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This study aims to explore and extend the consumer–brand relationship literature by integrating the relatively new construct of brand coolness with a growing body of work on gratitude. Specifically, gratitude is explored alongside emotional brand attachment as an additional mechanism affecting the relationship between cool brands and the loyalty outcome of repurchase intention. Consumption context is examined as a boundary condition to the effect of gratitude.

Data was collected from an online survey of a Qualtrics panel of 356 US consumers. A moderated mediation model is used to explain the effects of brand coolness on repurchase intention via emotional brand attachment and brand gratitude in the moderating presence of consumption context.

Brand coolness significantly increases repurchase intention. Furthermore, emotional brand attachment and brand gratitude are established as parallel mediators of the relationship between brand coolness and repurchase intention, with brand gratitude exhibiting a significantly stronger mediated effect. The impact of brand coolness on brand gratitude is moderated by social visibility, with publicly consumed cool brands stimulating greater brand gratitude than their privately consumed counterparts.

Brand gratitude is shown to influence repurchase intention independent of the impact exerted by consumers’ emotional brand attachment. Cognitive appraisal theory is used to distinguish brand gratitude from other mediators studied in consumer–brand relationships. Findings establish the moderating influence of the social visibility of the brand on the relationship between brand coolness and gratitude.

This paper aims to explore how motivations to stand out and fit in through consumption affect consumers’ perceptions of subcultural and popular brand coolness. Importantly, how do perceptions of brand coolness affect consumers’ formations of hot, emotional brand attachments and their willingness to pay more?

This study incorporates survey data from consumers regarding cool brands. A structural equation modeling approach is used to assess the relationship between the variables of interest.

Susceptibility to influence is positively related to desire for unique consumption. While this desire may be fulfilled by both subcultural and popular perceptions of brand coolness, only subcultural coolness has a positive relationship with the willingness to pay more. The importance of an emotional brand attachment is established between both dimensions of brand coolness and price premiums.

This study is based on cross-sectional survey data. As brand coolness is often transitory, longitudinal research on trends focusing on different elements of brand coolness may shed light on the cool brand lifecycle.

Firms wanting to position brands as cool should emphasize how the brand can help consumers stand out. If a cool brand is already well-known, resources should be allocated to building hot, emotional attachments to command price premiums.

This research contributes to a nascent body of literature empirically exploring brand coolness. It builds on past literature that notes the tension between standing out and fitting in conceptualizations of coolness by assessing individual differences. Significantly, it examines specific attributes of cool brands to explore the differences in how subcultural and popular perceptions of brand coolness relate to important marketing outcomes.

During the past decade, corporations have experienced a number of environmental “shocks” which have forced CEOs to examine the nature of their enterprises. Today, more so than ever before, executives are having to react to the concerns of various internal and external stakeholders. Among the key concerns of CEOs are: increased competition, especially at the global level, environmental issues (e.g. “green marketing”), and the demands of various stakeholder groups. The result of this new competitive environment is heightened pressure for businesses to perform.

This research investigates new innovative service models that provide opportunities for hearing and deaf individuals to switch roles within a co-created service encounter to allow for an enhanced perspective-taking experience. The purpose of this paper is to gain an in-depth understanding of deaf individuals’ experience working within such models using their preferred language, American sign language, to interact with a primarily hearing-majority customer base.

Data were collected for two studies through qualitative depth-interviews with both the deaf service employees and the hearing-majority customers from a North American restaurant founded on this innovative service model.

Results of these studies yield new insights into understanding the value generated for both the minority and majority populations within this co-creation platform. Notably, the deaf employees primarily recognize the transformative value derived from this service experience, whereas the hearing customers note the missing habitual value elements to which they are accustomed in traditional service encounters that inhibit repatronage intentions.

This is the first study to investigate the interpersonal service experience of deaf and hearing individuals within these emerging service models. Further, this research represents an initial attempt to explore a co-creative service experience between two different cultures, the deaf-minority and hearing-majority populations, with differing levels of ability.

The purpose of this study is to build on previous research on stress in sales forces to investigate the effect of perceptions of time wasted on salespersons' attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Responses from 400 salespeople who work in 49 business units of four Ecuadorian financial institutions were used to test a conceptual stress model. The research hypotheses were tested with a structural equation model.

