The interaction between brand managers and his/her social networks in any firms constitute a complex social system. This study posited that the quality of the relationship between a brand manager and his/her networks is imperative in fostering the quality of internal brand management which in turns increase the employee based brand equity. The participants for the study were 124 brand managers from Dubai firms specializing in consumer goods. The quantitative data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Network size and cost was found to affect information generation and knowledge dissemination.

Informative messages on product packages—especially on packages of food products—should be credible. Otherwise, the firm might experience a serious fall in brand equity. However, because nutrition intake and health promotion are “credence attributes”, it isdifficult for consumers to evaluate them. Moreover, if nutrition message or health claims were false or puffery, consumers might suffer a serious health damage. Regarding the problems, in 1991, Japanese Government took the initiative in the world by introducing the FoSHU (Foods for Specified Health Uses) system—a license system in which the government tries to control all health claims on packages of food products launched in the country. It should be noted that there are two factors which can be appeared on packages only with the permission of Japanese Government. One is health claims, of course, and the other is the “FoSHU seal”—a symbolic mark designed for FoSHU foods. Interestingly, these two licensed factors may have different effects on perceived product value in health. In this research, we conducted two studies to examine the difference of the effects on product value in health. The results showed that consumer evaluations of food products are affected by the FoSHU seal. The FoSHU seal has a strong signaling effects on evaluations of the particular food products for specified health uses. On the other hand, unlike the FoSHU seal, approved health claims themselves have no main effects on evaluations of the FoSHU products. This implies that health claims have positive external effects on evaluations of non-FoSHU products in the same category. The results showed that the external effects can be inhabited by product differentiation through the FoSHU seal and./or packaging.

Negative publicity can be defined as negative information about a product, a service, a brand, an organization or an individual that is circulated through mass media such as print media and broadcast media (Dean, 2004; O'Guinn, Allen, & Semenik, 2011). Indeed, there has been a growing interest in the marketing literature concerning the effects of negative brand publicity on consumer perceptions and evaluations (Cleeren, van Heerde, & Dekimpe, 2013; Dills & Hernández Julián, 2012; Pullig, Netemeyer & Biswas, 2006; Thirumalai & Sinha, 2011). Negatively publicized instances such as defective products/services or unethical business practices are likely to impair a brand’s image and its equity. However, previous literature has mainly focused on the effect of performance-related negative publicity on consumer responses and there are limited studies about the effect of value- or ethics-related negative publicity. Owing to the inherent characteristics of inseparability and intangibility, hospitality managers need to pay particular attention to ethical issues and the detrimental impact of value-related negative publicity. This study aims to examine the impact of negative brand publicity on hotel consumers for two types of negative publicity (namely, performance-related and value-related). A content analysis and a consumer survey were conducted in China so as to investigate the hotel recovery strategy and consumer responses toward negative publicity. The content analysis was performed on two largest local daily newspapers in China. It showed that the occurrence of value-related negative publicity (e.g., not keeping promises, or dishonesty) was much greater than performance-related negative publicity (e.g., untidy room, or equipment malfunction) in China’s hotel industry. Compensations appeared to be the most common method for hotel responses toward the two types of negative publicity. The consumer survey showed that consumer responses such as hotel evaluations and patronage intentions were negatively affected by negative brand publicity. Female consumers were found to be more sensitive to unethical issues than male consumers. In other words, females were more negatively affected by value-related publicity than performance-related publicity. Managerial implications for hospitality managers are discussed.

This study aims to investigate the antecedents to customer retention and brand loyalty of Internet Service Providers in Thailand. The findings reveal that customers’ commitment and value are influenced by information support, privacy and security. Additionally, the positive relationships between information quality and privacy and behavioural loyalty were revealed. Customers’ commitment and value were positively associated with behavioural loyalty. However, surprisingly, there was no support for the hypothesised positive association between customers’ value with behavioural loyalty. Practical implications that can be drawn from this research will form a foundation for service providers in the residential internet market to develop new retention strategies. These providers would l be able to reduce the current issues relating to the high customer churn rate. By making customers more central in company operations, these strategies can potentially reduce the expenses associated with acquiring new customers.

