The value created by supply chain management (SCM) practices means managers today are even more interested in these initiatives, this is especially true in emerging markets where they can have a profound impact. This research examines several critical SCM initiatives (strategic supplier partnerships, information quality, and proactive logistics practices), and their impact on supply chain flexibility, and ultimately organizational performance for small scale (fewer than 100 employees) manufacturing firms in India. These constructs are especially important for India because it has been suggested that they have high logistics costs as a result of insufficient infrastructure (e.g., power grid) and various labor-related issues. Under the Extended Resource Based View of the firm (Mathews, 2003) managers realize that capitalizing on supplier capabilities can improve the firm’s own responsiveness and overall performance. Therefore we examined strategic supplier partnerships (the long-term cooperative exchanges with critical suppliers) and proactive logistics practices (the interactions specifically with logistics providers regarding planning and joint problem solving), along with information quality (including accuracy, adequacy, timeliness, and credibility of information being exchanged) (Monczka et al., 1998). Other constructs include supply chain flexibility (the ability of the firm to respond to any change concerning its trading partners) and organizational performance (capturing productivity, efficiency, market share, and profit level) (Yamin et al., 1999; Tan et al., 1998). Validated scales developed by Li (2002) and Tan et al. (1998) were used and firm owners were targeted from a list of Coimbatore’s (a city in India) small scale manufacturers covering a wide-range of industries. The result was 75 completed surveys (a 94% response rate) which we evaluated using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling as appropriate for our sample size. The findings indicate that improving strategic supplier partnerships and information quality enables the firm to achieve a more flexible supply chain and ultimately better organizational performance. This research improves our understanding of critical considerations

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.

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.

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.

Trusting beliefs are playing an increasingly important role in building customer-based brand equity (CBBE) in the business arena. The present study examines the mediating effect of trusting beliefs on the interactivity-brand equity relationship. An online survey was administered to collect data from randomly selected consumers. The results show that system interactivity impact brand equity directly and indirectly through trust integrity. The present theory-driven model contributes to a better understanding of online brand equity. Therefore, allocating resources to influence the perception of system interactivity and trusting integrity beliefs is valuable to develop online brand equity. This research contributes to the interactivity theory and the relationship marketing theory and it also offers implications for practitioners.

