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This study aims to develop and validate a cross-national framework to identify the motivation underpinning consumers' (i.e. the general public's) loyalty toward credit card usage. The following research questions guided the study: (1) What factors motivate consumers to stay loyal to their credit card? (2) Does the investment model (regarding satisfaction and investment size) mediate the relationship between factors motivating consumers to stay loyal to their credit card?

This study employs the investment model theory (Rusbult, 1980) as a theoretical framework and uses structural equation modeling to develop and validate a cross-national framework, addressing factors that motivate consumers to stay loyal to credit card brands. In addition, the authors test the mediating effect of the investment model on the relationship. Survey data were collected from the United States and France.

The findings revealed four factors (incentives, customer service, investment size and satisfaction) that impact consumer credit card loyalty behavior in the two mature credit card markets. The authors find empirical support for two of four hypotheses. That is, investment size mediates the relationship between incentives and consumer loyalty, and satisfaction mediates the relationship between customer service and consumer loyalty. Moreover, unlike the French sample, the American sample produced a significant finding for investment size to mediate the relationship between customer service and consumer loyalty.

This paper validates and extends the investment model theory in the marketing of credit cards within a cross-national setting. Most studies on credit card consumption focus on the college student segment, and there is less understanding of the motivation to stay loyal to using a credit card from the general public who are not necessarily college students. Given the scarce stream of empirical studies dealing with cross-national consumer motivation, choice criteria of credit cards, and loyalty toward credit cards, this research comes at an opportune moment as credit card firms differentiate their card brands in the global marketplace. Further, a dataset originating from two mature Western economies has been put forward for the benefit of practitioners and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate employment of positioning strategies in the retail bank sector of Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically using Ghana as the study context. In addition, it explores the applicability of western-based typology of positioning strategies in the Sub-Saharan African environment.

Six retail banks – three national and three foreign – are studied, each through an in-depth case study method: covert and participant observation techniques; and face-to-face interviews of chief executive officers, marketing managers, and bank branch managers provided data for the study.

The results show that the “service” positioning strategy is the most popular strategy employed by retail banks. “Value for money,” “attractiveness,” “brand name,” and “country of origin” positioning strategies are also dominant. “Top of the range” and “selectivity” strategies are minimally pursued by the sample of banks studied. The results reveal that both foreign and national retail banks employ multiple positioning strategies in the face of competition. However, foreign retail banks consistently employ a; large number of strategies relative to national retail banks. This paper supports the applicability of a western-derived set of positioning strategies in the Sub-Saharan African marketplace.

This study closes a gap in the understanding of positioning, as well as filling the empirical gap in the application of positioning. In addition, it helps resolve a contextual gap of knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa’s retail banking sector.

This study responds to Porter (1996), Clancy and Trout (2002), and Knox (2004) for continued empirical research in positioning in service industries and specifically in Sub-Saharan African economies (Coffie, 2014, 2016; Coffie and Owusu-Frimpong, 2014). Moreover, this research adds value to the banking and marketing literatures through a qualitative case study method, which is an important yet overlooked research method (Yin, 2009).

This paper posits, develops and tests the effects of general environmental awareness factors on consumers’ intentions in the Environmental Awareness Purchasing Intention Model. Environmental awareness is tested within the context of purchasing vehicles and, thus, vehicle relevant factors (perceived quality and self-image) are also included. Further, the purpose of this paper is to explain the relative contribution of general environmental awareness factors on purchasing intentions compared to quality and self-image.

The main thrust of the research involved a survey of 248 young automobile buyers from a large public university in Texas, USA. The data were analyzed using both multiple regression and partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Environmental attitude has a positive impact on purchasing intention, while perceived control toward environmentally responsible behavior has a negative impact. Results also show a positive impact of quality and self-image on intention to purchase environmentally friendly cars. Furthermore, the results reveal that environmental awareness factors explain less variance than perceived quality. At the same time, the results show that environmental factors, relatively, explain more variance in the decision-making process than self-image.

This is the first study to examine the relationship between general environmental awareness and the intention to purchase an environmentally friendly car. This study contributes to sustainable consumption literature in operations management. The paper also provides insights for developing managerial guidelines for car manufacturers based on the understanding of factors influencing environmentally friendly car purchasing intentions.

