The experimental study investigates whether customers perceive a service robot as apparently more deep acting than surface acting and whether these perceptions differ for interactions with human service employees and humanoid service robots. Moreover, the role of gender within these service interactions is examined.

This research analyzes how higher education fosters collaboration in the curriculum by investigating the case of project-based learning programs and its ability to teach collaborative capabilities. 30 semi-structured interviews are conducted (students, supervisors, alumni) to gain an understanding of the experience of project work and how it impacts collaborative capabilities.

Many corporate brands are strongly associated with the person the companies are headed by (Argenti & Druckenmiller, 2004). Attention for corporate psychopaths (CPs), defined as individuals who show psychopathic traits and work successfully in corporations, has been growing lately (Boddy, 2005). Psychopathic traits (e.g. charm, lack of remorse and empathy) can easily be interpreted as leadership characteristics (e.g. charisma and decisiveness) and therefore boost the career of the psychopath allowing him/her to climb up the corporate ladder (Boddy, 2011). Empirical evidence—although limited—supports this assumption. It has been found that CPs more frequently have senior level positions in organizations than junior ones (Boddy, Ladyshewsky, &Galvin, 2010b) and that the chances of finding a psychopath among CEOs is four times higher than in the general population (Bercovici, 2011). A CP in a high level position (e.g. a CEO) can not only be assumed to have the largest leverage on how the company’s resources are deployed, but the way s/he is perceived by others also has a great impact on the company’s image (McGrath, 1995). The willingness to trust an entity is “based on the expectation that the other party will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). Therefore, the perception of negative/psychopathic traits in a CEO is of considerable importance to organizations because it influences the CEO’s public image and subsequently the level of trust placed in the top manager. This, in turn, can have far-reaching consequences for the company he works for because an executive’s greatest capital consists in the trust placed in him/her and a company cannot be successful in the long run without the trust from stakeholder groups (Hage, 2012). The perception of psychopathic traits can thus have severe consequences for the company’s attractiveness to its stakeholders. The current research investigates the effects of perceived psychopathy of CEOs for the attractiveness of any form of interaction with the company. Results of a structural equation model based on a survey among 670 participants show that perceived corporate psychopathy negatively influences perceived trust in the CEO. Perceived trust in the CEO, in turn, has a positive effect on perceived attractiveness of products, of shares, and of perceived employer attractiveness. Furthermore, if an individual considers sustainability to be of high importance, the ethical standards concerning sustainable behavior seem to be stricter because the trustor cares about them more than the economic aspects of how the CEO manages the company. Therefore, it was found that attitude toward sustainability moderates the relationship between perceived corporate psychopathy and perceived trust in the CEO.

Brand extensions are a critical strategy for the introduction of new products, which are often prone to failure. The use of an established brand can help promote acceptance of the new product by reducing perceived risk, enhancing efficiencies in terms of distribution and promotion, and reducing overall costs associated with launching the new product. Previous research regarding brand extensions has shown that various factors influence success of brand extensions (e.g., marketing support and retailer acceptance). One of the most important factors driving brand extension success is the fit between a parent brand and its extension. A new marketing construct, emotional attachment to a brand, has recently been introduced to the brand extension literature. However, the role of consumers’ brand attachment, in terms of reactions to a brand extension has largely been ignored by researchers. The lack of research on brand extensions and brand attachment is somewhat surprising, given the considerable body of research findings that show consumers who are emotionally tied to a brand respond differently to that brand due to increased attachment. Building on this body of work, we propose that consumers who are emotionally attached to a brand will be less impacted by the degree of fit between the parent brand and its extension. In this research, we show that emotional attachment with a brand is an important factor underlying consumers’ responses to a brand extension. In particular, we explore the moderating role of brand attachment on consumers’ responses to extensions that vary in terms of fit with the parent brand. We also explore the process underlying observed effects. These issues are examined with an experiment regarding extensions for a real-world brand. Further, mediated moderation analyses indicate that the moderating effect of brand attachment is mediated by brand image fit, but not by product category fit. Implications of our findings for managers and researchers are also are provided.

Brand equity, “the marketing effects uniquely attributable to the brand” (Keller, 1993, p. 1), is at the heart of competition in the luxury goods market (Keller, 2009). While firms competing in this segment have come up with sophisticated ways to build brand equity, they are currently challenged by the increasing importance of the internet in consumers’ journeys (Kapferer & Bastien, 2012; Okonkwo, 2009). With online sales of luxury goods showing a twelvefold increase over the past 11 years (D’Arpizio et al., 2014), it is evident that luxury brands have to be present somehow in the digital environment today (Heine & Berghaus, 2014). The strategic purposes, business potentials, and consequences for brand equity of this presence, however, are still largely unexplored and remain a paradoxical topic. As a luxury brand’s website is the brand’s most valuable digital asset (Heine & Berghaus, 2014) and as there appears to be a consensus that luxury brands can use their websites to present their products in the digital environment, at least for purposes of communication, the question arises which products are most suitable for reinforcing the brand’s image. The roles a luxury brand’s products can play in relation to brand management can be classified between four poles spanning two dimensions, which this research terms ‘accessibility’ and ‘contemporariness’, in relation to Kapferer and Bastien’s (2012) luxury brand architecture map. Empirical evidence of these dimensions is, nevertheless, scarce, and yet no prior research has investigated these product roles in an e-commerce setting. The current study develops a model to test how an online purchase option and the contemporariness as well as the accessibility of the product assortment offered on the websites of luxury brands affect specific brand equity dimensions of luxury brands. Data of a 2x2x2-online scenario experiment were analyzed, showing that prestige and uniqueness value are non-significantly affected by offering an online purchase option, while functional value increases significantly. Regarding the displayed product assortment, the brand equity dimensions of functionality, prestige, and uniqueness are found to be significantly affected by the inaccessibility of the products, while their contemporariness elicits significant changes in uniqueness value. The study also assesses the mediating role of the brand attributes of availability, price premium, aesthetics, and innovativeness, as well as the moderating role of consumers’ prior brand ownership, for these effects.