European Journal of Marketing

Nick Lee; Gordon Greenley

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032676pmid: N/A

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to explicitly recognise the first issue of EJM completely made up of submissions received under the new editorial team of Lee and Greenley, operating since January 2008. The authors also seek to make some broader points about academic review, and journal ranking. Design/methodology/approach – The authors provide some conceptual thinking regarding journal review, and academic ranking of journals. Findings – The authors propose that it is potentially dangerous to restrict the perception of top quality work to only that published in a limited selection of journals, and that research needs to be judged on its own merits. Research limitations/implications – These thoughts are preliminary and intended to spark thinking and debate, not to represent editorial policy. Owing to space constraints, the coverage of many issues is necessarily brief. Practical Implications – Marketing researchers should find these thoughts at the very least stimulating, and may wish to investigate these issues further. Originality/value – The editorial should provide some interesting food for thought for marketing researchers.

Edward Kasabov; Alex J. Warlow

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032685pmid: N/A

Purpose – In the last ten years, businesses taking advantage of market deregulation, call‐centre, intranet and internet technology have broken traditional marketing norms and path‐dependent customer management practices. These businesses offer substantially lower prices and good customer service. In spite of anecdotal evidence of the high level of service complaints in the press, these businesses are expanding rapidly by growing the market and by taking share from traditional suppliers. Service failure recovery and complaint management are two areas which are extensively re‐designed by such businesses. This paper aims to identify and examine such new practices. The authors suggest that the traditional “customer‐centricity” model is being replaced by a “customer‐compliance business model” (CCBM) of service provision. This new model and its propositions defy conventional thinking in the areas of service recovery and complaint management. Design/methodology/approach – Available data and research are reviewed, in an attempt to understand CCBM. Differences with the customer‐centricity model are discussed. Findings – CCBM cannot be explained adequately by current assumptions in marketing. It breaks commonplace marketing expectations about service failure and recovery. Research limitations/implications – The emphasis is on explaining innovations in service recovery and complaint management. Practical implications – Companies which operate the CCBM model are of growing importance to developed, service‐oriented economies. The paper builds on evidence to show how CCBM businesses have abandoned or minimised costly customer centricity and have broken past norms and conventional marketing thinking and practice. Originality/value – The scarcity of research in this area is explained by the recent, rapid evolution of these new model businesses. The study reveals and makes sense of important trends in service provision, distinct from and incompatible with normative arguments in some academic writings that advocate service recovery excellence.

Lloyd C. Harris

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032694pmid: N/A

Purpose – Although dysfunctional behaviors by customers is increasingly being recognized by both scholars and practitioners, “illegitimate” complaining, in the form of fraudulent returns by customers, is under‐researched. The aim of this study is to address this gap in extant knowledge through explicitly focusing on uncovering factors which permit consumers to exploit retailers' liberal return policies when fraudulently returning products that they know they have used or damaged. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews were utilized as the main data collection method. Interviews were conducted amongst service employees and customers. A total of 87 interviews were conducted with front‐line employees and managers of 12 general retail outlets. Customer interviewing involved 96 interviews. Potential customer informants were randomly contacted with a request to participate in a study of customer service and returning goods. Findings – Data analysis revealed ten main factors that appear to be related to customers' likelihood of successfully, fraudulently returning products. Research limitations/implications – As with other similar studies of this nature, the findings and implications are limited by the research design and methods employed. However, these limitations also indicate potentially fruitful avenues of future research. Future studies could employ different methods and explore differing contexts to gauge the generalizability of findings. Practical implications – The findings of the study have a range of implications for practitioners and policy makers. Insights are generated into the extent of fraudulent returning and the factors which facilitate successful fraudulent returns. As such, practitioners could use such insights to reduce the frequency of such episodes. Public policy implications centre on highlighting the issues which policy makers may wish to consider. Originality/value – The current study is the first to explore how (rather than, why) consumers exploit firms' return policies and fraudulently defraud retailers. As such, a fundamental and stark contribution centres on the finding of widespread, recidivist fraudulent returning among those interviewed. Ten facilitators of fraudulent returning were identified, providing rich insights into how customers are able, successfully, to return used and damaged products.

