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As organizations increasingly engage with consumers over mobile devices, there is a growing need to understand how consumers react to impression management over platforms with limited textual content. The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess how different impression management tactics can be used in mobile media to enhance consumer perception-attitude-intentions toward a corporate brand.

We surveyed 670 consumers and estimate structural equation models and repeated-measures ANOVAs to determine how short passages employing alternate impression management tactics influence consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and purchase intentions.

Results reveal that each impressions management tactic (i.e. ingratiation, intimidation, organizational promotion, supplication and exemplification) influences consumer perceptions, attitudes and intentions. The authors compare differences in how the impressions management tactics influence each stage of the perception-attitude-intentions model and find evidence that initial differences in perceptions favoring ingratiation and exemplification appeals become magnified for purchase intentions.

Recent calls for research focus on an understanding of how consumers process information on reduced-content platforms of small-screened mobile devices. These results provide empirical evidence of the use of impression management and the difference between five impression management tactics on enhancing consumer perception-attitude-intentions model.

The results of this study will provide marketers with insights to optimize communications and corporate brands with consumers over mobile media.

This paper adds to the nascent yet vital literature on mobile marketing by focusing on how impression management tactics influence perceptions, attitudes and intentions through the short message characteristic of mobile platforms. The authors develop a framework for how corporate brand management can strategically use impressions management tactics in this novel domain.

Management response to consumer comments has become a widely adopted marketing strategy to address the undesirable effects caused by negative remarks. Yet, when and what management response is more effective and under what circumstances remains under-researched. This study aims to fill this gap.

In three experiments using five different products, the authors manipulate psychological construal level (psychological distance: distant vs proximal) and management response (response of primary vs secondary features) and thereafter assess their bearings on consumer psychological and behavioral reaction toward products of two distinctive natures (hedonic vs utilitarian).

At a psychological distance, consumers show a preferable reaction to management response of primary over secondary features. In contrast, when the psychological distance is proximal, consumers react more positively to management response of secondary than primary features. In addition, these effects vary as a function of product nature, hedonic vs utilitarian.

The findings of this research bring a significant contribution to marketing communication literature and extend the construal level theory.

A better understanding of the relative effectiveness of distinct types of management response to negative consumer comments is essential for more targeted and effective marketing strategies.

Little research has documented the effects of distinct types of management response. How psychological distance might underpin these effects has not been explored. In addition, whether the interaction effect of management response and psychological distance varies with differences in product nature, namely, hedonic and utilitarian, remains unanswered until this research.

The authors analysed the operations of two synchronised channels by focusing on “buy online and return in store” (BORS) strategies in fast-fashion retail by investigating internal and external factors affecting this omnichannel strategy.

The authors apply a combination of techniques to identify the BORS factors. Firstly, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis was used to define the operational factors of BORS adoption. The authors then apply analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate the factors under four SWOT categories for kids, male and female consumer groups. The factors of BORS were then ranked using the fuzzy VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (fuzzy VIKOR) approach.

Combining the SWOT, AHP and fuzzy VIKOR techniques, the authors identified 21 factors in this study. The opportunity that BORS provides for trying in the fitting room for a better convenient shopping experience was ranked as the most important factor, followed by the opportunity to create a loyal customer profile with an easy and well-organised return process. Furthermore, the results reveal that the child consumer group is the most critical of the stated operations factors, followed by male and female consumers.

The authors described the operational factors and supported the decision-making system of BORS for each consumer group with a priority ranking to realise effective managerial management for fast-fashion retailers and practitioners.

The study contributes to the growing literature on the BORS omnichannel strategy, specifically for fast-fashion retail based on consumer needs.

This paper aims to examine the influences of the number of hotel management responses and especially the textual similarity in hotel management responses to online reviews on hotel online booking.

This study used the data from 437 hotels in New York City on Expedia. The data specifically include online reviews, management responses and real-time number of online hotel bookings, which were merged to create one dataset for this study. To calculate the management response similarity, three widely recognized text mining functions of calculating textual similarity were adopted in this model. Fixed-effect panel data model was then used to examine the influence of management response to consumer online reviews on online hotel booking volume.

The empirical results demonstrate that the number of management responses to consumer online reviews does not significantly affect hotel booking; compared to none or only one management response, or management responses with low similarity, management responses with high similarity can significantly reduce the hotel booking on Expedia.

This study suggests that the similarity of management responses influences customers’ hotel booking, and hotel managers should avoid providing too similar management responses.

First, this study, for the first time, proposes the concept of management response similarity and its measurement methods. Second, this study takes an initial attempt to empirically test the influence of response similarity on hotel booking by using secondary data online.

Introduction – In today’s intense competitive environment, businesses that want to have a sustainable competitive advantage must put the customer at the centre of all their activities and create customer loyalty by offering products and services that will provide customer satisfaction. One of the key elements of ensuring customer satisfaction is the effective handling of customer complaints, which is defined as the customers expressing their dissatisfaction with unmet expectations and unsatisfied needs verbally or in writing. The concept of a complaint as a response of customers’ dissatisfaction with the products and services they experience is an invaluable feedback mechanism for businesses to resolve issues relating to their products and services.