Mobile banking has been continuously increasing worldwide. A number of studies have been examined on the mobile banking adoption intention (Kim et al., 2007; Sripalawat et al., 2010; Bhatiasevi, 2015; Baptista, 2015). However, most of those studies have been confined to Western countries and the developed Asian countries such as China (Ball et al, 2004; Chitty, 2012), Thus, there were only few of researches on continuance usage intention towards mobile banking in Thailand. Then, an investigation of the factors affecting users’ continuance intention should be studied to fulfill this gap. It is interesting to examine users’ continuance intention towards mobile banking and identify factors that would affect them. In addition, the adoption rate of mobile banking in Thailand is still underused than expected (Sripalawat et al., 2010). Hence, users’ continuance usage is a critical for long-term improvement of mobile banking. Consequently, continuance intention has become an essential topic of study in the mobile banking research area. The purpose is to study the impact of risk and trust on continuance intention towards mobile banking in Thailand and generate a meaningful understanding of the users’ continuance intention towards mobile banking. Mobile Banking is in a form of electronic banking, which describes all financial transactions through mobile communication technology (Weber and Darbellay, 2010; Chen, 2008; Mallat et al., 2004). Based on Ball et al., (2004) an extend European Customer Satisfaction Index model has been investigated on continuance intention. In this paper, the perceived risk is added for a better explanation of the impact of perceived risk and trust in continuance intention on Thai mobile banking consumers. Continuance intention can be defined as a customer’s intention for repurchasing from the same organization (Edvardsson et al., 2000). Repurchasing products and services from the same organization is a result of value received from one seller is more than other alternatives (Hallowell, 1996). Company can reduce cost and increase profit from customer loyalty. It is because company need to spend five times more than the cost of retaining an existing customer to acquire a new customer (Yap et al., 2012). It is a key factor in order to achieve company success and sustainability over time (Flavian et al., 2006; Keating et al., 2003). Expectations, both of experience and non-experience users can have an “expectation”. Non-experience users can have an “expectations” prior consumption experience from other sources such as advertising, promotion, pricing and word-of-mouth. Patterson et al. (1997) mentioned that expectation has an influence on disconfirmation and associate on satisfaction. Perceived quality is received customization and reliability from product or service. The level that products or services meet customer’s requirements is customization and the level of firm’s providing standard products without deficiencies is reliability. Parasuraman et al., (1988) claimed that a distinctive product quality contributes the differentiation of products and services to overcome competitors. The perceived quality significantly influences on satisfaction (Parasuraman et al., 1996; Kim et al., 2008). In addition, perceived quality is expected to have a positive effect on customer satisfaction (Fornell et al., 1996). Perceived value of a service is the benefits from service quality that customers receive relative to the costs paid by customers (Turkyilmaz et al., 2013). Perceived value is expected positively impact on satisfaction in the ECSI model (Turkyilmaz and Ozkan, 2007). Trust is the belief that a company will complete its commitments without taking benefits from customers (Ranaweera et al., 2005). Mukherjee and Nath (2003) found trust is an antecedent of commitment in online banking. Moreover, Morgan and Hunt (1994) supported trust is a key to successful relationship marketing. Aydin and Ozer (2005) mentioned that building trust is not only perceive good outcomes but also believe that good results will continue. Trust in service providers has a significant impact on continuance intention. It is an antecedent in models concerning to relationships that include loyalty as dependent variables (Schaupp and Be ́langer, 2005; Verhagen et al., 2006). Lack of trust can influence the way in which consumers see banks and financial institutions and in particular consumers’ attitudes to new forms of service delivery via the internet (Zhao et al., 2010). Perceived risk has changed as people have engaged online transactions. In the past, perceived risk was mainly related to fraud or product quality, but presently perceived risk is linked to financial, psychological, physical, or social risks in online transactions (Forsythe and Shi, 2003; Im et al., 2008). There are different types of risks were explored in the previous research about mobile banking and other banking technologies. Firstly, privacy and security were concerned regarding mobile banking among some consumers (Luarn and Lin, 2005). A PIN codes has been used to increase the security. Personal details and financial information became the main concern for mobile banking (Brown et al., 2003), especially among mature consumers (Laukkanen et al., 2007). When customers perceive an uncertainty, they tend to limit their usage or purchase intention Lin (2008). In addition, Wu and Wang (2005) support that risk has a statistically significant effect on intention to use mobile commerce in Taiwan. Satisfaction can be defined as how much customers are satisfied with the products or services of a company, and how well their expectations are met Oliver (1999). Customer satisfaction has been also explained as an overall evaluation of a firm’s post-purchase performance or utilization of a service (Fornell, 1992). Customer satisfaction is generally viewed based on evaluations and expressed some time during the purchase-consumption process. Loyalty and satisfaction are considered in several conceptual. There are a relationship between loyalty and satisfaction (Oliver, 1999). For the methodology, the questionnaire was administered through online included questions measuring the variables based on the extended European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model. Both males and females mobile banking consumers aged more than 18 years old living or working in Thailand are focused on this paper. The questions were rated on a 5-point Likert scale and developed from previous mobile banking studies (Parasuraman et al.,1988; Bhattacherjee, 2001, Ball et al., 2003; Chen, 2012; Kang et al., 2012; Kursunluoglu, 2014; Baptista, 2015). The partial least squares path modelling was used to investigate data from questionnaire to test hypotheses and determine the consistency, reliability and construct validity, as well as the relationships among constructs. 403 valid samples were collected after eliminating 153 invalid samples. The majority of respondent uses mobile banking more than 4 times a month as 36 percent. A percentage of 30 of respondents use mobile banking 1-2 times a month. Respondents using mobile banking 3-4 times a month and less than once a month follow with 19.1 percent and 14.6 percent respectively. The results from partial least squares path modelling have shown that the expectation has a significant impact on customer satisfaction. Thai consumers who set expectation on their mind by using their previous experience or word of mouth from their friends will compare the mobile banking service performance to their expectation. They would satisfy the mobile banking if the services meet their expectation. Perceived quality has a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction. Providing good performances with accuracy, unfreezing system contributes customer satisfaction on Thai mobile banking users. Perceived value affects on customer satisfaction. After Thai consumers use the mobile banking service, they would evaluate the benefits receiving from the service relative to the costs paid by customers. If service received was worth with the money paid, Thai consumers would satisfy services. Perceived risk does not have a negative impact on customer satisfaction but it has a significant negative effect on continuance intention. Thais’ satisfaction would not be reduced by perceived risk, whereas Thai users would stop using mobile banking if they feel unsafe and perceive risk. Trust has a significant direct impact on continuance intention towards mobile banking consumers in Thailand. This shows that Thai consumers would keep using mobile banking service since they trust on the mobile banking service providers. The satisfaction is a dominant in continuance intention. Satisfaction has a significant impact on continuance intention. Once users satisfy the mobile banking service, they would like to continue use mobile banking and introduce mobile banking to their friends. In conclusion, satisfaction, trust and perceived risk have an impact on continuance intention towards mobile banking in Thailand. Expectations, perceived quality, perceived value have an indirect impact on continuance intention in using mobile banking for Thai consumers through satisfaction. The satisfaction is a dominant factor of continuance intention usage (Bhattacherjee, 2001a, 2001b; Chen et al., 2012; Lam et al., 2004). Satisfaction on mobile banking can be generated by good quality service, value, and responding customers’ requirement to meet their expectations. Surprisingly, perceived risk has no a negative impact on customer satisfaction, but it has an impact on continuance intention. Trust also leads Thai consumers continue use mobile banking. This study contributes mobile banking service providers to know the impact of risk and trust on continuance intention towards mobile banking in Thailand and generate a meaningful understanding of the users’ continuance intention towards mobile banking. The result can improve the volume and value of mobile banking transaction, and satisfaction. Moreover, mobile banking providers can reduce the challenge and generating a better decision on the future marketing campaign to motivate mobile banking consumer keeps using the services.