This paper aims to offer a systematic view of religious consumption and its iterative influences on consumers, as well as their differences in attitudes, values and behaviors.

Using a mixed-method approach – both qualitative and quantitative – the study develops religious self-transformation and self-categorization scales to empirically evaluate the hypotheses.

The convergence of consumption, self-identification and religious attitudes and behaviors proffer an essentially subjective concept useful in understanding the existential reflection and supernatural orientation that individuals may seek through consumption. Cluster analysis (based on product, services, media and practices) reveals four quadrants. The non-religious (religious) group has low (high) consumption in all four consumption categories Self-categorization (self-transformation) group has high (low) level of product consumption, but low (high) in all three other categories. This research presented four invisible identities that are visibly different in terms of life satisfaction, religious brand preference, dollars spending on religious products and monetary donation.

This research only considers one medium-size city as opposed to all types of cities. All religious affiliated and nonaffiliated respondents are included in the total sample.

The study offers new insights into the triadic relationship between religious self-identification, religious consumption, and the marketplace that can be used in branding, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and persuasive advertising, public relation and social media, and services marketing.

Religion addresses the nature of existence. In this religion–consumer–brand nexus, consumption is a way for consumers to experience and immense themselves in the sacred to solidify, communicate, transform, improve and transport who they are capitalizing on religious self-identification can affectively promote positive social change.

This work proposes four invisible identities that are different in consumption of religious products and services in terms of patterns and purposes. These groups of consumers shape the marketplace through the derived utility of their religious consumption based on their self-identification, which in turn influences their religious brand preference.

The purpose of this study is to explore the direct and indirect effects of perceived provider professionalism and service recovery in enhancing patient satisfaction in a developing country.

This study used a survey method to investigate satisfaction among health-care consumers. This study used data collected from 210 health-care consumers to empirically test the hypotheses via structural equation modeling

This study found that service recovery has a significant direct effect on patient satisfaction. Though this study did not find perceived provider professionalism to have a direct effect on patient satisfaction, it found an indirect effect in the relationship via service experience. Thus, service experience fully/completely mediates the relationship between perceived provider professionalism and patient satisfaction, while partially mediating the significant relationship between service recovery and patient satisfaction.

The results further underscore the need for health-care organizations in developing countries to focus on mindfully developing operations-oriented strategies that lead to the delivery of memorable service experiences for patients.

Using social exchange theory as a contextual backdrop, this study aims to better understand how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can contribute to customer retention (CR). A conceptual framework is developed to illustrate the proposed relationship and the influence of mediating factors. The telecommunication industry in Ghana is used to operationalize the conceptual framework.

Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through face-to-face interviews with CSR managers and through a structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using qualitative analysis and structural equation modeling.

Findings suggest that CSR, corporate image and service quality have significant relationships with both corporate image and CR. Corporate image also mediates the relationship between CSR, customer value and service quality with that of CR. The authors also find that CSR strengthens the relationship between customer value and service quality with that of corporate image, which subsequently leads to enhanced CR.

Thus far, the mediating variables that help explain and predict the relationship between CSR activities and CR have been overlooked in the extant literature. The results of this study will help fill a critical knowledge gap in marketing and CSR literature.

The purpose of this study is to establish the relationship between stakeholder market orientation (StMO) and sustainability performance (SP) at tourism destinations (TDs).

Using a quantitative survey, data was collected from 313 tourism business managers, who are the owners or managers of the tourism businesses at the TDs, and was analysed using the partial least square structural equation model.

Findings indicate that environmental performance is the highest sustainability management practice adhered to at the TDs. Also, community and visitor orientations predicted SP most, with all its hypotheses supported.

This study focuses on the impact of StMO dimensions on SP within the TDs, thereby limiting generalisation to other sectors.

Tourism marketing managers are given the knowledge that StMO strategy is a precondition for effective implementation and adoption of SP strategy.

The results have key social implications, in that a sustainability marketing strategy that will assist in the increase acceptance of sustainability programs within the tourism sector has been noted.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is believed to be the first empirical study to test the relationship between StMO dimensions and three SP dimensions. This study will improve the sustainability management of tourism resources in Ghana. It will further aid in meeting some of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a healthcare framework of service quality, perceived value, and satisfaction in Ghana. More specifically, this study investigates the role and effect of service quality on patient satisfaction and perceived value in Ghana’s healthcare delivery.

