The Effectiveness of Environmental Claims among Chinese Consumers: Influences of Claim Type,Country Disposition and Ecocentric Orientation

This study empirically examines how environmental claim type affects the communication effectiveness of environmental advertising claims among Chinese consumers, and how two individual difference variables—country disposition and ecocentric orientation—moderate the claim type-effectiveness relationship. The present findings reveal that environmental claim type, country disposition, and ecocentric orientation all exert significant influences on communication effectiveness. Specifically, it is shown that substantive environmental claims generate greater communication effectiveness than associative environmental claims for both high-involvement and low-involvement purchases. For both types of purchases, environmental claims also generate more positive responses from consumers exhibiting a strong ecocentric orientation than from those exhibiting a weak ecocentric orientation. In addition, when compared with those holding a negative country disposition toward the source country, consumers holding a positive country disposition express more favorable responses toward environmental claims in high-involvement purchases. Finally, the present study also reveals that country disposition and ecocentric orientation jointly exert significant moderating effects on the claim type-effectiveness relationship in high-involvement purchases. These results remind marketers of the importance of adopting a situational perspective by taking country disposition and ecocentric orientation into account when determining which types of environmental claims should be employed to appeal to their targeted Chinese consumers.     

Working Together: Critical Perspectives on Six Cross-Sector Partnerships in Southern Africa

Early strategy scholars have pointed to the importance of reflecting on moral issues within the scope of strategic management. Although strategy content and context have been discussed in relation to ethical reflection, the third aspect, strategy process, has found only little or no attention with regard to ethics. We argue that by emphasizing the process perspective one can understand the related character of strategic management and ethical reflection. We discuss this relatedness along formal, functional, and procedural similarities. Whereas formal aspects refer to the conditions under which both processes occur, functional aspects look at the role that strategy process and ethical reflection fulfill. Procedural aspects account for similarities in the nature of both processes insofar as the activities that are conducted within each process phase share common characteristics. We claim that ethical reflection can be thought of as an integrative part of strategic management – either explicitly or implicitly. Michael Behnam received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt, Germany. He is an Associate Professor of Management at the Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University, Boston, USA. Prior to this he was the Head of the Department of International Management at the European Business School, Germany. His research has been published in Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of International Business and Economy as well as in German top-tier outlets. He authored or co-authored numerous book chapters as well as three books, most recently the 7th edition of a textbook on Strategic Management. His research areas are Strategic Management, International Management and Business Ethics. Andreas Rasche received his PhD from European Business School, Germany and is currently Assistant Professor for Business Ethics at Helmut-Schmidt-University, University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, Germany. He has published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly and authored numerous book chapters on international accountability standards. He has gained working experience at the United Nations in Washington D.C. and New York and works closely with the United Nations Global Compact Office. His research interests and publications focus on the process of standardization in the field of CSR and the adoption of standards by corporations. More information is available under: http://www.arasche.com     

Working Together: Critical Perspectives on Six Cross-Sector Partnerships in Southern Africa

This paper examines six cross-sector partnerships in South Africa and Zambia. These partnerships were part of a research study undertaken between 2003 and 2005 and were selected because of their potential to contribute to poverty reduction in their respective countries. This paper examines the context in which the partnerships were established, their governance and accountability mechanisms and the engagement and participation of the partners and the intended beneficiaries in the partnerships. We argue that a partnership approach which has proven successful in one context can be used as a valuable learning resource. However, a partnership’s work, which includes all aspects of the partnership and its activities, cannot necessarily be transferred directly to another partnership without a thorough and locally informed analysis of the context in which it is implemented. In addition, we suggest that it is difficult to assess whether the good intentions behind partnerships were translated into real benefits for target groups as effective monitoring and evaluation procedures were not in place in the partnerships studied. Similarly, the absence of regularised governance and accountability systems in partnerships made it difficult to support partner and beneficiary participation and engagement. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to partnerships and that partnership replication should focus more strongly on the transfer of learning about partnership processes instead of simply copying partnership activities. Moreover, the development of stronger mechanisms for assessing and ensuring accountability towards both partners and intended beneficiaries is required if partnerships are to meet their intended objectives.     

Perspectives on Advertising From the Geographical Literature: A Critical Review

In recent years, geographers have been devoting increasing attention to the field of advertising, and in particular to advertising imagery. The authors of this article offer a critical review of articles with substantial advertising content that have appeared in geography journals, and assess their relevance to advertising practitioners, scholars and students. These writings are reviewed under three headings: considerations of place and space; issues related to gender and race, and aspects of international advertising. Although many geographers are critical of advertising, there is nevertheless much in their work to interest an advertising readership.     

