Choose, Choose, Choose, Choose, Choose, Choose, Choose: Emerging and Prospective Research on the Deleterious Effects of Living in Consumer Hyperchoice

The ideology of consumption and the imperative of consumer choice have washed across the globe. In today's developed economies there is an ever-increasing amount of buying, amidst an ever-increasing amount of purchase options, amidst an ever-increasing amount of stress, amidst an ever-decreasing amount of discretionary time. This brief essay reviews research suggesting, for example, that hyperchoice confuses people and increases regret, that hyperchoice is initially attractive but ultimately unsatisfying, and that hyperchoice is psychologically draining. Future research is then discussed, including how and why hyperchoice may have other toxic effects on people, including the degrading of moral emotions and behavior.     

The Face of Fairness: Self-Awareness as a Means to Promote Fairness among Managers with Low Empathy

Although managing fairness is a critical concern for organizations, not all managers are predisposed to enact high levels of fairness. Emerging empirical evidence suggests that personality characteristics can be an important antecedent of managers’ fair behavior. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to understand how to promote fairness among managers who are naturally predisposed to engage in lower levels of fairness. Building upon self-awareness theory, we argue that increasing managers’ self-awareness can motivate managers with low trait empathy to engage in greater levels of justice. We test the interactive effects of trait empathy and state self-awareness using an experimental study (N = 76) in which individuals were asked to communicate negative news. In support of our hypothesis, our results indicate that increasing self-awareness through self-focusing situations can help promote interactional justice when communicating negative news for individuals with low trait empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

An Empirical Investigation Into the Effect of Music Downloading on the Consumer Expenditure of Recorded Music: A Time Series Approach

The downloading of music from the internet has been proliferating over the past three years. The recording industry believes that this phenomenon is responsible for the decline in recorded music sales since the year 2000, and to a certain extent this is supported by consumer surveys and previous studies that have used panel or cross-sectional data. In this analysis, an econometric, time-series model of consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs is estimated which takes into account factors that are posited as effecting the consumption of recorded music, but not used in previous studies. The most significant finding is that music downloading, subsequent to 2000, affects consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs through the price elasticity of demand. Falling DVD prices have also served to reduce the demand of recorded music during this same period.     

Customer satisfaction and customer behavior: The differential role of brand and category expectations

Previous research has suggested that consumers use multiple strands to evaluate their satisfaction with a product and to establish postpurchase behavioral intention. However, prior empirical research has focused on which individual standard best predicts satisfaction. In contrast, this article develops and tests a model of consumer satisfaction and postpurchase behavioral intention in which consumers simultaneously use multiple standards—perceptions of performance, brand expectations, and category expectations. The results of an experiment for a simulated service encounter provide support for the proposition that consumers use multiple standards and that these standards have differential effects on such postpurchase outcomes as satisfaction, repurchase intention, and willingness to recommend. Brand expectations are shown to be better predictors of affective outcomes (such as satisfaction), while category expectations are shown to be better predictors of behavioral outcomes (repurchase and recommendation). Consistent with prior research, perceived performance is shown to have a strong effect on both satisfaction and behavioral intention.     

Incorporating satisfaction measures into a restaurant productivity index

The increasing stature of the foodservice industry in the global service economy suggests that productivity analyses—similar to those performed in non-service-based settings—would benefit multi-unit operators by maximizing their desirable operational outcomes while minimizing expenses and other detrimental conditions such as low job satisfaction. This paper suggests that such analyses might be possible through the application of a holistic productivity metric—one that includes traditional operational variables such as revenue, profit, food cost, and labor cost, and previously ignored variables such as guest and employee satisfaction as well as retention equity. Through data gathered from a single chain's 36 corporate-owned, same-brand casual-theme restaurants located in metropolitan centers across the United States, we found that factors leading to maximum outputs such as controllable profit and retention equity include employee satisfaction in addition to expected variables such as cost of goods sold and number of seats. Most notably, employee satisfaction as an input proved to be the most volatile variable in maximizing operational outputs.     

The self-catering accommodation sector in Yorkshire,England

Little baseline data exist concerning the outlook and business practices of those operating in the self-catering accommodation sector. Drawing on a survey of operators in Yorkshire, England, this paper finds a concentration of micro-enterprises that are unsophisticated in their approach to managing their business. The findings pose challenges to those agencies charged with enhancing the competitiveness of the sector.     

The importance of packaging in purchase and usage behaviour

This study's primary objective is to analyse how consumers evaluate product packaging in two distinct phases of the consumer decision‐making process: at the moment of acquisition and post‐consumption. The packaging's technical, functional and informative attributes, as well as its influence on satisfaction and loyalty, were evaluated. An empirical study was conducted with a product of immediate consumption, milk, using four versions of packaging and a total sample of 265 family units. The model was evaluated using partial least squares (PLS), and differences were compared using variance analysis. The results demonstrate the most and least valued attributes, the primary differences between the four types of packaging, and the perception generated at each moment. The research provides interesting theoretical and empirical perspectives and has business implications for marketing directors and product managers.     

Consumer Self-Confidence in Wine Consumers: The Role of Knowledge-Based Factors

This study uses the Wine Self-Confidence Scale (WSCS) with a sample of 297 customers of ABC Fine Wine and Spirits, a Florida-based retailer, to examine aspects of self-confidence in wine purchasing. The results indicate that two knowledge-based self-confidence factors (information knowledge and persuasion knowledge) were predominant for these consumers. The study showed strong support for the WSCS, which was developed as a measure of self-confidence in wine buying by Olsen, Thompson, and Clarke (2003) and how these relate to reliance on personal experience.     

Which Characteristics Predict the Survival of Insolvent Firms? An SME Reorganization Prediction Model

The negative impact of insolvency, especially in small and medium enterprises, informs the objective of this paper: to study the characteristics of bankrupt firms to achieve a preventive diagnosis for reorganization by means of artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies such as rough set and PART methods. The AI models obtained show not only the key variables to predict insolvency, but also their relations and the critical values. Using only five firm characteristics (sector, size, number of shareholdings, return on assets, and cash ratio), our model could reduce delays and costs, since it is able to predict which firms will undergo reorganization or liquidation before the legal procedure.