The increase of immigrant employees in services has made intercultural service encounters a commonplace phenomenon. In these encounters, customers frequently use service employees’ accent to infer ...their ethnic background, often eliciting cultural stereotypes. However, it is still unknown how accent-based stereotyping impacts customer participation (CP), that is, the degree to which customers engage in the service process by contributing effort, knowledge, and information to improve their service experience. Addressing this question in four experimental studies (Ntotal = 1,027), we find that (1) customers contribute less to the service encounter voluntarily when the employee has an unfavorable foreign (compared to a local) accent, (2) the negative effects of unfavorable accents on voluntary CP are stronger than the positive effects of favorable ones, (3) accent-based employee stereotypes (superiority, attractiveness, dynamism) mediate the impact of accents on CP, (4) unfavorable accents impede even participatory tasks mandatory for service completion, and (5) accent effects on CP are dampened for customers with a high need for interaction and can be managerially neutralized through self-service options that offer customers higher control over the service delivery. Our findings inform staffing and training decisions for frontline service roles commonly undertaken by immigrants and assist the design of intercultural service delivery systems.
Graphical Abstract
Accelerating antiglobalization challenges previously undisputed assumptions about the importance of a product's globalness/localness in purchase decisions. Putting these assumptions to test, this ...article conceptualizes globalness/localness as a distinct product attribute and decomposes its utility into weight and preference components. Subsequently, it offers an equity-theory-based prediction of the attribute's declining relevance/trivialization and quantifies its trade-offs with other attributes by calculating global/local price premiums. Conjoint experiments in two countries (Austria and India) reveal that (1) emerging- (developed-) market consumers exhibit relative preference for global (local) products, (2) emerging-market consumers perceive higher preference inequity between global and local products than developed-market consumers, and (3) the corresponding inequity triggers consumers’ cognitive inequity regulation (manifested through attribute trivialization in developed markets) and behavioral inequity regulation (manifested through asymmetrical willingness to pay for global/local products across developed/emerging markets). In addition, attribute trivialization and price premium tolerance are moderated by consumers’ spatial identities and price segment. The findings contribute to the theoretical debate on the relevance of product globalness/localness in deglobalizing times and inform competitive strategies; segmentation, targeting, and positioning; and international pricing decisions.
Purpose - The paper aims to present a comprehensive framework for understanding consumer trust in a corporate brand, incorporating both the antecedents and consequences of trust. The paper also seeks ...to account explicitly for the differences in antecedents and consequences of trust found among customers and among non-customers.Design methodology approach - Data were obtained from 308 face-to-face interviews conducted in Germany. Structural equation modelling was used in order to test the proposed hypotheses.Findings - The results indicate that competence and credibility have a high explanatory power as antecedents of trust. Trust has a considerable impact on supplier selection for existing and new products, as well as on the word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviour of consumers. There are strong differences between customers and non-customers in terms of the antecedents and consequences of trust in a corporate brand.Research limitations implications - In order to generalise the findings, the model needs to be tested with other samples and research objects. Marketing research into trust should focus on competence and credibility as important antecedents of trust. The findings propose that trust has positive effects on purchase intention and WOM behaviour. Marketing research should pay more attention to the role of trust in gaining new customers.Practical implications - Because of the positive influence on marketing success, managers should focus on trust-building activities that centre on competence and credibility primarily with current customers. However, trust also seems to be a good device to gain customers from competitors.Originality value - The contributions of the paper are, firstly, a more complete framework of trust that analyses both antecedents and consequences of trust simultaneously. Secondly, the study allows a direct comparison of the difference in antecedents and consequences of trust between customers on the one hand and non-customers on the other.
This research investigates perceived brand globalness, brand origin image, and brand origin–extension fit as drivers of brand extension success that are mediated through parent brand quality and ...brand–extension fit. The authors present two complementary studies based on consumer samples from a mature and an emerging market respectively. In both studies, out of all drivers examined, the brand origin–extension fit has the strongest effect on brand extension success both in terms of quality evaluations and purchase intentions. The findings further indicate that extension success is more influenced by consumers’ perceptions of the country from which the focal brand originates than by their perceptions of the brand’s global availability and reach. Implications of the findings for theory and practice are considered and future research directions identified.
Despite the well-documented importance of consumer-brand relationships, international branding research has not yet investigated whether a brand's perceived globalness and localness influence ...consumers' identification with the brand. Drawing on brand relationship theory and global/local branding literature, the present research theorizes on how perceived brand globalness and localness influence consumer-brand relationship building and discusses how these influences vary for brands of domestic versus foreign origin. Two studies in mature and emerging markets, using several brands across multiple product categories, reveal that both perceived brand globalness and localness have positive effects on consumer-brand identification. These effects (1) hold in both mature and emerging market settings, (2) are independent of brand quality assessments, (3) interact in a mutually-reinforcing way, and (4) are moderated by brand origin in a substitutional manner indicating that the relational effects of brand localness (globalness) are stronger for foreign (domestic) than for domestic (foreign) brands.