The Gay Family in the Ad: Consumer Responses to Non-traditional Families in Marketing Communications

This paper investigates consumer responses to gay families portrayed in advertising, drawing on critical visual analysis, reader response analysis and queer theory. Twenty-five consumers were interviewed about a selection of family oriented ads. Several themes emerged from the interviews, including straightening up – reading apparently gay images as heterosexual, or straight, despite rather overt gay signals. This important interpretive phenomenon seems to "interfere" with processing of apparently gay imagery, revealing interesting interpretive strategies. Findings are discussed within the advertising as representation research tradition, and illuminate interpretive strategies that consumers use when confronted with culturally sensitive images in advertising.     

Coordination mechanisms in cross-functional teams: a product design perspective

Marketing research has shown that cross-functional team structures are not a universal panacea for shortening development times or improving success rates. Marketing research has nonetheless included the claim that marketing-led teams result in superior performance in cross-functional teamwork, in comparison with sales-led or design-led structures. The premise has been that marketing structures are more participative, more efficient, and more effective than sales-led or design-led structures. This paper presents a more nuanced view. Analysing factors such as contingency, closure, and attitude, the paper argues that the effectiveness of any one functional base or organisational arrangement depends on the customers and on the technologies by which these customers are served. On the basis of a literature review and five case studies, the paper specifies why and how cross-functional teams should be design-led when the task is to open up new ways of envisioning or to generate new ideas for the future.     

Consumer Self-Confidence in Wine Consumers: The Role of Knowledge-Based Factors

This study uses the Wine Self-Confidence Scale (WSCS) with a sample of 297 customers of ABC Fine Wine and Spirits, a Florida-based retailer, to examine aspects of self-confidence in wine purchasing. The results indicate that two knowledge-based self-confidence factors (information knowledge and persuasion knowledge) were predominant for these consumers. The study showed strong support for the WSCS, which was developed as a measure of self-confidence in wine buying by Olsen, Thompson, and Clarke (2003) and how these relate to reliance on personal experience.     

Consumers and Competition in Health Care: The Case of Denturism

Denturism is the making and fitting of dentures directly for the public by nondentists. It is an example of potential competitive entry in a health services market and, like other such examples, its economic benefits must be weighed against any threat to the public health and safety. This article examines evidence relating to the economic benefits to consumers of legalizing denturism. Conservative estimates are presented of the economic benefits to consumers that would accrue under alternative institutional arrangements. Under several such arrangements it was found that the value of benefits is of the same order of magnitude as total government expenditures on dental services.     

An Exploratory Study of the Critical Success Factors of One-to-One Web-Marketing: User Perspectives

ABSTRACT

Dell provides personalized marketing services through the Internet (Fischer et al., 2000). This type of application of the Internet is referred to as One-to-One Web-marketing. A review of the current literature relevant to information management and marketing revealed that, relative to other topics, research into this area is lacking. This study addresses this by exploring the Critical Success Factors (CSF) of One- to-One Web-marketing from the user's perspective. It employed a triangulation method of integrating qualitative and quantitative designs in a three-stage research process. The research results revealed that there are five Critical Success Factors of One-to-One Web-marketing from the user perspectives: (1) the satisfaction of customer requirements, (2) the identification of customer differentiation, (3) the design of a quality user interface, (4) the establishment of customer recognition, and (5) the provision of customized services.     

Consumers between supermarket shelves: The influence of inter-personal distance on consumer behavior

Recent research underlines the important influence on consumer behavior of the mere presence of consumers on other consumers in retail businesses. While these results mainly relate to overall behavior, it is largely unknown how consumers behave in stores and how they react to customers present around them. This study examines the impact of an encounter between two consumers, directly in front of the same shelf row, on diverse consumer behavior. By means of two pilot studies we gained initial insights into the mutual influence. An image-based scenario study shows that the proximal distance is important for consumers' emotional state. In addition, the results indicate that these triggered negative and positive emotions mediate the effects of the distance on shopping satisfaction, aversive behavioral tendencies, willingness to buy, and number of alternatives considered.     

Sex Appeal in Advertising: What Consumers Think

This study examined consumers’ attitude toward the use of sexual content in advertisements among there different cultural groups; i.e., individualistic sample (White American), collectivistic sample (US temporal visitors from Asia), and acculturation sample (Asian immigrants). Sixty participants were asked about cultural acceptability of sexual content ads and the favorable attitude toward those ads by using Q-methodology. Asian participants reported less cultural acceptability for sexuality, than either Asian American or North American participants. The findings also revealed that North Americans are more likely to prefer the use of sexual content in advertisement than Asians. Asian-American participants agreed with North American participants in regard to sexually explicit advertising. Implications and limitations were discussed.     

