Search results

CRM treats various profiles of customers or individual customers differently, purposively favoring certain customers while deliberately disadvantaging others. This research aims to provide insights into how advantaged (favored) and (non-favored) disadvantaged customers perceive fairness in retailers’ marketing tactics.

A multiple study approach has been adopted, influenced by a three-stage process, which involved exploratory interviews, pilot tests, and the main survey.

The results have provided marketers with a perspective on maintaining and enhancing relationships. Service and marketing communications concern the advantaged customers most, while pricing is the most important aspect for the disadvantaged customers.

In terms of handling customers, there are important implications from recognizing how those who are favored and those who are not so advantaged perceive their treatment. Failure to appreciate the pitfalls for visibly treating certain customers more favorably and others demonstrably less so, will have stark consequences for retail management and consumer marketing.

Contributions are made to the literatures on CRM and on unfairness, particularly in terms of how to address the inevitable inequities inherent in retailers’ CRM offerings. Identification of the advantaged and disadvantaged customers and their respective views allows marketers to develop more appropriate approaches for handling customers who are sensitive to perceived unfairness.

This study contributes to the participative budgeting and budget misrepresentation literature by exploring: (1) whether managers’ judgments of fair behaviors are malleable and context-dependent and (2) if these judgments of fair behavior impact cost reporting misrepresentations. Two experiments investigate these questions. Experiment 1 (n = 42) tests whether the behavior that managers judge to be “fair” differs based on the decision context (i.e., initial economic position [IEP]). Experiment 2 (n = 130) investigates: (1) how managers’ deployment of fairness beliefs influences their reporting misrepresentations and (2) how decision aids that reduce task complexity impact managers’ deployment of fairness beliefs in their misreporting decisions. The study found that managers deploy fairness beliefs (i.e., honesty or equality) consistent with maximizing their context-relevant income. Hence, fairness beliefs constrain misrepresentations in predictable ways. In addition, we find more accounting information is not always beneficial. The presence of decision aids actually increases misrepresentations when managers are initially advantaged (i.e., start with more resources than others). The implications from these findings are relevant to the honesty and budgeting literature and provide novel findings of how managers’ preferences for fairness constrain managers from maximizing their income. The chapter demonstrates that contextual factors can influence the deployment of managers’ fairness beliefs which, in turn, differentially impact their reporting misrepresentation. Another contribution is that providing decision aids, which reduce task complexity, may not always benefit companies, since such aids may increase misrepresentation under certain conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to study what happens when firms misuse customers’ information and perceptions of unfairness arise because of privacy concerns. It explores a unifying theoretical framework of perceptions of unfairness, explained by the advantaged–disadvantaged (AD) continuum. It integrates the push, pull and mooring (PPM) model of migration for understanding the drivers of unfairness.

The paper is conceptual and develops a theoretical model based on extant research.

Using the PPM model, the paper explores the effects of information-based marketing tactics on the AD framework in the form of two types of customers. Findings from the review suggest that three variables have a leading direct effect on the AD customers. Traditionally, the fairness literature focuses on price, but findings show that service and communication variables impact customers’ unfairness perceptions. This paper examines the importance of these variables, in the context of an AD framework, to help explain unfairness and consider the implications.

To explain information misuse and unfairness perceptions, the paper develops a unifying theoretical framework of perceptions of unfairness, explained by linking the PPM model of migration with the AD continuum.

Are White and Asian job applicants advantaged in access to professional jobs relative to Black and Latinx job applicants at the initial screening stage of the hiring process? And, are the mechanisms of advantage for White applicants different than the mechanisms for Asian applicants? In this chapter, the author proposes a theoretical framework of “parallel mechanisms” of White and Asian advantage during hiring screening – that White and Asian applicants are advantaged compared to Black and Latinx applicants, but that the mechanisms of advantage subtly differ. The author focuses specifically on mechanisms related to two important factors at the hiring interface: referrals and educational attainment. The author applies the concept of parallel mechanisms to a case study of software engineering hiring at a midsized high technology firm in Silicon Valley. The author finds that at this firm, White applicants are advantaged at initial screening relative to Black and Latinx applicants due to average racial differences in applicant characteristics – namely having a referral – as well as differences in treatment by recruiters. For Asian applicants, average racial differences in possession of elite educational credentials, as well as racial differences in recruiter treatment, explain the racial disparity in callbacks. The author discusses the implications of parallel mechanisms of advantage for racial inequality in a multiracial context, and for organizational policy meant to address racial disparities during organizational hiring processes.

The purpose of the paper is to examine perceptions of unfairness and accompanying cognitive and emotional outcomes exhibited by present versus prospective customers when faced with targeted promotions. The targeted promotions were designed to be alternatively advantageous or disadvantageous to the targeted group.

An experiment was conducted with a two (customers categories: present /prospective customer) × two (inequality conditions: advantaged/disadvantaged condition) between‐subject design. A total of 104 valid questionnaires were completed with a minimum of 24 participants per cell.

Present customers perceive higher unfairness than prospective customers when faced with disadvantaged conditions. However, perceived unfairness was not significantly different when faced with advantaged conditions. Further, perceived unfairness cognitively and affectively influences purchase intentions through perceived value and negative emotions.

Although prospective customers are price‐sensitive, targeted promotions should favor present customers instead of prospective customers to lower the perceived price unfairness of present customers. In addition, when relatively low prices are necessary to attract prospective customers, firms should create a type of “segmentation fence”, where present customers are exposed as little as possible to special offers designed to attract prospective customers.

This research contributes to three streams of literature. The first is related to perceived reference price unfairness, focusing on self/other comparisons (present versus prospective customers) rather than self/self comparisons. The second contribution is related to the outcomes of perceived price unfairness. The mediating effect of perceived value (i.e. cognitive outcomes) and negative emotions (i.e. affective outcomes) between perceived price unfairness and purchase intentions is examined concurrently. The third contribution is that this research raises echoes with the perspective of customer relationship management.