Cross-buying refers to the customer action of buying additional products and/or services from the same provider (Valentin 2004). With the belief that cross-buying enables firms to increase profit from existing customers, firms have steadily placed greater emphasis on cross-selling strategies for profitability. To date, numerous studies show that cross-buying behavior of customers has a positive effect on firm profitability. Business reality, however, offers a different perspective; namely, that high levels of cross-buying may not always be linked to firm profitability. For example, Best Buy (an electronics retailer in the United States) has identified approximately 20% of its customers as unprofitable in spite of them purchasing multiple items (McWilliams 2004). Shah, Kumar, Qu, and Chen (2012) found that customers who persistently exhibit certain types of behavior (e.g., excessive service requests, high levels of returning products, lower levels of revenue growth, promotion maximizers) are unprofitable even though they purchased more than one product category.The aforementioned research implies that cross-buying can exert a negative impact on profitability, thereby calling for further examination of cross-buying behavior. It is conceivable that a repeated purchase propensity (contrasted with a cross-buying propensity) concentrated on a single brand is more profitable. Therefore, our primary objective in this paper is to identify a more beneficial type of customer among those who tend to patronize a limited number of brands versus those who tend to patronize a variety of brands, using a one-dimensional model (brand dispersion index). In addition, the second goal of this research is to investigate the boundary conditions where cross-buying will not lead to an increase in sales (unprofitable cross-buying conditions). As two moderating factors that weaken a customer’s crossbuying propensity and a firm’s sales (frequency and transaction size of firms), we consider (1) promotion dependency and (2) spending limiter condition. We use transaction data that include partners in various industries such as gasoline stations, convenience stores, banks, restaurants, and online shopping malls, covering forty-seven categories. Because multiple partners in many categories are available, this allows us to study whether a customer’s cross-buying level in the current period (t) affects the customer’s purchase frequency and transaction size in the subsequent period (t+1). The observation period for the data set extends over three years. Findings from this study indicate that a high level of cross-buying at period t has a positive impact on increasing customer frequencies and transaction sizes in the subsequent (t+1) period. This means that cross-buying has the potential to increase the firm’s profitability. Customers who show a high level of cross-buying propensity tend to exhibit higher levels of loyalty than customers who concentrated on limited brands. Firms should find ways to induce customers with low cross-buying propensity to increase crossbuying. Regarding moderating effects, promotion dependency and spending growth (decline vs. stagnation), spending growth has a considerable moderating effect on the relationship between cross-buying propensity and a customer’s transaction size. Specifically, the effect of cross-buying on transaction size weakens when spending is shrinking. This result makes an important contribution to cross-buying research. If customers showing a high level of cross-buying do not increase their spending level, they may be merely switching to other brands in the program under a fixed budget. So while the rate of crossbuying seems to increase, profit might not increase. The findings from this study imply that it is crucial to target and motivate customers who tend to use various brands and contribute to sales to do more cross-buying instead of suggesting cross-buying to random customers. The promotion dependency, however, turns out to not have significant moderating effects on the relationship between the customer’s propensity to cross-buying and the customer’s purchase frequency and transaction size. For marketing purposes, it is important to consider which customers are more profitable among those who tend to do cross-buying among multi-brands versus those who tend to purchase repeatedly in a limited number of brands. This research provides a solution with a one-dimensional index, the brand dispersion index. Whether cross-buying is shown to be a positive or negative impact on sales, the results are meaningful in implementing customer relationship management. Regardless of the direction in the level of crossbuying, both directions provide a solution to allocate marketing resources. For instance, if the propensity for cross-buying increases sales, the firm should implement marketing strategies to encourage people to use a variety of brands by adding new brands. If repeat purchases increase sales, the company should concentrate on certain brands that customers use most frequently. In addition, by finding the conditions that do not increase sales (e.g., spending limiter condition), it makes marketing practitioners think that cross-buying does not always bring positive results. Overall, the findings from this study are that it is crucial to motivate and target customers who tend to use various brands and contribute to sales to do crossbuying activity, instead of promoting cross-buying to random customers. Conceptual Framework Figure 1 provides an overview of our framework for the relationship between brand dispersion and visiting frequency and transaction size of customers. Specifically, we hypothesize how customer frequencies and transaction sizes in time t+1 will be influenced by customer brand dispersion levels (the extent that customer transactions occur across a broad range of brands) in time t. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of two customer specific variables: (1) degree of promotion dependency and (2) spending limits.