Stephan Zielke

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032702pmid: N/A

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse how five price image dimensions influence shopping intentions for different store formats. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 306 espondents evaluated three stores from a list of 18 retailers on a multiple‐item scale, resulting in 918 price‐image measurements. Based on these data, a covariance structure analysis in Mplus analyses the direct and indirect impact of five price image dimensions on shopping intentions. A multiple group analysis identifies differences in the effects between store formats. Findings – The impact of image dimensions differs substantially between store formats. For discount stores, value for money is by far the most important image dimension. For supermarkets, price level and value are equally important, but price perceptibility and price processibility are also relevant. For organic food stores, value is most important, followed by price processibility and evaluation certainty. For the weekly market, price perceptibility plays a key role in explaining customers' shopping intentions. Practical implications – The results carry several implications for retail pricing practice, as they indicate that retailers should not focus exclusively on price level competition. Depending on the store format, retailers should attach importance to the price image dimensions in varying degrees. Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature by: advancing price‐image measurement; modelling direct effects on shopping intentions; analysing a number of different indirect effects in an integrated model; and taking the moderating effects of store format into account.

Tatiana Anisimova; Felix T. Mavondo

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032711pmid: N/A

Purpose – Global competition has increased a manufacturer focus on relationships and optimization of internal processes within channels of distribution. One of the central themes of channel relationships and an important theoretical proposition in corporate branding has been achievement of alignment between corporate and stakeholder perspectives. Using three corporate brands, this study seeks to use a configurational theoretic approach to investigate how deviation of salespeople from the corporate perspective is related to their satisfaction and commitment. Design/methodology/approach – The manager‐specified ideal corporate brand profile was used as a proxy for a corporate perspective and a benchmark. Applying the Profile Deviation approach to study the effects of misalignment, the authors hypothesise that salespeople's deviation from the corporate perspective is negatively related to their satisfaction and commitment. Findings – Results, which were robust across the three corporate brands, partially support the hypotheses. However, positive performance implications of salesperson deviation suggest that the effects of misalignment are more complex than currently viewed in the literature. Findings and implications are discussed and research directions are developed. Practical implications – The study offers insights into the areas of corporate brand misalignment, internal branding and salesmanship. Originality/value – From the comparison of the three congruence models, it was intended to infer which corporation has succeeded in narrowing the perceptual discrepancy between the corporate and salesperson perspectives. By developing a fine‐grained analysis the study pin‐points the actual aspects that require co‐alignment, thus facilitating managerial decision making.

Matthew Chylinski; Anna Chu

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032720pmid: N/A

Purpose – By examining the behaviours of cynical consumers and the factors that give rise to them, the paper's aim is to highlight the potential impact of consumer cynicism on firms and to investigate the possibility of influencing the evolution of those behaviours over time. Design/methodology/approach – A multi‐method approach uses five focus groups, a survey, and a longitudinal experiment to explore the behaviour of cynical consumers experiencing different patterns of goal/value (in)congruence with the actions of a firm. Findings – Progressive development in the frequency and severity of cynical behaviours results from repeated incongruence between consumers' goals or values and firm actions. Value incongruence has a greater effect on the severity of cynical behaviours. Recency effects remove cynical behaviours when the underlying drivers of cynicism are reversed. Research limitations/implications – The results are based on consumers' behavioural intentions, requiring a degree of subjective interpretation to quantify the severity of consumer behaviours. Practical implications – Because of the potentially severe nature of cynical consumer behaviours, the study helps managers to gain a better understanding of these behaviours, their source, and how to monitor their frequency, severity, and development over time. Originality/value – Several facets of consumer cynicism are examined that have not been explored together previously, including drivers, cognitive/affective mechanisms, and the pattern of resulting behaviours. This approach provides managers with a tool to predict how consumers will react to a given situation and suggests actions to mitigate these reactions.