Although preferential treatment has been considered a positive relationship marketing tactic, this research aims to examine how perceived harm to others as a result of preferential treatment invokes consumers’ negative moral emotions and negative attitudes towards the service provider.

Four studies are presented in this research. A pilot study first provides empirical evidence that customers who receive preferential treatment are aware of potential harm caused to other customers. Three experimental studies then test the hypothesis that shame and embarrassment mediate the effect of perceived harm to others on consumers’ responses to earned and unearned preferential treatment, respectively.

The present studies demonstrate that consumers naturally scan the environment and seek out information about others when judging their own experience; consequently, when preferential treatment is perceived to cause harm to others, it can trigger negative moral emotions. In particular, the authors show that shame mediates the effect of perceived harm to others when preferential treatment is earned, whereas embarrassment mediates this effect when preferential treatment is unearned.

The results of this research contribute to the literature on earned and unearned preferential treatment and negative moral emotions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to show that negative moral emotions may arise because of perceptions of harm to other customers, particularly in the context of earned preferential treatment. The authors demonstrate that ordinary shopping contexts have the potential to elicit these negative emotions, raising concerns about ethical and moral practices in service environments.

When designing relationship marketing programs incorporating preferential treatment, firms need to consider both the ethics of justice and the ethics of care. Guidelines considering ethics of care should be developed for employees to ensure appropriate training to deliver preferential treatment effectively and avoiding situations causing potential harm to others. Strategies could include encouraging employees to better scan the servicescape to identify if other customers’ needs should be attended first, and providing clearer justifications when administering preferential treatment. The provision of choices such as delayed redemption and passing on benefits to others can help minimise harm and potentially enhance customer service experience.

The studies presented here are the first to examine the role of perceived harm to others as an antecedent of consumers’ negative responses to preferential treatment. In particular, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to show that negative moral emotions may arise in the context of earned preferential treatment, calling into question some basic principles of relationship marketing.

The authors examine how different exchange patterns affect structurally disadvantaged actors' interactional justice evaluations and group identification in situations characterized by reciprocal and negotiated exchange.

Laboratory experiment.

Although results replicate prior work finding that disadvantaged individuals view their exchange partners as less fair when exchanging via negotiation rather than reciprocation, they also show the value of considering the pattern of exchange. Indeed, both the form of exchange and the pattern of exchange prompt exchange behaviors that shape how disadvantaged actors view the exchange experience, such that much of the direct effect of the form of exchange is offset by indirect paths, especially when the disadvantaged actor remains committed to their more advantaged partner. These fairness evaluations matter because as the authors show, they affect perceptions of group identification.

Future work should more explicitly consider how emotions as well as different levels of inequality might modify the processes described.

This chapter highlights the need to consider both the form of exchange and the relative stability of exchange when considering the fairness perceptions and group identification of disadvantaged individuals.

Only a handful of studies have examined social interactions between parents and children around food choice, though these have important implications for health. Moreover, we know very little about how socioeconomic status might influence these exchanges, including the nature and outcomes of children’s requests for specific foods and drinks.

Data are from a survey of 401 families with children ages 2-17. Using formal mediation models to decompose direct and indirect effects, we test three potential mechanisms of socioeconomic differences in caregivers’ propensity to indulge children’s requests for specific foods or drinks: (1) Children’s food-seeking behaviors; (2) Caregivers’ nutritional attitudes and values; and (3) Caregiver social control and monitoring of children’s diets. We also present a symbolic indulgence explanation, which is not empirically testable using our data, but is consistent with qualitative evidence (Pugh, 2009).

We find significant SES differences in the frequency and nature of children’s requests for foods, nutritional attitudes and values, and opportunities for caregiver monitoring of children’s eating habits, but these mechanisms explain little of the association between socioeconomic status and caregiver responses.

Limitations of this study include the non-probability sample and the inability to demonstrate the meaning and intention underlying SES effects. Nonetheless, our findings provide information about how SES does and does not influence parent-child interactions around food choice, which has important implications for developing effective policies and interventions for improving children’s diets.

In light of null findings regarding alternative explanations, children’s requests for unhealthy food and parents’ willingness to grant them may be related to cultural practices around parenting that differ by social class. Consequently, culture may be an important yet under-emphasized mechanism contributing to socioeconomic disparities in children’s dietary habits and health.

What is the scope of brokerage network to be considered in thinking strategically? Given the value of bridging structural holes, is there value to being affiliated with people or organizations that bridge structural holes? The answer is “no” according to performance associations with manager networks, which raises a question about the consistency of network theory across micro to macro levels of analysis. The purpose here is to align manager evidence with corresponding macro evidence on the supplier and customer networks around four-digit manufacturing industries in the 1987 and 1992 benchmark input–output tables. In contrast to the manager evidence, about 24% of the industry-structure effect on industry performance can be attributed to structure beyond the industry's own buying and selling, to networks around the industry's suppliers and customers. However, the industry evidence is not qualitatively distinct from the manager evidence so much as it describes a more extreme business environment.

This paper tests the theory that local option sales taxes (LOST) work to the disadvantage of poorer localities, particularly rural areas, where many residents commute to shop and work. We also hypothesize that LOST systems hurt struggling communities more than they help prospering ones. The LOST system is examined using multiple years of data from North Carolina, a state whose tax structure favors such an analysis. The results indicate that LOST systems exacerbate inequality between local communities by actively moving revenue from poorer communities to more wealthy ones. We find evidence that LOST systems cost poorer counties a greater percentage of their total budgets than is gained by the wealthy counties that attract retail activity.