Companies are increasing their use of cause-related marketing as a means of communicating their commitment to corporate social responsibility while accomplishing their strategic goals. Although prior ...studies suggest that consumers react positively to cause-related marketing programs, understanding of their impact on financial performance remains limited. To address this gap, the authors employ an event study to examine the effects of cause-related marketing announcements on shareholder value using a sample of firms that appeared on
Fortune
’s Most Admired All-Star list between 2005 and 2017. Study results show that announcement of these initiatives results in a significant loss of shareholder value. These losses are most pronounced for firms making monetary-only contributions, in comparison to those that make in-kind donations. In addition, the negative effects are mitigated for firms that have stronger reputations, have greater resource slack, and operate in more dynamic industries. Moreover, low-reputation and low-slack firms benefit most from in-kind contributions.
Academia has been described as a marketplace of ideas, whereby scholars compete to establish thought leadership via publication of their work in top journals of their disciplines. Within the bazaar ...of B2B marketing scholarship, few scholars generated as deep an impact as the late Shelby D. Hunt. In this manuscript, we adapt R-A Theory to the context of the academic publishing enterprise. Based on Dr. Hunt's retrospective writings and personal perspectives shared by his collaborators, we identify critical basic resources and higher-order competences underlying the success of Dr. Hunt's ideation, development, and promotion of impactful B2B theories. Next, we illustrate how his deployment of three scholarly competences - opportunity recognition, theory development, and theory retailing - contributed to the success of his Commitment-Trust and RA theory programs. The paper closes with a discussion of key lessons scholars and the academy can draw in crafting new indigenous marketing theories.
•Structure of marketing discipline's marketplace of ideas has hindered development of indigenous theory.•Paper applies RA theory and the hierarchy of operant resources concept to the level of the individual scholarly research enterprise, identifying the basic resources and higher-order competences most critical to Dr. Shelby Hunt's major theoretical contributions.•Three masterful scholarly competences were identified: opportunity recognition competence, theory development competence, and theory retailing competence.•The paper concludes with key insights for individual scholars and the greater marketing academy as it relates to crafting impactful new marketing theory.
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•Both heavy and soft haptic cues affect purchase behavior positively.•A heavier haptic cue affects perceptions of retailer competence.•A softer haptic cue affects perceptions of ...retailer warmth.•Competence and warmth mediate the effect of a haptic cue on recommendation intentions.•These haptic cue effects are mitigated for retailers with a more favorable image.
While research has recognized the role of haptic sensations in influencing various aspects of consumer behavior, the association between haptically based experiences and social judgments in a retail encounter has not been explored. Based on the results of one field study, we showed a positive effect for both heavy and soft haptic cues on purchase behavior. Two follow-up lab experiments demonstrate that haptic attributes of retailer promotional materials affect social judgments of retailer competence and warmth. Furthermore, the relative accessibility of these two dimensions is contingent on the salience of environmental haptic cues (weight vs. softness). Additionally, we show that weight and softness influence recommendation intentions through competence and warmth, respectively. Compared to a lighter weight haptic cue, a retailer using a heavier haptic cue is perceived as more competent. In contrast, a retailer using a soft haptic cue is perceived as being warmer. Further, we demonstrate that retailer image moderates the impact of haptic cues on social judgment, such that these effects are mitigated for retailers with a more positive image.
Despite widespread use in advertising, scholars have not been able to agree if taboo themes have a positive effect on advertising outcomes. The conflicting findings in prior research are further ...complicated from using self-report and indirect attention measures. The current study includes responses to 23 actual advertisements using a combination of eye-tracking and self-report data to understand attention and recall effects relating to the brand-identifying elements in ads. Findings indicate that taboo positively affects recall and attention, and attention to brand-identifying information also influences recall. The results demonstrate that taboo increases time to first fixation and fixation count for both product images and brand logos. Thus, taboo seems to encourage processing of brand- identifying information. Additionally, high ad complexity mitigated the effects of taboo on attention. Together, the results suggest a holistic approach to considering how attention is allocated to different areas of the ad.
Many stakeholders such as parents, companies, and policymakers play a role in children's online privacy. This study explores how parents who have at least one child age 10 and younger perceive the ...sensitivity of their children's personal information and willingness to share it with social media marketers. Survey results of 418 parents indicate that a variety of types of children's information is perceived as sensitive, with certain information (e.g., videos, photos) that parents readily share via social media as highly sensitive. Findings also suggest that fathers and single parents are more likely to perceive their children's information as sensitive and yet are more willing to share it. This research contributes to the consumer welfare literature on children's privacy by providing a baseline of parents' attitudes regarding their children's data, extending prior research that has examined adults' perceptions of the sensitivity of their own information and willingness to share with social media marketers.
