people perceptions and behaviors. King et al. (2014) prescribes that further studies should define the impact of visual eWOM on the consumers. Therefore, this research aims at establishing how adding visual information (e.g., photos and video) to an online review changes consumer perceptions and intentions. This research objective contributes to the growing literature on online reviews by testing the role of the format. It also contributes to practice by revealing design factors that businesses could use to optimize the efficiency of online reviews and generate positive eWOM.

ABSTRACT. While the predominant strategic perspectives including the resource-based view (RBV), transaction cost economics and positioning tend to ignore the ultimate objects of strategy, the customer, the advent of social media may lead to a change. With the growth of social media and other user-generated content (UGC), there is a significant opportunity to use the views, thoughts, ideas, attitudes, etc. from the actual consumer to help build strategy from the bottom up, rather than just top down. Using the tools available today it is possible to collect and analyze the text on the websites, blogs, forums, communities and other places people and customers gather and use content analysis techniques. The future of travel and tourism marketing lies in using multiple sources of intelligence to get a more intimate and complete view of the customer. As this UGC is a source of customer intelligence, firms should be able to improve their market research resulting in better strategic decision-making. Further, by drawing customer intelligence from both the second and their most important items (i.e., customer ratings and customers reviews used by customers in making their purchasing decision, it is expected to yield relevant demand-side insight that can be utilized in the development of firm strategy. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to whether firm strategy can be enriched by using demand-side insights generated by customers.

ABSTRACT. What information are customers looking for in reading online product reviews? This research decomposes and analyzes three fundamental information components that a review may contain: sensory information (i.e. reviewer's observation), cognitive information (i.e. thoughts/analysis), and affective information (i.e. emotion). Analyzing 56,752 reviews of 120 products of 4 product categories from Amazon.com, we report that customers value sensory information, are indifferent to cognitive information, and dislike affective information in their information searching for product purchase. This pattern is more salient in reviews of search goods than those of experience goods.

ABSTRACT. Engagement is a central aspect of discussions surrounding online brand communities. The current paper advances the existing thinking associated with conceptualisation and operationalisation of customer behavioural engagement in the online brand communities context. By understanding how brands engage in an online community we can provide better community management and develop affection marketing relationship strategies.

It is found that existing scales are limited in measurement of customer behavioural engagement in online brand communities. The current study focuses in depth on the behaviour element which is a consequence of cognitive and emotional engagement. An advanced scale for customer engagement measurement is proposed. Using Amazon Mechanical Turk with two studies one of 250 and 507 online community users the scale is tested and developed.

The proposed 18-item scale offers a tool for future researchers to benchmark online brand communities and their engagement. Future studies are offered five dimensions of online engagement: Advocating, Sharing, Learning, Socialising and Co-developing and a related definition of online engagement.

On the practical contributions, online communities managers are now offered a more comprehensive tool for better understanding of their customers and how their online community could be improved.

ABSTRACT. Historically brands have not engaged in social and political conversations for fear of potentially alienating customers. However, in today’s post-modern culture, corporate neutrality has been subject to criticism. Remaining ambivalent on contentious issues is now more of a failing than a virtue, especially in the eyes of certain consumer groups (Beverland 2009). Engaging with socio-political issues is not necessarily new for companies. This has often been seen in cause-related marketing and advocacy advertising. However, the emerging concepts of corporate social advocacy (CSA) and corporate political advocacy (CPA) differ in terms of the controversial nature of the cause and organizations political involvement. Drawing from the literature and the emergent themes in the first phase of this research, we develop a corporate social activism typology. This varies the degree of social activism marketing (high vs. low) with the degree of authentic social practices (high vs. low). Four resulting quadrants represent the degree of brand practice that authentically aligns with social causes vs. the degree of brand marketing around social causes. The resulting typology reveals when brands are more likely to be perceived as “woke-washing” or inauthentic in their marketing, as their practices may not clearly align with their messaging.

