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The purpose of this paper is to identify critical personality traits affecting and influencing buying behaviour in high involvement consumer durables. It also intends to guide practitioners in selecting appropriate marketing frameworks, consumer segments and processes considering the characteristics of consumer behaviour in developing economies.

It systematically reviews the literature on consumer personality traits, its measurement and related consumer buying behaviour. It uses data collected from potential car buyers at various car showrooms across the Indian subcontinent. The authors have worked with the online survey firm Qualtrics, to gather a data set of 328 car purchase intenders’ responses to their validated survey. The model was tested using the SmartPLS.

The personality traits of imagination, agreeableness and social factors positively influenced attitude towards automobiles with advanced technology. Further, in line with the theory of planned behaviour, it is seen that a positive attitude towards advanced technology and design for automobiles makes a person more willing to pay for the same.

The study is confined to consumers intending to purchase a car, who are Indian residents.

It adds to the comparatively lesser body of study on the impact of personality traits on intentions and attitudes in high involvement consumer durable purchases. Further, it serves as an empirical examination of the adoption of new technologies, in the context of high involvement consumer durables. For practicing managers, it provides a reference for deciding future development directions and approaches related to the effective market launch strategies and commercialization of advanced technology automobiles in India.

Emotions in business-to-business (B2B) interactions are relatively unexplored when compared with business-to customer (B2C) industry wherein sufficient evidence implicating the role of emotions in decision-making is available. This study aims to explore the role of emotions in B2B decision-making, and a customer experience model is suggested for the B2B industry.

The qualitative research methodology using structured and semi-structured interviews along with a repertory grid technique was followed during the study. Purposive sampling was done to identify respondents who were involved in the vendor choice process either as a buyer or a seller in their respective organizations.

Exploratory research conducted during this study supports the presence of five dimensions of customer experience – sensory, emotional, relational, behavioural and intellectual – in a B2B context. The study further indicates that the experiential value for B2B decision-making is derived from functional, symbolic, emotional and cost values which are assessed by the buyer during their interaction with the product or the service ecosystem and has an impact on the purchase intentions of an industrial buyer.

This paper identifies the role of specific customer experience dimensions in a B2B environment and proposes the role and mechanism of emotional factors affecting the decision-making process in B2B exchange.

This paper seeks to empirically examine the distinct antecedents of cognitive and affective brand trust in the context of high inherent risk product of baby care toiletries. In addition, the moderating role of working status and education is investigated for the relationship between brand trust and its antecedents.

Extensive literature review was conducted to develop the theoretical framework, which was then empirically validated through a survey conducted on the 507 respondents. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The study found that brand credibility, brand innovativeness and family influence are antecedents of cognitive brand trust whereas brand intimacy and family influence are drivers of affective brand trust. Further, the working status is found to moderate the relationship between brand intimacy to affective brand trust and family influence to both cognitive and affective brand trust. The study result does not support the moderating effect of education on the relationship of cognitive brand trust with brand credibility and brand innovativeness.

The study recommends marketing strategy implications for high inherent risk product companies such as baby care toiletries that what essential factors they must keep in mind while promoting their brand and winning trust of customers.

The present study is one among those few empirical investigations that examines the role of antecedents of brand trust in less researched context of high inherent risk products.

The article aims to examine the rural‐urban divide used as a premise for idiomatic understanding of Indian rural consumers, and review current practices. This may be self limiting, and may trap marketers in an idiom that is not in touch with current realities in the rapidly evolving rural market. The paper highlights the rapid changes, emerging segments, the factors affecting change, and the need to revisit the rural idiom, with a more nuanced, stratified, granular look at the differences among rural consumer segments.

It looks at existing literature and recent consumer survey reports, and notes the existing practitioner mindset, and current practices reported in literature industry forums and popular press.

Recent surveys help posit the rise of the rural middle class, highlighting four sets of factors causing changes in the rural households' consumption patterns. It concludes that the most critical need is to understand values, needs, aspirations, social norms and realities, nature and pace of change to develop effective competitive strategies to address rural consumers, especially its middle class.

It is limited in its opinions due to the dependence on reports of prior surveys and existing literature.

It identifies areas for future research to capture this change, and proposes the variables that must be kept in mind for generating adequate consumer insights. This is proposed through an initial re‐stratification and psychographic mapping of consumers for better rural marketing initiatives.

Marketers have embarked on methods twining social uplift through economic empowerment, with programs building on distribution reach and efficiency helping them expand their own business. Better insights into rural diversity should help expand the programs and create more impact.

It has brought together diverse perspectives from practice and literature, and focussed attention on specific drivers of change, and how they will create greater diversity going forward. This will help focus on new segments, and proposes a newer paradigm for researching rural consumers.

This paper aims to empirically examine the distinct antecedents of cognitive and affective brand trust in the context of baby care toiletry brands. Further, the moderating role of the mother’s personality traits on the relationship between brand trust and its antecedents is investigated.

The study methodology involves two phases: exploratory and descriptive. The exploratory phase, with the support of a focused literature review, results in a theoretical framework that is later validated through the survey-based empirical phase.

The study finds that brand predictability and brand innovativeness are antecedents of cognitive brand trust, whereas brand intimacy is a driver of affective brand trust. The study confirms that agreeableness positively moderates the relationship between brand intimacy and affective brand trust, whereas conscientiousness positively moderates the relationship between brand predictability and cognitive brand trust.