Despite the importance of innovation and customer participation for both practitioners and academics, the effects of the integration between innovation and customer participation has rarely been addressed in consumers’ perspectives. Accordingly, the authors first examine separately the impact of the two breakthrough innovation types (technology-based innovation vs. market-based innovation) and two forms of customer participation (as information providers vs. as co-developers) on brand attitude. Following this, the interaction effect between the two variables is also tested. We used a 2x2x2 mixed subjects design. We employed a 2 (breakthrough innovations: T-INNO, M-INNO) x 2 (customer participation: CPI, CPC) between-subjects design for independent variables and the dependent variable had a 2 (brand attitude: pre-brand attitude, post-brand attitude) within-subject design. The hypotheses were tested for a cell phone product category by pretest. Participants were 148 university students from Seoul, Korea. The results show that both breakthrough innovation and customer participation positively influence the brand attitudes held by customers, though neither the two forms of breakthrough innovation nor the two forms of customer participation differ from each other in terms of the strength of this relationship. However, when technology-based innovation is combined with customer participation in the form of co-development, a stronger positive impact on brand attitude is observed than when customers are treated as information providers. Conversely, when market-based innovation is combined with customer participation in the form of information provision, a stronger positive impact on brand attitude is observed than when the customers act as co-developers. These results have a number of theoretical contributions. First, prior innovation research has mostly focused on the impact on firm performance. Even though a few researchers have conducted several studies about the impact of innovation in terms of consumers’ perspectives, they did not consider the specific type of innovation. The present study focuses on comparing the impact of two types of breakthrough innovation based on customers’ perspectives. Second, prior customer participation or co-creation research has mostly looked at the positive impact on performance from both the firm’s and consumer’s perspective. However, they did not consider the specific type of customer participation which can affect differently performance. In this study, the differential impact of each type of customer participation was explored. Third, previous studies have not focused on the interaction effect between two types of innovation and customer participation. We found that the interaction effect can be significant when they are combined together. This study has also managerial implications. First, when firm managers utilize both breakthrough innovation and customer participation strategies, they need to consider the most effective combination of the forms of innovation and participation available. Second, this interaction effect should be considered not only in the innovative product development process but also in the communication activities in their customers. Finally, the limitations and further research directions of this results are discussed.