The manuscript examines Guanxi’s direct influence on reducing opportunism and conflicts, and its indirect influence on increasing buyers’ satisfaction, relationship performance and long-term orientation. The findings based on data collected from 273 Chinese firms reveal that Chinese buyers’ guanxi with US suppliers could significantly reduce buyers’ perception in suppliers’ opportunistic behaviour and the perceived levels of conflicts in Sino-US relationships, hence increasing their satisfaction, relationship performance and long-term orientation. The results broaden existing understanding of guanxi literature by empirically examining Guanxi’s influence on supplier opportunism and conflicts. The research implications suggest guanxi could be employed as a management mechanism in reducing supplier opportunism and conflicts, hence positively increasing satisfaction, performance and long-term orientation.

Social media, Web 2.0 based social activity and powerful marketing tool, brought about a new paradigm for the 21st century culture and society. In line with the trend, the fashion industry is vigorously undertaking marketing activities on social media, seeking to build and maintain relationships with their customers through the Internet and mobile devices. The one-way provision of information by firms to customers has evolved to a symmetrical form of customers, whereby the customers also supply information to the firms share information with other customers. Through social media services, customers not only share their thoughts and experiences but also exchange tangible products and publicize the products, thereby directly participating in production and marketing activities of brands. Such participation of consumers offers inspirations for differentiated service on the part of the brands, for which proactive and long-term participatory activities of customers are required. Customer participation is of primary importance in current service marketing industry. Until now, related literature on customer participation has mostly centered on offline service situations. However, the advent of social media has simplified the process of participation for customers, and invoking voluntary customer participation has become the greatest challenge facing service industries, and, at the same time, the path to success. Those of us who live in the age of information technology are offered the opportunity to engage in two-way communication with other customers, the brand, and the media. Thus, customer participation is just as, if not, more important in an online environment. More and more customers are becoming directly involved in brand activities, which affect the brands as well as the customers themselves. Nonetheless, extant customer participation research focuses on developing constructs that are largely based on offline situations. Although such constructs correspond in part to the online setting, they fall short of meeting the unique characteristics of customer participation in social media. Therefore, in order to establish constructs for customer participation in social media, revision and supplementation of the offline-based constructs were found to be necessary. Based on interaction theory, this study explored the notion of customer participation in fashion brands’ social networking site (SNS) service by categorizing it into three types: customer-customer, customer-brand, and customer-media participation. In addition, it examined the external factors that influence customer social participation and how active social participation of customers in SNS affects trust and customer equity. The association between measurement variables according to the brand type was also closely examined. This study underwent two pre-tests to revise and supplement the survey items on customer social participation. A preliminary investigation was conducted on 516 respondents, and a total of 582 respondents participated in the main investigation. The respondents who were invited to participate lived in Korea, were in their 20s or 30s, and had previous experience in using fashion brands’ SNS service, SPSS 18.0 was used to conduct frequency analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, and t-test. Based on the results, AMOS 18.0 was used to undergo confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results of the study are summarized as follows. Based on the brand type (SPA and luxury) and the rate of sales, Uniqlo, a global SPA brand that boasts the largest number of SNS fans, and Louis Vuitton, a global luxury brand, were chosen for the study. The respondents consisted of consumers in their 20s and the 30s who, within the last six months, had previous experience in using the SNS service of the brands. The sample consisted of 40.7% male and 59.6% female, and 72.5% were in their 20s and 27.5% in 30s. A large percentage of the respondents were students (64.9%). The large proportion of university students reflects the trend of most active users of SNS being university students. Second, SNS service shopping context found positive association with customer-customer participation and customer-brand participation, but customer-media participation was insignificant. The results show that as the SNS is characterized by its linkage to different websites and platforms, customers are exposed to constant opportunities for participation. On the other hand, customer-media participation was found to be insignificant, which can be interpreted as indiscriminate constant supply of information that seeks to spur impulsive buying leading to antagonism of the customers. Such negative situations can be avoided by departing from indiscriminate provision of information to offering information that is customized to the needs and demands of each customer and invoking the customer to participate in information delivery. Third, SNS participation motivation and customer social participation were all positively associated. In particular, customer-media participation demonstrated the strongest influence, followed by customer-customer and customer-brand participation. As such, active participation of the customer with the brand is the most effective way to create collaborative, synergy effect or co-creation. Fourth, all routes from SNS user orientation to customer social participation were significant. SNS users in general possessed high levels of self-efficacy and tended to feel elevated as well as find altruistic pleasure in providing information that would help others. Such users participate through numerous ways such as customer-brand and customer-media participation but were the most active in customer-customer participation. Fifth, it was found that customer-customer and customer-brand participation builds trust of the customers toward the SNS service and the information or the information provider. However, customer-media participation did not indicate the same results. In order to build trust through participation, brands need to provide an inviting environment for customers to post comments and share information. Furthermore, marketing strategies, such as offering events and coupons to stimulate E-WOM activities of customers as well as creating a space for open communication are vital to building trust. Sixth, customer-media participation was positively associated with customer equity. Unlike customer-customer and customer-brand participation which requires constant physical effort of the customer, customer-media participation demands considerably less time and effort apart from the initial stages during which customization process is undergone to receive tailored information with just one click. Therefore, establishing convenient and practical system that targets the Y-generation in their 20s and 30s is emphasized in order to maintain a long-term relationship. Seventh, trust is positively associated with customer equity. Building trust is based on interactivity among people. This study found that customer-customer participation and customer-brand participation influence customer equity through trust, while customer-media participation leads to customer equity without being mediated by trust. Therefore, all three types of participation are equally important to customer equity. Eighth, brand type was a meaningful moderator to the relationship between SNS service shopping context, SNS service user orientation, participation motivation, customer social participation, trust, and customer equity. To summarize, the type of participation to encourage is based on the brand type, and as customers may have different expectations according to the brand, it is important to understand their orientations and provide customized information or an open space for communication. In addition, participation behavior has a strong potential to influence customer equity, but depending on the type of participation, trust may not necessarily positively influence customer equity. Therefore, it is recommended that brands offer credible and sincere information that customers can trust and follow. The significance of this study is that it is one of the first studies to examine customer participation in a social media environment. At a point in time where customers’ value creation is attracting increased attention, this study empirically revealed that customer-media relationship, which enables customer-customer and customer-brand participation on SNS, is also within the bounds of participation. Furthermore, this study identified the importance of relational marketing approach to brand and customer through customer social participation. By applying the concept of customer equity, which is in its fledgling stage in the area of consumer fashion marketing, it offers a basis for future research on long-term relationship building with firms The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are discussed below. The sample of the study consisted of Koreans between the ages of 20 to 30. The limitation in the sample is inadequate to generalize the findings, and therefore, a comparative study with broader sample across culture and age is necessary. Moreover, this study observed customer participation on SNS environment. However, as there was a lack of preceding literature in this area, the measurement scales were revised and supplemented to fit the purpose of this study. The measurement instrument, therefore, needs to be further applied with different antecedents and consequences in subsequent research. Finally, due to the lack of previous literature on customer participation in SNS environment, the theoretical basis of the relationship between the variables lacked solidity. This study adapted a part of a theoretical framework to fit the context of the study to come up with the hypothesized relationship between the variables. Therefore, it is suggested that future research works toward developing and strengthening the theoretical framework of customer social participation.

