Service customers influence the quality of service outcome through their role in the service delivery process. As a way of informing customers of their role and motivating customers to play the role well, service providers often use auditory announcements. However, how to design an effective announcement for service customers still remains largely under-studied. To fill this gap in the research, the current study examines the impact of humor in a service announcement on customer intention to comply with the announced message. Specifically, we examine the impact of two humor design factors: location of humor in the announcement and the degree of message-relatedness of the humor. Further, we explore the structure of the impact of humor on customer intention to comply. We propose that the two design elements of humor will first influence the degree of customer perceptions of funniness of the announcement, which will influence the degrees of customer attention to the announcement and customer memory of the message, which will eventually influence customer intention to comply with the message. To empirically examine our hypotheses, we conducted a two (positions of humor: beginning versus ending of the announcement) by two (message relatedness of humor: strong versus weak) between-subject experiment. The context of our experiment was college students’ course evaluation. In the message, listeners were asked to participate in an online evaluation of the course which they were taking. Pre-recorded messages were played to students at the beginning of five different sections of one particular course at a business school in a major university in Seoul, Korea. The results of an ANCOVA analysis demonstrated the significant impact of both humor position in the message and the message-relatedness of the humor. A structural equation modeling analysis showed that perceived funniness influence customer attention to the announcement but not customer memory of the message. The degree of customer attention, in turn, influenced customer intention to comply with the announced message.

able to articulate their unfavorable opinions about products, brands and companies by posting complaints on a diverse set of platforms including the firms’ own Facebook brand pages. Such actions enable dissatisfied consumers to disseminate their negative sentiments among a broad audience of negative electronic word-of-mouth (NeWOM) observers (Hong & Lee, 2005). For those observers, negative consumer comments are a valuable source (Lee & Song, 2010). They usually read the NeWOM messages to identify the responsible party and to know what has caused other persons’ problems. This information, in turn, is likely to influence the potential customer’s own attitudes towards the company (e.g., Vermeulen & Seegers, 2009; Willemsen et al., 2011). Such inferences can have critical consequences for a company’s economic well-being. This study investigates how companies can counteract potential threats by means of corporate webcare (i.e., applying appropriate response strategies to counteract latent NeWOM effects). Previous studies focusing on the offline service management context have examined different types of corporate response strategies (e.g., Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1999). Marcus and Goodman (1991), for instance, classify response strategies into either accommodative (i.e., the company accepts the failure and takes on responsibility for it) or defensive strategies (i.e., the company denies the responsibility for the negative event, attacks the accuser, or shifts the blame to others). In addition, no-action strategies are very popular among companies on the social web (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; i.e., the company remains silent, makes only meaningless comments or takes no overt action). Furthermore, eWOM literature provides some evidence that consumers are more likely to listen to those who are not affiliated with the company (e.g., Colliander & Dahlén, 2011). On social media platforms, these brand advocates then defend a company from attacks by other consumers. The study at hand investigates the observer-related effects of multiple corporate- and consumer-response styles. More specifically, a one-factor between-subjects design (n = 728) manipulated different responses to a negative comment on a service failure publicized on a corporate Facebook fan page. Findings provide evidence that particularly accommodative online complaint handling can mitigate NeWOM effects and trigger favorable brand attitudes of NeWOM observers. Among alternative webcare strategies, empathetic communication including the acceptance of the failure and a simple public apology is an effective way to respond to negative Facebook comments. However, particularly responses including also an explanation as well as some kind of compensation can turn potential customers in actual customers of the brand. Findings further suggest that companies should perform their own webcare as defensive responses from brand advocates do not always leave a good impression. From a practical perspective, companies should consider webcare as a means not only to help current customers with their problems, but also to provide an outward-directed cue for the company’s customer-orientation.

