Reference Group Influence on Selection of Services

Reference group influence has long been studied in the setting of product purchase. This study examines the significance of reference groups in the selection of services. The study also examines the variation of reference group influence across services. The services selected correspond to the following four categories: publicly consumed luxuries, publicly consumed necessities, privately consumed luxuries, and privately consumed necessities. Three types of reference group influences are studied-informational, value expressive and utilitarian. The results reveal that reference group influence is greatest for publicly consumed services.     

It's ok to think in a bad way: How state optimism and pessimism influence risk-taking

Government and public policy makers are facing an important issue on how to balance between economics and consumers' well-being. Thus, the current research proposes an important factor to help understand more on consumers risk-taking in investment. Trait optimists typically expect bright outcomes, whereas trait pessimists usually expect gloomy ones. However, the present research qualifies these generalizations. This current research proposes that optimism and pessimism can also be temporarily changed and cause different impact comparing to trait optimism and pessimism. Four studies showed that state optimists and pessimists differ in their expectations of success in a situation in which outcomes are purely a matter of chance or skills. Specifically, state optimists invest more in risky options when they believe that the investments are chance-based, whereas state pessimists invest more when they believe the investments are skill-based. These effects were due to their beliefs that the outcome is due to chance or skills. Additionally, we found that the effect will be moderated by individuals' locus of control.     

What Do We Really Need? Goals and Values,Security, and the Perception of Consumer Necessity

There is a general trend for consumer goods considered luxuries to become thought of as necessities. Although the luxury/necessity distinction is central to the fields of marketing and economics, little research has examined the perception of necessity as a psychological phenomenon. Three studies examined the relationship of the perceived necessity of a variety of consumer goods to goals, values, and insecurity. In Study 1, the number of goods considered necessities as opposed to luxuries correlated negatively with intrinsic and positively with extrinsic goal pursuit. In Study 2, this pattern generalized to the distinction between needs and wants, the extent to which participants reported needing their possessions, and to materialistic values. In Study 3, the perception of necessity mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and materialism, suggesting that needing consumer products has in part a basis in interpersonal insecurity. In turn, it may facilitate materialistic consumption.     

WHY ARE GOODS CHEAPER IN RICH EUROPEAN COUNTRIES? BEYOND THE BALASSA–SAMUELSON EFFECT

In wealthy European countries consumer goods tend to be cheaper than consumer services. Usually explained in terms of cost developments and/or foreign‐trade considerations, this trend could also be a reflection of demand‐side regularities. Estimation of a cross‐country demand system indicates that goods are ‘necessities’ whereas services are ‘luxuries’. The relative price of goods responds negatively to the rising supply of goods and positively to the rising supply of services, with the former response being much stronger. If the supplies of both items were to rise at the same speed, the relative price of goods would have to fall.     

An overview of entrepreneurial activity in nonprofit organizations in the international context

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play a relevant role in society by attempting to satisfy human necessities in a different way, or as a complement to lucrative firms and governmental activity. In this sense, they are active in different areas, and several analyses have been developed to study the effects and the behavior of these organizations in such fields, as is shown in the articles included in this special issue. The main goal of this paper is to show the main aspects analyzed in those papers.     

A Pessimist's Simplistic Historical Perspective on the Fourth Wave of Consumer Protection

The current severe economic downturn, coupled with scandals of business misfeasance and malfeasance, raises expectations for another surge in the U.S. consumer protections. Because it happened three times before, the human temptation to seek historical parallels readily fuels either optimistic hopes or the paranoid ravings of fact-free commentators on a broadcast news network. A simplified historical perspective brings an odd mix of hopeful optimism and reluctant pessimism.     

COURNOT OLIGOPOLY UNDER STRATEGIC UNCERTAINTY WITH OPTIMISTIC AND PESSIMISTIC FIRMS

In this paper the Cournot oligopoly under uncertainty is analyzed by means of the Choquet Expected Utility (CEU) theory. Firms are supposed to be either optimistic (CEU maximizers who hold concave capacities) or pessimistic (convex capacities). Reaction functions, equilibrium quantities, prices and profits are derived and compared for different degrees of uncertainty and uncertainty attitude (optimism or pessimism). It is proved that optimists make higher profits than pessimists whenever uncertainty is sufficiently low. If it is high just optimists participate in the market making losses. An interpretation of the main results in terms of the market's level of maturity is provided.     