消费者电视购物中信任问题研究

在我国由于信任的缺失严重影响了电视购物行业的发展。文章通过实证研究影响消费者电视购物中信任的因素,研究得出了八个影响因素:风险态度、产品信息、价格、品牌、电视购物频道声誉、交易安全性、订单履行和主持人,并对电视购物频道的管理人员提出了一些营销建议。     

The Family Firm in Industrial Capitalism: International Perspectives on Hypotheses and History

This comparative analysis of the international literature on family firms takes A.D. Chandler's concept of ‘personal capitalism’, presented in Scale and Scope, as the theoretical frame of reference. The article focuses principally on Britain, particularly the thesis that large family firms were probably major contributors to national economic decline during the first half of the twentieth century. However, comparisons drawn between the characteristics and role of family firms in the United States, Germany and Japan suggest that it is not possible to describe them in a way which transcends either chronological or geographical boundaries. Comparisons of the behaviour and performance of family firms and managerial enterprises suggest that, contrary to Chandler's view, as a concept the family firm offers a limited understanding of the differential industrial performance of competing national economies before World War II. National and corporate cultural differences are seen to have been more important influences on business behaviour than contrasting organisational structures.     

The Internet and Sustainable Consumption: Perspectives on a Janus Face

In the industrialized world, Internet use has grown exponentially to become a global communication and business resource. For the time being, both theoretical and empirical research on consumption and the Internet are still in their infancy. This paper discusses the possible influence of the Internet on sustainable consumption. In absence of a solid empirical data base, the approach is a conceptual one. The paper investigates the role of the Internet in the development of consumption patterns and lifestyles, looks at the Internetös role in developing public awareness of environmental and social issues, and discusses its potential contribution to support strategies for sustainable consumption such as sufficiency, efficiency, consistency, and political consumption. It concludes with implications for consumer policy and questions for further research.     

The Influence of Acculturation and In-Group Bias on Source Credibility: The Case of Asian American Female Consumers

While research on cultural variables influencing source credibility has been called for by scholars, very few studies have made attempts thus far. In this study, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of acculturation and in-group bias on Asian Americans’ perceived source credibility and advertising effectiveness. The results indicate that while acculturation had some effects on the subcomponents of credibility, in-group bias did not have an effect on credibility and Asian Americans’ advertising responses.     

Contractual Satisfaction: The Polish and Tanzanian Perspectives

Purpose: Interfirm satisfaction has been studied at the aggregate level, which has limited use in terms of understanding specific dimensions. Contractual satisfaction relates to the specific level of analyzing interfirm satisfaction. This study contributes towards understanding contractual satisfaction and the contextual nature of the concept. To achieve the latter, two heterogeneous emerging markets were used (Poland and Tanzania).

Methodology: The study was conducted in Poland and Tanzania, focusing on manufacturing firms. The sample included 201 Polish firms and 240 Tanzanian firms.

Findings: The major findings suggest that ex ante costs and ex post specifications have a significant positive effect on contractual satisfaction, with a stronger effect in Poland. Behavioral uncertainty has a significant moderating effect on these two constructs in Tanzania but not in Poland, whereas the moderating effect of trust is found to be significantly positive in Poland but negative in Tanzania.

Research Implications: The nature of markets and institutions has an influence on business to business relations.

Practical Implications: Contractual satisfaction is not homogeneous across markets; managers should pay attention to specific contextual factors such as institutions and the stage they are at in their transformation.

Originality: The study looks specifically at contractual satisfaction and extends the contractual governance literature by considering heterogeneous emerging markets.     

The Cost of Being Female: Critical Comment on Block

Women currently earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Explanations abound for why, exactly, this wage gap exists. One of the more potent justifications attributes this pay differential to the unequal effects of marriage on the sexes: the marital asymmetry hypothesis. However, even when marital status is accounted for, a small but significant residual gap remains. This article argues that this is the result of social factors. Entrenched societal sexism causes all of us to harbor unconscious bias about the capabilities and proper gender roles of women. This bias, in turn, leads us to discount work completed by females, especially in professional environments. Employers are not immune from this effect, and the undervaluation of female ability affects hiring practices, leading to the residual wage gap.     

Why Consumers Like Facebook Brands: The Role of Aspirational Brand Personality in Consumer Behavior

In total, the top five brands on Facebook have more than 500 million fans through the “like” Facebook button feature and yet research shows that about only 1% engage with the top brands on Facebook. This suggests that individuals have other underlying reasons for liking brands' Facebook pages. To address the question of the latent motivations for liking brands on Facebook, a conceptual model proposing that individuals liked Facebook brands to achieve specific virtual identities was developed and tested. The results demonstrate the significance of brand personality in determining consumer behavior. Self-congruity was also revealed to be an important moderator in the relationships theorized between brand personality and consumers' online behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are outlined and discussed.