Gianfranco Walsh; Vincent‐Wayne Mitchell

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032739pmid: N/A

Purpose – Consumer sovereignty assumes that consumers have adequate product information and are able to understand that information in order to make an informed choice. However, this is not the case when consumers are confused. Recently, Walsh et al. identified dimensions of consumer confusion proneness and developed scales to measure these dimensions. Drawing on their concept of consumer confusion proneness, this paper seeks to examine consumers' general tendency to be confused from marketplace information and its effect on three relevant outcome variables – word of mouth, trust, and satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – The reliability and validity of the consumer confusion proneness scale was tested on the basis of a sample of 355 consumers, using confirmatory factor analysis. The study employs structural equation modelling to examine the hypothesised relationships. Findings – The results show that the consumer confusion proneness scale has sound psychometric properties and that the three dimensions of similarity, overload, and ambiguity have a differential impact on word of mouth behaviour, trust, and customer satisfaction. Practical implications – The findings have implications for marketing theory and management, as well as consumer education. Marketers may apply the consumer confusion proneness scale to their customers and assess which dimension is the most damaging in terms of the three marketing outcomes examined. Originality/value – This is the first study to test Walsh et al. 's consumer confusion proneness scale and to extend their work by analysing the effect of the three construct dimensions on three key marketing outcome variables.

Malcolm Wright; Erica Riebe

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032748pmid: N/A

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether brand defection shows double‐jeopardy effects, and whether stochastic models provide useful benchmarks of expected brand defection rates. Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of an empirical study of brand defection in four markets using panel data, comparing the performance of simple OLS models with a stochastic model. Findings – Brand defection shows double jeopardy. Almost all brand defection in the markets studied could be explained by the category examined and the market share of the focal brand. A stochastic model of choice fits these data well, and provides many further practical and theoretical applications. Practical implications – The study provides improved benchmarks for brand defection, allowing managers to spot whether their brand is performing better or worse than expected. It also allows better analysis of market structure for subscription services, especially under dynamic conditions, and better estimation of customer lifetime value when defection rates are not known for all brands. Originality/value – The paper closes a gap in the brand defection literature by showing that a given level of defection is a natural characteristic of any market, subject to within‐market variations dominated by market share. Recent work has overlooked these points, resulting in unrealistic goals for customer defection programmes and inefficient estimates of customer lifetime value. The paper also provides a method of defection analysis that can be deployed by numerate managers and market researchers, and used as a basis for further academic work.

Hong‐Youl Ha; Siva K. Muthaly; Raphaël K. Akamavi

doi: 10.1108/03090561011032757pmid: N/A

Purpose – This study sets out to employ a cross‐cultural perspective to explore alternative explanations in the development of the online repurchase intentions model. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed constructs of alternative models deal with key online consumer behavior variables such as customized information, web use applications, online service and perceived interactivity which lead to the formation of purchase intentions. These variables form the theoretical foundation for four alternative models. To test these four alternative models 448 online consumers were surveyed in 2007. Structural equation modeling is used to test these models. Findings – The results demonstrate that the power of customized information lies in its ability to influence consumer satisfaction and perceived interactivity that are proximate to repurchase intentions. The results also show that the link of satisfaction→repurchase intentions provides a meaningful empirical representation of the hierarchical sequence in which the cycle of customer repurchasing process (satisfaction→attitude→repurchase intentions) is related. Research limitations/implications – One may examine applications of the findings in the travel industry in practice and reflect upon potential pitfalls when applying the findings of this piece of the present research. Although previous studies reveal the significance between the two constructs, further research can investigate the issue to be generalizable to the many types of e‐B2C services. Second, particularly in terms of the ability to generalize the model, the study did not provide fairly consistent results for different service categories. Studies on other service classes, such as online bookstore and online banking services, may reveal findings that extend the authors' approach. Practical implications – Similarity of purchasing attitudes between Korean and UK consumers may allow e‐tailors to design a systematic strategy for generating favorable attitudes toward their web sites, even though standardized online treatment of consumers is not the golden path of internet marketing. Further, the proposed research model (PRM) provides a means of identifying the underlying dispositions associated with the mediating variable. Originality/value – This is the first study to examine online repurchasing models using alternative explanations. By structuring such alternative models, McKenzie argues that researchers may be better able to judge how the evidence relates to each alternative view. The present approach can be viewed as a significant early step on the path toward a comprehensive understanding of online consumer behaviors in new information communication technology.