The effects of online negative word-of-mouth on dissatisfied customers: A frustration–aggression perspective

Conceptualizing how customers construe online negative word-of-mouth (nWOM) following failure experiences remains unsettled, leaving providers with inconclusive recovery strategy programmes. This empirical study recognizes online nWOM as a co-created encounter between the complainant (i.e., the initiator of the online nWOM) and the recipient (i.e., the consumer who engages with the online nWOM), examining their idiosyncrasies to discern their understanding of the experience. It introduces frustration–aggression theory to online WOM literature, recognizing that it can support a higher-order understanding of phenomena. Through phenomenological hermeneutics, interviews and focus groups, data were collected from millennials in Albania and Kosovo that provided accounts of nuanced and distinctive online nWOM realities. The emerged insights extended extant theory to a three-fold online nWOM typology (i.e., lenient online nWOM, moderate online nWOM and severe online nWOM) recognizing the negative impact customers have on a provider, which is controlled by frustration–aggression tags. Frustration–aggression variations across online nWOM led to the construct of three types of customers that engage in online nWOM, namely tolerable online nWOM customers, rigorous online nWOM customers and confrontational online nWOM customers. Findings culminated with satisfactory recovery strategies aligned to customer inferences regardless of the nWOM context.     

Embrace the debate: Goals,de-marketing overconsumption,and conflicting information

When faced with conflicting information, consumers often wonder what the “right” consumption level is. A highly relevant context that is often associated with such uncertainty is food consumption (e.g., of meat or dairy products), where consumers seek information to determine whether and how much to consume, and often a recommended goal from health experts is to reduce overconsumption. We apply the theory of goal settings as reflecting such information, focusing on specific goals (e.g., “eat meat twice a week”) versus general goals (“eat less meat”). Based on a series of three experiments in both online and field settings with 674 participants overall, we show that in food consumption contexts with conflicting information, general goals set by health experts are less effective than specific goals in battling overconsumption. Perceived value of information was identified as the underlying mechanism as it mediated the effect of conflicting information on reduced overconsumption. Prior work suggests conflicting information is typically disadvantageous for consumers. Our research demonstrates how consumers can benefit from communication emphasizing specific goals when information conflicts. It contributes to policymakers, health experts, and social marketers that search for effective marketing strategies to reduce overconsumption of items that may be associated with conflicting information.     

Board of directors and export spillovers: What is the impact on extensive margins of trade?

Increased export experience on the board of nonexporting firms has a causal effect on their propensity to enter foreign markets in later periods. Using a universal set of Swedish employer–employee panel data for the period 2000–14, this paper finds evidence on spillover from exporters to non-exporting SMEs through outside board directors. The identification strategy to account for endogenous selection of external board members relies on external instruments and applications of different instrumental variable approaches, capturing also unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings are robust to controlling for export background among managers and employees, as well as firm size, human capital, total factor productivity, productivity spillovers, firm location and industry classification.     

How to achieve consumer continuance intention toward branded apps—from the consumer–brand engagement perspective

Branded mobile applications (apps) serve as useful marketing tools to assist existing and potential customers and greatly motivate consumers to engage with brands. This paper aims to investigate how branded apps achieve consumer continuance intention from the perspective of consumer–brand engagement (CBE). Data are collected from 509 users of Chinese branded mobile applications and analyzed using a structural equation model. Results showed three dimensions of CBE that have unique interrelationships that promote continuance intention. Perceived informational usefulness serve as a utilitarian motivation, while perceived entertainment and social presence as hedonic motivations, all contributing to CBE in different ways.     

“I’ll wait for him”: Understanding when female shoppers prefer working with gay male sales associates

This article explores an under-researched area in retailing; namely, straight female shoppers’ preferences for working with gay male sales associates. Study 1 employs qualitative methodology to show that female shoppers often prefer working with gay male sales associates when they are older or heavier than female sales associates. Study 2 employs experimental methodology to show that female shoppers desire to work with gay male associates more than their straight male counterparts when they are purchasing merchandise requiring non-sexual intimacy, such as apparel and cosmetics. The results should help retailers understand why many female shoppers willingly, and comfortably, work with gay male sales associates and the role of gay associates in various retail departments.     

Co–evolution of Industry Structure,Technology and Supporting Institutions,and the Making of Comparative Advantage

In recent years,a considerable body of research has been established on the co–evolution of technology and industry structure, from the time that the technology is young to the time when it is mature· A somewhat smaller body of research has been established on how private and public institutions, and public programs and policies co-evolved with a technology and industry· It is proposed here that nations differ in their pace and pattern of institutional response to the birth and development of an industry, and that the locus of comparative advantage is largely determined by these different kinds of national response.     

Revisiting the fit–performance thesis half a century later: a historical financial analysis of Chandler's own matched and mismatched firms

This study revisits Chandler's seminal work Strategy and Structure (1962) empirically. This work helped fashion the notion of strategic fit as well as the need for new organisational forms. Chandler's fit–performance thesis proposes that firms which match structure to their strategy will become economically more efficient than mismatched firms. The very same firms Chandler studied are analysed financially as their structure evolves through successive phases of being matched to their strategy, mismatched, and then finally matched again. Over 70 longitudinal tests are performed, yielding mostly statistically significant results. These tests surprisingly suggest that mismatched firms generally outperform firms that match structure to strategy. Such results matter in light of new conceptual approaches being introduced on the subject of ‘fit’; novel plausible explanations are provided for this apparent theoretical paradox.     

Facilitating intercultural negotiated practices in joint ventures: The case of a French–German railway organization

In this paper, we show how new work and managerial practices emerge in international joint ventures (IJVs), how they are co-constructed by cultural negotiating processes over time, and how this co-construction can provide synergistic effects. We use the case study of a binational railway organization which coordinates activities of its parent companies, DB and SNCF, between France and Germany, to focus on emerging practices, and use the framework of Brannen and Salk (2000) to categorize these practices. Our study centres on factors that facilitate the development of synergistic practices: organizational and communication structures, individual skills and socialization of IJV actors, and interpersonal relationships and learning processes in “boundary spanning dyads”. Where previous studies typically insist on boundary spanners as individuals, we specifically highlight the important role of boundary spanning dyads and relationships.