Search results

The shape of a product plays a crucial role in shaping consumer behavior. Despite the voluminous research on factors influencing consumers’ shape preferences, there remains a limited understanding of how the busy mindset, a mentality increasingly emphasized by marketing campaigns, works. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between a busy mindset and the preference for angular-shaped versus circular-shaped products and brand logos.

This research consists of seven experimental studies using various shape stimuli, distinct manipulations of busy mindset, different assessments of shape preference and samples drawn from multiple countries.

The findings reveal that a busy mindset leads to a preference for angular shapes over circular ones by amplifying the need for uniqueness. In addition, these effects are attenuated when products are scarce.

This research represents one of the pioneering efforts to study the role of a busy mindset on consumers’ aesthetic preferences. Beyond yielding insights for practitioners into visual marketing, this research contributes to the theories on the busy mindset and shape preference.

The objective of this study was to improve understanding of frontline staff's subjective happiness and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating the roles of employees' busy mindset and leader conscientiousness.

The link between employee anxiety and subjective happiness was also explored, and the cross-level mediating effect of employee anxiety was tested using a multilevel design. A survey of 373 frontline staffers and 74 team leaders in the integrated resorts (IRs) was conducted in three waves: April (Time 1), May (Time 2) and June (Time 3) in 2020. The data were analysed with SPSS and Mplus using a hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) method.

The results indicated that during the COVID-19 pandemic, a busy mindset increased frontline staff's anxiety and thus decreased their subjective happiness, and leader conscientiousness remedied the effect of anxiety on subjective happiness.

The findings are relevant to frontline staffers, team leaders in the hospitality industry and corporate service departments. Against the background of COVID-19, conscientious leaders can significantly help employees to overcome their anxiety and insecurity and improve their subjective happiness, answering the urgent call to deal with the challenges of the new work–life environment.

The study differs from previous other studies in two dimensions: First, the authors explored the interactions of the affective events from the cross-level perspectives, i.e. both team level and individual level. Second, the authors conducted this research on the mental issues of the hospitality frontline staffers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which remains a black box to be explored.

Research was undertaken to understand whether taught resilience programmes which highlight the protective factors of resilience would impact individual resilience outcomes. The research focussed on specific resilience dimensions, change agility, physical, emotional and mental resilience, purpose in life and recovery; in an attempt to bridge the gap in understanding whether it is possible through taught programmes to improve resilience through the creation of new habits.

The research was conducted using interpretative phenomenological analysis methods and used semi-structured interviews with 12 participants to understand participants lived experience of a one-day personal resilience programme, conducted within a private global manufacturing organisation.

The research found that all 12 participants interviewed 12–18 months post-programme made sustainable habits changes increasing personal resilience levels. Participants built new habits into their everyday lives, in the physical dimension exercising more regularly, taking breaks, changes in nutrition and creating better sleep patterns. Through increased understanding of emotional intelligence participants were able to react more favourably to adverse situations and through mental increased resilience focus achieve work and home priorities. In understanding the change journey participants found that they were able to move more quickly through the change cycle. Almost all participants found understanding their life purpose difficult and were not able to give a conclusive answer to what this might be, they found that attending the programme helped reflection in this dimension.

The paper includes an overview of previous resilience research but differs in its examination of the impact of a specific taught resilience programme in a large private sector organisation using IPA methodology.

This paper aims to examine how exposure to sexual images activates the urge to yield to temptation in a subsequent unrelated context.

In Study 1, this paper uses empirical data based on an automobile expo to examine the correlational relationship between sexual imagery and indulgence. In Studies 2 and 3, this study examines the moderating effects of self-construal and gender differences on indulgent consumption, with different dependent measures. Study 4 distinguishes the sexual images into gratuitous sex and romantic love and tests the mediating role of sensation seeking.

For men, an independent self-construal increases indulgent consumption. In contrast, an interdependent self-construal facilitates women’s indulgent consumption. Having an interdependent self-construal has the opposite impact on indulgent consumption for the two genders: sexual images of romantic love attenuate the effect on men but boost the effect on women. Perceived sensation-seeking serves as the underlying mechanism.

This paper contributes to the literature on sex, reward-processing, context effects in marketing and indulgent consumption.