Data were gathered through surveys administered to 113 healthcare patients in Ghana. partial least square-structural equation modeling analysis was used to empirically test the research model.

Results show healthcare quality significantly influences satisfaction and perceived value of healthcare delivery. Additionally, perceived value’s impact on satisfaction and behavioral intention shows that increasing perceived benefits while reducing perceived costs leads to repeat behavior and paves the way for retention strategy for healthcare management.

This study yields a series of limitations in its results and conclusions. These limitations and future research are discussed in Section 7 of the study.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the effects of healthcare service quality on patient satisfaction and perceived value, determining the effect of healthcare service quality on patients’ behavioral intention, and testing the proposed framework in Ghana, a fast growing and economically liberalized emerging country in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Grounded in regulatory mode theory (RMT), this study aims to investigate the impact of managers’ orientation for action (locomotion and assessment) in business-to-business positioning decision-making.

Data are collected using a scenario-based experimental design. Study 1 examines whether interest and involvement in recommending a positioning strategy depends on a manager’s regulatory mode orientation. The impact of such orientations on the likelihood of changing a recommended positioning strategy is the focus of Study 2. The moderating effects of task motivation (expected rewards resulting from a recommendation), market feedback and the line manager’s leadership style are examined.

Both assessment and locomotion are significant determinants of involvement in recommending a positioning strategy. The introduction of motivation as a moderator helps explain differences in level of interest in positioning decision-making. Locomotion, but not assessment, affects the likelihood of changing a recommended positioning strategy. Assessment amplifies the impact of locomotion, while none of the interaction effects between regulatory mode orientation and contextual factors is a significant determinant of changing a positioning strategy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first application of RMT on positioning decision-making. Results from two experiments provide novel insights into the predictive relevance of managers’ preference in terms of involvement with the decision-making process and the likelihood of altering positioning.

Rising expectations for exceptional customer experiences demand strategic amalgamation of cross-functional, customer-focused teams (marketing/sales/service departments). However, the long history of interface conflicts between functional teams continues to attract research attention. Past research has given more attention to conflicts between marketing and sales teams than to triadic interface conflict between custom-focused teams and their sub-conflicts in a business-to-business (B2B) sales process. The purpose of this research paper is to quantify the triadic interface conflicts and associated sub-conflicts between customer-focused teams, discuss conflict resolution strategies and perform a sensitivity analysis (SA) to give a fuller account of functional team conflict.

Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) based in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed for identifying and resolving conflicts in customer-focused team interfaces. A group of 30 managers of a large electronics company participated in this research. The authors collected the data from customer-focused team managers during training sessions on interface conflicts and conflict management/resolution strategies. The authors perform SA to test the robustness of conflict resolution strategy rankings.

The findings reveal that managers adjudge task as the most crucial conflict attribute driving teams apart, followed by lack of communication. For the sub-conflicts, managers considered how to do the task as the most important conflict attribute, followed by lack of regular meetings. For conflict resolution strategies, managers regarded collaboration or integration as the overall best strategy, followed by compromise. Leveraging the AHP-based MCDM to resolve customer-focused team interface conflicts provides managers with the confidence in the consistency and the robustness of these solutions. By testing the SA, it is also discovered that the final outcome stayed robust (stable) regardless when the priorities of the main criteria influencing the decision are increased and decreased by 5% in every combinations.

This study examined only a large B2B company in the electronics industry in African and Middle East settings, focusing on interface conflicts among customer-focused departments. Future research could address these limitations.

This paper advances our understanding of customer-focused team interface conflicts in a B2B sales process. It also provides valuable insights on effective management of major and sub-interface conflicts. This paper provides a framework for and practical insights into how interface conflicts that are prevalent in marketing, sales and service sectors can be resolved to improve customer experience and business performance.

This study contributes to the literature by developing an AHP-based MCDM, which not only extends our conceptual understanding of the interface conflicts between customer-focused teams by emphasizing their triadic nature but also provides valuable strategies and insights into the practical resolution of such conflicts in a B2B firm’s sales process. Methodologically, SA is valuable to ensuring the robustness of the conflict resolution strategies’ rankings that will influence relevant pragmatic decision-making.