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The aim of this research was to investigate how ethnocentrism and economic development within transitional economies affects the formation of brand attitudes and attitude toward the ad.

Kazakhstan and Slovenia were chosen as representative transitional economies – Kazakhstan in the early stages and Slovenia highly advanced. A random sample of adults was surveyed in both countries and in the USA, which served as a control group. Questionnaires were distributed that contained measures of ethnocentricity (CETSCALE), attitude toward the brand (Ab) and attitude towards the ad (Aad). Expectations based on theory and previous studies suggested the following: ethnocentricity leads to negative Aad and Ab for foreign products and ethnocentricity will have a greater effect on Aad and Ab in new transitioning economies. All hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (LISREL).

Ethnocentricity did result in negative Aad, but only for Kazakhstan, not Slovenia. The effect of ethnocentrism on Aad was stronger in the newly transitioning economy. Ethnocentricity affected Ab formation only indirectly through Aad, not directly as predicted by previous research. There was limited support for the idea that the effect of ethnocentrism on Ab was stronger in newly transitioning economies.

Because ethnocentric attitudes transfer directly to negative Aad, it indicates that developing a superior brand in newly transitioning economies is preferable to relying on mass advertising to make one's case. The brand will develop its reputation based on quality and status, which are not directly affected by ethnocentricity. A further protection from ethnocentric attitudes would be to form a joint venture with a local firm or set up a foreign subsidiary. In more advanced transitioning economies, a shift to mass communication of product benefits will work more readily.

International marketers have better decision‐making information now available. The relationships of economic development and ethnocentricity are more clearly laid out as they relate to attitude formation for foreign products. Researchers in this field have more advanced theory to work from, as the path by which ethnocentricity affects attitude formation has been delineated more clearly.

The vast majority of interventions during organizational change tend to focus on individually-held attitudes toward change. However, groups often form collective attitudes that are distinct from those held by its individual members, and organizational change often necessitates collective attitude change within teams, work units, or even the entire organization. We challenge the dominant view that collective attitudes to organizational change merely reflect an aggregation of individual attitudes by considering how and why collectively-held change attitudes are formed and activated. Drawing on social network theory, we propose an alternative approach toward an understanding of change. Acknowledging and detailing attitude formation as a social response to change – a social system of interaction among change recipients – we explain how collective attitudes to organizational change emerge. With this stance, individuals may hold broad and differing attitudes, but as a group can come together to share a collective attitude toward change. Using this approach, we explain how collective attitudes and individual attitudes are linked through top-down or bottom-up processes, or a combination of both. Developing this alternative perspective improves our understanding of how collective attitudes to change develop and evolve and enables both scholars and practitioners to better manage and influence the formation of change-supportive collective attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the beliefs and attitudinal factors that affect the private sphere pro-environmental behavior of information technology (IT) professionals in using personal computers.

A research framework that draws from the belief-action-outcome (BAO) framework and that consisted of 11 hypotheses was developed. Data were collected from a sample of 322 IT professionals and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results identify the pro-environmental personal computing actions that IT professionals are taking and how their Green IT beliefs, attitudes, information acquisition capability, and organizational fields influence their behavior.

The sample was limited to Australian respondents. The measurement of IT-specific environmental practices was not exhaustive nor were the measures of macro- and micro-antecedents of Green IT belief and attitude.

National, regional, and international professional associations such as the Association of Information Systems can influence pro-environmental behavior among IT professionals through the creation and dissemination of information that shape both general and IT-specific environmental beliefs.

The novelty of this work lies in: first, proposing and testing a research framework that can be leveraged in future studies; second, establishing how organizational fields and availability of information contribute to the formation of IT professionals’ environmental beliefs and attitudes; third, applying and suggesting potential extension to the BAO framework to evaluate the association between IT practices and environmental sustainability among IT professionals.

This study aims to investigate the effects of brand familiarity on attitude formation across different advertising channels, product types and brand settings.

A meta-analysis containing 107 empirical studies with 183 effects sizes tests a theoretical model according to situational moderators and methodological factors of brand familiarity.

Brand familiarity has stronger positive impacts on attitude formation under particular advertising tools (online and real advertising), product types (hedonic and mature products) and brand characteristics (memory-based recall). The findings also depend on methodological factors such as student samples, laboratory settings and non-estimated effect sizes.

This meta-analytic study reconciles prior inconsistencies and advances the understanding of brand familiarity across key advertising, product and brand moderators.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a decentralized output feedback controller for cooperative attitude regulation of spacecraft formation in absence of angular velocity feedback.

The nonlinear relative attitude dynamic and kinematic equations represented by relative quaternion and relative angular velocity, respectively, are considered in this paper. The lead filter is employed to synthesize virtual angular velocity signal so that the design of output feedback controller is achieved. Lyapunov method is adopted to prove the stability of closed‐loop system. Considering the external disturbance, the theory of L2‐gain disturbance attenuation is employed to improve the designed controller. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the controllers proposed.

It is found that the closed‐loop system can be guaranteed asymptotically stable in absence of external disturbance. When disturbance is considered, as long as the sufficient condition proposed is satisfied, the improved controller can render system uniformly ultimately bounded stable.

The proposed output feedback control scheme can be considered as a fall‐back alternative for the case that the angular velocity sensors fail, or seen as another option for the system without angular velocity sensors at all.

