Leveraging brand equity to attract human capital

We propose that brand equity can influence job seekers’ perceptions of job opportunities. Our results suggest that job seekers view working for a strong brand as a way to build the power of their résumé. The belief that strong brands build powerful résumés is, in part, the outcome of job seekers’ beliefs that working for a strong brand will allow them to advance to better positions internally, provide them job-related training and skills, and demonstrate their willingness to work hard. In turn, job seekers express a greater desire to work for strong brands as measured by salary requirements and perceptions of job appeal in experiment 1 and job choice in experiment 2.

Quest for the eco‐apparel market: a study of mothers' willingness to purchase organic cotton clothing for their children

The purpose of this study was to examine what consumer characteristics are related to willingness to purchase and selection of children's organic cotton clothing (OCC). A survey was conducted on mothers of pre‐schoolers to collect data on mothers' environmental characteristics, involvement with OCC and children's clothing, children's clothing purchasing behaviour and willingness to purchase OCC. A buying scenario experiment was used to examine whether price and other product characteristics influenced the participants' selection of OCC. It was found that a mother's environmental concerns, environmental purchasing behaviour and recycling behaviour significantly affected their involvement in OCC, which further significantly determined mother's willingness to purchase OCC. However, mothers were not willing to pay a premium for purchasing children's OCC. A majority (59.5%) of the mothers who selected OCC in the buying scenario indicated fabric softness was the main reason for their selection. Preparing environmental education materials for consumers and producing OCC with high quality and good performance would help improve the acceptance of OCC in the market.     

Implementing Technologies for Financial Service Innovations in Base of the Pyramid Markets

This study examines how information communications technologies (ICTs) can be implemented effectively to provide financial service innovations to the poor who live in developing countries, a market collectively known as the “Base of the Pyramid” or BOP. The BOP needs—but commonly lacks—basic financial services, a situation that perpetuates poverty. With a dearth of formal banks especially in rural areas of developing countries, the BOP has almost no access to savings accounts, credit lines, and other necessary services. However, ICTs have the potential to overcome cost, infrastructure, and other barriers to service delivery, and are being used to offer new financial services such as mobile phone banking to the BOP. The purpose of this study is to determine ways of successfully implementing these technology‐enabled service innovations. The study draws on the Socio‐Technical View for theoretical girding, and uses case method to examine multiple ICT implementation projects in five sub‐Saharan African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Uganda). The projects, which were carried out by a leading microfinance banking organization named Opportunity International, provided mobile banks, point‐of‐service, and mobile phone banking services to the BOP. Several techniques were applied to gather data in the field over a two‐year period: depth interviews, direct observations, and internal document and data analysis. Multiple forms of evidence were triangulated against one another, and analyzed across cases until themes emerged and converged. In doing so, two specific forms of analysis, explanation building and cross‐case synthesis, were employed to make sense of the data. The findings, summarized as research propositions, collectively conclude that implementation is effective when the unique socio‐human, governmental‐regulatory, and market conditions of the BOP are accounted for, such that fit is achieved between the technologies and environments they are situated in. More specifically, effectiveness comes when implementation (1) addresses customer and agent limits with the technologies, and is accepted and supported by trained staff who monitor technology use and make responsive system adjustments; (2) exploits and promotes supportive governmental regulations and actions, as well as leverages sound electronic fund transfer (EFT) switches, whether government or bank established; and (3) accounts for low business capabilities and evolving market competition, along with the underdeveloped financial sector and financial literacy of the population. In sum, there are multiple factors that should be considered in the design and installation activities surrounding these technologies to ensure they provide cost‐effective, quality financial services to the poor.     

Expansion Opportunity at Triple F Farms: A Case Study

Many farms and ranches consider the decision to expand as one way to remain competitive in today's marketplace. Triple F Farms is contemplating the decision to expand by buying the land and machinery of the owner/manager's retiring father. Students and outreach audiences are led through the analysis and decision-making process to evaluate the differences in farm size and financial goals and to evaluate how those goals affect the producer's expansion decision.     