This research replicates the study of Steenkamp, Batra, and Alden (2003) on perceived brand globalness (PBG) and provides a stringent test of their documented effects through (a) considering the ...impact of PBG on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP), and (b) experimentally manipulating brand globalness. Across four studies, the results suggest that consumers are willing to pay more for global brands as long as their globalness leads to a more favorable brand attitude. Testing a comprehensive set of consumer characteristics as moderators, we find that the increased tolerance towards global brand price premiums is robust across consumer segments.
Considering the increasing international division of labor, as well as stakeholders' growing awareness of sustainability, assuring that business practices are sustainable is a major challenge. ...Companies have to account for the fact that any misconduct at a supplier's premises may have spillover effects that reach the manufacturer or retailer. Therefore, purchasing managers have to assure that their suppliers are compliant with sustainability standards. This, however, may induce higher purchasing costs and, as a consequence, force a trade-off between (short term) economic (i.e., purchasing cost reduction) and social/environmental sustainability criteria. How purchasing managers evaluate this trade-off is particularly interesting because they often receive performance-based salaries that incentivize the reduction of purchasing costs. Our paper sheds light on this trade-off by examining how much purchasing managers are willing to pay to assure compliance along different sustainability dimensions when selecting new suppliers in a mature market setting, namely Germany. Additionally, we identify potential (individual, professional, and organization-related) factors that may impact the purchasing managers' willingness to pay (WTP), and examine their effects. Among the most surprising findings, purchasing managers on average are willing to pay a price premium for manuals that demonstrate compliance with the United Nationals Global Compact (UNGC). Furthermore, the results show that this WTP is mostly influenced (negatively) by self-enhancement (on the individual level) and/or obedience to authority (on the organizational level), but the effects of company, affiliation with the UNGC, gender, or years of experience have no influence. Moreover, the WTP is higher for the social than for the environmental dimension, and the marginal effect of accreditation on WTP depends on which combinations of dimensions are accredited.
Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) has enjoyed increased popularity as an analytical method among Industrial Marketing Management (IMM) authors over the last years. Despite such popularity, many ...authors fail to understand the basic principles of the method and reviewers are frequently confronted with manuscripts suffering from erroneous applications, insufficient reporting and questionable interpretation of SEM-based findings. Addressing this issue, the present article presents – in non-technical language – the most basic concepts related to SEM, resolves common misconceptions about the method's application and provides hands-on advice to IMM authors and reviewers dealing with SEM-based manuscripts. Structured along ten fundamental questions, the article covers issues related to (1) latent variables and their scaling, (2) types of parameters in SEM, (3) unstandardized and standardized estimates, (4) model identification, (5) model constraints, (6) model fit, (7) independence and saturated models, (8) modification indices, (9) nested models, and (10) equivalent models. After illustrating these concepts with the use of examples, the article concludes with a list of guidelines addressed both to IMM authors crafting manuscripts using SEM and the peers reviewing them.
•Despite increasing popularity for IMM authors, manuscripts using structural equations modeling (SEM) suffer from mistakes in the method's application.•Using a “stick to the basics” approach we clarify fundamental concepts to facilitate the basic understanding of SEM.•We pose and answer ten basic questions the answers to which we illustrate with the use of examples.•We discuss concepts such as latent variable scaling, constrained and unconstrained parameters, model fit, model identification, nested and equivalent models.•We conclude with a list of guidelines to help IMM authors and reviewers dealing with SEM-based manuscripts.
Purpose
This study aims to investigate whether and how strongly cultural (mis)matches influence immigrant customers’ satisfaction, as well as if this relationship is mediated by cultural or service ...employee performance attributions. In addition, the authors test whether attributions differ depending on the service delivery outcome (success vs failure).
Design/methodology/approach
The 2 (origin of service employee: Austria or Turkey) × 2 (service delivery outcome: success or failure) scenario-based experiment includes 120 Turkish immigrant customers in Austria.
Findings
Contrary to previous research, the results indicate that in an immigrant customer context, cultural (mis)match does not influence customer satisfaction. The service delivery outcome is a boundary condition. With a positive service delivery outcome, immigrant customers attribute the results to the cultural background of the employee if it is the same as their own, but they attribute success to employees’ performance if they belong to the immigration destination culture. For negative service delivery outcomes, neither cultural nor performance attributions arise.
Originality/value
This study is the first to focus specifically on immigrant customer behavior in a high-involvement service context. The results challenge the predictions of social identity theory and the similarity-attraction paradigm and highlight that the immigrant context is unique. In this context, attributions play a key role in determining customer satisfaction.
Driven by the upsurge in global (out-)sourcing and the changing expectations of organizations' stakeholders, companies are increasingly being held responsible for the actions of their suppliers. ...Subsequently, Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has emerged as an important factor in safeguarding organizations from being accused of irresponsible behavior. Grounded on the concept of ethical culture, the research in this paper identifies elements for guiding PSM behavior towards socially and environmentally sustainable supplier selection. Results indicate that different elements of the firms' ethical culture have a significant impact on how purchasing managers account for social and environmental criteria when selecting suppliers.
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