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Managers prefer semantic imbeds in brand names, but extant literature has primarily studied fictitious names for their sound-symbolic perceptions. This paper aims to explore sound-symbolic perceptions of products with blended brand names (BBNs), formed with at least one semantic and one nonsemantic component. Unlike most extant literature, this study not only estimates the effect of vowels and consonants individually on product perceptions but also of their combinations. The boundary condition for this effect is examined by classifying products by their categorization and attributes by their abstractness.

Through a within-subject experiment, this paper tested perceptions of products with BBNs having high-/low-frequency sounds. A mixed-design experiment followed with sound frequency, product-level categorization and attributes’ abstractness as predictor variables.

For BBNs, vowel sounds convey brand meaning better than the combinations of vowel and consonant sounds – and these convey brand meaning better than consonant sounds. Differences in consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs occur when the degree of attributes’ abstractness matches product-level categorization, such as when concrete attributes match subordinate-level categorization.

Brand managers/strategists can communicate product positioning (attribute-based) through BBNs created specifically for product categories and product types.

This research presents a comparative analysis across vowels, consonants and their combinations on consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs. Manipulation of names’ length and position of the sound-symbolic imbed in the BBN proffered additional contributions. Another novelty is the interaction effect of product categorization levels and attributes’ abstractness on sound-symbolic perception.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a behavioral theory of organizational vision.

Based on existing theoretical concepts and empirical evidence, this new theory development compares a diverse set of plausible logical, empirical, and/or epistemological conjectures so that highlighting occurs to form the substance of the new vision theory.

The approach takes the form of an emerging vision theory, which explains how vision attributes create an impact on organizational performance.

While vision is core to the prevailing vision‐based leadership theories, little is theoretically and empirically known about attributes for effective vision. Moreover, there is no existing leadership theory, which explains the process by which vision attributes create positive effects on organizational performance. The paper proposes a vision theory to fill this gap.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the personal values driving Indonesian and Malaysian Muslims’ consumption decisions with respect to halal food.

The personal values of 130 Indonesian and 80 Malaysian Muslims have been analyzed, using a means-end chain (MEC) approach, in relation to halal food.

Primary personal values are identified as a better sense of personal security. This is ascribed as seeking “better future” and “go to heaven.” Other personal values are related to tradition, benevolence and achievement.

Since this study was conducted in both the capital cities of Indonesia and Malaysia, this study might not take account of cultural diversity within the two countries’ Muslim communities.

An understanding of the personal values governing Muslim consumption is a useful tool toward improving the promotion of halal certification and food products.

This study reveals the personal values of Indonesian and Malaysian Muslims with underpinning their consumption of halal food.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how consumers from a developing country background such as Indonesia make local fresh food decisions for daily eating.

The use of the means-end chain approach is utilized as a measure of attributes, consequences and values of locally produced products.

For Javanese ethnic group in Indonesia, “save money” and “health benefits” are identified views that motivate consumers purchasing their local foods.

Although investigating the largest ethnic groups in Indonesia, the results of this study cannot be generalized to all Indonesian consumers and a larger sample needs to be studied to generalize the results to the wider population of Indonesia.

It is better for the Government to promote local food policies that is based on identified motivations of consumers. “Save money” and “health benefits” themes can be used as the central messages for the development of advertising strategies.

This study identifies the Javanese motivations for buying local foods and examines the motivation differences between rural and urban locations. This is providing views for the Government and individual businesses use to.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the motives of urban consumers when purchasing local food products using means-end chain (MEC) analysis and second, to introduce an alternative approach to segment the market based on consumers’ motivation using decision segmentation analysis (DSA).

DSA was used as advanced segmentation procedure of hierarchy value maps (HVMs) produced by MEC analysis.

The findings suggest that there are two main segments of local food consumers in urban Indonesia: value-for-money and health benefits. The value-for-money segment is dominant when making local food purchasing.

This study sample is not representative of local food consumers in urban Indonesia as only three urban cities were interviewed.

An understanding of the motivation-based segmentation of local food in urban cities is a useful tool in order to reinforce and attract local food consumers to consume more locally grown food.

This study reveals the motivation-based segmentation of local food in urban cities in Indonesia.

