Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science最新文献

The now-mature sharing economy has not delivered on its original utopian promises. Instead of providing prosocial benefits for consumers and society, incumbent platforms dominate monopolistic markets. In this article, we study a novel business model in the sharing economy––the platform cooperative––to ask how can a responsible marketing strategy can be viable and effective for market challengers. We draw on a qualitative, ethnographic study of the lived experiences of consumers and managers in leading platform cooperatives Fairbnb and Drivers Cooperative, and find that while challengers cannot overhaul the system, they can engender change from the margins. We identify three dimensions of a change from the margins strategy in decentralizing the marketplace, shaping authentic narratives, and building institutional partnerships. We discuss implications of a responsible marketing strategy for market incumbents and challengers within the sharing economy and beyond, and for theorizing new frameworks in the marketing strategy literature.

Governments enact various regulations to decrease the use of plastic. This raises the question of whether the effectiveness of such measures is restricted to the realm of the plastic products being regulated, or whether and how it ‘spills over’ on to the use of other plastic products. Leveraging scanner and survey data across 22 countries, the authors show that a ban or a charge on plastic bags strengthens descriptive social norms to avoid plastic, which in turn curbs the purchasing and use of plastic bottles, as well as of other plastics. Yet there is also a dark side to charging consumers for plastic bags, as a negative cueing effect can lower concerns about plastic pollution and make consumers less vigilant about their use of other plastic products. Taken together, this research shows that government regulation aimed at changing small common behaviors potentially has a much larger impact via spillover effects.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 seeks to achieve sustainable food production and consumption, including reduced food loss and waste; SDG 2 proposes the goal of zero hunger. In pursuit of these goals, technology arguably has a central role, at every level of the food value chain. To establish this role, the authors identify and examine current technologies aimed at increasing food production and suitably redistributing unused food, as tactics to combat food loss and waste, with the shared end goal of reducing food insecurity. A proposed 2 × 2 typology illustrates how existing technologies can influence food production, distribution, and consumption, as well as influence the stakeholders in the food production–consumption chain. These insights also inform a research and development agenda pertaining to the need for technology applications that can increase food production and/or reduce food waste effectively enough to achieve the goal of zero hunger.

Product efficacy is an important driver of product evaluation and product usage. This research examines how marketers can improve perceived and actual product efficacy. Given the managerial ease of adjusting product design, we demonstrate that adding a sensory signal (e.g., tingling, cooling, fizzing) to a product that promises positive outcomes would improve product evaluations and actual product efficacy. In five studies (and two additional studies reported in the Web Appendix), we show that sensory signaling (vs. nonsignaling) products elicit actual product choice and improve product evaluations, repurchase likelihood, recommendation likelihood, as well as objective measures of product efficacy (such as consumer performance). This occurs because the sensory signals make consumers feel a greater transfer of benefits to the body during product usage. We further demonstrate that the effect holds even when persuasion knowledge is activated. Together, this research provides important insights on product designs that benefit not only marketers but also consumers.

Despite retailers’ interest in moving away from thin-model photography to embrace body-size diversity, online fashion shopping predominantly features thin models. While concerns about negative consequences for sales impede industry-wide changes, we demonstrate that consumers and retailers benefit from optimally portraying diverse bodies. Three studies unveil the “Dissimilarity-Risk Deterrence Effect,” wherein thin models dissuade consumers with larger clothing sizes from online purchasing due to perceived body-size dissimilarity and heightened fit-risk perception. Eight experiments demonstrate that models of consumers’ own size mitigate the effect, enhancing online purchase decisions, while controlling for mechanisms like positive affect, authenticity and social identification. The effect extends across various clothing items but attenuates when body size matters less to fit evaluation. Moreover, the effect is concealed by retailers’ risk-reducing strategies, such as measurement information and free product return policies. This research underscores the strategic significance of diverse product imaging to improve supply chain efficiency and consumer well-being.

