Technology readiness in a B2B online retail context: An examination of antecedents and outcomes

This paper develops and empirically tests a model that examines the role of technology readiness (TR) in the business-to-business (B2B) context. The research investigates how retailers' TR, and its antecedents, impacts their evaluation of a credence based B2B service, namely web solution service providers (WSSPs). It responds to previous research calls by extending the TR construct from the business-to-consumer (B2C) perspective that is traditional in the extant literature into the B2B domain. The findings of a survey conducted with 133 firms in the retail industry are that TR is an important contributor to the eventual achievement of service quality and satisfaction. The contributions of this study are; first it develops and validates a measure of TR in a B2B context; second it investigates the antecedents of TR in this domain, demonstrating the impact of past inexperience, industry trust and switching costs on firms' level of technology readiness to adopt online operations; and third, it finds that service quality and satisfaction are outcomes of TR. The key management implication for WSSPs is the need to address the TR levels of existing and potential clients if they wish to deliver successful e-business solutions to them. Their clients' TR can be better managed by making the offering more easily understood, building relational rapport, reducing risk perceptions and adopting a client centric perspective throughout the process.     

Strategy Fads and Competitive Convergence: An Empirical Test for Herd Behavior in Prime-Time Television Programming

The economics literature contains many theoretical analyses of imitation and differentiation strategies but relatively few empirical studies of these topics. This paper aims to address that shortcoming. I analyze program introductions by television networks and then compare the payoffs to imitative and differentiated introductions. The analysis indicates that the networks imitate each other when introducing new programs and that, on average, imitative introductions underperform differentiated introductions. These results are consistent with theoretical models of herd behavior but are difficult to explain using standard models of spatial competition or the possibility of omitted variable bias.     

Third Party Customers Infecting Other Customers for Better or for Worse

In this article the effect of the displayed emotions of third party customers and purchase occasion on customers are examined, even when there is no direct interaction between customers. Three independent studies, including two experiments are employed. The first experiment examines the effects of both positive and negative displayed emotions of third party customers and purchase occasion on customer emotions and repurchase intentions, when there is no direct interaction between customers. The second experiment captures changes in the customers’ affective state on a moment‐by‐moment basis enabling differentiation between the effects of the service environment and the intervention of exposure to the displayed emotions of third party customers. Results show that customers are “infected” by the displayed emotions of third party customers even when there is no direct interaction between the customers. It is also demonstrated that the purchase occasion affects the type and intensity of emotions customers experience and the likelihood of repurchase. Implications for scholarly research and retailers are discussed.     

Food health claims – What consumers understand

Issues pertaining to consumer understanding of food health claims are complex and difficult to disentangle because there is a surprising lack of multidisciplinary research aimed at evaluating how consumers are influenced by factors impacting on the evaluation process. In the EU, current legislation is designed to protect consumers from misleading and false claims but there is much debate about the concept of the ‘average consumer’ referred to in the legislation.     

USING REGRESSION ANALYSIS TO REDUCE AGGREGATION BIAS IN LINEAR PROGRAMMING SUPPLY MODELS*

Because methods of eliminating aggregation bias are impracticable, an alternative method is suggested for reducing aggregation bias which uses regression estimates of farm resonrce availabilities as functions of farm size. The estimates are incorporated in a parametric run of the LP problem in which size is parameterized. The method is applied to a case study problem, and the results compared with other methods of demarcating representative farms.     

Marketing implications of the expected role of physicians in family decisions concerning the institutionalization of the elderly

This study investigates the decision to place a loved one in a nursing home, looking at the interaction between adult children and the elderly, and at the role expected to be played by physicians. Younger respondents and those without previous experience with decisions concerning the admittance of a loved one in a nursing home do not see the physician as playing an important role, whereas the elderly and those with experience do. Differences in perceptions by these two groups are explored and the marketing implications for healthcare providers are discussed. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Ethics and services marketing

The area of services marketing is a highly crucial one for potential ethical violations. The services industry, which drives over two-thirds of our national economy, is about to experience severe changes due to increasing competition. The temptation to make ethical compromises will pose a dramatic threat to the business climate.We review conceptual approaches to the field of marketing ethics and conclude that existing models often lack an important component which affects ethical decision-making. That component includes the interorganizational variables: the primary task environment, including immediate customers and suppliers to the buyer and seller; the secondary task environment, comprised of suppliers and customers to the immediate suppliers and customers, competitors, and regulatory agencies, and the macro-environment, those broader forces which impinge on the activities in the primary and secondary task environments.We suggest various propositions for circumstances under which unethical behavior is likely to occur within the interorganizational domain. The overarching framework is that of service industries in an increasingly competitive environment.Dr. Ellen Kennedy and Dr. Leigh Lawton are associate professors in the Department of Marketing at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. They have published articles in theJournal of Business Ethics andIndustrial Marketing Management on the topics of using fiction to teach business ethics and workforce socialization.     

Dual Domestic Listing, Market Structure and Shareholder Wealth

This paper examines the impact of dual domestic listing of common stocks on shareholder wealth. The sample contains 137 AMEX- and NYSE-listed companies that dually listed their common stocks on the Pacific and Midwest Stock Exchanges between 1984 and 1988. Because the sample stocks do not have unlisted trading privileges, dual listing changes the market structure in which the stocks traded. Changes in market structure may affect stock returns through the liquidity services provided by the competing markets and through the possible nonhomogeneous clientele across markets. Using standard event methodology to examine stock market behavior around dual listing shows that the net effect of dual listing on returns is negative. Such negative returns suggest that corporate managers have reasons for dual domestic listing other than increasing shareholder wealth.