ABSTRACT. The entire field of place branding is beset with one serious issue. This issue is that there is almost no consensus about the exact nature of place branding. This makes it important for researchers to explore the experiential, subjective and functional elements of place branding and their integration in remaking a city. In this scenario, brand heritage offers place branding an extraordinary leverage by adding multiple identities of a place and the essence. This paper, hence, explores the nexus between the interactions of place branding and brand heritage of a city. The study was undertaken in India’s only World heritage city Ahmedabad, declared by UNESCO in 2017. A qualitative approach was adopted for the study and three stages were adopted, in-depth interviews with Long term and short terms residents and visitors. Multi- sited ethnography was adopted to understand complex processes, or when the question regarding evidences asking how instead of what. The first finding showed us that heritage is the life story that people live every day. The second established that place and people, together form the brand heritage of the place. Further, people connect with the brand heritage with their own life stories which later reinforces how the place has to be branded to the people in a way that is meaningful and relevant for them. The final finding found that people prefer to see a non-celebrity (common person) as the face of the place and not a celebrity.

ABSTRACT. U.S. retailers lose in excess of $350 billion in sales per year due to returns (Appriss 2017). The area of product returns continues to be an under-researched area, despite its significance to manufacturers and retailers (Yon Seo et al. 2015). To date, a large amount of the research on product returns seeks to identify personality traits of customers that can be used to pinpoint and predict who will return products (e.g., age; Daunt and Harris 2012), or to provide evidence that strategically increasing the stringency of return policies will reduce returns (e.g., Petersen and Kumar 2010; Powers and Jack 2013). In contrast, the current research investigates whether a strict return policy is always in the best interest of the retailer. We investigate whether a lenient return policy can have a positive long term-impact on retailers by favorably influencing brand image and other related brand outcomes.

ABSTRACT. In solution business, solution providers use boundary resources (i.e. the individuals/boundary spanners who span interorganisational boundaries and the interfaces that help coordinate interfirm relationships) to coordinate their networks. However, due to modularization and digitalization of solution process, these interfaces may have taken over or complemented the functions of boundary spanners. Boundary spanners may also have new functions due to these changes. Thus, this research aims to explore how solution providers can utilize diverse boundary resources simultaneously to orchestrate large and diverse solution networks. A multiple case-study approach studies three companies with digital platforms that orchestrate solution networks in the LED and ICT industries. The research findings reveal the functions of interfaces, which include module providers categorization and ranking, module reconfiguration, module standard testing, network communication and responsibility specification. They offer the infrastructure for boundary spanners to reconfigure networks. Boundary spanners also develop new functions, including capability examination, resource mobilization, network representation and strategic planning. This research contributes to the boundary spanner literature by extending boundary spanners’ functions. It also contributes to the B2B network literature broadly by pointing out the use of boundary resources to orchestrate a large and dynamic network with diverse business partners.

ABSTRACT. There are two perspectives on controlling the performance of salespeople - an outcome based perspective and behavior based perspective. The former process focuses on the objective measures of results while the latter perspective on performance control of salespeople incorporates complex and often subjective assessments of the attributes of sales people. A balance of these implications provides strong support for laying controls and evaluating the performance of sales people in varied socio-cultural selling situations. This study has been conducted in two developing countries in India and Mexico during 2017- 2018 with varied socio-cultural selling situations. The study discusses the impact of sales territory design on these consequences in reference to the underlying rationale of management control, incentive pay, and territory design as predictors of performance and sales unit effectiveness and attempts to examine the relationships between incentive pay and management control and their impact on salesperson performance and sales organization effectiveness.

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

ABSTRACT. Customer mistreatment of frontline employees (FLEs) is a widespread phenomenon and is detrimental to employee well-being. To date research in this field has focused on exploring the antecedents and conditions that trigger customer mistreatment of FLEs, mapping the reactions and consequences of customer mistreatment of FLEs. The role of supervisory interventions in managing the immediate impact on FLEs from such disruptive experiences has yet to be addressed, despite it constituting the only proximal resource that can be enacted to help FLEs cope with in progress episodes of customer mistreatment. Drawing on the premises of the job demands-resources (JD-R) and conservation of resources (COR) frameworks, the current research employs an experimental methodology and explores how two of the most common forms of customer mistreatment towards FLEs affect FLEs’ psychological and behavioural reactions.

