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.

Customer relationship management processes: How faithful are business-to-business firms to customer profitability?

Marketing academicians and practitioners have over the past decade advocated the implementation of customer equity principles within firms. This article draws on adaptive structuration theory to frame the faithfulness of firms to acquiring and maintaining customers according to their profit potential. Using survey data from 158 business units engaged in business-to-business sales, this article examines the motivational effects of market growth rate and customization requirements, and the technology and information integration capabilities of the firm as determinants of firm adherence to treating customers according to their profitability. The study finds that firms are better at maintaining customers according to their profit potential than acquiring customers according to their profit potential. Further, maintenance faithfulness appears to have more ultimate impact on firm performance. The study suggests that pursuing customer profitability has limited effectiveness unless accompanied by a broader range of initiatives aimed at making the firm more customer-focused.     

Multiple ranking tasks in a semantic domain: An investigation of task order effects

The possibility of task order effects has not been studied previously for some types of multiple rating/ranking tasks commonly used in the social sciences. Data from two studies that employed multiple ranking tasks in a semantic domain were examined for evidence of task order effects. In general, multiple ranking tasks appeared to be free of order effects, although respondents may display less agreement in later tasks than in earlier tasks when data is collected in circumstances that do not promote the full attention and motivation of respondents.