Salespeople operating in the banking industry are prone to be dissatisfied, emotionally exhausted, and are likely to quit when they believe that their time or their efforts have been wasted or used ineffectively.

Ecuadorian samples adequately represent Latin American banking employees. However, individuals from collectivistic countries, such as Ecuador, have a more relaxed view of time. Hence, perceptions of time wasted may have a greater effect on job attitudes and behaviors in the USA than in Ecuador.

Success in sales requires effective time management. However, salespeople are sometimes required to perform activities that they can perceive as wasteful. Managers should be aware that performing wasteful activities leads to emotional exhaustion and high intentions to quit.

This is the first study to empirically test the effect of time wasted on organizational variables.

This paper studies how Chinese consumers respond to foreign goods in the post‐WTO era. Specifically, it examines brand sensitivity as a mediator and product cues as moderator of purchase intention. Additionally, it examines consumer preferences for different products and consumption plans for the subsequent five years. The survey sample is drawn from a population of foreign product users from 34 cities in 18 provinces in China. Results provide evidence that brand sensitivity mediates the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention; product cues moderate the effect of ethnocentrism on purchase intention. As the first study to link consumer ethnocentrism directly to brand sensitivity and purchase intention, this research provides some managerial implications. Global marketers can offset the negative effect of ethnocentrism by emphasizing brand image of its products, taking advantage of specific product cues, or by providing more comprehensive after‐sale service to reduce the perceived risk of purchasing imports. Also, price is still a hurdle that prevents Chinese consumers from mass consumption of foreign products. Global firms should not overestimate the purchasing power of Chinese consumers. This study represents a “snapshot” of Chinese consumers’ decision making at a time when their economic system is undergoing rapid change.

Long and short‐range‐planning helps, as in the chemical and and drug industry, with planners beating nonplanners' sales and profits by 60 percent. To start formal, integrated long‐and short‐range planning, select and appoint a planning director, teach planners about planning usage and results, create a standard view of the organization, define future goals by phases or years, select a planning site, determine future goals, run the plant by the plan, and revise planning yearly. This requires educating staff in planning's desirability, techniques, and corporate goals. It also requires economic, technological, social, political and legal, and competitive views going into the planning, to be understood. Planning should define risks, resources, and competitive advantages over rivals.

This study aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of how consumers approach shopping directly via social media by explicating decisions related to trust on social media and how various types of electronic word of mouth (eWOM; ratings and reviews, recommendations and referrals and social media communities) contribute to these decisions.

A total of 198 respondents with experience shopping directly via social media were instructed to select the platform on which they had the most shopping experience (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.) to answer relevant survey questions. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for analyzing the results.

Findings reveal that eWOM provided by strong ties (recommendations and referrals; social media communities) is superior to weak ties (ratings and reviews). Surprisingly, ratings and reviews do not significantly relate to trust in the retailer, suggesting that this information may be necessary but not sufficient for trusting retailers on social media.

This research distinguishes trust decisions related to shopping on social media and clarifies how each type of eWOM uniquely influences trust in the retailer by using tie strength theory.

The objective of this chapter is to understand innovative processes of resource redeployment taking place during consumption. We label this as consumer entrepreneurship. We define consumer entrepreneurship as the process of sharing and recombining resources innovatively to seek opportunities for self-creating user value. Through the illustration of heterogeneous forms of consumer peer-to-peer sharing, we argue that consumer entrepreneurship: (1) differs ontologically from a view of entrepreneurship as creation of exchange value; (2) bridges the notion, established in marketing studies, of consumers as value creators with the field of entrepreneurship; (3) develops mostly when the process of sharing is regulated informally, based on trust relationships; and (4) thrives as groups of sharing consumers discover and enact their values through the experimentation of multiple forms of product and service procurement. On the basis of these points, consumer entrepreneurship contributes to provide a novel perspective on hybrid organizations, that is, a view of hybrid organizations as everyday spaces where consumers create heterogeneous forms of (utilitarian, social, or environmental) value that they personally use as opposed to reward exchanges. Relative to the current definition of hybrid organizations (Pache & Santos, 2013) and organizing (Battilana & Lee, 2014), we argue that consumer entrepreneurship helps better explain “why, when, and how” consumers increasingly engage in peer-to-peer sharing organizations – a fledging and still underexplored way of organizing consumption worldwide.