The growing pace of market globalization has enabled firms to find it increasingly attractive to exploit growth opportunities abroad. To this end, predicting firms’ success and growth in foreign markets has become an important issue to international business researchers and managers. The international business literature suggests that different internal firm and foreign market specific environment factors drive internationalization of firms including firms’ structure, strategy, orientations, capabilities and nature of foreign market competition. Researchers interested in the field of international entrepreneurship have also given attention to firms’ international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) as a potential driver of firms’ internationalization behavior, with few recent studies reporting investigations into the relationship between IEO and internationalization scope. The entrepreneurship literature suggests that variations in entrepreneurial behaviors may lead to exploitation of “new entry” (Oviatt & McDougall, 2005; Cavusgil & Knight, 2015). Within the international entrepreneurship discipline, international new entry is construed to entail identification and exploitation of new product-market opportunities abroad, or a pursuit of internationalization scope (Dai et al., 2014). Internationalization scope is defined as the process of seeking new market opportunities across multiple foreign markets, and is operationalized variously with indicators that tap the percentage of overseas revenue to total revenue, and the number of foreign countries and geographic regions from which a firm receives its sales. Thus, internationalization scope is viewed to be inherent and essential to the exhibition of an IEO, and may be driven by firms’ entrepreneurial proclivity. While a few studies have looked at how IEO impacts percentage of revenue firms obtain from foreign markets (Dai et al., 2014), little studies have studied how and when IEO drives regional expansion. This is notwithstanding the fact that traditional internationalization theory points to regional expansion as an antecedent to global expansion. Indeed, international business scholars have argued that a combination of increasing informal exporting activities, rising liberalization of regional economies, colonial bias, regional economic blocs and the emergence of middle class in many regional markets has created opportunities for firms to internationalize within neighboring geographical regions. Additionally, it has been argued that the benefits and costs of regional protection can motivate firms to pursue regionalization strategy as an antecedent or an alternative to globalization strategy. In drawing insights from earlier works, therefore, the present study focuses on the regional expansion of exporting firms in a Sub-Sahara African economy – Ghana, and examines how international entrepreneurial-oriented behaviors drive the firms’ intra-Africa expansion. African markets are noted for their diversity in national laws, cultures, geography, and infrastructural development. Particularly relevant to internationalizing African firms is the diversity and imperfection of marketing channels across African markets. An important implication for African firms, therefore, is how they can leverage their comparative advantage of handling diversity and imperfection of marketing channels in their home African market to successfully compete in overseas host markets with similar conditions. Accordingly, we further empirically examine how a firm’s ability to manage heterogeneous and imperfect marketing channels moderates the effect of IEO behaviors on regional expansion. We posit that the extent to which firms develop managerial and organizational capabilities to successfully compete in conditions of high market channel diversity and imperfection is a major contingency factor that can help explain when entrepreneurial behaviors influence regional expansion. By empirically examining these questions, this study brings new insights to IEO research by showing that IEO behaviors are differentially related to regionalization strategy depending on firms’ capability to manage heterogeneous and imperfect regional marketing channels. Specifically, findings from our study of small and medium sized firms in Ghana doing business in regional African markets show that regional expansion increases when levels of product innovation intensity, competitive aggressiveness and autonomous behavior are high and when regional channel management capability increases in magnitude. Additionally, the study provides evidence to show that increases in risking-taking behavior decrease regional expansion when regional channel management capability is high. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that although product innovation novelty and proactiveness are directly related to regional expansion their effects are cancelled out when levels of regional channel management capability are high.

With the rapid development of science and technology, big data has been applied in many fields and has brought commercial revolution[1]. The scientific community generally regards big data as "massive data + complex types of data". Commercial applications are more concerned about big data as an analytical (prediction) method and focus on the potential commercialization of analysis results. All walks of life will produce large amounts of data every day. The transition of data-scale brings huge commercial value, which will certainly bring the innovation of business model[2]. Particularly in the internet and other emerging industries, because they get data more convenient and fast. Like Amason, Facebook, Google etc, they use analysis of big data to innovate their business model for maximizing their profits[3], actually business model refers to "an enterprise’s profitable operation mode plus ways to make money"[4]. So the effectiveness of business model innovation of big data on emerging industries has been remarkable. But the impact of big data on traditional industries is still in the exploratory stage. Traditional industry mainly refers to the labor intensive, manufacturing oriented industries, including the traditional commerce and service industry[5]. Learning from the experience of big data on business model innovation of emerging industries, traditional industries can use big data to subvert the business model and accelerate the transformation and upgrading.

