Beyond close vs. distant ties: Understanding post-service sharing of information with close,exchange, and hybrid ties

Customers' post-service sharing of information (PSSI) occurs with a range of social ties typically conceptualized in terms of closeness/tie strength. We extend this research by orthogonally crossing the dimension of closeness with exchange to define close, exchange, and hybrid ties. Study 1, a survey of actual PSSI behavior, supports our conceptualization regarding the dimensions of closeness and exchange defining audiences for PSSI. Study 2, a survey of PSSI intentions, further supports the significance of this extended conceptualization by showing that a model with close, exchange, and hybrid ties has a significantly better fit than a model with only close ties. We provide further evidence of the significance of these three ties by showing that service outcome and process have distinct effects on PSSI to each social tie. Satisfaction has a non-linear effect on PSSI to close ties, and positive and negative linear effects on exchange and hybrid ties respectively. Further, satisfaction is the sole predictor of PSSI to close ties, whereas satisfaction, provider status and customer power interactively drive PSSI to exchange and hybrid ties. Thus, considering close, exchange, and hybrid ties enables a more comprehensive understanding of PSSI.     

Are You a Chocolate Lover? An Investigation of the Repurchase Behavior of Chocolate Consumers

This study aimed to understand the factors affecting repurchase behavior of chocolate brands and, consequently, customer retention and acquisition. The study adopted a qualitative, inductive approach using in-depth interviews with 31 Australian consumers. The factors identified in the extant literature as antecedents of customers’ repurchase intention in the chocolate industry, including brand recognition, sales promotion, product price value, variety, taste, texture, size, packaging, and customer satisfaction, were confirmed. The results also indicated that functional value, product selection value, self-gratification value, socialization value, and transactional value were also considered during the consumer decision-making process. Implications for practitioners are provided.     

Product quality: Impact of interdepartmental interactions

The authors examine the role of organizational factors affecting interdepartmental interactions and their subsequent effects on product quality. Results from a national study suggest that product quality is affected by interdepartmental conflict and connectedness. Importantly, the linkage between interdepartmental conflict and product quality appears to be robust across varying levels of market turbulence and technological turbulence. In contrast, interdepartmental connectedness appears to be more important for product quality under conditions of high market and technological turbulence. The results also indicate that interdepartmental interactions are influenced by leadership characteristics (risk aversion of top managers), reward system orientation, and organization structure (centralization, departmentalization, and hierarchical levels). Managerial implications and directions for future work are proposed. His research interests focus on marketing strategy, marketing management, and new product management. His work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, and other journals. His research focuses on implementing and controlling marketing, market/environmental orientation, and customer responses to advertising. His work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Review of Marketing, and other journals. His research interests include market orientation, marketing strategy, sales management, and industrial marketing. His work has appeared in a number of journals including theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, andStrategic Management Journal.     

The quality and effectiveness of marketing strategy: Effects of functional and dysfunctional conflict in intraorganizational relationships

By examining only dysfunctional conflict and ignoring functional conflict, empirical research in marketing has presented only part of the story. This research offers the first systematic look at the antecedents and consequences of both functionaland dysfunctional conflict in intraorganiational relationships. The authors develop and empirically test a causal model for key organizational antecedents of new product strategy quality and market performance. They find that dysfunctional conflict in the decision-making process has deleterious consequences for quality of strategy and market performance, whereas functional conflict improves both quality of strategy and performance. Specifically, organizational design characteristics such as formalization, interdepartmental interconnectedness, low communication barriers, and team spirit improve new product performance by enhancing functional conflict, whereas centralization and high communication barriers lower new product performance by increasing dysfunctional conflict. A post hoc test for common method bias or variance suggests that bias or variance alone cannot explain these findings. His general research interests focus on strategic issues relating to internal relationships, market learning, and organizational context of marketing strategy. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Advertising, andJournal of Services Marketing, among others. His general research interests focus on strategic issues relating to relationship marketing, firm performance, sustainable competitive advantage, timing of market entry, and information technology. His past research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Services Marketing, andMarketing Education Review, among others. His research interests are in the areas of marketing research methods, structural equations modeling, cellular automata theories and methods, and Taoist methodologies for marketing strategy. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, andJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, among others.     

A testable model of consumption with externalities

This paper presents a nonparametric model of interdependent preferences, where an individual's consumption may act as an externality on the preferences of other consumers. We assume that individual price consumption data is observed for all consumers. It is known that the general consumption model with externalities imposes few restrictions on the observed data, where the consistency requirement is Nash rationalizability. We motivate potential games as an important sub class of games where the family of concave potential games is refutable and imposes stronger restrictions on observed data. We use this framework to extend the analysis of Brown and Matzkin [D. Brown, R. Matzkin, Testable restrictions on the equilibrium manifold, Econometrica 64 (1996) 1249-1262] on refutable pure exchange economies to pure exchange economies with externalities. Finally, we discuss an application of this model to inter-household consumption data.     

Exploiting International Stock Market Correlations with Open-end International Mutual Funds

Investors can exploit the correlations between international stock markets by trading no-load, open-end, international mutual funds. These investors in effect cheat passive investors because they buy the mutual funds at their net asset values, which do not reflect information released during the US trading day. The strategy we examine yields an annual rate of return 800 basis points above the S&P500, over a period of almost eight years.     

Optimality of balanced designs for minimum norm quadratic unbiased estimation of variance components

This paper develops an approximate theory for the optimality of balanced designs under minimum norm quadratic unbiased estimation of variance components in one-way classified data.