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► Price initially appears to be the greatest barrier to green product adoption. ► Expertise appears to be the linchpin in persuading non-green consumers. ► Numerous other barriers, ...including price, are likely impacted by expertise. ► The number and form of informational cues impacts consumer expertise. ► A large number of detailed verbal cues are preferred over simple numeric cues.
Knowledge regarding the barriers to green consumption is of increasing importance as retail organizations place greater emphasis on the environment in evaluating performance in adherence with the triple-bottom line approach. The objective of this research is to investigate individual barriers that affect consumers’ evaluations of the green products found in retail outlets. The research presented utilizes a critical incident qualitative study and two quantitative studies to examine the factors associated with non-green purchase behaviors. In addition, findings from an experiment suggest that altering the number and form of informational product cues may overcome purchase barriers. These factors are discussed, as are the implications of the research for stakeholders of retail organizations.
Does improving employee happiness affect customer outcomes? The current study attempts to answer this question by examining the impact of employee satisfaction trajectories (i.e., systematic changes ...in employee satisfaction) on customer outcomes. After accounting for employees’ initial satisfaction levels, the analyses demonstrate the importance of employee satisfaction trajectories for customer satisfaction and repatronage intentions, as well as identify customer-employee contact as a necessary conduit for their effect. From a macro perspective, employee satisfaction trajectories strongly impact customer satisfaction for companies with significant employee–customer interaction, but not for companies without such interaction. From a micro perspective, employee satisfaction trajectories influence customer repatronage intentions for frequent customers, but not for infrequent customers. These effects are robust to controlling for previous customer evaluations and recent employee evaluations. Overall, these findings extend the dominant view of examining static, employee satisfaction levels and offer important implications for the management of the organizational frontline.
Most studies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in a supply chain context have been conducted from the buyer's perspective. Few have paid attention to how suppliers leverage this ...kind of performance to expand exchange relationships with major customers. From a resource dependence and social exchange perspective, this article specifically examines whether two supplier CSR performance dimensions—environmental and product performance—can serve as a mechanism to expand a supplier's relationships with a smaller number of major buyers, where its increasing exchange dependence often measures this factor. Moreover, these dependent relationships may further develop and change under different conditions of uncertainty. Using large‐scale longitudinal data to test the proposed model, we find empirical evidence that a supplier's environmental and product performance relate positively to greater customer dependence and improved financial performance across diverse sets of industries. However, the findings also reveal that both demand‐driven and supply‐side uncertainty can weaken the effect. Specifically, the positive effect of environmental performance tends to weaken in the face of supply‐side uncertainty, whereas the positive effect of product performance tends to weaken amid demand‐driven uncertainty. Accordingly, we note important nuances and contingencies for suppliers to consider when considering how investments in these CSR performance dimensions affect exchange dependence.
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•Customer attitudinal loyalty can be held with different levels of conviction.•In the presence of barriers, attitudinal loyalty with conviction predicts behavior.•Customer-company ...identification fosters conative loyalty with conviction.•Customer satisfaction fosters conative loyalty without conviction.•Retailers take on risk by exclusively pursuing customer satisfaction-based loyalty.
Why do customers’ attitudinal loyalty fail to predict their behavior? More importantly, what creates such latent loyalty? We attempt to answer these questions by examining the antecedents and outcomes of loyalty conviction, which represents the inherent strength/uncertainty in a customer’s attitudinal loyalty. For deep attitudinal loyalty (i.e., conative loyalty), the findings suggest that customer satisfaction creates loyalty held without conviction. In contrast, customer-company identification creates loyalty held with conviction. Importantly, attitudinal loyalty without conviction loses its ability to predict behavior when situational and competitive barriers are present whereas loyalty with conviction maintains a predictive relationship with behavior despite the same barriers.
As green marketing strategies become increasingly more important to firms adhering to a triple-bottom line performance evaluation, the present research seeks to better understand the role of “green” ...as a marketing strategy. Through an integration of the marketing, management, and operations literatures, an investigative framework is generated that identifies the various stakeholders potentially impacted through the environmentally friendly efforts of a firm. Specifically, the inter-connected nature of the core business disciplines of marketing, management (both strategy and human resources), and operations are examined as controllable functions within an organization from which strategies can be enacted to affect a firm’s stakeholders. The prior research in these areas is examined to identify potential research opportunities in marketing while also offering a series of representative research questions that can help guide future research in marketing.