This research introduces the construct of perceived brand local connectedness (PBLC) that captures the extent to which a (domestic or foreign) brand is associated with and connected to a consumer’s home culture. Together with perceived brand globalness (PBG), PBLC is linked to purchase intention (PINT) through consumer-brand identification (CBI) and perceived brand quality (QUAL). Across two studies in mature and emergent market settings, findings provide evidence that both constructs matter, although PBLC’s effects are relatively stronger than those of PBG. Results further indicate that global identity moderates the effects of PBG on CBI while consumer ethnocentrism (CET) moderates the corresponding effects of PBLC. Implications of the findings for theory and practice are considered.

According to the environmental management literature, firms can realize significant cost advantage relative to competitors and improve their competitive position by implementing certain "Environmental Management Practices"(EMPs) (Hart, 1995; Shrivastava, 1995b; Christmann, 2000). Although EMPs is importance and prevailing presence, little attention has been paid to understand the drivers and outcomes of EMPs in the context of international buyer-supplier relationships. This study attempts to increase the understanding of how isomorphism pressures and organizational cultures influence the EMPs, which in turn enhance supplier’s competitive advantage in the context of international buyer-supplier relationships.

A market-oriented culture remains a source of competitive advantage for organisations. Despite calls for an integrated research perspective on the linkage between organisational culture and market orientation (e.g., Deshpande and Webster 1989; Deshpande and Farley 2004), scholars have made limited attempts to examine the relationship between the two concepts. The objective of this study is to investigate what kind of organisational culture encourages and rewards market orientation behaviours. A structured survey was administered to 870 senior managers attending part-time EMBA programmes in prestigious business schools in China. A total of 370 completed questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of 43 percent. The research findings suggested that different organisational cultures have different impacts on market orientation. Specifically, the results indicate that an adhocracy and a market culture facilitate the development of a market orientation, while a hierarchical culture hinders market orientation behaviours. However, the hypothesised negative relationship between a clan culture and a market orientation was not supported. This study seeks to extend the literature by responding to Deshpande and Webster ’s (1989) call for an integrated research of organisational culture and marketing. Besides its theoretical contributions, this study also offers some important insights for leaders of organisations. As organisations are driving to become more market-oriented, leaders need to understand why certain organisational cultures exist and their impact on market orientation practices. Although this research provides interesting insights on the understanding of market-oriented organisational culture, it is important to recognise the limitations of the research. Culture is a complex system of norms and values that develops over time and influences organisational processes and behaviours (Hurley and Hult 1998; Schneider and Rentsch 1988). On the other hand, time affects market orientation in a number of ways, such as lagged or cumulative effects during the implementation of a market-oriented strategy (Gauzente 2001). The inclusion of

This study aims to examine the impact of endorser ethnicity and portrayal on consumers’ attitude toward luxury ad and brand. In addition, the moderating role of individual’s appearance self-esteem is examined. In the ads of luxury brands in China, it is common to have two types of endorser ethnicity (i.e., international vs. local) and two types of endorser portrayal (i.e., sexy vs. smart). Endorser ethnicity in an ad may influence consumers’ self-referencing behavior which refers to an individual’s tendency to encode communication information differently depending on the level on which the self is implicated in the information (Rogers et al., 1997). Asian consumers’ self-reference level is found to be higher when they are exposed to ads featuring an Asian model than a Western model (Martin et al., 2004). In other words, if an international luxury brand adopts a localization advertising strategy in China by using a Chinese endorser, the local consumers are more likely to generate a higher level of self-reference.