Deodorant, as a hygienic product, becomes a daily necessity product and has significant benefits to its users. Yet, the real motivation for consuming deodorant is not fully understood, and therefore, this study aims to join the extant literature in this context by investigating the effect of personal values.

A qualitative study using the laddering approach (means-end analytic) was used and 50 college students participated in this study.

The hierarchical value maps show that achievement, power, security and benevolent personal values are responsible for millennials deodorant consumption behavior. Fragrance, price and antiperspirant are the most important attributes that appeal to such consumption.

The findings also suggested that three different situational factors generated these different personal values. It includes a pre-career environment, puberty and maintaining self-stability. The strongest attributes that appeal to millennials are fragrance, price, antiperspirant, brand, long-lasting quality and packaging.

This study offers the means-end approach to the framework of millennials deodorant consumption behavior and which can be implemented to investigate millennials consumption decision-making processes.

The purpose of this paper is to use path analysis to test a model that posits that vision will have both direct relationships with organizational growth and indirect relationships to organizational growth through the mediating effects of organizational readiness for change.

The population of the study consisted of 104 fully or partially employed business students from a higher education institution located in Southern California. The data were gathered by questionnaires and analyzed by path analysis to test the hypothesized model.

The results suggested that perceived readiness for change mediates the relationship between vision attributes and organizational growth. Also, there was a direct impact of vision content (VC) on organizational growth. Perceived readiness for change did not mediate the relationship between VC and organizational growth or the relationship between vision communication and organizational growth.

The study makes contributions to both theory and practice. From a theoretical point of view, examining the relationship between organizational vision and perceived organizational readiness for change enriches the understanding of the organizational change process, and in turn enhances organizational performance and growth. In addition, the authors add to existing knowledge by empirically investigating the important role that vision and employees’ readiness for change play in organizational success.

Despite many scholars emphasizing the significance of a vision on organizational readiness for change and organizational growth, there is little empirical research that substantiates this assumption. Therefore, this empirical study appears to be the first to explore the idea.

Customer decision‐making uncertainty (DMU) is a persistent phenomenon in business‐to‐business markets. However, there is substantial variation in the degree to which customers perceive DMU and how suppliers should react to it. The purpose of this paper is to explain variation in customer decision‐making uncertainty.

Based on existing industrial buying typologies, this paper proposes a new classification scheme to explain variance in customer decision‐making uncertainty. Market offering complexity and co‐creation are used as defining dimensions in the construction of four archetypal types of industrial market offerings.

The paper demonstrates on a theoretical level that customer decision‐making uncertainty is especially prevalent in complex offerings characterized by high degrees of co‐creation.

This typology helps to provide a more nuanced understanding of the effects of co‐creation on customer value. Firms should adapt their selling approaches to the degree of complexity and co‐creation that they offer their customers.

The originality of the paper rests in explaining customer decision‐making uncertainty in relation to complexity and co‐creation. Thus, it sheds light on the dark side of co‐creating market offerings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the range sensitivity of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and evaluate the effectiveness of using a bottom‐up approach to mitigate the possible range insensitivity bias in the AHP.

An experiment was conducted to test the normative range‐sensitivity of four different methods: the AHP with bottom‐up evaluation; direct ratio weights; swing weights; and trade‐off weights. Also, the significance of the range‐sensitivity effects and the differences among weighting approaches were rigorously tested using various statistical models.

Results show that the range sensitivities of AHP and direct ratio weights are significantly less than the range sensitivities of swing weights and tradeoff weights, suggesting that the bottom‐up evaluation approach might not be a feasible solution for the range‐insensitivity problem. This finding is consistent with the value‐comparison hypothesis proposed in an earlier study, and is partially supported by the theory of the multi‐dimensionality of attribute importance.

It is concluded that treating the attribute weights and performance scoring scales separately in the AHP or other multi‐attribute decision analysis models might lead to an arbitrary final ranking of alternatives. Therefore, it may be necessary to incorporate better elicitation procedures into the AHP models to ensure that attribute weights properly reflect the range or scale of measurement.

This study provides new evidence and issues words of warning of the range‐sensitivity effects in the multi‐attribute decision analysis.