One of the longstanding goals of both managers and researchers has been to understand the characteristics of effective salespeople. Selling orientation (SO), one of the general approaches of salespeople, has also been referred to in several studies as selling behaviors (Saxe and Weitz 1982; Brown et al. 1992; Jaramillo et al. 2007). SO is the degree to which salespeople place their own needs and/or the needs of the firm before those of their customers by attempting to sell as much as possible to customers. This is exhibited when salespeople are primarily engaged in selling activities that emphasize “getting the sale” (Schultz and Good 2000; Boles et al. 2001). Few researchers focus their attention on SO as one of the sales approaches enhancing sales performance and previous studies generally discuss SO as a factor negatively correlated with customer orientation (CO) (Saxe and Weitz 1982; Brown et al. 1992). These studies suggest SO should be controlled to encourage CO. However, Schwepker (2003) shows in his overviews of recent research that there is not a general consensus on the relationship between SO and individual sales performance. In fact, some studies indicate that SO increases individual sales performance, while others find that it is not an influential factor (e.g. Goff et al. 1997; Boles et al. 2001; Wachnel et al. 2009). Salespeople are required to adopt long-term perspectives as well as short-term sales results simultaneously in a competitive market; thus, it is meaningful to explore whether SO, as an aggressive sales approach, improves individual sales performance and whether SO can be used as an effective organizational indicator. Some studies, on the other hand, argue that the relationship between SO and individual performance is affected by moderating factors, such as differences in performance measurement (subjective or objective) (Jaramillo et al. 2007) and the sales skill level salespeople possess (Wachner et al. 2009). For example, Wachner et al. (2009) tested the moderating impact of three selling skills: interpersonal skills, salesmanship skills, and technical skills. These studies show that various external and individual factors can affect the relationship between SO and performance. Unfortunately, the impact of internal factors, such as integration with other functional members of the organization, has largely ignored. However, integration between salespeople and a variety of functional members is crucial for exchanging information and activating organizational learning (Rouizes et al. 2005), which may affect sales strategy. Indeed, salespeople, as boundary spanners, cooperate with other functional members and provide the firm with external market information (Griffin and Hauser 1990; Singh 1998; Krohmer et al. 2002). On the other hand, salespeople also receive information and support regarding new products and product delivery from other functional members, which benefits individuals’ sales performance. Our study, therefore, aims to examine the performance impact of SO at the level of the individual salesperson. In addition, we test for the moderating effect of integration with other functional members. We use the term integration as proposed by Kahn (2001), in which levels of integration are gauged by the extent of information exchange and personal interaction, and argue that integration, as an option internally available to salespeople, will increase the effectiveness of a sales approach. The indices we use to judge individual sales performance are as follows: the sales figures achieved, the degree to which the salesperson commits to the target sales figure, the number of new customers found, and the level of task innovation displayed in comparison with other members of the same sales team. SO is usually seen as a short-term sales approach. While pure SO cannot have a positive effect on customer loyalty or satisfaction levels (Boles et al. 2001; Schwepker 2003), it is often the most effective short-term selling method. In fact, Wachner et al. (2009) report that SO directly increased individual sales performance in the B to B market settings. Moreover, Boles et al. (2001) reported that SO is not harmful to relationships with customers for in-store retail settings because customers expect salespeople to engage in selling-oriented behavior to some degree. Schwepker (2003) argues that salespeople are more likely to utilize SO in an effort to meet the demands and goals placed on them when managements use the outcome-based measurements (e.g. financial performance) to evaluate their performance. This may mean that when salespeople take a more strongly selling-oriented approach, they increase their attention on selling itself and find effective methods for increasing performance. These discussions show that SO is influential in increasing sales performance. Our first hypothesis, therefore, is: H1. SO positively affects individual sales performance. Meunier-FitzHugh and Piercy (2007) emphasize that the selling of products and services is not exclusive to marketing or sales. Integration between different functional members is vital to improved customer satisfaction and product development performance (Kahn 2001). In addition, Kahn and Mentzer (1998) show that integration between different functional members has a positive influence on performance in terms of department success, overall firm performance and new product development. The authors explain that the information exchange intrinsic to integration allows members to reduce uncertainty, thereby facilitating different types of performance. By transmitting information and interacting with members who work in complementary functions, salespeople are more likely to increase their product knowledge and control time schedules. Accordingly, we expect integration with other functional members to positively impact individual performance. According to Storbacka et al. (2009), sales can play an important role in new product development, which also increases opportunities to broaden customer relationships and modify sales strategies. We argue that when integration is coupled with SO, individual performance improves because integration