The Chinese ecosystem (especially in traditional markets) has been completely subverted by on-line stores such as Taobao and JingDong after 2010. This research is to understand how to improve traditional markets since 92.5% practitioners in the retail industry conduct business in traditional markets. By the mean time Korean traditional markets attract more customers. In this research the multi-group analysis is used to analyze the difference between Chines customers and Korean customers upon customer equity in traditional markets. The research objectives are: First, to understand the relationships among service quality, customer equity drivers and customer satisfaction in Chinese and Korean traditional markets; Second, find out how to improve the three drivers of customer equity through these variables mentioned above in traditional markets. In this study the relationships among service quality, the drivers of customer equity, customer satisfaction and customer lifetime value were studied based on the analysis of the data which were collected in Chinese and Korean traditional markets.

The market distribution channels has changed from single to multi-channels due to the diffusion of digital development products. In addition the new consumption emergence has been applied in showrooming and reverse-showrooming. One of well-known shopping district in South Korea, Dongdaemun, has been introduced Dongdaemun-based fashion brand which use on/offline multi-channel distribution. This study aims to segment multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands and analyse the effects of customer equity attributes, customer satisfaction, and re-purchase intention. The goals of this study are as follows: 1) to identify multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands, 2) to analyse the influence of multi-channel attributes on customer equity, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intention, 3) to explore the consumer group differences on shopping orientation. This study applied means-end chain theory to conduct in-depth interviews for the purpose of deriving the multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands and explore the influence of such attributes on customer equity, customer satisfaction, and re-purchase intention. This study collected 493 samples and structural equation modeling was used for final data analysis. The main findings of this study are as follows. The multi-channel attributes have a significant impact on value equity and brand equity. Relationship equity is influenced by product diversity, entertainment, and informativeness. The all of customer equity drivers have significantly impacts on repurchase intention and only brand equity have significant effect on repurchase intention. Also, customer satisfaction affects re-purchase intention. Brand equity have a significant influence on CLV. The consumers group differ in how consumers recognize multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands, based on channel preference. This study shows the importance of customer equity and suggests long-term implications for the development of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands.

Sustainability is about how biological systems remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. People do not only focus on economy but also focus on social and environment. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) was created in 1999 which was based on economy, social and environment to evaluate and rank companies according to their corporate sustainability performance. In this paper we try to find out how to build sustainability index based consumers’ perception instead of company’s internal data and find what influence customers’ satisfaction upon sustainable fashion products in traditional fashion markets. The data was collected in Dongdaemun Market which is the biggest Korean traditional fashion market.

One of the top tourist destinations in Korea during 2014 was Dongdaemun market, which is a representative traditional market that provides reasonably priced, fashionable products. Already constituting 43.1% of Korea’s foreign tourists, the number of Chinese tourists is expected to reach 14.88 million by 2020 at an average annual growth rate of 19.8%. The most important way to improve customer equity is by understanding a store’s attributes, so this study aims to investigate the effects of Dongdaemun fashion market’s store attributes on customer equity. A survey was conducted among Chinese tourists and structural equation modeling were used to test the hypotheses. The main findings of this study are: Store attributes appear to have an impact on all of the three drivers of customer equity. Value equity has a positive impact on the customer lifetime value (CLV). Also, brand equity and relationship equity were identified as having positive impacts on revisiting intention, regardless of the type of shopping mall. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for developing the customer equity of Dongdaemun’s traditional markets.