ABSTRACT. With technology increasingly integrated into the retail experience and a decrease in the availability of retail employees, the responsibility for initiating service encounters in a retail setting has shifted from employees to customers in many situations. However, as many as 90% of shoppers will leave without making a purchase rather than asking for help from an employee (Businesswire 2014), adversely impacting perceptions of service quality. This paper uses signaling theory to look at the process through which shoppers create impressions of an employee and proposes employee apparel as a primary signal used to make decisions regarding anticipated service quality. While employee apparel has been conceptualized as a potent atmospheric cue, little work has been done on the relationship between employee apparel and service expectations. A conceptual model is proposed and tested with perceived expertise mediating the relationship between employee apparel and service expectations. The findings of this study give evidence that more formal apparel, such as a lab coat, may be more effective at increasing perceptions of service quality than less formal apparel, such as a t-shirt or polo. Theoretical implications and managerial applications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. We model the utilities of the activity and companionship during the activity as two endogenous dependent variables. This allows determining whether companions enhance shopping or impair it, and vice versa, what shopping does to companionship. We estimate random coefficients models on data from the American Time Use Survey among working adults for a period of nine years. We find that, in most daily activities, either companionship subsidizes the activity or the utilities antagonize, i.e. both have negative estimates of their effects on each other. Specifically, the presence of shopping and lunch/dining companions enhances shopping and having lunch/dinner but the opposite, that shopping and having lunch/dinner enhance companionship, does not hold. The mechanism by which companionship promotes consumption in these two settings seems to be that companions (friends, spouses and children) directly improve social utility, thus reversing the negative effects of consumption on the enjoyment of companionship. Thus, promotions for physical shops should make salient the presence of those specific types of companions in order to motivate potential prospects. Shopping and hanging out at a mall allow enjoying the presence of children more than any other activity in this sample.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines if psychological habituation moderates the effect of autotelic need for touch on product evaluation. Prior studies demonstrate that individual preference to touch has a role in product evaluation, but no study to date has investigated if habituation moderates this relationship. The authors conducted an experiment in which flimsy and firm cups of coffee are sampled in random sequence. First, the authors created a six-item Need-for-Touch (NFT) factor in Amos to test the effect of NFT on perceived quality of the coffee. Second, the authors used a multigroup analysis and dividing the sample into two groups based on sampling order (flimsy-firm; firm-flimsy) to test if the sampling order moderated the above effect. The findings show that on aggregate level autotelic NFT does not have a significant effect on product evaluation. And it holds with the group sampling coffee first from a flimsy cup. However, when coffee is sampled first from a firm cup, findings suggest that autotelic need for touch has a significant effect on product evaluation.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the effects of shopping center value dimensions on customer satisfaction and loyalty and the moderation effect of distinct levels of university education (Bachelor vs. Master/PhD) in Morocco. A shopping intercept survey generated 244 usable questionnaires collected in Morocco, Africa. Structural equation modeling was used to test a series of research hypotheses. The results revealed that utilitarian and hedonic values significantly affect customer loyalty, but not customer satisfaction. While the socialization value significantly influences customer satisfaction, it does not affect customer loyalty to a shopping mall. The findings further show that university education level significantly moderates the effects of both utilitarian and non-utilitarian value dimensions on satisfaction and loyalty. This research offers valuable managerial recommendations for practitioners interested in the development of shopping malls in Africa. This paper provides valuable recommendations for mall managers interested in Morocco and similar African countries. The findings suggest that mall managers should focus on factors that enhance the socialization value of the mall, especially when they target highly educated customers. Further, our data shows that mall managers seeking to increase customer satisfaction should take customers’ level of university education into consideration. Conversely, such strategies should be considered with care if manager aim to privilege loyalty to the shopping mall rather than satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. Car manufacturers offer a wide variety of driver assistant systems. Each system is a technological development bringing us closer to fully autonomous vehicles. In this specific constellation of an innovation process, the total disruptive potential of an autonomous car can already be imagined by consumers, but will be reached only after years of incremental developments. Our study focuses on the usability measurement of existing automated driving functions by using System Usability Scale (SUS) (Brooke 1996). Compared to most of the studies dealing with automated or autonomous driving in general, this work is based on a real driving experience. We conducted a user experience study with a pre- and a post-questionnaire, using 207 test drivers who took part in a one hour standardized driving assignment on a defined driving route within Stuttgart (Germany) using either Mercedes-Benz E- or S-Class. Results indicate that usability of automated driving functions is already in an acceptable range even if functions are still far from full automation. We could not find any group-specific differences in usability assessment. The data analysis also shows a significant correlation between a positive usability evaluation and an intention to purchase corresponding vehicles with automated driving functions.