modifies SO’s aggressive behaviors into an adaptive selling style. Adaptive selling is considered “the altering of sales behaviors during a customer interaction or across customer interactions based on perceived information about the nature of the selling situation” (Weitz et al. 1986, p. 175). Franke and Park (2006) argue that the benefits of adaptive selling behaviors are likely to outweigh the costs of gathering and applying information to specific situations, thereby improving overall individual sales performance. Thus, if salespeople integrate with other functional members in the process of selling products and providing customized service according to customer needs, we expect that the relationship between SO and individual performance will be stronger. On the other hand, role ambiguity of salespeople may be reduced by high SO, which stimulate salespeople to put higher priorities on selling and short-term purpose (Tubre and Collins, 2000; Wachner et al. 2009). Low role ambiguity will make functional integration efficient and effective since allocation and coordination regarding functional roles cost less compared with the situation where the roles are ambiguous. Therefore, when salespeople have higher SO, integration produces more results in shorter time. Hence, on the basis of this reasoning, we hypothesize that: H2. Integration positively affects individual sales performance. H3. The positive relationship between SO and individual sales performance is stronger when salespeople are more integrated with other functional members. 382 questionnaires were handed out to a firm and 186 salespeople including the sales managers filled in the questionnaires. This company’s services and products are related to real estate, car insurance and financial insurance. We chose this particular company because the salespeople are encouraged to use SO approaches and generally integrate with other functional members. Based on Wachner et al. (2009), SO was measured with a three-item indicator that included the following items: “high sales performance is more important than how to accomplish it,” “I try to focus attention on the degree of sales performance compared with others,” and “when a company appraises salespeople, only financial performance has to be considered.” These measures were modified from those used in Wachner et al. (2009) to reflect SO’s short-term transactional manner and emphasis on high financial performance. In addition, the integration with other functional members referred to in Kahn and Mentzer (1998) was also measured using an indicator with the following items: “I frequently exchanges information with other functional members,” “I am actively gathering information from colleagues with different functions,” “critical information is shared between colleagues with different functions,” and “the integration between sales and other functions is possible.” We assessed the validity and dimensionality of our reflective constructs by performing a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Our CFA model contains SO (three items, α= .730), integration (four items, α= .839), and performance (four items, α = .826). The model shows an acceptable fit with the data with a χ2 of 153.481 (df = 41, p< .001), a comparative fit index (CFI) of .926, AGFI of 0.846 and a root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of .10. We conducted a moderated hierarchical regression analysis to test our hypotheses. Regression results have been provided in Table 1. After mean-centering the interaction variables, multicollinearity was irrelevant because the VIF of the multicollinearity statistic was low level. Model 1 includes control variables and the effects of SO and integration. Model 1 reveals a positive effect of selling orientation (β= .201, p< .01) and integration (β= .358, p< .001) on performance. In Model 2, interaction terms were added. The Model 2 results indicate that the interaction effect between SO and integration on performance is positive and significant (β= .142, p< .05) supporting H3. Post hoc analysis also confirms that integration moderates SO to increase performance. Specifically, examination of the simple regression lines show that there is only an effect of the SO on performance when the salesperson’s integration level is high (t= 3.60, p< .00), but is not significant when integration level is low (t= 1.085, ns). Overall, our results indicate that SO and integration have an important impact on individual sales performance. In addition, as shown by Fig. 1, SO affects individual performance more positively when salespeople integrate more fully with other functional members. These results highlight the tact that, when they co-exist, SO and integration between different functional members contributes to increased individual sales performance. As one of the components of market orientation, integration with other functional members prompts salespeople to consider customer satisfaction. By exchanging knowledge and contributing to internal information flow, integration allows salespeople to develop SO into an adaptive selling approach, thereby increasing sales performance. On the other hand, because high SO results in salespeople using their time and efforts more effectively for performance with integration than low SO, sales performance increases. From a theoretical perspective, the findings we report here taking into account the moderating effects of integration, present a new understanding of the relationship between SO and individual performance. Moreover, our findings have managerial implications. Although SO has a positive effect on individual performance, SO also presents considerable challenges, such as decreasing customer loyalty and endangering salespeople’s job satisfaction (Boles et al. 2001; Schwepker 2003). As a result, the relationship between SO and salespeople’s individual performance requires more discussion and should be considered carefully. Our study shows that sales management could potentially increase sales performance by using cross function teams and setting financial goals, which would simultaneously encourage integration as well as SO (Rouziès et al. 2005).

