Celebrity influences on consumer decision making: new insights and research directions

ABSTRACT

Throughout human history, people have expressed admiration for heroes who possessed extraordinary abilities and achieved superhuman goals. For many, modern-day celebrities fulfil this role and are prominent in various marketing communications activities. This paper addresses the literature review gaps and provides an in-depth review of the psychological and social psychological perspectives which are relevant to the celebrity endorsement literature. The contributions of this paper consist of a detailed analysis of important types of consumer-celebrity relationships, key emotional drivers (e.g. envy and admiration) of celebrity influence and the development of an original conceptual model. The conceptual model pulls together the past research and identifies new research gaps, which synthesises different research perspectives and provides a sound theoretical basis guiding future researchers and marketing managers.     

Complainers versus non-complainers: a multi-national investigation of individual and situational influences on customer complaint behaviour

Abstract

One of the least understood areas in customer complaint behaviour (CCB) research is why some customers complain and others do not in similar dissatisfaction situations. Prior research has explored differences in customer characteristics between complainers and non-complainers, but not in association with relevant situational factors. This gap is addressed with a new conceptual framework incorporating two situational variables – customer dissatisfaction and involvement – and two consumer traits – impulsivity and self-monitoring. Several hypotheses about their main and interaction effects are tested in two different contexts, using a survey-based study in three countries (Singapore, South Korea, and the United States). Specifically, it is shown that CCB is positively associated with involvement and impulsivity, and negatively with self-monitoring. Involvement and impulsivity are shown to moderate the association between dissatisfaction and CCB positively, and self-monitoring moderates it negatively. Some implications and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Universally optimal balanced changeover designs with first residuals

Considering the presence of first order residual effects of treatments, a family of variance balanced changeover designs has been presented and universal optimality of the designs is established. The designs use only v experimental units and (v ? 1)/2 periods for v = 4t + 3 prime or prime power number of treatments; t being a positive integer. A special feature of the proposed designs is that ‘in the order of presentation of treatments to experimental units over periods, each treatment is once immediately preceded by only half of the other treatments and is immediately followed once by the remaining half of the treatments’. This characteristic results in reducing the size of the variance balanced designs considerably.     

FDI Location and the Relevance of Spatial Linkages: Evidence from Provincial and Industry FDI in China

In this study both aggregate and industry‐level foreign direct investment (FDI) data are employed to investigate the spatial dependence of FDI hosts. The analysis contributes to the existing literature by focusing on the heterogeneous spatial correlation of FDI in different industries. Using more comprehensive FDI data across multiple industries and multiple provinces in China from 1999 to 2007, the results show a significant spatial correlation among provinces. Aggregate FDI tends to be regional trade platform oriented indicating neighboring provinces become competitors for FDI. In contrast, results based on industry‐level provincial FDI show stronger support for vertical or complex vertical FDI.     

Managing the world's forests

Forests play a vital role in balancing natural systems: the stabilization of global climate and the management of water and land. 30% of the earth's total land area is forested. 66% of the tropical moist forests are in Latin America and the remainder in Africa and Asia. 75% of tropical dry forests are in Africa. Temperate forests are primarily in developed countries. Deforestation and misuse of forests occurs primarily in developing countries at significant social, economic, and environmental costs. Losses have occurred in fuelwood, fodder, timber, forest products, biological diversity, habitats, genetic materials for food and medicine. The World Bank's evolving role in forestry is briefly described. Agreement has not been reached among people or nations about the most appropriate means to balance conservation and development goals. The challenge is to stabilize existing forests and increase forest planting. The causes of forest degradation must be understood. Direct causes include agricultural encroachment, cattle ranching, fuelwood gathering, commercial logging, and infrastructure development. These direct causes are driven by economic, social, and political forces: market and policy failures, population growth, and poverty. The market failures include: 1) the lack of clearly defined property rights on forest resources for now and the future, 2) the conflict between individual and societal needs, 3) the difficulty in placing a value on nonmarket environmental services and joint products, and 4) the separation between private and social costs. The solution is action at the local, national, and global levels. Countries must establish forest policy. The existing government incentives which promote deforestation must be changed. For example, concession policy and royalty systems must be corrected; explicit and implicit export subsidies on timber and forest products must be stopped. Private incentives must be established to promote planting of trees, practicing preservation, and setting up sustainable management systems. Property rights must be clearly defined and land use policies must spell out forest use patterns. A global strategy for forest management is needed for conservation, protection, reforestation, agricultural and rural development, sustainable use, and research with funding.     

Muslim religiosity and purchase intention of different categories of Islamic financial products

Considering the rapid growth of Islamic Financial Products (IFPs) worldwide and the limited research on Muslims’ buying behaviour of such products, this research examines the relationship between religiosity, consumer buying attitude and purchase intention towards different categories of IFPs. The findings suggest that buying attitude has full mediation for deposit, credit and capital market products and partial mediation for insurance products on the association between Muslim religiosity and their purchase intention. Interestingly, religiosity influenced positively even for insurance and capital market products. This is in contrast with our hypothesised relationships for capital and insurance products. The study contributes to the literature by enhancing our understanding of the complex mediating religiosity – buying attitude – purchase intention relationships for different categories of IFPs.     

Motivating high‐impact innovation: Evidence from managerial compensation contracts

We investigate the relationship between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation and firm innovation and find that long‐term incentives in the form of options, especially unvested options, and protection from managerial termination in the form of golden parachutes are positively related to corporate innovation, and particularly to high‐impact, exploratory (new knowledge creation) invention. Conversely, non‐equity pay has a detrimental effect on the input, output and impact of innovation. Tests using the passage of an option expensing regulation (FAS 123R) as an exogenous shock to option compensation suggest a causal interpretation for the link between long‐term pay incentives, patents and citations. Furthermore, we find that the decline in option pay following the implementation of FAS 123R has led to a significant reduction in exploratory innovation and therefore had a detrimental effect on innovation output. Overall, our findings support the idea that compensation contracts that protect from early project failure and incentivize long‐term commitment are more suitable for inducing high‐impact corporate innovation.     

The Structure and Composition of India’s Exports and Industrial Transformation (1980–2000)

Abstract

This paper analyses structural change in Indian manufactured exports empirically for 143 (mainly manufacturing) industrial groupings. Trade indices such as Balassa’s revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index and variants are used. Detailed econometric analysis is employed to examine structural change. The stability and the process of the intertemporal evolution of the RCA indices is considered. Three technology categories (high technology, medium technology and low technology) are analysed individually. Our results point towards substantial industrial restructuring in manufactured exports. We find evidence of despecialisation within India’s manufactured exports for the time period studied, which is consistent with increasing specialisation in a subset of manufactured exports.