Tackling grand challenges and making sustainable development a reality through sustainable consumption crucially depends upon both companies’ activities as well as individuals’ consumption choices. In opinion polls, many consumers claim to favor sustainable products over conventional ones. However, a large gap remains between their stated purchasing intentions and actual decisions, posing a challenge for companies in predicting product demand and strategically managing their product portfolios. In this study, we develop a conceptual framework to demonstrate how companies can encourage sustainable consumption behavior among their customers by involving them in their corporate sustainability (CS) activities. We introduce psychological ownership as the underlying mechanism explaining how customer involvement in CS activities translates into changes in their consumption choices. We further argue that the link between customer involvement and psychological ownership depends on the type of a company’s CS—that is, whether CS is embedded in or peripheral to the company’s core business. The results from three experiments, including one field experiment conducted in collaboration with a fashion retailer and involving real customer purchase decisions, support our theorizing. The findings reveal the power of customer involvement as a marketing tool in promoting sustainable consumption.

This work illustrates a case in which the implementation of automated digital screens in an apparel retail store led to unintended side effects involving decreased customer spending. Using an empirics-first approach, researchers have investigated this topic through the conducting of field experiments, intercept surveys, and online experiments involving both consumers and frontline employees (FLEs). In this research, the unintended outcomes of technology implementation are first revealed, and then the potential reasons and boundary conditions underlying those outcomes are explored. The findings indicate that while automated digital screens increase customer convenience, they can also restrict the ability of FLEs to perform extrarole behavior. This restriction results in a negative shopping experience and reduced spending, particularly in settings in which FLE interaction is critical. The research also reveals that reintroducing extrarole behavior in the presence of technology can offset this negative effect. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are then discussed, and future research directions are proposed.

Many firms are adopting customer experience management as a route to differentiation, but experience management in practice has only begun to be explored. Using a strategic orientation lens and a theories-in-use approach, a multiple-case study reveals the presence of a “customer experience orientation” (CXO) exhibiting six values and related behavioral norms. Three of these values—journey motivation, continual experience optimization, and experience empowerment—shape experience-based organizational learning through the collection, dissemination, and actioning of experience insight. Substantially extending prior work, a further three values—journey organization, experience mandating, and experience-purpose alignment—institutionalize this learning. Contextual moderators of the impact of CXO on customer experience appraisal and hence firm performance are proposed. Ambivalent effects on performance via increased or decreased costs are also identified, which may counteract or amplify the positive effects of CXO via enhanced experience appraisal. CXO emerges as a distinct, learning-based philosophy for organizational effectiveness, albeit one that draws on ideas from service, human resource management, agile design, and marketing.

Industry-wide crises, characterized by multiple companies within an industry allegedly engaging in similar misconduct, lead to disruptions in the social order. During such crises, one or a few of the involved companies often attract more media attention and receive punishment ahead of the others. Will such punishments take the heat off other involved companies or increase their risk of further punishment? This research shows that the observation of these punishments increases consumers’ intent to punish other involved companies. Observing one involved company get punished signals that the involved companies are indeed at fault, thereby increasing consumers’ certainty in blame attribution. Subsequently, consumers increase their motive to restore social order and their intent to punish other involved companies. Four theoretically and managerially relevant moderators have been identified and tested. Seven studies involving secondary data and experiments with both hypothetical and real behavioral outcomes support the proposed effects.

Restaurants are increasingly opting for technological innovations for food ordering. While digital modes of ordering, such as kiosks, tablets, and apps, embrace emerging innovations, can there be unintended consequences regarding the foods purchased and total spending? The findings from a series of studies, including six studies conducted in the field, demonstrate that a digital (vs. non-digital) ordering mode leads consumers to have a more automatic decision making mode and lower cognitive involvement, which results in more indulgent outcomes in the form of unhealthy food orders and higher overall spending. This effect attenuates for consumers with a high degree of technology acceptance and for orders placed earlier in the day. These findings suggest that restaurant managers with the goal of selling healthier options would benefit from having non-digital ordering modes, while managers desiring more indulgent purchases would benefit from having digital ordering modes available.