From a marketer’s perspective, place is only a sacrosanct component of the marketing mix (McCarthy, 1960), and extends into services’ “7Ps” (Grӧnroos, 1994). The servicescape literature explores how stimuli present within commercial consumption settings or servicescapes impact consumer behaviors (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011). Arguably, marketers view place as exchange locales, and they do not understand the evocative role that they assume in consumers’ lives (Sherry, 2000). Within cultural geography, places represent “profound centres of human existence” (Relph, 1976, p. 43). Place is a triad comprising of a physical setting, activities, and meanings (see Relph, 1976). This paper investigates how Israeli Jews attribute meanings to places associated with their destruction during the Holocaust (1939 – 1945). Respondents were eight Jewish Israelis who recently participated in the educational Holocuast sojourn (i.e, Warsaw Ghetto, Treblinka, and Aushwitz). Using long interviews, the authors put forth a framework that shows how the participants assign place-based meanings on four dimensions. The individual dimension reflects how the tour personally impacts visitors’ lives. The communal dimension, explores the trip impact’s the individual’s view towards Israel and Israeli nationalism (Zionism). The religiosity dimension reflects tour’s impact on a participant’s self-identity as a Jew (e.g., secular, conservative, Orthodox). Lastly, the global dimension explores the trip’s impact on a participant’s identity as a human being in a global world. Did the trip alter a participant’s views towards mankind, towards genocide, and universal lessons that everyone may learn from the Holocaust? Results help to understand the evocative role that places often assume in consumers’ lives. Place no longer seem as inert; instead, spaces imbued with meanings impact lives, experiences, and even one’s overall well-being. From a broader perspective, the results suggest a different role that consumption settings may assume in consumers’ lives. Places may impact consumers on multiple levels, and the essence of understanding the profound bonds that consumers often form with places, originates not from the functions that places serve, but rather, from the meanings that consumers often assign to place.

In recent years, leading digital technology companies have shown a strong interest in enabling children to send electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Recasting children from passive to active participants in marketing communications, this shift expands children’s marketing practices from how a company influences children via traditional marketing communications to how children influence a company’s marketing practices through eWOM. This paper aims to enhance our understanding about the use of children’s eWOM in marketing communications when children’s eWOM and children’s marketing begin to intersect. The eWOM literature demonstrated the effects of eWOM on product sales without identifying the sender (King, Racherla, & Bush, 2014). The extension of the effects from aggregated sender to children needs careful study in light of children’s marketing literature which showed children have distinct characteristics in the context of traditional marketing (Cross, 2002). In this study, we examine the positive expectation of business impact that explains firms’ adoption of children’s eWOM and further investigate the normative concerns about the social influence of children’s eWOM.

E-commerce has become an irreplaceable sales channel for businesses of any size all around the globe. It is a major source of revenue and sales through this channel continue to gain momentum with an annual growth rate of 20%3). The ubiquity, flexibility, and convenience associated with e-commerce has undoubtedly changed the consumption patterns. However, consumers’ preferences and considerations when making purchasing decisions are not static either. In a global competition, businesses have to adopt quickly to respond emerging trends in retail. An important and persistent trend in this regard is ethical consumption, a development which has been widely researched in an offline context. The present experiment demonstrated that online shop-related ethical labeling positively influences consumers’ willingness to pay and purchase intention across a broad range of products. While any type of ethical labeling showed a positive effect in these regards as compared to no ethical labeling, there was no pronounced difference between the various types of labels used. Accordingly, we assume that consumers make inferences from a specific ethical label about the higher–level ethical “trait”.

Business model of direct selling is the dynamic and complex multi-level structure. Interpersonal face-to-face communication is the key value creation aspect of direct selling business model. Nowadays more and more sellers employ virtual communication channels instead of face-to-face, thus hindering a traditional relational element. The study explores whether usage of Internet technologies for communication with customers brings benefits or extinguish the direct selling industry. The research is based on the quantitative analysis of all-country paper based survey from 5694 respondents. The statistical analysis of total sample revealed that usage of Internet in general does not give advantages for distributors. However, usage of person-to-person internet communication tool, such as e-mail, allows achieving better performance as measured by earnings per hour worked. Surprising is the fact that the most successful young distributors (at the age under 35 years) do not use internet for communication with customers at all. For distributors over 35 years old neither internet nor e-mail usages have got impact on performance. In rural areas users of internet communication tools show lower performance results. In big cities usage of e-mail provides significantly higher performance, but general usage of internet does not. Consequently, the effects from usage of internet technologies for communication with customers are achieved in case of person-to-person communication. Moreover the most productive sellers give priority to the live communication.