As the general public’s awareness of the environmental problems associated with economic growth have increased, interests in eco-friendly products have also increased for the past few decades. However, many consumer surveys and sales data indicate that while many consumers believe that buying eco-friendly products is important for protection of environment, actual adoption of those products are far below what has been expected. This discrepancy between consumers’ beliefs and actions regarding eco-friendly products purchase suggests that consumers do not purchase eco-friendly products solely based on environmental concerns and environmental merits of products. Then, what is the decisive determinants of consumer’s decisions to buy of green products? Previous researches showed that many people usually are reluctant to buying green products because of high price compared to conventional products (Hopkins and Roche 2009; Thakur and Aurora 2015), but if people perceived additional value to self (e.g. functional value, social value, emotional value, economic value, epistemic value), people are willing to buy green product (Lin and Huang 2012; Jung and Kim 2014; Renfro 2010). In other words, the perceived personal value for money, associated price and benefits of product, can be importantly decisive determinants of eco-friendly buying decisions. Moreover, among many values or benefits, economic benefit such as monetary savings can be an effective factor to adaption of green product. This is because that many consumers are very sensitive to price of green products as many researchers argued, and economic benefit is so visible and computable that reduce consumer’s perceived cost. Therefore, for inducing the adaption of green product, the way of appealing and presenting product information about price premium and potential economic benefits is very important in marketing communication with consumers. However, the extant many researches have focused on highlighting that which benefits of product depending on individual difference is more attractive to people, rather than both price and benefit. There is a general lack of study on this issue in the extant literature. Furthermore, previous experiments about green products have another limitation that it is difficult to reflect the real choice of green product. Many empirical researches have focused on an attitude toward product or advertisement, a preference or a purchase intention as dependent variables, which are mostly used for predicting consumer’s choice of product. However, choice does not always and reflect the attitude toward product or advertisement, preference or purchase intention. Thus, the more research reflected actual choice of green product or conventional product is considerably needed. To fill the gap in the extant literature, this research develops and tests hypotheses on how different presentations of price premiums and monetary savings of eco-friendly products affect consumers’ choice of those product, based on extended Thaler (1985)’s Hedonic editing hypothesis of mental accounting theory, which this study proposed. In extended Thaler’s Hedonic editing hypothesis, alternative presentation (all of segregation) is added to original Thaler’s Hedonic editing hypothesis, to compensate for limitation of original hypothesis that most fragmentarily consider two attributes of product (e.g. one gain and one loss, one gain and one gain), even though attributes of products can be composed of several attributes. Therefore, this research investigates whether presenting price premiums and monetary savings in an integrated manner, a segregated manner or an all of segregated manner leads to differential choices, depending on the relative sizes of monetary gains and losses of various eco-friendly products. Additionally, this study also analyze the moderating effect of consumer’s product involvement. According to ELM model (Petty and Cacioppo 1979), the different methods of inducing persuasion may work in decision-making process, depending on level of involvement. To be specific, under high involvement, conditions the quality of the arguments contained in a message has had a greater impact on persuasion (central route). While, under low involvement conditions, peripheral cues such as attractiveness of a message source or the number of positive or negative messages have had a greater impact on persuasion (peripheral route). Therefore, this study suggests that consumers with low product involvement will more choose green product in message condition, which has the greatest number of positive information, while the consumers with low product involvement will have no difference in choice of green product, depending on different presentation. This study conducted an experiment about a choice between green product and non-green product on different presentation of monetary costs and benefits (integration, segregation, all of segregation), in each types of product (multiple gain product, mixed gain product, mixed loss product). We selected representative product for each type of product, after investigating market research (multiple gain product-washing machine; mixed gain product-LED bulb and rechargeable battery; mixed loss product-hybrid car) as shown in Table 1, and the price of each green and conventional product and cost saving amount of green product is based on real product’s attributes, in an experiment. In doing so, this study analyzed and compared the proportion of choice of green product in each conditions, by using omnibus chi-square test with SPSS 21.0 (Sharpe 2015). The findings of the empirical study shows that the effect of presentations of price and monetary savings is only significant to low product involvement consumer in all product categories, excepted for hybrid car. The results showed that low involvement consumers make many choices of green product in condition, which has the greatest number of positive information. Specifically all of segregation is the most persuasive than other presentation for LED bulb to low involvement consumer, but all of segregation is the less persuasive for rechargeable battery. This results indicate that the persuasive way of presentation is different depending on attributes of each product although LED bulb and rechargeable battery is classified as same types of product. The contribution of this study to the literature on choice of eco-friendly products in perspectives of mental accounting theory is four-fold. First of theoretical contribution, this study could extend and develop Thaler (1985)’s Hedonic editing hypothesis, by proposing alternative presentation (all of segregation). Additionally this study found that the proportion of choice of green product can be different in same type of product, depending on attribute of product. Third, this study reflected actual choice of green product by considering consumer’s choice as dependent variables, rather than attitude, preference or purchase intention. Finally, in managerial implication, this study provide managerial guidelines and strategy how to present the message about green product to increase consumer’s choice, depending on product type. Further research for extend and develop this study are currently underway.