Although the relationship marketing literature acknowledges the importance of switching costs for increasing customer retention in general, little is known about its relevance in industrial markets. In particular, it is unclear whether switching costs and its dimensions impact relevant behavioral outcomes of buyer-seller relationships in business-to-business (B2B) markets. Against this background, our research intends to make two main contributions: Since we assume differential effects for different types of switching costs, our research first explores the dimensions of switching costs for the B2B domain. Second, it tests the relative impact of the dimensions of switching costs on business customers’ actual purchase behavior. Results suggest that switching costs in B2B settings are a multi-faceted construct, including (i) procedural, (ii) financial, and (iii) relational switching costs. Moreover, we find relational switching costs to be most important for securing B2B buyer-seller relationships since they impact a customer’s (a) share-of-wallet, (b) cross buying behavior, and (c) actual switching behavior. While procedural switching costs only influence share-of-wallet, financial switching costs solely impact customer’s cross-buying behavior across a firm’s product and services categories. These findings contribute to a better understanding about how to secure B2B buyer-seller relationships.

This study builds upon the scant brand personality (BP) literature in services and highlights its applicability to services marketing, which is critical given increasing interest in building favourable service brands. This study examines the impact of Geuens, Weijters and De Wulf’s, (2009) BP measure, an arguably theoretically superior measure of BP to Aaker’s (1997), into an accepted nomological net by Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001), and tests the extent to which BP dimensions determine behavioural outcomes in services (Geuens et al., 2009).

