The Perfect Fit: The Moderating Role of Selling Cues on Hedonic and Utilitarian Product Types

With the need among retailers to create effective promotional campaigns, scarcity, and popularity cues are increasingly used. Drawing from regulatory focus and popularity versus scarcity cues literature, this research explores the impact of popularity versus scarcity cues and product types on consumer perceptions of risk, product uniqueness, and purchase intentions. Results from three studies provide primary insights: (1) A utilitarian product aligns with prevention goals and hence the popularity cue will enhance consumers’ purchase intentions, and (2) a hedonic product aligns with promotion goals and hence the scarcity cue will enhance consumers’ purchase intentions. Further, we theorize that perceived risk and perceived product uniqueness will act as psychological mechanisms. We discuss theoretical contributions and strategic insights for retailers and marketers that the findings indicate.     

Merit versus maleness: How strategic positioning can mitigate external gender bias

Despite the proactive efforts of many firms to combat gender bias within their organizations, societal prejudices still disadvantage women leaders and the firms who employ them. This external gender bias shapes outside stakeholder evaluations of women leaders’ efforts in various ways, and firms need strategies to cope with this external gender bias. We examine the conditions that might alleviate this burden of external bias and what women leaders and top executives can do to leverage these conditions—from a strategic positioning perspective—that will effectively allow female leaders to differentiate their work. To do this, we synthesize and build upon evidence that the external gender bias against women leaders diminishes when they lead in areas that are unconventional rather than mainstream. We then propose a two-step process based on (1) identifying the likely threat of external gender bias, which is stronger in some industry contexts than others, and (2) leveraging unconventionality to circumvent male prototypical comparisons, thereby reducing the hazards of external gender bias.     

绿色人力资源管理实践感知、资质过高感与员工绿色行为

企业绿色人力资源管理实践旨在通过激发员工绿色环保行为，实现企业绿色可持续发展。员工资质过高感虽然是影响员工行为的重要因素之一，但绿色人力资源管理研究对其关注甚少。为此，以员工为调查对象，基于个体层面，从资质过高感研究绿色人力资源管理实践感知与员工绿色行为的关系。结果发现：绿色人力资源管理实践感知与员工绿色行为显著正相关，资质过高感发挥U型调节作用。结论可为组织绿色人力资源管理实践提供有益参考。     

Perceived organizational support and coworker support as antecedents of foreign workers’ voice and psychological stress

This study investigates the effects of perceived organizational support (POS) and coworker support on the voice behavior and psychological stress of foreign workers in Macau hospitality industry. Drawing upon social exchange theory, we propose that POS and coworker support exert differential impacts on foreign workers’ promotive and prohibitive voice. We further hypothesize the negative relationships between these two types of support and psychological stress. Our hypotheses were tested by a two-wave longitudinal survey data collected from 141 foreign workers employed in four Macau hotels. The results showed that, although POS and coworker support were positively related to promotive voice, the effect of POS was comparatively stronger. Only POS had a significant and positive effect on prohibitive voice. In addition, coworker support but not POS reduced foreign workers’ psychological stress. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

Communicating a company's positive impact on society—Can plausible explanations secure authenticity?

Organizations could prosper by delivering products and services that make society a better place. However, they face the challenge of successfully communicating what they contribute to society, especially if their contributions are closely related to their core business activities. The thin line between genuine societal engagement and the pursuit of profitability may feed society's increasing skepticism about the genuineness of organizations' care for societal issues. This study addresses the question of how a for-profit organization can successfully communicate what it intends to contribute to society while still coming across as authentic. If customers can explain the organization's envisaged societal contributions in terms of characteristics of the organization, they can see more clearly how its contributions fit the organization and will perceive the organization as more authentic. Perceived authenticity, in turn, increases customer loyalty and perceived fit enhances stakeholders' attitudes toward the organization's societal engagement.     

The influence of restaurant co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence on employees’ turnover intentions: The mediating role of job attitudes

The current study examines the influence of co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence on employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions in a casual dining restaurant setting. The warmth and competence dimensions represent two fundamental social dimensions that people often use to evaluate other individuals or groups. The current findings determined that co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence had significant effects on employees’ job satisfaction, which in turn improved their organizational commitment.Furthermore, job satisfaction and organizational commitment mediated the relationships between co-workers’ perceived warmth and competence and employees’ turnover intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Measuring the shopper's attitude toward the point of sale display: Scale development and validation

In Europe alone, marketers invest several hundred million of Euros in marketing activities at the point of sale every year. A prominent role is assigned to display promotions. However, despite their large practical importance, surprisingly, there is no measure to pre-evaluate different displays and their design facets so that the display which reached the best pre-evaluation results may be identified and, if poor rated facets were found, those may be altered before production and rollout of the display in question. Therefore, this paper develops and validates a scale to measure the shopper's attitude toward a point of sale display reflecting all relevant facets of a display from the shopper's point of view. Examination of the scale led to satisfactory results in terms of reliability, validity, and its predictive power for purchase intention. Summarizing, the scale can help to improve display designs prior to rollout, thus, enhancing the efficiency of display promotions.     

Health and cosmetics: Investigating consumers’ values for buying organic personal care products

In investigating consumers’ intentions to re-purchase organic personal care products (PCP), this study extends the theory of planned behaviour by including perceived value dimensions as the antecedents of attitude in the model. The findings revealed that most of the hypothesised relationships linking the consumer perceived value constructs (namely, health, safety, hedonic and environmental) with attitude towards the rebuying of organic PCP, were supported. Also, better product knowledge about organic PCP would lead to more positive attitudes towards re-purchasing the product. In contrast, social value was not important in predicting attitude. Similarly, the influence of subjective norm on rebuying intention was not supported. In terms of ranking of importance with regards to prediction of re-purchasing intention, attitude was the most important predictor followed by perceived behavioural control, product knowledge, hedonic value, environmental value and safety value.     

A contextual perspective on consumers' perceived usefulness: The case of mobile online shopping

This research aims to study the origins of consumers' usefulness perceptions through the example of mobile online shopping adoption in Europe. The results of an empirical study, which is grounded in technology acceptance theory, reveal the pivotal role of consumers' beliefs about the quality of mobile online stores in the formation of usefulness perceptions prior to adoption. While this study identifies that consumers form their usefulness evaluations depending on the respective shopping tasks, the results of a moderation analysis yield usefulness predictors that differ in relevance across product categories and shopping touchpoints. This contextual perspective has implications for both adoption and (online) channel research. It also helps managers to identify starting points on how to promote (mobile) online shopping adoption.