The study recommends marketing strategy approaches for baby care product companies, including the essential factors they must keep in mind for promoting their brand and winning the trust of mothers.

The study is among the few empirical investigations that examine the role of the moderating effect of personality traits on the relationship between brand trust and its antecedents, in the little-researched context of the high perceived risk category of baby care toiletry products in an emerging-market context.

This case looks at a new start-up company, d.light Design, as it was seeking to go to market in India with its solar-powered LED lamps in 2009. Sam Goldman, founder and chief customer officer of d.light, was in New Delhi, India; his business-school friend and co-founder Ned Tozun was in China, the site of the company's manufacturing plant.

One of the key decisions Goldman and Tozun needed to make was whether d.light should focus on just one distribution channel in India, or multiple channels. The startup had limited capital, so it needed to get the distribution question right to generate revenue quickly.

The case thus combines an entrepreneurial problem with an emerging-market, or bottom-of-the-pyramid, channel design challenge. This case does not focus on product design or manufacturing challenges but rather on questions of:

• The constraints d.light faced in creating an aligned distribution channel. These constraints can have legal, environmental, and/or managerial foundations

• Demand-side misalignments in the channel structure that will occur if d.light chooses one or another of the considered channels in the case, namely, (a) the RE (rural entrepreneur) channel, (b) the village retailer channel, or (c) the centralized shops channel

• • What mix of channels—or what single channel—d.light should focus on in the Indian market

• • The financial return possible based on d.light's current cost structure and overhead expenditures in India

The constraints d.light faced in creating an aligned distribution channel. These constraints can have legal, environmental, and/or managerial foundations

Demand-side misalignments in the channel structure that will occur if d.light chooses one or another of the considered channels in the case, namely, (a) the RE (rural entrepreneur) channel, (b) the village retailer channel, or (c) the centralized shops channel

• What mix of channels—or what single channel—d.light should focus on in the Indian market

• The financial return possible based on d.light's current cost structure and overhead expenditures in India

• Assess channel benefit demand intensities for chosen target market segments

• Assess channel alignment constraints that can limit the channel designer's ability to optimize the channel to meet identified end-user demands for channel benefits

• Use these ideas to defend a choice of one or more possible channel structures as appropriate parts of a company's overall channel system

• Analyze financial opportunity in this situation, given cost parameters and possible market penetration estimates

Assess channel benefit demand intensities for chosen target market segments

Assess channel alignment constraints that can limit the channel designer's ability to optimize the channel to meet identified end-user demands for channel benefits

Use these ideas to defend a choice of one or more possible channel structures as appropriate parts of a company's overall channel system

Analyze financial opportunity in this situation, given cost parameters and possible market penetration estimates

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of regulations, reforms and legal environment on dividend policy in a different institutional setting. Particularly, it examines the firm-level cash dividend behaviour of publicly listed firms in Turkey in the post-2003 period, since there were major economic and structural reforms as well as significant regulatory changes of dividend payout rules imposed by the supervisory bodies.

The paper focuses on a recent large panel data set of 264 Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE)-listed firms over a ten-year period 2003-2012. First, it employs a modified specification of Lintner’s (1956) partial adjustment model for analysis regarding target payout ratio and dividend smoothing. Second, it performs a logit model for analysis in identifying the link between financial characteristics and the likelihood of paying dividends.

The results show that ISE firms now follow the same determinants as suggested by Lintner. They, indeed, have long-term payout ratios and adjust their cash dividends by a moderate level of smoothing, and therefore adopt stable dividend policies (although less stable policies compared to their counterparts in the developed US market) as a signalling mechanism over the period 2003-2012. Moreover, the results also report that ownership structure concentration affects the target payout ratio and dividend smoothing in the Turkish market. In addition, the results further show that more profitable, more mature and larger sized ISE firms are more likely to pay cash dividends, whereas ISE firms with higher investment opportunities and more debt are less likely to distribute cash dividends in the post-2003 period.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first major research that examines the implications of reforms and regulations on cash dividend payments and dividend smoothing over time in Turkey during its market integration process in the post-2003 period.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the capabilities of social entrepreneurship (SE) firms and how they achieve competitive advantage while engaging in social value creation. The authors employ a business model perspective to understand the (self-) sustaining mechanism for social good.

The authors carry out an in-depth investigation of three SE ventures. The authors analyse the history of these ventures to determine how they achieved competitive advantage. The cases are analysed based on the internal development in the context of environmental support.

The authors find that SE ventures, like all other organisations, achieve competitive advantage based on available resources such as reputation and network of the founder, managerial experience and other corporate resources within the firm. The authors also find that the competitive advantage often comes from innovate usage – a practice that is reinforced by the support from institutional environment.

Due to the case study approach, the research is aimed at theoretical development within the social business literature. The approach makes it difficult for the findings to be universally generalisable. The authors therefore envisage future researchers to test the theoretical propositions.

Based on the analysis, the authors conclude that distinct capabilities of social businesses help them achieve competitive advantage, and that policy makers should institutionally support these ventures. The findings stress the importance of resources in sustainability and effectiveness of emerging market SE.

The application of a business model perspective in SE is unique, and advances the understanding of social businesses from a strategic management perspective.