Why do consumers buy green apparel? The role of dispositional traits,environmental orientation,environmental knowledge,and monetary incentive

This study investigates the influence of both consumer optimism and pessimism on the green apparel buying behavior, using the self-focused regulation theoretical framework. Further, it measures the mediation effect of environmental orientation, and the moderation effect of environmental knowledge and monetary incentive on the proposed associations. An online survey was conducted through Amazon Mechanical Turk to collect data from 450 consumers. The findings reveal that optimistic consumers buy green apparel, while pessimistic consumers avoid it. Interestingly, when environmental orientation is introduced as a mediator, the pessimistic consumers also express the intent to buy green apparel. Further, environmental knowledge and monetary incentive both significantly moderate the relationships of green apparel buying behavior with consumer pessimism and environmental orientation. Holistically, this study provides significant implications for both green apparel marketers and retailers.     

A naturological approach to marketing exchanges: Implications for the bottom of the pyramid

Marketing as exchange has been the sine qua non of the field for over thirty years. While buyer-seller dyads dominate traditional conversations, other forms of transactions are included as long as value transfer occurs. The most logical extension is Stakeholder Theory, an approach with the same basic structure for understanding, maintaining, and advancing important relationships among firms and their constituencies. Together, they posit that self-contained individuals or units have a marked impact on one another, which passes across defined boundaries at discrete periods of time. Yet the failure to capture organic and dynamic ways in which such entities interact necessities a new approach, such as the naturological perspective that recognizes porous boundaries and reverberating consequences of marketing exchanges, especially among consumers and other impacted parties who survive at or near the proverbial bottom of the economic pyramid.     

Asymmetric effects of investor sentiment on industry stock returns: Panel data evidence

This article employs a state-of-the-art panel threshold model by allowing for regime intercepts, in order to shed new light on the asymmetric/nonlinear effects of local and global sentiments on expected industry stock returns among 11 Asian countries during the period from 1996 to 2010. Empirical evidence demonstrates that once the regime intercept is included, the asymmetric effects of global sentiment on oil & gas, financials, and health care industry returns become less under optimism, as compared with under pessimism. More critically, the positive (negative) impact of global sentiment above (under) the threshold turns significant, indicating that global optimism leads industry returns to be overvalued, while pessimism leads them to be undervalued. For local market sentiment, our results support that higher local sentiment enhances the returns of basic materials, telecommunications, and utilities industries. The empirical results confirm that the nexus of industry returns and investor sentiments is subject to change between different sentimental intervals.     

A cross-sectional analysis of asset holdings

This article introduces cross-sectional data on asset holdings derived from a survey of Australian households. We use the data to estimate asset Engel curves which are shown to fit the data extremely well. The findings indicate that cash and bank deposits and insurance are necessities, with wealth elasticities less than unity, own home has an elasticity of one and the other four assets [1) other property, 2) shares and securities, 3) superannuation, and 4) unincorporated business] are luxuries with wealth elasticities greater than unity. The Engel curve estimates are used to explain differences in the dispersion of the portfolio across households and to compute a measure of the substitutability complementarity between the individual assets. The results indicate that 1) housing is a substitute for all other assets and 2) business related assets are all pairwise complements.     

Consumer-defined sustainably-oriented firms and factors influencing adoption

Guided by stakeholder theory, a pair of exploratory studies identifies factors that influence firms to adopt an environmentally-friendly approach to conducting business, while providing insight into consumers' perceptions of such firms. An analysis of twenty in-depth interviews and a qualitative survey yields a conceptual model, indicating that such firms are motivated by governmental intervention, organizational values, and the potential benefits that can accrue as a result of implementation. Moreover, consumers view sustainably-oriented firms as maintaining procedures, developing products, and portraying themselves accordingly. These findings are relevant to academicians as they describe the underlying rationale for such behaviors and outline a novel conceptualization of the construct, thus invigorating future research. The results are also useful for firms as they shed light on sustainability efforts that are salient to the consumer and provide support for implementation, thereby encouraging the joint maximization of social and economic objectives.     

The impact of the implicit theories of social optimism and social pessimism on macro attitudes towards consumption

People have substantially differing attitudes towards consumption. Anti-consumers are negative towards consumption. In contrast, pro-consumers view consumption in a positive light. We posit that people's attitudes toward consumption at the societal (macro) level are impacted by the implicit theories they hold about whether society can solve the problems it faces. We identify two different implicit theories consumers hold regarding how solvable larger societal problems are. Social optimists believe that we will solve the problems that are emerging as we evolve at the societal level. In contrast, social pessimists believe that societal evolution is creating problems too large to be solved. We developed a macro attitudes model where social optimism and pessimism were posited to impact people's macro attitudes towards consumption. We present the results of a study that found that social optimists have more positive attitudes towards consumption and social pessimists have more negative attitudes towards consumption. We also found that this model provided a superior fit in comparison to three other plausible models relating implicit theories and attitudes towards consumption. These findings have implications for anti-consumption research, consumer research on implicit theories, and social marketing designed to address problems associated with overconsumption.     

