Customer loyalty: Toward an integrated conceptual framework

Customer loyalty is viewed as the strength of the relationship between an individual’s relative attitude and repeat patronage. The relationship is seen as mediated by social norms and situational factors. Cognitive, affective, and conative antecedents of relative attitude are identified as contributing to loyalty, along with motivational, perceptual, and behavioral consequences. Implications for research and for the management of loyalty are derived. His research interests include consumer decision making, information processing, and consumer loyalty. He has published in theJournal of Consumer Research andAdvances in Consumer Research. His research interests are consumer information processing, persuasion cues in advertising, and international marketing. His articles have appeared in theJournal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, andCanadian Journal of Administrative Sciences as well as in a number of conference proceedings.     

Private saving in India and Malaysia compared: the roles of financial liberalization and expected pension benefits

In this article, we provide a comparative account of the evolution of private saving in India and Malaysia, and analyze how policy changes in the financial sector and pension system help explain differences in their saving performance. Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds estimation procedure, we find a fairly robust long-run relationship between private saving and its determinants in both countries. Consistent with the predictions made in the life cycle model, our results indicate that higher income growth stimulates private saving and an increase in age dependency retards private saving. The results provide some support for the hypothesis that financial liberalization results in lower private saving in both countries. The evidence also indicates that expected pension benefits tend to stimulate private saving in India, but that the reverse is found in Malaysia.     

Learning and knowledge diffusion in a global economy

I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to understand how multinationals affect host countries through knowledge diffusion. Workers in the model learn from their managers and knowledge diffusion takes place through worker mobility. Unlike in a model without learning, I present a novel mechanism through which an integrated equilibrium represents a Pareto improvement for the host country. I go on to explore other dynamic consequences of integration. The entry of multinationals makes the lifetime earning profiles of host country workers steeper. At the same time, if agents learn fast enough, integration creates unequal opportunities, thereby widening inequality. The ex-workers of foreign multinationals also found new firms which are, on average, larger than the largest firms under autarky.     

Managing product safety of imported Chinese goods

While recent recalls and scares have focused greatly on Chinese manufactured toys and foodstuffs, the issue of product safety extends to a wide variety of Chinese-produced goods. The supply chain in China is characterized by cost pressures and quality fade, multiple levels of outsourcing often involving small producers, a large number of counterfeit goods, Chinese cleverness at evading detection, and poor product safety surveillance by both the Chinese and U.S. governments. While some of these characteristics are present in other developing economies, few countries—save China—face all of these issues. To best counteract these forces, companies which outsource goods from China need a well-defined strategy to improve product safety. This strategy should encompass the practices of developing an organizational unit responsible for product safety, securing greater control over raw material sourcing in China, using extreme care in choosing Chinese subcontractors, conducting continuous product testing by multiple parties, being especially vigilant for counterfeits, and improving product traceability. Toward the end of ensuring items which meet quality standards, product safety auditing allows firms to assess their management of product safety of Chinese-made goods.     

揭示一个真实的中国

大多数人对上述问题的回答，简直让人感到瞠目结舌。因为除了上海、北京、广州和重庆等几大城市外，他们对广阔的中国市场的潜力几乎一无所知。中国中小城市的整体发展现状，给大多数行销和传播人员提出了严峻的挑战。他们往往忽视中国特异的多民族特性和多种不同方言地区的显著文化差异，而盲目地将中国飞速发展和快速壮大的理念一股脑推行到所有地区中。“忽略地区——二三级城镇”市场必将呈现巨大的增长态势，为了验证上述趋势，奥美和传立中国开展了一项以揭示真实中国为主题的调查研究。     

Subordinate‐Superior Upward Communication: Power,Politics, and Political Skill

A multiphase study involving 1,285 respondents was conducted to answer an important yet overlooked question: for a job requiring frequent informal communication with superiors, should an organization focus more on selecting employees with higher trait‐like willingness to communicate or on providing an environment where the flow of communication is easy and aided? We found support for the latter. Further, we observed that subordinates alter their communication behaviors based on the perception of superior's power, politics in the organization, and their own political skills. The study contributes to a better understanding of how situational variables affect subordinate‐superior upward communication. Implications of the study are also discussed. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Understanding responses to comedic advertising aggression: the role of vividness and gender identity

As the use of comedic aggression in advertising has become more frequent, questions about the boundary conditions of its effectiveness become more important. Issues related to the vividness of the aggression, unique audience responses, and legitimacy of the aggression are examined here as potential influences on the impact of comedic advertising aggression. Two experiments are reported that explore how reactions to comedic advertising aggression are influenced by components of vividness (concreteness – aggressive intensity, emotional interest – psychological distance), the audience's gender identity, and whether the aggression was provoked and justified. Feminine identity individuals in close psychological situations react quite negatively to advertising using the highest level of comedic aggression while masculine identity individuals actually prefer the most vivid aggression in some conditions. The response patterns become different for feminine and masculine identity individuals when the aggression is unprovoked and therefore less justified. The results provide guidance about the limits of using comedic advertising aggression.     

The Impact of the Great Recession on Financial Services Advertising: An Exploratory Study

We explore how advertising managers of financial services organizations have responded to the repercussions of the Great Recession in their advertising strategies. To this end, we compare print ads for financial services that appeared in six magazines at two periods in time: 2005, prior to the Great Recession and 2010, after the end of the Great Recession. We content analyzed 755 prints ads and found major differences in the advertising strategies from prerecession to postrecession, particularly in the type of appeals. We further examined these strategic shifts by audience focus (business-to-business and business-to-consumer) and gender focus (male, female, or both).