ABSTRACT. The concept of customer engagement has rapidly become a key strategic focal point for many companies (Pansari and Kumar, 2017). Moreover, there has been huge growth in the body of customer engagement literature that highlights both its theoretical and practical importance (Alexander et al. 2018). However, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened a new era of customer brand engagement (Tu et al. 2018). AI and its corresponding digital technologies such as intelligent agents, chatbots, advanced robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) enable deeper engagement with customers and the introduction of AI has revolutionised customer-brand interactions (Huang and Rust, 2018). Of these novel digital technologies, this research uses intelligent chatbots as the prime application of this customer brand engagement study. The overall research aim of this study is to explore customer brand engagement in the context of intelligent chatbots. The following research objectives are presented. (1)To identify the antecedents of customer brand engagement in the context of intelligent chatbots (2) To identify the relational outcomes of customer brand engagement in the context of intelligent chatbots. This research used a qualitative research approach, whereby 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted.The interviews explored customer brand engagement initiated through intelligent chatbots. To date customer brand engagement is yet to be studied in the context of intelligent chatbots. Moreover, no antecedents and relational outcomes have been proposed for intelligent chatbot engagement.

ABSTRACT. The use of different types of social media is proliferating at an incredible pace. Social media has influenced many aspects of people’s lifestyle. Despite the significant amount of research has been done to explain the effect of social media in people’s everyday life, almost no research has addressed the question that if social media involvement impacts people’s consumption behavior, such as motivation for consumption or the way that people consume different products or experiences. Nowadays, we see many people share their consumption experience, such as eating in a restaurant or attending a concert, on social media such as Facebook and Instagram. The aim of this research is to show how social media usage can affect people’s product and experience consumption behavior. The two main research questions we are trying to address in research are: First, how social media usage impact the motivation for product or experience consumption? Second, how involvement in social media can affect the way that people consume these products and experiences, which are motivated by social media involvement. In the rest of this paper, we will explore the literature, present the hypotheses, and briefly explain the suggested methodology and expected results.

ABSTRACT. Based on social identity theory, we investigate how companies profit internally from business practices and polices pertaining to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In particular, we analyze how employees evaluate their company’s CSR and perceived CSR authenticity and how this relates to important employee firm-beneficial outcomes (e.g. loyalty to the company, trust in management, word-of-mouth) as well as important individual-beneficial outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, emotional wellbeing). The role of employees´ involvement in CSR is also investigated. A survey with the employees from a national division of a global company selling fast-moving consumer goods is reported (n=135). Preliminary results reveal that evaluation of perceived CSR and perceived CSR authenticity strongly impact employees´ sense of organizational pride. In turn, outcomes beneficial to the firm (trust in management, Word-of-Mouth) as well as individual-beneficial outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional wellbeing) are enhanced with increase in organizational pride. Moreover, employees’ involvement in CSR has a moderating role in the perception-social identity-mechanism. Implications for internal CSR management, directions for future research and limitations are discussed.