Well-developed listening skills are crucial to success in the marketing profession. Poor listening skills have been rated as the most important contributing factor to salesperson failure (Ingram et al., 1992). Listening errors can result in conflicts, missed business opportunities, alienated relationships, and a waste of time and money (Bergeron & Laroche, 2009). Recognizing the importance of effective listening, organizations such as Pfizer, Ford, IBM have introduced listening training programs for all their personnel (Shepherd et al., 1997). A number of definitions exist for “listening” (e.g., Bergeron & Laroche, 2009). From the marketing perspective, this paper adopts a well-accepted listening definition as “the cognitive process of actively sensing, interpreting, evaluating and responding to the verbal and nonverbal messages of present or potential customers” (Castleberry & Shepherd, 1993, p.36). Prior research has underscored the importance of “active listening” strategies such as active empathetic listening (Drollinger et al., 2006; Bodie, 2011); adaptive selling (Spiro & Weitz, 1990); and listening across cultures (Imhof & Janusik, 2006). However, despite its importance, neither marketing students nor professionals receive coaching or instruction for situations when listening is particularly difficult – i.e., when we are required to listen carefully to another person in the presence of hindrances to communication (distractions, inattention, poor delivery). Salespeople, students, journalists, counselors … are often faced with the task of “tough listening” - when they must listen carefully to a person that is not communicating in an interesting or engaging manner, when the environment is full of distractions, or when they as listeners are fatigued. The major hindrances to effective listening have been well documented, but extant research that addresses how people might overcome those hindrances is scant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the range of strategies that people use to improve their comprehension and empathy of others when they wish to listen carefully but find it difficult to do so. The practice of effective listening is perhaps one of the most human and fundamental components of community, commerce, and culture. Several academic disciplines such as marketing, education, communication, and psychology have closely examined the listening process in an effort to understand and improve it.

Although marketing research traditionally considers itself an applied discipline, research in this area has been criticized over the last decades for its lack of managerial relevance. The debate on rigor versus relevance is age-old, but could not be more vigorous, in marketing science, in practice as well as within higher education institutions. Yet, there has been little empirical research on the triangular relationship between academic quality, managerial relevance and anticipated relevance – that is, students’ relevance anticipation. This paper contributes to the discussion threefold: First, it empirically confirms a positive relationship between academic quality and practical relevance for the marketing discipline. Second, the findings are supported for an educational setting. Academic quality and anticipated relevance (as perceived by marketing students) are positively correlated. Third, the paper assesses the suitability of academic journal articles for marketing education. By introducing the concept of anticipated practical relevance, academic journal articles can be categorized on an additional dimension. The question whether students are able to anticipate practical meaning now allows identifying “triple drivers”, that is, journal articles that are (1) highly regarded in science, that are (2) practically relevant, and that (3) allow students to correctly anticipate the managerial meaning. I propose that these articles are suitable for confirmatory teaching and learning and therefore have a place in the classroom.

This paper aims to narrow the gap in research on the impact of universities’ digitalization on reputational assessments by students. A measurement for perception of universities digital advancement (PDA) is developed and integrated in a model to explain university reputation and students’ WoM behavior. Results highlight the importance of the PDA.

We have limited knowledge on the potential pattern similarities/differences of trust’s role that may exist in information use obtained through intra- and inter-organizational relationships. This study addresses this question by investigating how trust leads to information use. Data from 338 intra-organizational and a sub-ample of 158 inter-organizational information exchange-relationships showed that trust is an important driver of the utilization of market information in both cases. Trust has no direct relationship to information use, instead has a strong indirect effect through a mediator, perceived quality of information. The effects of trust on the use of information obtained through intra- and inter-organizational relationships proved to be similar.