Unlike most classical works in the field of output feedback which focus on centralized scheme and neglect the disturbance, the controller proposed in this paper is able to handle the output feedback control problem of multi‐agent formation in a decentralized fashion, so as to avoid the single failure point of a centralized scheme. Meanwhile, the capability of L2‐gain disturbance attenuation is also achieved simultaneously.

This paper aims to investigate the fast attitude coordinated control problem for rigid satellite swarms with communication delays.

Based on behavior‐based control approach, the attitude control system is designed to guarantee that the attitude of the satellite swarm converge to a dynamic reference state in finite time. A fast sliding mode is developed to improve the convergence rate and robustness of the control system. All the effects of communication delays, parameter uncertainties and external disturbances are taken into account simultaneously, and the communication topology of the satellite swarm can be arbitrary types. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the analytic results.

Despite the existence of communication delays, parameter uncertainties and external disturbances, the stability of the closed‐loop system can be successfully guaranteed and the proposed control strategies are effective to overcome these unexpected phenomena subject to arbitrary communication topology.

This paper introduces a fast terminal sliding mode control method which can guarantee the fast convergence of the attitude state of the satellite swarm in the presence of communication delays, switched communication topology, parameter uncertainties and external disturbances.

Advertisers use various tactics to influence consumer purchases and create positive associations with their brands. The purpose of this study is to explore the formation of peer-endorser credibility and its influence on attitude formation. The role of product involvement in the formation of attitudes and endorser credibility is also examined.

A quantitative study was conducted among university students. Data were collected using an online questionnaire concerning three advertisements for which identical questionnaires were constructed; 364 responses were generated.

The authors show that the credibility of a peer endorser is constructed from trustworthiness, expertise, similarity and attractiveness dimensions that positively affect consumers’ attitude toward an advertisement and a brand. Product involvement affects advertising effectiveness indirectly through the endorser-credibility construct. Finally, the authors show that a consumer’s experience with an advertised product affects the perception of endorser credibility and the effectiveness of the advertisement.

The findings reveal new insights into the little studied area of peer-endorser effectiveness. The authors shed light on the construction of peer endorser credibility and the relative importance of specific credibility dimensions on the effectiveness of an advertisement. This study also provides information on the direct and indirect effects of consumers’ brand involvement on attitudes toward advertisements.

The purpose of this research paper is to apply the ABC model and examine the attitudinal segmentation of online consumer in India in terms of internet usage, perceived risks, website attributes, intent to do online purchase in future and preference of website attributes.

A structured questionnaire was administered to 600 online consumers using field and online survey mediums. The logit analysis was applied to arrive at segmentation of online users.

Findings show how attitudes are different of online users when they were segmented based on internet usage. This segmentation showed attitudes that were paradoxical in nature. To explain this paradoxical behaviour of online buyers, this study applied the logit analysis. The online users were further examined applying the ABC model of attitude. Three distinct segments of online users emerged. They are: CAB, CBA and BCA.

The findings of this paper will be useful for online retailers who want to start e-commerce business in India. The findings are also useful for designing appropriate promotion and marketing strategies to entice online users to become online buyers.

The key contributions of this paper are the new insights from using the ABC model. Based on usage of internet in number of hours, online buyers could be segmented into four groups. On further analysis using ABC model, this studied showed that a better segmentation of online buyers is possible and that is called attitudinal segmentation. The BCA attitudinal segment is a finding of this study and is unique to this research. This has not been done using Indian online buyers and this adds to the originality of the study.

The study explored the effect of different factors affecting attitude formation towards Internet banking (online banking) in Finland. The purpose of this paper is to determine those factors that influence the formation of attitude towards Internet banking on the one hand, and their relation to the use of online banking services, on the other. To attain these, a large survey (1,167 responses) was carried out during the summer of 2000 in Finland. Attitude formation was studied by the use of a structural equation model. The results are expected to provide both theoretical and practical contributions in the area of electronic retail banking and understanding of consumer behaviour in the turbulent financial services industry.

The phenomenon of global brands taking a stance on crucial, yet polarizing, socio-political issues, namely global brand activism, is rising. However, how consumer views on this practice are shaped when global branding elements are factored in remains unclear. Drawing from the functional theory of attitude formation, this study investigates the relationships of consumer characteristics (political ideology, consumer ethnocentrism) and brand factors (global brand attitudes and perceived motivation of global brand activists) with attitudes toward global brand activists.

Using a survey of a UK nationally representative sample (n = 439), we test our hypothesized model via structural equation modeling and mediation analysis.

Our findings reveal direct and indirect effects of political ideology on attitudes toward global brand activists (AttGBACTIVs). While consumer ethnocentrism and global brand attitudes do not directly drive AttGBACTIVs, they do influence them indirectly. Perceived motivation of global brand activists emerges as a key mechanism activating these effects and affecting AttGBACTIVs.

First, this study constitutes a novel examination of consumer views of brand activism through a global branding lens. Second, our investigation uniquely combines important determinants of brand activism outcomes with key international marketing factors (namely consumer ethnocentrism and global brand attitudes). Third, the concurrent exploration of individual and brand factors in our mediated model reveals the complex mechanisms through which attitudes toward global brand activists are formed.