The marketing of love: how attachment styles affect romantic consumption journeys

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science - The experience of romantic love is closely interlocked with consumption journeys—yet how and why consumers engage in romantic consumption is not...     

Listen to the voice of the customer—First steps towards stakeholder democracy

Recently, calls have grown louder for more stakeholder democracy that is, letting stakeholders participate in the process of organizing, decision‐making, and governance in corporations, especially in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Despite the relevance of the subject, the impact of customer involvement in CSR on their company‐related attitudes and behaviors still represents a major research void. The paper at hand develops a conceptual framework of consumer involvement in CSR based on the existing literature, theories of stakeholder democracy, and organizational boundaries as well as drawing from the qualitative focus group interviews (N = 24). The framework is tested on a large scale, two‐time point field‐experimental study (N = 3,397). More specifically, consumer reactions to three degrees of customer involvement (i.e., information, feedback, and dialogue) are tested in two different CSR domains (i.e., company‐internal business process vs. company‐external philanthropic CSR). Results indicate that the customer involvement in CSR has a more beneficial effect in terms of strengthening customer outcomes in CSR domains that directly affect external stakeholders of the company (i.e., philanthropic CSR) than in domains that mainly concern company‐internal stakeholders (i.e., business process CSR).     

New approach to development aid

The prevailing disenchantment concerning the less developed countries (LDCs) has multiple roots. Two, however, are of particular importance. The first, symbolised by the report of the Club of Rome, is connected with the implications of the world’s finite resources. The second, underlined by Mr McNamara, is in the obstinately and grossly unequal distribution of the benefits of whatever progress is being made.     

Type I error and test power of different tests for testing interaction effects in factorial experiments

A simulation study was conducted to investigate the effect of non normality and unequal variances on Type I error rates and test power of the classical factorial anova F‐test and different alternatives, namely rank transformation procedure (FR), winsorized mean (FW), modified mean (FM) and permutation test (FP) for testing interaction effects. Simulation results showed that as long as no significant deviation from normality and homogeneity of the variances exists, generally all of the tests displayed similar results. However, if there is significant deviation from the assumptions, the other tests are observed to be affected at considerably high levels except FR and FP tests. As a result, when the assumptions of factorial anova F‐test are not met or, in the case those assumptions are not tested whether met, it can be concluded that using FR and FP tests is more suitable than the classical factorial anova F‐test.     

Price discovery in currency markets

This paper examines the price discovery process in currency markets, basing its analysis on the pivotal distinction between the customer (end-user) market and the interdealer market. It first provides evidence that this price discovery process cannot be based on adverse selection between dealers and their customers, as postulated in standard models, because the spreads dealers quote to their customers are not positively related to a trade’s likely information content. The paper then highlights three factors familiar in the literature – fixed operating costs, market power, and strategic dealing – that may explain the cross-sectional variation in customers’ spreads. The paper finishes by proposing a price discovery process relevant to liquid two-tier markets and providing preliminary evidence that this process applies to currencies.