This paper discusses how online video clips are used in official construction project presentations, in attempts to convey credibility and trust. Empirical vignettes are from large construction projects in the Greater Stockholm area: The Friends Arena; the Arena City; the new Karolinska University Hospital; and the Stockholm Bypass traffic project.

This paper proposes a conceptual model for understanding the determinants of business school reputation from a company’s perspective, and further, investigates the potential effect that business school reputation has during the recruitment process. Although extant research enhanced the knowledge of business school reputation enormously (e.g. Corley & Gioia, 2000; Rindova, Williamson, & Petkova, 2010), business school reputation from the stakeholder perspective of practitioners has been largely underrepresented. Instead researchers have focused on examining business school education from students’ and academics’ perspectives (e.g. Baden-Fuller, Ravazzolo, & Schweizer, 2000). However, only few studies examine all three constituencies: students, firms and academics (e.g. Safón, 2009; Vidaver-Cohen, 2007). Reputation is pertinent as it reduces uncertainty among stakeholders and foremost, serves as signal to evaluate the quality of a product or service (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990, p. 237). For example, in the context of business schools recruiters assess the quality of graduates by recruiting candidates directly “off campus”. Thus, practitioners are regarded as a stakeholder group that exerts a powerful influence on business schools (Safón, 2007, p. 218). That is, successful alumni not only influence the perception of prospective and current students directly, but more generally contribute to external perceptions as part of rankings and media (e.g. Glick, 2008, p. 19). Hence, it is pivotal for business school management to know what drives the reputation of the institution in order to invest in and leverage on the most important determinants. Responding to a more holistic approach of business school reputation (e.g. Safon, 2009), the proposed conceptualization of business school reputation moves beyond prior literature to an understanding of multiple factors, internal and external, that influence business school reputation. Based on empirical qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 12 recruiters from multidisciplinary backgrounds, in terms of industry and experience and extant literature, four main determinants of business school reputation were identified. These determinants include Media Coverage, Quality, Alumni and the Institution itself and are in line with prior research findings (e.g. Armstrong & Sperry, 1994; Sweitzer & Volkwein, 2009). Adding to the above, it is also evident that business school reputation has an influence on the selection process during recruitment (e.g. Safon, 2009). Therefore, this study not only contributes to the discussion on business school reputation from a multiple stakeholder perspective in identifying main drivers of reputation, but also on its influence on the recruitment process. Thus, the scarcity of research on business school reputation from practitioner’s perspective calls for a theory-based conceptual model for further foundation of research. By addressing these research gaps, this study makes several contributions. First, examining business school reputation from a practitioner’s perspective expands existing literature on business school reputation. Second, the proposed conceptual framework advances the importance of business school reputation from a management perspective with regard to its influence on the recruitment process.

Higher education institutions are facing increased national and international competition for research talent and research funds (OECD, 2009). The best way for a university to react to this situation is to foster its reputation. Not only for firms (Raithel & Schwaiger, 2015), but also for universities, reputation is one of the most valuable intangible assets (Albers, 2015). Therefore, this study investigates the drivers of business school reputation as perceived by academics. The impact of the following potential drivers is analyzed in this study: research performance, third-party research funds and standing of professors within the academic community. We used the variable research reputation from the business school ranking of the Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung (CHE) as a proxy for reputation. In addition, also the variable sum of third-party funds was available from the CHE dataset. Furthermore, we measured professors’ standing in the academic community by considering if they are outstanding members in the two major German research communities and if they are in the editorial board of one of the A+ or A ranked journals according to the vhb-jourqual ranking. Moreover, we measured research performance by means of the score of the faculty achieved in the Handelsblatt Rankings Faculties as well by means of the publication output per faculty member. Besides, the previous score of the CHE ranking was included to control for path dependency of reputation (Gray & Balmer, 1998). As additional control variables, the size of the business school, the research reputation of the host university (measured as the number of Nobel-price winners from the university) and the size of the city (measured by the number of inhabitants) were used. Research performance as measured by the Handelsblatt Ranking accounts for 31% of current reputational assessment. The influence of third-party funds as well as professors’ standing within the academic community could not be confirmed. Moreover, city size was found to be correlated to reputation. The obvious explanation would be that large cities are able to attract better researchers (be it for quality of life or because universities in large cities offer more attractive compensation schemes), which in turn leads to a higher research productivity – an important driver for academics’ reputational assessments of a business school.