More than 2 billion people are infected with Mycobacterium. tuberculosis; however, only 5-10% of those infected will develop active disease. Recent data suggest that containment is controlled locally ...at the level of the granuloma and that granuloma architecture may differ even within a single infected individual. Formation of a granuloma likely requires exposure to mycobacterial components released from infected macrophages, but the mechanism of their release is still unclear. We hypothesize that exosomes, which are small membrane vesicles containing mycobacterial components released from infected macrophages, could promote cellular recruitment during granuloma formation. In support of this hypothesis, we found that C57BL/6 mouse-derived bone marrow macrophages treated with exosomes released from M. tuberculosis-infected RAW264.7 cells secrete significant levels of chemokines and can induce migration of CFSE-labeled macrophages and splenocytes. Exosomes isolated from the serum of M. bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin-infected mice could also stimulate macrophage production of chemokines and cytokines ex vivo, but the level and type differed during the course of a 60-d infection. Of interest, the exosome concentration in serum correlated strongly with mouse bacterial load, suggesting some role in immune regulation. Finally, hollow fiber-based experiments indicated that macrophages treated with exosomes released from M. tuberculosis-infected cells could promote macrophage recruitment in vivo. Exosomes injected intranasally could also recruit CD11b(+) cells into the lung. Overall, our study suggests that exosomes may play an important role in recruiting and regulating host cells during an M. tuberculosis infection.
Background The aim of this study was to describe for the first time the medium to long-term outcome after distal humeral hemiarthroplasty (DHH). Methods Twenty-six patients (mean age, 62; range, ...29-92 years) treated with DHH for intra-articular distal humeral fractures and its sequelae were studied retrospectively. Results Four patients had died and 4 had been revised to total elbow arthroplasty: 2 for periprosthetic fractures and 2 for primary component loosening (all in prostheses without an anterior flange). Six other complications had occurred: ulnar neuritis, 4; stiffness, 1; and wound necrosis, 1. Seventeen patients underwent assessment at a mean of 80 months after surgery. The mean values of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) elbow score (pain, 9.93; function, 25; satisfaction, 9.06); Mayo Elbow Performance Score (90); Quick Disabilities of Arm, Shoulder and Hand (19), and EuroQol EQ5D (Index, 0.84; Visual Analog Scale, 80) outcome measures demonstrated good function and satisfaction with little pain. The mean flexion extension arc was 116°. There was no evidence of instability. Radiologic evidence of ulnar wear was seen in 13 patients and may be related to prosthetic design to some extent. Worse wear was associated with a higher ASES pain score, lower satisfaction score, and lower EuroQoL Visual Analog Scale of quality of life. Degree of wear correlates with time after surgery but not with age at the time of surgery. Conclusion DHH offers a treatment option for unreconstructable distal humeral fractures and is associated with a good long-term outcome.
ABSTRACT
Healthcare providers are expected to compete across multiple performance dimensions, thereby managing both their financial productivity and the patients’ “in process” experiences. This fact ...creates tensions in some healthcare settings, as providers need to provide high‐quality care and positive customer experiences while still being financially responsible. Increasingly, these goals create pressures that require emergency departments (EDs) to generate operational efficiencies to improve how healthcare providers manage patient flow at different service stages and to deliver better care for an increasing number of patients at a more reasonable cost. From the perspective of managing patient process flow stage times, this article uses online ratings and secondary source data to examine how EDs can simultaneously improve both experiential and financial productivity performance. Our findings strongly indicate that EDs may be able to leverage the physician‐directed evaluation time stage to improve departmental efficiencies in both performance areas. However, the diminishing value of evaluation time and the time a patient spends in pre‐care for ED services are necessary contingencies to consider. Finally, to illustrate the practical relevance of these findings, we explore the perceived tradeoffs of managing the different patient flow time stages.
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