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. The concept of brand origin was introduced two decades ago in response to the restrictive nature of the country-of-origin construct in international marketing and consumer research. The objective of the brand origin construct was to catalyze origin research by shifting the operationalization from the product level to the brand level, and encourage expansion of the research scope away from the constraints of national geography. This expansion, however, has remained unnecessarily constrained to geography. This paper offers a revised definition of brand origin that enables brand origin research to evolve in scope to any number of perceived sources or derivations. The revised definition is exercised by applying it to an exploratory study of brand stories on product packages. Results suggest that the availability of brand origin stories in the sample increased fivefold once the requirement for geographic categorization was removed.

ABSTRACT. Due to consumers’ increasing desire for effective diets and a healthier lifestyle, which is particularly promoted through social media, the demand for food is shifting towards products that fulfill the new needs. The so-called superfoods are defined as „nutrient-rich [products] considered to be especially beneficial for health and well-being” and refer to plant-based foods, which are not chemically enriched, but have a naturally high nutrient density. Especially in the last years superfoods gained strong popularity as e.g. chia seeds and almond flour have almost doubled their sales from year to year. By focusing on their inherent nutritional value, superfoods are set in opposition to supplements and so called functional foods, which are fortified, enhanced or otherwise altered to increase their nutrient contents. Still, superfoods are also criticized, as there is a lack of scientific evidence regarding an actual boost of physical performance or positive health effects that might prevent diseases. For this reason, there also is a high distrust and scepticism regarding superfoods and its beneficial effects. The purpose of the presented study is to understand which product-related quality characteristics of superfoods (e.g. naturalness, health-benefits, nutritiousness, food safety and taste) affect customers’ perceived value (CPV) or enhance scepticism and therewith influence product perception and product related behavior. Our results show that CPV is mainly driven by taste and health benefits, whereas scepticism is only affected by taste. Furthermore, scepticism and CPV, both influence product perception and behavior, although the effects of CPV massively exceed the influence of scepticism.

ABSTRACT. Most comparative advertising research focused on the USA with limited cross-national comparisons, as comparative advertising was not allowed in most of Europe and many parts of the globe until late 1990s. With the exception of Chang (2007), little is known about gender differences in consumer perceptions of comparative advertising and less attention has been devoted to how message framing and regulatory focus theory perspectives interact with different ad types. This study contributes to the literature by examining the role of ad format (direct vs indirect comparative advertising), gender and message framing for consumer ad response in the UK, using a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial between subjects design experiment with Internet delivery. The design includes ad format (direct comparative (DCA) or indirect comparative (ICA); promotion vs prevention framed messages; male vs female respondents). Claim believability and brand beliefs are stronger for DCA than for ICA. Promotion framed messages are more effective for Direct Comparative Advertisements than indirect ones. Women had a less favorable reaction to DCA than men. This study shows that the effects of manipulations on attitude certainty do not mirror the effects on traditional outcome variables such as brand beliefs or claim believability. Future research and theoretical perspectives are provided.

ABSTRACT. To help differentiate brands and products in a competitive marketplace, marketers often turn to celebrity endorsement as a means of grabbing the attention of consumers. Nonetheless, in an effort to expedite the decision making process, consumers often refer to their own social schemas for knowledge concerning products, brands, and celebrity endorsers. While this is a very practical technique, it also comes with the potential drawbacks of inaccuracy and a tendency to stereotype. In our paper, we rely on social psychology’s stereotype content model for insight into two universal social judgment dimensions—warmth vs. competence—upon which celebrities are evaluated (Fiske et al. 2002). We propose that a match between consumers’ social judgments and the appropriate type of advertising appeal—symbolic vs. utilitarian (Cheng and Schweitzer 1996) —used in the messaging is associated with more positive consumer responses to the brand. Thus, through this line of inquiry marketers could benefit from a deeper understanding of the potential effects related to celebrity endorsement and its impact on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions.

ABSTRACT. Blockchain technology continues to gain recognition by consumers and companies promising to disrupt existing centralized establishments while improving transparency and increasing accountability. This special session has several objectives. First, we will discuss blockchain technology and how it functions. Second, we will introduce use cases of how industries are using the technology. Finally, we will propose a research framework that corresponds with four distinct exchange relationships: consumer-to-consumer, firm-to-firm, firm-to-consumer and consumer-to-firm.