Developments on the Chinese automotive market could change the business in the race to the crown for German premium brands. With extraordinary growth rates, car manu-facturers prioritized Asian market development. More concrete, a quickly evolving segment of young, wealthy Chinese customers demanding German luxury cars seems to be a chance to compensate maturing home markets. BMW – originated in premium segments – is about to expand its luxury reach through its 7-series while, at the same time, serving the increasing demand for “affordable luxury” in all markets. However, competitors are catching up with new concepts. Whereas Mercedes-Benz always had a great proportion in the luxury segment, Audi became the market leader in China by launching several new luxury models. BMW sees the answer in the possible launch of a new 9-series sharing a platform with their Rolls-Royce cars. Furthermore, the BMW Individual manufactory launched a new, strictly limited 7-Series in corporation with silver manufacturer Robbe & Berking – the most expensive and exclusive car BMW ever crafted. To be able to win the race, BMW has to incorporate new technologies when considering the trading-up or trading-down of their model range.

This paper develops a conceptual model relating motivation, involvement, and changes to travel style to the selection of destinations and choice of events amongst non-professional participants involved in small-scale sporting events. A longitudinal comparison of t

Sport is a lucrative and universal form of popular culture, transcending international and social boundaries (Andrews & Jackson, 2001) providing sports men and women with increasingly lucrative financial opportunities through involvement in sponsorship and endorsement deals (Colapinto & Benecchi, 2014). Whilst sport celebrities have long been used in marketing communication and sponsorship campaigns to increase levels of consumer interest and attention (Gupta 2009; McCracken 1989; Van der Veen & Song, 2001), what is not well researched, is the role that electronic word-of-mouth communications plays in the transmission of potentially negative effects on consumer attitudes towards the sport celebrity brand image when a transgression occurs. Not only does electronic word-of-mouth communication make the transmission of a transgression immediate and widely disseminated, it also provides numerous opportunities for celebrities themselves to share information about themselves and their lives sometimes resulting in a “too much”, “too soon” and “too often” nexus. With the removal of a social privacy filter common with many of the younger generation, this TMI (too much information) state or increased self-disclosure (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) makes managing the brand image of sport celebrities by their managers and their sponsors an increasingly difficult problem.

The combination of sports and the IT industry has reached a variety of fields, especially in the area of broadcasting technology. Due to diverse preference of viewer and the rising number of channels, broadcasting companies provide differentiated contents to reach a dominant position. Therefore, each broadcasting company has their own strategy to produce contents through special technology skills to hold a top position amongst other companies. According to Eric Rothenbuhler's ‘media niche theory’, when there exists numerous media device with identical resources, the competition to survive between the devices become intense and soon draws a line between the superior and inferior devices which results in eliminating the less viewed media devices out of the race. To secure the uniqueness of the media broadcasting market like the ecosystem, the object is to verify the effectiveness of the convergence of sport broadcasting technology skills and IT technology. Therefore, the media devices and the newly developed technology for video production method were the independent variables. Additionally, the dependent variable was the media effect. Concretely, the media device technology variable set as 3DTV, video production method was set as the variable for FreePointView(FPV) and media effect was separated into arousal and presence level. Recent technology is developed three-dimensionally so that the viewers can feel as close to reality as possible and the most current