The role of economic and normative signals in international prosocial crowdfunding: An illustration using market orientation and psychological capital

Entrepreneurs in emerging nations are increasingly seeking microloans on international crowdfunding platforms composed of prosocial lenders primarily seeking non-monetary returns. Drawing on signaling theory, we posit that economic signals (as illustrated by market orientation) and normative signals (as illustrated by psychological capital) embedded within borrower narratives will influence funding time. A Computer-Assisted-Text-Analysis (CATA) of 130,964 profiles across 49 countries suggests that borrower cues of customer orientation, competitor orientation, long-term focus, profitability focus, confidence, and optimism are positively associated funding time, while cues of coordination, hope, and resilience are negatively associated with funding time. Prosocial lenders seem less inclined to lend to borrowers that exhibit a desire for economic success or normative expectations for positive outcomes in the future, while they seem to lend more rapidly to those exhibiting current hardship or a concern for people. A discussion of these findings and their implications for poverty alleviation concludes the study.     

Explaining variation in conspicuous luxury consumption: An individual differences' perspective

This article examines the impact of various individual differences on consumers' propensity to engage in two distinct forms of conspicuous (publicly observable) luxury consumption behavior. Status seeking is an established driver, but other managerially relevant drivers can also explain conspicuous consumption of luxuries. The study develops and empirically confirms a conceptual model that shows that bandwagon and snobbish buying patterns underlie the more generic conspicuous consumption of luxuries. In addition to status seeking, the self-concept orientation regulates which of these two patterns is more prominent. Both susceptibility to normative influence and need for uniqueness mediate the influence of self-concept. The modeled psychological constructs explain a large part of the variance in conspicuous luxury consumption patterns and can be used as input in the development of marketing strategies.     

What Role Does Sense of Power Play in Consumers’ Decision Making of Risky Food Consumption While Dining Out?

One way to understand risky food consumption is to look at the influence of the sense of power, as well as optimism bias. The purpose of this study was to examine how the sense of power affects consumers’ intention to consume risky foods by assessing the direct relationship between their sense of power and subsequent consumption of risky foods, and investigating the indirect relationship between sense of power and risky food consumption with general optimism bias or food safety optimism bias as a mediating variable. A web-based questionnaire with 387 responses was used to test the hypotheses and the indirect relationships from the sense of power to intention to consume risky foods via food safety optimism. Findings indicate the theoretical implication of a new variable (food safety optimism) that is useful in understanding the relationship between the sense of power and risky food consumption. Results also offer practical implications on better ways to market raw or undercooked foods to potential consumers.     

How Does a Product Gain the Status of a Necessity? An Analysis of Necessitation Narratives

The consumer perception of how products gain the status of necessities is characterized by complexity, laden with idiosyncratic consumer experiences, and driven by personally relevant historical developments. This study pushes the theoretical boundaries of understanding consumer necessities by reaching beyond the classification of products into traditional dichotomies such as necessity–luxury and need–want. It focuses on how consumers experience and recount emotion‐laden events in their lives whereby certain products move to being perceived as necessities over time. An analysis of narratives reveals that product necessitation encompasses five stages: familiarization, transformation in the form of redemption or contamination, memorialization, (re)integration and reconstruction, and solidification. Comprehending necessitation experiences is of great interest to marketers in creating effective marketing strategies as well as to public policymakers in ensuring that their citizens have access to life necessities.     

Influence Strategies and Channel Member Satisfaction in Cameroon

Researchers have called for increased understanding of channel member satisfaction as a bidimensional construct comprising economic and social elements. In addition to responding to this call, the view that threats and punishments are natural necessities in the African context by reason of cultural preponderances is examined. The study was conducted among brewers and their retailers. The authors found that the brewers' use of threats and indirect influence strategies respectively decreases and increases both economic and social satisfaction of their less powerful retailers, whereas the use of promises contributes to retailers' economic satisfaction. Contrary to theory, however, the use of promises does not undermine channel members' autonomy and intrinsic motivation as will be expected in some Western countries.     

Growth and Trade vs. Trade and Growth

In the traditional trade literature, there is a well-developed area analyzing the effect of growth on trade and its reflection on income growth. This literature developed already in the 1950s and 1960s. Generally speaking, an interest in the effects of trade on growth has also existed for many years, where trade has often been viewed as an engine of growth. Cases in point are the "East Asian Tigers" and Japan which have especially benefited from outward-looking policies. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between economic growth and growth in income terms of trade, arguing that income terms of trade is a useful concept in analyses of the link between trade and growth. Our results suggest that fast-growing countries have either specialized in sectors with a relatively favorable development with regard to world market prices, or they have managed to successively improve quality within sectors, thereby avoiding falling terms of trade in spite of large increases in export volumes.