The past,present, and future of brand research

Marketing Letters - This article discusses the past, present, and future of brand research. We begin by reviewing three historical eras of branding development in the past: the information,...     

.net最重要的10个问题--你应当了解的微软战略

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Most-Favored Treatment Provisions as Nondiscrimination Guarantees

A firm employs suppliers who make specific investments. Because output demand is uncertain and the cost of enumerating contingencies high, the firm retains some unilateral control over the input quantities it purchases. To allay suppliers’ concerns over potential opportunism the firm must commit not to pit them against one another ex post by threatening to buy less from those who refuse to discount their prices. By extending most-favored treatment guarantees the firm commits not to discriminate. In some circumstances this generates efficient and opportunism-free outcomes. In others it is less effective but may remain attractive relative to other options. Evidence from field market contracts for natural gas corroborates this nondiscrimination hypothesis.     

A Cross‐Disciplinary Examination of Firm Orientations’ Performance Outcomes: The Role of Supply Chain Flexibility

Although market orientation (MO) has long been considered an important business philosophy, the examination of MO outside the firm's boundaries has been rather limited. To address this, this study explores how supply chain orientation and operational flexibility (FLX) facilitate the implementation of MO. Although the positive impact of MO on firm performance has been well established, this study highlights that such benefits are enhanced by the development of supply chain related capabilities. Results indicate that market‐oriented firms are more likely to realize the strategic importance of managing the supply chain when operating under conditions of high environmental munificence, dynamism, and complexity. This provides a better understanding of the complex relationship between the demand and supply sides of the firm. This study highlights the importance of marketing theory and concepts to supply chain management scholars, and vice versa. This further accentuates the importance of eliminating the disconnect between supply and demand‐management processes, also described as the “Great Divide” (Drucker 1973; Esper et al. 2010a,b). A number of key managerial implications are offered as well.     

Happily Ever After: How Ending Valence Influences Narrative Persuasion in Cautionary Stories

Narratives are a persuasive platform that evokes processing distinct from other message formats. Story-ending valence is a component common to all stories and can influence how individuals respond to and are persuaded by the story. The current work examines how ending valence of a cautionary story, a popular type of narrative that delivers a warning to the audience, influences story-consistent beliefs through a process of global reflection or understanding of the overall story message. Across three studies, we find a positive story ending enhances reflection on the message meaning and, subsequently, enhances story-consistent beliefs.     

Is there gender bias when creative directors judge advertising? Name cue effect in ad evaluation

A lack of women in creative departments has been documented in previous research. These departments are seen as a male fraternity subculture in advertising agencies, where women experience many difficulties in their career progress. One of these drawbacks is gender bias in the selection of ideas' process. Male creative directors are believed to promote ideas created by men within a homosocial environment. This female perception emerged from previous qualitative research is studied experimentally for the first time. Almost 90 advertising creative directors and higher level positions assessed ads created by students in an advertising university course. In the current study, we explore the effects of ad gender authorship. Results revealed an absence of gender bias based on ad name cues, neither the gender of the ad creators nor the creatives affected the evaluations. The findings are discussed and future research is proposed.     

Linking Unlearning with Work–Life Balance: An Initial Empirical Investigation into SMEs

The use of work–life balance (WLB) supporting cultures to provide and support the welfare of both the individuals and their families is expected to improve organizational outcomes by enabling company members to improve levels of job satisfaction and commitment to work. However, creating or introducing another culture in the company frequently generates internal problems when it conflicts with the current culture in terms of the beliefs, habits, and things managers take for granted. In this paper, we develop a framework for modeling how the unsuitable knowledge may be mitigated in order to strengthen a WLB culture. It is based on the idea that the presence of an unlearning context that fosters the updating of knowledge is likely to be essential for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) that are trying to implement a WLB culture. The research model and hypothesized relationships are empirically tested using the structural equation modeling approach, validated by factor analysis of 229 SMEs in the Spanish metal industry. Our findings show that in order to strengthen a WLB culture and thus positively influence innovation‐related outcomes, SMEs meet the challenge of developing an unlearning context to counteract the negative effects of the outdated knowledge in relevant areas and to facilitate the replacement of out‐of‐date or obsolete knowledge.     

GAMBLING IN CONTESTS WITH REGRET

This paper discusses the gambling contest introduced in Seel and Strack (2013, Gambling in Contests, Journal of Economic Theory, 148(5), 2033–2048) and considers the impact of adding a penalty associated with failure to follow a winning strategy. The Seel and Strack model consists of n‐agents each of whom privately observes a transient diffusion process and chooses when to stop it. The player with the highest stopped value wins the contest, and each player's objective is to maximize her probability of winning the contest. We give a new derivation of the results of Seel and Strack based on a Lagrangian approach. Moreover, we consider an extension of the problem to a behavioral finance context in the sense of regret theory. In particular, an agent is penalized when her chosen strategy does not win the contest, but there existed an alternative strategy that would have resulted in victory.