Advertisers, retailers, food courts and restaurants may use sexual imagery to promote more indulgent consumption with gender and self-construal as segmentation variables. Public policymakers and other concerned parties should also raise consumers’ awareness of the priming effect found in this research.

This research advances the literature on sex by demonstrating the priming effects of sexual imagery and further considers the simultaneous impacts of gender and self-construal on consumers’ subsequent indulgent consumption.

This study aims to enhance the understanding of impulse buying in grocery stores, where such purchases are pervasive and consumers face greater decision fatigue and diminished willpower than in more frequently examined retail environments. The intent is to demonstrate the influence of variables known to affect impulse buying in other environments on grocery shopping behavior, identify and profile segments that vary along those constructs and reveal how those segment characteristics help to explain impulse buying differences.

A purposive sample of 234 grocery shoppers approached at the point of purchase in a metropolitan area in Northeastern USA completed scales for theoretically derived variables and reported on their impulse purchases.

Anxiety, perceived financial pressure (PFP), novelty/variety seeking and shopping enjoyment positively influenced, whereas need for cognition had a negative effect on impulse-purchase activity. Two distinct segments of impulse buyers emerged: anxious and innovative shoppers. Anxious shoppers were higher in anxiety, PFP and compulsive buying, whereas innovative shoppers had higher levels of need for cognition and novelty/variety seeking.

The evidence for the dominance of anxiety and novelty/variety seeking as key motivators of distinct segments of impulse buyers in grocery stores is unique to this study. Results yield new insight on tension between the effects of motivational variables on the immediate impulse buying decision and post-purchase evaluation and add precision to marketers’ efforts to encourage spontaneous in-store decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of a role play activity as part of an experiential instructional strategy to develop an empathetic mindset among professionals, managers and executives attending an executive education program in change management.

This paper provides an approach and process for management educators and facilitators of executive education programs to introduce and teach role play for the busy executives to learn about empathy.

Role play is a useful teaching method that helps adult learners understand the importance of seeing things from another person’s point of view especially within a short period of time.

Management educators and facilitators could introduce and teach role play for the busy executives to learn about empathy based on the proposed approach and process in this paper.

This paper provides an approach and process for management educators and facilitators of executive education programs to introduce and teach role play for the busy executives to learn about empathy especially within a short a period of time.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This research paper clarifies that a coopetition-oriented mindset does drive coopetition-oriented behaviors. The results reveal that industry experience has a negative impact on the manifestation of coopetition-oriented behaviors, due a risk-related reticence in choosing suitable coopetition partners. Engaging in internationalization – for example, by partnering with a competitor to enter a foreign export market – with a coopetition-oriented mindset, has the positive effect of yielding further coopetition-oriented behaviors. Organizations involved in international business models are therefore more likely to partake in coopetition strategies.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This paper emphasises the importance of integrating sustainability principles in the learning environment to support a more sustainability focused mindset.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This study seeks to assess the sustainability of black African Small/Medium Enterprises (BASMEs) in London – by identifying how several unique factors might impinge on their propensity to flourish, falter or fail. In acknowledging the importance of break‐out to the sustainability of these businesses, this study explores whether an escapist mindset and low levels of acculturation could impinge on an entrepreneur’s willingness to overcome embeddedness, by reducing dependence on community linkages. Combining a synthesis of existing literature with a modicum of empirical research, this study finds that majority of the respondents were not “escapists entrepreneurs”. However, the escapists were more likely to operate businesses which may be failure‐prone as they were more likely to neglect pre‐start‐up preparations, less likely to approach institutional support systems for business support and more likely to favour embeddedness. Furthermore, acculturation levels were not found to have any effect on the entrepreneurs’ attitudes towards overcoming embeddedness and approaching institutions for business support. This study has both practical and social implications – as outlined in the main body of the paper.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This research paper concentrates on uncovering how the impact of pursuing workplace stretch goals can spill over into an employee’s family life. The results reveal that, due to the higher level of personal resources they demand, stretch goals do generate perceived resource scarcity that in turn causes work-family conflict (WFC). The study’s key takeaway is that employees who already have or are trained to adopt a high paradox mindset can best manage the resource demands involved in pursuing stretch goals, which limits WFC since these individuals see managing the experience as a positive source of personal challenge.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.