In services in general, customers play critical roles in determining the success of service delivery. Some services (such as education) require an active participation of customers for the successful accomplishment of purchase objectives. Yet, there are few systematic and integrated researches in defining the dimensions of customer’s active participation and in empirically testing the effect of customer’s active participation on customer’s perceived performance (as opposed to the firm’ performance and customer satisfaction). Existing studies have focused mainly on the general concept of customer participation during a service encounter, leaving the specific concept of customer’s active participation in various situations still under-researched. Through this study, we intended to fill this gap in research. Specifically, using college business education as our study context, we first propose the concept of “customer’s active participation (CAP)” as the reflection of customer engagement concept and identify the dimensions of CAP. We then empirically examine the effect of CAP on customer perceptions of performance of their own (CPP). Through the review of literature on the topics of customer participation, customer engagement, employee engagement and focus group interviews, we defined customer’s active participation and identified its dimension as follows. We defined customer’s active participation as “customers' making not only their individual efforts to ensure the successful outcome of the service delivery but also active interacting with service providers, other customers, and others in and outside of the service delivery context to achieve their consumption goal”. We then identified five dimensions of customer’s active participation; in-service-space interaction, 3 kinds of outside-service-space interactions (customer-to-service provider, customer-to-customer, customer-to-others), and individual level participation both in and outside the service space. In order to collect necessary data, we administered a self-administered survey using a questionnaire among undergraduate-level business major students at Yonsei School of Business. As a result of an EFA, we confirmed the uni-dimensionality of each of five determinants and the reliability of the measurement items for each dimension. The CFA result of a different set of data collected from another set of respondents among undergraduate business major students at Yonsei School of Business, we confirmed that the five dimensions well explain the customer’s active participation (CAP). Results also supported that customer’s active participation (CAP) positively influences customer’s perceptions of performance (CPP). This study contributes academically and practically in several ways. First, this study is the first attempt to propose the concept of “customer’s active participation (CAP)”. Second, this study identified the major determinants of CAP and developed a scale in the business education context. Third, this study empirically verified and the importance of the effect of CAP on their perception of own performance. Practically, this study contributes by showing the importance of managing CAP and by proposing the specific dimensions of CAP that should be managed.

This study compares the male and female attitudes towards sexual imagery in press advertising and identifies the demographic and psychographic factors influencing their attitudes. Although this topic has received previous attention in literature, genders’ attitudes have not been exclusively compared and particularly not with a view to the factors influencing these attitudes. We employed qualitative methodology to gain a greater understanding of the participants’ views. The findings revealed the significance of gender and age on shaping consumers’ attitude. The contrast between male and female attitudes was undeniable, however overall interviewees implied their growing indifference to the genre.