Innovations in Retail Business Models

A retail business model articulates how a retailer creates value for its customers and appropriates value from the markets. Innovations in business models are increasingly critical for building sustainable advantage in a marketplace defined by unrelenting change, escalating customer expectations, and intense competition. Drawing from extant strategy and retailing research, we propose that innovations in retail business models are best viewed as changes in three design components: (1) the way in which the activities are organized, (2) the type of activities that are executed, and (3) the level of participation of the actors engaged in performing those activities. We propose six major ways in which retailers could innovate their business models to enhance value creation and appropriation beyond the levels afforded by traditional approaches to retailing. We also describe the drivers of business model innovations, the potential consequences of such innovations, and numerous examples from retail practice that highlight our concepts and arguments. In doing so, we provide a starting point for academic research in a domain that is deficient in theoretical and empirical research, and offer retailing managers a framework to guide retail business model innovations for sustainable competitive advantage.     

Foreign Direct Investment and the Incentives to Innovate and Imitate*

We propose a new channel of FDI spillovers on domestic firms, which operates through imitation of original products. Domestic heterogeneous firms may not introduce any new products, introduce a new product line (innovate), or develop a variety that is a close substitute to an existing product line (imitate). The presence of foreign firms generates incentives for imitation because they introduce original products that are vertically differentiated from domestic products. Using firm‐level panel data for China, we find that increased FDI presence in a given industry leads to more imitation, but not necessarily more innovation, by domestic firms.     

Spurring Cross‐Functional Integration for Higher New Product Performance: A Group Effectiveness Perspective*

Spurring integration among functional specialists so they collectively create successful, or high‐performing, new products is a central interest of innovation practitioners and researchers. Firms are increasingly assembling cross‐functional new product development (NPD) teams for this purpose. However, integration of team members' divergent orientations and expertise is notoriously difficult to achieve. Individuals from distinct functions such as design, marketing, manufacturing, and research and development (R&D) are often assigned to NPD teams but have contrasting backgrounds, priorities, and thought worlds. If not well managed, this diversity can yield unproductive conflict and chaos rather than successful new products. Firms are thus looking for avenues of integrating the varied expertise and orientations within these cross‐functional teams. The aim of this study is to address two important and not fully resolved questions: (1) does cross‐functional integration in NPD teams actually improve new product performance; and if so, (2) what are ways to strengthen integration? The study began by developing a model of cross‐functional integration from the perspective of the group effectiveness theory. The theory has been used to explain the performance of a wide range of small, complex work groups; this study is the first application of the theory to NPD teams. The model developed from this theory was then tested by conducting a survey of dual informants in 206 NPD teams in an array of U.S. high‐technology companies. In answer to the first research question, the findings show that cross‐functional integration indeed contributes to new product performance as long conjectured. This finding is important in that it highlights that bringing together the skills, efforts, and knowledge of differing functions in an NPD team has a clear and coveted payoff: high‐performing new products. In answer to the second question, the findings indicate that both intra‐ (or internal) and extra‐ (or external) team factors contribute and codetermine cross‐functional integration. Specifically, social cohesion and superordinate identity as internal team factors and market‐oriented reward system, planning process formalization, and managerial encouragement to take risks as external team factors foster integration. These findings underscore that spurring integration requires addressing the conditions inside as well as outside NPD teams. These specialized work groups operate as organizations within organizations; recognition of this in situ arrangement is the first step toward better managing and ensuring rewards from team integration. Based on these findings, managerial and research implications were drawn for team integration and new product performance.     

The Image Realism Effect: The Effect of Unrealistic Product Images in Advertising

Many advertisements use unrealistic images of products (e.g., hand drawings, digital illustrations, rotoscoped animation) instead of actual product images. However, while unrealistic product images are widely used in advertisements, little is known about their possible impact on product evaluation. We propose that because products in unrealistic images look unconsumable or unusable, unrealistic product images (1) suppress consumers’ mental simulation of consuming or using those products and (2) increase uncertainty in the judgment of these products’ characteristics. As a result, unrealistic images attenuate the judgment of a product’s characteristics (both benefits and drawbacks). That is, the same characteristics are judged less intensely when a product is presented as an unrealistic image instead of a realistic image. Through seven studies, we demonstrate this effect for food items (e.g., bread, cupcakes, hamburgers, and chips) and durable goods (e.g., automobiles), finding support for the underlying processes. We further demonstrate that the impact of unrealistic images is not restricted to product evaluation but also extends to actual consumption.