Purpose
Although unfavorable pricing errors (UPEs) cost customers billions of dollars each year, research has not yet examined customers’ reactions to UPEs. This paper aims to fill this gap by ...examining customers’ reactions to UPEs in terms of frequency, magnitude and the interaction between frequency and magnitude. Also, this study explores the moderated mediating role of price consciousness.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experimental studies were conducted to examine customers’ reactions to UPEs in terms of frequency, magnitude and the interaction between frequency and magnitude. PROCESS Model 6 and 84 along with multivariate regression analysis and MANOVA were used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that high-frequency and high-magnitude UPEs lead to increased perceived deception and dissatisfaction, resulting in a higher negative attitude toward the grocery store, decreased re-patronage intentions and increased negative word-of-mouth (NWOM). Also, results show that regardless of customers’ price consciousness level, customers display negative reactions when encountering UPEs.
Research limitations/implications
This paper only investigates UPEs in the brick and mortar setting; future studies should examine UPEs in different settings.
Practical implications
The findings show that UPEs can cause significant problems for grocery stores. Thus, managers should take precautionary measures (e.g. constantly checking shelves) to ensure that the advertised price and the checkout price match.
Originality/value
This paper represents the first attempt to empirically examine the relationship between UPEs frequency and magnitude, on the one hand, and perceived deception, dissatisfaction, customer attitude, re-patronage intentions, NWOM and price consciousness on the other.
Research has emphasized the importance of matching products' characteristics with their supply chain design (i.e., supply chain fit). Fisher () introduced the notion of supply chain fit and indicated ...that before developing a supply chain firms must consider the nature of the demand for their products. I expand on the Fisher () framework by offering a more comprehensive understanding of when it pays off for firms to deploy resources to achieve supply chain fit. I argue that it is simplistic to assume that perfect supply chain fit will always lead to improved financial performance because the benefits generated by perfect supply chain fit might be offset by the resources deployed to achieve that fit. In order to execute this research I use archival and survey data to evaluate the moderating effects of six dimensions of environmental uncertainty (e.g., munificence, market dynamism, technological dynamism, technical complexity, product diversity, and geographic dispersion) on the relationship between supply chain fit and financial performance.
Immigration is an important and contemporary topic in management education given its impact on labor, wages, innovation, and diversity. However, extant research offers few insights into the ...antecedents to student immigration attitudes. Survey data from undergraduate students taking business courses at two large public universities in the southeast U.S. reveal that while student attitudes toward immigration are more moderate than the general U.S. population, these attitudes differ by gender, political affiliation, and immigration background. Following realistic conflict theory and social identity theory, these student immigration attitudes are a function of both fear and competition. First, their attitudes are confounded by conflicting antecedents in perceived personal competition for resources with immigrants (e.g., jobs, wages) versus immigration benefits (e.g., costs, labor base, innovation). Second, xenophobia (fear of immigrants) is a remarkably powerful influencer of one’s immigration attitude and its antecedents. With these points, management educators must engage students in critical thinking about immigration to prepare them to effectively work with diverse colleagues and business partners while leading global organizations. We, therefore, present four cross-disciplinary areas of intersection between immigration and management education, including diversity and cultural intelligence, human resource management and ethics, entrepreneurship and innovation, and finally, economic and socioeconomic impacts.
We study the diffusion of influence in random multiplex networks where links can be of r different types, and, for a given content (e.g., rumor, product, or political view), each link type is ...associated with a content-dependent parameter ci in 0,∞ that measures the relative bias type i links have in spreading this content. In this setting, we propose a linear threshold model of contagion where nodes switch state if their "perceived" proportion of active neighbors exceeds a threshold τ. Namely a node connected to mi active neighbors and ki-mi inactive neighbors via type i links will turn active if ∑cimi/∑ciki exceeds its threshold τ. Under this model, we obtain the condition, probability and expected size of global spreading events. Our results extend the existing work on complex contagions in several directions by (i) providing solutions for coupled random networks whose vertices are neither identical nor disjoint, (ii) highlighting the effect of content on the dynamics of complex contagions, and (iii) showing that content-dependent propagation over a multiplex network leads to a subtle relation between the giant vulnerable component of the graph and the global cascade condition that is not seen in the existing models in the literature.
We seek to explore whether customers’ levels of service recovery expectations differ across customers who, prior to the service failure, publicly complimented the firm on social media and customers ...who, in advance of the service failure, privately complimented the firm on social media. We explore these differences in terms of satisfaction with the service provider and willingness to go back to the service provider. We conduct an experiment to test the research hypotheses. Our study results show that customers who complimented the service provider publicly (relative to privately) on social media in advance of a service failure require a higher level of service recovery to be satisfied with the service provider and go back to the service provider. Further, these effects are partly moderated by customer loyalty and social media usage intensity.
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the effect of perceived brand interactivity on customer purchases along with the mediating effect of perceived brand fairness. To increase the explanatory power ...of the model, this study also examines the moderating role of brand involvement.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was conducted to measure the constructs of interest. The direct, indirect (mediation) and conditional (moderation) effects were evaluated using linear regression, PROCESS Model 4 and PROCESS Model 59, respectively. Further, the Johnson Neyman (also called floodlight analysis) technique was used to probe the interaction terms.
Findings
The study results indicate that perceived brand interactivity directly and indirectly (via perceived brand fairness) impact customer purchases. The results also reveal that the positive impact of perceived brand interactivity on perceived brand fairness is greater when brand involvement is lower. In the same vein, the positive impact of perceived brand fairness on customer purchases is greater when brand involvement is lower. However, brand involvement does not moderate the impact of perceived brand involvement on customer purchases.
Originality/value
This study examines the effect of perceived brand interactivity on customer purchases (as a customer engagement behavior) while accounting for the mediating role of perceived brand fairness and the moderating role of brand involvement. The results provide noteworthy theoretical and managerial implications.
We aim to differentiate psychological customer engagement from behavioral customer engagement formally. Thus, we examine the impact of psychological customer engagement on behavioral customer ...engagement (i.e., customer purchases, customer referrals, customer influence, and customer knowledge). To enhance the model’s explanatory power, we also explore the moderating role of customer commitment in that relationship. An online survey (
N
= 207) was conducted to measure the constructs of interest. Regression analyses test research hypotheses; PROCESS Model 1 was used to test the moderating role of customer commitment. Further, the Johnson–Neyman (JN) technique (also called floodlight analysis) was employed to probe the interaction terms. The results show that when customers cognitively and affectively engage with a brand, they are more willing to behave favorably toward the brand by purchasing its products/services, promoting it, influencing others on social media platforms, and providing valuable suggestions or feedback to the brand. The results also indicate that the positive impact of psychological customer engagement on customer purchases and customer referrals is stronger for lowly committed customers than highly committed customers. However, regardless of customers’ levels of commitment, customers display high levels of customer influence and knowledge.
Public acquisitions have been a constant challenge in the application process for public funds, especially in the application for European non-reimbursable funds.The low rate of absorption relating ...to the programming period 2014-2020 is closely linked to the manner of processing public acquisitions in Romania, these engendering most of the delays in the application process of non-reimbursable funds projects. Although Romanian primary legislation relating to public acquisitions is balanced by the community’s acquis, secondary legislation shows inconsistencies and leaves room for interpretation, with many scantily regulated subjects.Corroborated by the lack of clear descriptions of the roles relating to the National Authority for Public Procurement and to the Managing Authorities in regards to the verification of public acquisitions made by beneficiaries of European funds, this causes not only delays in the application process of the projects, but also financial corrections and a low rate of absorption.
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