This study empirically investigates how four individual-level characteristics impact the effect of the four self-congruity types on brand attitude. A widely used practice among marketers focuses on communicating that using their brands will bring consumers closer to how they would like to see themselves, their ideal self-concept (e.g. being a slim person like the models in the ads), instead of how they actually see themselves, their actual self-concept. However, recent research shows that there is no “universality” of a superior self-congruity effect. Specifically, individual-level characteristics (e.g. self-esteem levels, product involvement levels) determine if actual or ideal self-congruity impact brand perceptions more strongly (Malär, Krohmer, Hoyer & Nyffenegger, 2011). This study extends that research by (a) considering all four self-congruity types (actual, ideal, social, and ideal social) and (b) four additional individual-level characteristics, which are valuable for segmenting consumer markets within and across countries. The four individual-level characteristics are a dominant independent self-construal, interdependent self-construal, cosmopolitan orientation and local orientation. Considering these individual-level characteristics offers marketers insights on which of the four self-concept types they should try to match with their brand communications when targeting these specific consumer groups. Survey data from a non-student sample was collected in the US. After performing data cleaning procedures, 800+ usable responses were analysed with the use of PLS-SEM (Lohmöller, 1989). The measurement models demonstrate satisfactory reliability, convergent and discriminant validity. Furthermore, the results suggest that the data is not compromised by non-response bias and common method variance. The structural models display satisfactory predictive capabilities of the four self-congruity types on brand attitude. The findings show that as expected an individual’s dominant independent self-construal, interdependent self-construal, cosmopolitan and local orientation impact which of the four self-congruity types has the strongest effect on brand attitude. For individuals with a dominant local orientation or interdependent self-construal, actual self-congruity has the strongest effect on brand attitude. For individuals with a dominant cosmopolitan orientation or independent self-construal, ideal self-congruity has the strongest effect on brand attitude. The findings of this study extend self-congruity theory by considering the effect of these four individual-level characteristics. Managerial implications are also presented.

This study examines the determinants of the member customer’s decision of redeeming versus accumulating loyalty program (LP) points by focusing on the effects of the different channels of transaction (online versus offline) and the demographic information of member customers. Our study is based on customer-level demographic and transaction data on a major partnership LP in Korea, the OK Cashbag (OCB) program. This study differs from the existing literature in three aspects. First, the dataset employed for this study enables us to compare member customers’ point redemption behavior between online and offline channels, whereas previous studies demonstrate coupon redemption behavior either in an online (Chiou-Wei and Inman 2008) or an offline setting (e.g., Cronovich 1997; Kwon and Kwon 2007; Mittal 1994; Reibstein and Traver 1982; Ward and Davis 1978). Second, the current study investigates not only the main effects of demographic variables, but also a series of interaction effects between the online channel and each demographic variable. Clear empirical evidence of an interaction effect would provide an LP provider with significant managerial implications. Third, rich data on customers’ transaction behavior with matching demographic information for each member customer enable us to conduct both transaction-level and individual customer-level analyses. Therefore, an individual customer’s transaction behavior can be analyzed in more detail for robust results and richer implications. We find that transactions that occur through online channels and those made by younger customers demonstrate a greater tendency of redeeming LP points as opposed to accumulating them. We also find that online channels exhibit a moderating role by mitigating the demographic effects on member customers’ point redemption behavior. These findings allow the LP provider to predict the future LP point balance by analyzing its main channel of transaction and the demographic profiles of its member customers.

This paper is exploring the role of market orientation adoption by the Sales managers in the creation of effective cross functional relationship between Marketing and Sales and in company performance. Based on data collected from both Marketing and Sales managers in 132 consumer packaged goods companies, the study shows that higher levels of market orientation by the Sales managers are reducing the level of Marketing-Sales conflict as perceived by the Marketing managers and enhancing important performance metrics. The implications of the study for both theory and practice are discussed.

The environmental consequences of consumerism are starting to demand change on the part of consumers, businesses, and the public sector. As consumer activity has been found to be a primary cause of environmental degradation and natural resources depletion, consumers need to become educated and involved in sustainability efforts (Sheth et al., 2011). In the current marketplace, however, consumers generally make purchase decisions without considering the environmental impact of those choices. This paper examines a sustainability claim, which allows consumers to consider the negative consequences of their decisions. Additionally, the consequences are communicated using message framings varying between the personal impact and company impact framing. This paper also considers differing levels of a consumer’s environmental involvement. Consistent with the theoretical concepts of social judgment, in conjunction with self-determination, the findings from this research offer an important expansion on prior work: here, the level of EI determined a boundary condition for the effects of sustainability labeling and message framing. While both groups of consumers evaluated the ad containing full information more favorably than the one with partial information, high-EI consumers preferred the ad focusing on the company’s impacts regarding the environment. Arguably, presenting the responsibilities of the company clarified and justified the use of the claim. However, extrinsic rewards and self-enhancement motives may not be key motivators for high-EI consumers. In fact, asking high-EI consumers to conserve nature and minimize their environmental impacts may be ineffective, since they typically respond more to their personal beliefs. Conversely, extrinsic rewards and recognition seem to be prime motivators for low-EI consumers. To encourage consumers to make more mindful consumption decisions, a communication tool that incorporates sustainability labeling and environmental impact framing seems to offer much promise. Indeed, the ability to connect environmental impacts with consumer choices appears to be an important determinant of the effectiveness of sustainability communication. If an ad fails to clearly convey to consumers the environmental impact of purchasing specific products, the provision of sustainability information on product packaging is of no practical value. A more transparent approach of presenting sustainability information may prove helpful to both consumers and the environment.