ABSTRACT
Sponsorship of sporting teams and events has become an increasingly popular form of corporate and brand communication. Despite the continued growth of sponsorship spending, the corresponding ...literature base is highly fragmented and little agreement exists related to the psychological mechanisms underlying response. This paper integrates several prominent sponsorship research streams in promoting a “resource‐matching” perspective of cognitive elaboration and attitude change. This research holds that in the absence of clear functional fit between sponsor and event, identifying a basis for sponsor–event fit is likely to require some degree of cognitive effort. The results indicate stronger social identification with the sponsored event influences the favorability they attribute to sponsor motives and promotes stronger perceptions of fit between the sponsor and the sponsored activity. Further, the results indicate fit perceptions mediate the relationship between attribution and sponsorship response. Consistent with ELM theory, when cognitive resources are insufficient for the complexity of the fit‐matching task, social identification may still act as a peripheral cue in driving a positive affective response to sponsorship information.
Purpose
Online consumer reviews (OCRs) have emerged as a particularly important type of user-generated information about a brand because of their widespread adoption and influence on consumer ...decision-making. Much of the existing OCR research focuses on quantifiable OCR features such as star ratings and volume. More research that examines the influence of review elements, aside from numeric ratings, such as the verbatim text, particularly in services contexts is needed. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of service failures on consumer arousal and emotions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors present three behavioral experiments that manipulate service failure and linguistic elements of OCRs by using galvanic skin response, survey measures and automated facial expression analysis.
Findings
Negative OCRs lead to the greatest levels of arousal when consumers read OCRs. Service failure severity impacts anger, and referential cohesion, an observable property of text that helps a reader better understand ideas in the text, negatively moderates the relationship between service failure severity and anger.
Originality/value
The authors are among the first to empirically test the effect of emotional contagion in a user-generated content context, demonstrating that it can occur when consumers read such content, even if they did not experience the events being described. The research uses a self-report and physiological measures to assess consumer perceptions, arousal and emotions related to service failures, increasing the robustness of the literature. These findings contribute to the marketing literature on OCRs in service failures, physiological measures of consumers’ emotions, the negativity bias and emotional contagion in a user-generated content context.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the applicability of Hartmann et al.’s (2018) service ecosystem framework to the day-to-day management of the modern sales force. The authors provide a review of ...the framework, acknowledging its strengths, while also indicating areas for advancement. The authors conclude with recommendations to the framework and indicate opportunities where future research could advance sales theory.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of the theoretical underpinnings of the service ecosystem framework is weighed against the established roles and responsibilities of the modern sales force in the literature.
Findings
The ability of the framework to capture the multi-level, multi-actor and dynamic aspects of sales represents an improvement in the conceptualization of selling is critical. Suggestions around the refinement for meso-level sales interactions and a more pliant application of service dominant-logic are offered.
Research limitations/implications
The suggested extensions of the framework continue the advancement of novel theorization for the field of sales. Priorities for future research include consideration of ethical implications of the framework and formulations of new management strategies reflective of the broad and dynamic properties of the ecosystem conceptualization.
Practical implications
This paper provides managerial guidelines and implications tied specifically to the thick and thin crossing points and how they may impact employee decision-making.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to pointedly examine the service ecosystem framework with respect to established principles of managing a modern sales force.
Preorder offers are increasingly common for many types of products and services. Sales promotions, such as price discounts and free gifts, are frequently used to raise offer attractiveness and elicit ...a stronger sales response. Through a series of experiments, we show that a preorder promotion's effectiveness depends on whether it matches the construal level associated with timing of the featured product's release. When a match occurs, it increases consumers’ positive affect leading to higher purchase intention directly or by raising the perceived certainty of new product quality. In addition, we find interesting differences related to promotion type. Specifically, we show that a larger discount promotes low‐level construals, which leads to stronger purchase intentions only when the product is scheduled for near‐future release. Since a gift may elicit either high‐ or low‐level construals, a premium offer of higher perceived value leads to stronger purchase intentions regardless of release timing.
A stream of studies investigates shareholder wealth effects of marketing investments into sport sponsorship properties. While research generally upholds a positive relationship between sponsorship ...agreements and shareholder wealth, the relationship remains unclear for several sponsorship categories. With more specific attention to research design issues, this paper replicates and extends prior research in two of these areas: official product and Olympic sponsorship announcements. This paper notes that inclusion of observations with potentially confounding events materially affects results reported by the original authors. The first study identifies a significant positive shareholder wealth effect associated with initial official product sponsorship announcement but not for renewal of such announcements. The second study resolves conflicting views from prior research regarding Olympic sponsorships. Although a negative overall relationship exists for sponsors of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the market's negative view of costly, top-tier global sponsorships largely drives this result.