The empirical study at hand explores the relationship between traditional and social media, and shows that media coverage and different forms of corporate communications do have an impact on social media chatter. Moreover online advertising is capable of taking advantage of awareness aroused by media coverage.

The objective of this paper is to understand consumers’ responses (attitude, perception of quality and luxury) to production delocalization in the luxury industry, based on brand origin matching consumers’ origin or not, in order to understand the interaction brand origin and consumer ethnocentrism on those responses.Two experiments were conducted. Study 1 exposes 166 respondents (French, Italian and other European) to a message of delocalization of either a French or Italian brand supposed to delocalize production to China. Study 2 assesses, among 62 French women, the implicit preference toward French luxury brands (through the Implicit Association Test, Greenwald et al. 1998) and the level of consumer ethnocentrism (through CETSCALE, Sharma et al. 1995). Then, the group is exposed between subjects to 2 delocalization messages X 2 country of delocalization (China, Poland EU) Although brand origin is not salient when consumers evaluate brands (no explicit preference for French brands over Italian brands across studies), it is nonetheless present below awareness, as part of the brand heritage and the brand identity (measured through an implicit preference for French brands over Italian brands among our French respondents). It manifests in context of brands delocalizing out of the home country. Across studies, the attitude toward the brand, the perception of quality and perception of luxury is affected negatively post-exposure to a message of delocalization. Yet, this result is moderated by consumer ethnocentrism and message framing. When the message induces positive consequences for the brand and for the national economy, French respondents (and Italian respondents in study 1) are less affected by the delocalization of their home brands than other respondents. In turn, when the message highlights a loss in national employment, respondents judge the brand more negatively. The effect is stronger for respondents higher in ethnocentrism. The country of delocalization does not influence those results. There is scarcity of papers investigating the CoO effect for luxury brands, although the luxury business model and luxury brand identity are rooted into brand origin. This paper is the first to our knowledge to investigate the effect of brand origin and consumer ethnocentrism on brand delocalization.

Marketing green products can be challenging and identifying the preferences of consumers can help marketers overcome these challenges by developing focused marketing solutions. This research was conducted to examine the affects of cultural differences on the perception of green buildings thus the associated preferences of the occupants. This study found that South Koreans perceive indoor environmental quality as the most important green building attribute while Americans feel the same way for the materials and resources used to build. Interdisciplinary approaches such as the ones developed in this study can help develop targeted marketing strategies to ultimately benefit multiple industries by offering sustainable solutions to the growing global and regional environmental, economic, and social problems.

This case study investigates the impact of cognitive style (field in/dependence) on errors in English writing through extensive reading (ER). It explores different possibilities between two field-independent (FI) and field-dependent (FD) learners through ER, and it considers the types of errors (interlanguage or intralingual) that they are more likely to commit. The participants were two Korean female high school students with different cognitive styles. To ascertain their respective cognitive styles, the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was conducted. The participants were asked to write a reading log once a week for six months. Data analyses were performed by two raters, and for further qualitative analysis, Nvivo 10 was used. The results showed that ER was more beneficial to the FI learner with regard to writing proficiency, and both the FI and FD learners committed considerable interlanguage errors. Furthermore, there were similarities and discrepancies between the FI and FD learners as a result of the ER treatment in interlanguage error change.

The improvement of car driving comfort is requested according to development of automobile manufacturing technology. Therefore, many experts have been studying automotive vibration of normally driving cars to improve automotive driving comfort. Vibration characteristics of a tire play an important role to judge a ride comfort ability and sound quality for a vehicle. A lots of study on the ride and the noise to reduce the vibration in the 20∼100Hz frequency range was being carried out for years. The tire impact due to the bump is the main factor of the vibration in the 20∼100Hz. This vibration is related to the harshness which perceive the displeasure or noise. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of the impact harshness due to the stiffness of the tire tread part according to change the tread compound.