Aim – The aim of this chapter is to emphasise the importance of the concept of complaint as an important part of customer relations management and an effective marketing tool for the tourism sector. As a service sub-sector, the simultaneous production and consumption of services in the tourism sector ensures customer satisfaction more than concrete products, due to their inseparable nature. For this reason, handling, evaluating and finalising customer complaints has an important function and value in providing the necessary information for tourism enterprises to become aware of their deficiencies and mistakes. Complaint management has started to play an even more critical role for the tourism industry in preventing customer losses due to dissatisfaction, especially considering the shrinkage in demand in the sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method – Firstly the concept of complaint and the importance of complaints for businesses were explained, customer complaint behaviour and the factors affecting this behaviour were examined in detail, the concept of online complaint was mentioned and the subject was evaluated in terms of tourism businesses.

Results – While the effective management and resolution of complaints should be seen as a goal by every tourism business, it is vital that they understand customer complaint behaviours, the factors affecting this behaviour and how complaints should be managed in a way that will result in favour of the business.

Conclusion – A complaint management process that enables customers to easily report their complaints to businesses and produces solutions as soon as possible will positively affect customer satisfaction. In this context, in order to reduce the negative effects on tourism enterprises, especially through the pandemic, business need to have clear and easy-to-access procedures, provide a quick response, show reliability and consistency in providing a solution, keeping the complainant informed of progress, have employees who can communicate with empathy and courtesy, have enough employees to deal with the situation, and adopt proactive approaches to prevent complaints rather than reducing the volume of complaints.

Originality/Value – This research contributes to the literature in terms of complaining behaviour, examining the factors affecting this behaviour and emphasising the importance of the concept of complaints in the tourism sector. In addition, the research is important in terms of examining the contributions of an effective complaint management system in reducing the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector, which is one of the sectors mostly affected on a global scale.

India generates around two million tonnes of e-waste every year, and it is increasing at a very high rate of 30%. However, due to inefficient handling of infrastructure and limited number of collection centres along with the absence of proper incentive structure for producer and recyclers, 95% of e-waste reaches to unorganized sector for disposal. Consumers are not aware of the need of proper e-waste disposal and in absence of proper motivation and they are not inclined towards recycling process. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the best practices of e-waste take adopted all over the world to implement effective policy interventions for e-waste management in India and other emerging economies.

This paper has recommended preventive as well as curative policy interventions on the basis of best e-waste management practices of Germany, Italy and Japan; life cycle assessment of e-waste; and SWOT analysis of Indian electronic product industry.

Preventive measures include a deposit refund scheme wherein a consumer will be responsible for depositing a refundable fees during the purchase of the product. The amount should be arrived at keeping in mind cost involved in handling e-waste and ensure some motivation for the consumers to give back used product. To ensure proper tracking of the product, Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used which will be activated at the time of sale of product and remain so until product reaches some designated recycling space or recycler and consumer is returned back his deposit fee. Subsidy to the producers and recyclers can also be provided by the government to further incentivize the whole process. An example of mobile phones has been used to understand the proposed deposit fees and associated cost structure. Curative measures to reduce the generation of e-waste in long run for managing the discussed issue have also been proposed.

This study is an initiative for proposing and implementing best e-waste take back techniques in a developing economy like India by acquiring learnings from best/advanced economies in terms of e-waste take back.

As a supply chain management initiative, category management has to date been the almost exclusive preserve of the grocery sector and, within that sector, limited to food categories. This paper proposes that the fashion industry might usefully follow the grocery industry's lead and implement category management. A comprehensive review of the literature on category management highlights the opportunity for fashion marketing to consider the potential of category management, and the specific research gaps. In operationalising the subsequent research objectives, the paper reports the results of exploratory, in‐depth consumer research for a particular category of intimate apparel. The managerial implications of these findings are then discussed in the context of the established eight‐step category management process. The overall tentative conclusion of this study is that as a consumer‐oriented joint planning tool, category management offers retailer‐supplier partnerships in the fashion industry an important adjunct to the industry's quick response methods. The paper closes with an agenda for future research.

In this paper, the contaminating role of socially desirable responding (SDR) in the investigation of “dark-side” aspects in international services marketing is examined. The main question to be answered is whether or not relationships between consumer ethnocentrism towards international services and its antecedents are biased by SDR, manifesting itself as impression management by respondents. The results of an empirical study confirm that conscious impression management indeed is likely to represent a serious threat in this type of consumer behavior-related research. The relationship between cultural openness and consumer collectivism on the one hand and consumer ethnocentric tendencies towards foreign services on the other hand was found to be biased by SDR. Such bias, however, could not be found for the other antecedents, namely patriotism and conservatism. This suggests that whether or not respondents engage in impression management depends on the conceptual character of the constructs being studied in international services research. Accordingly, the results have several implications for international services research practice.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical explanation – financial numeracy – for consumer proficiency with financial services. With sufficient financial numeracy, consumers benefit fully from financial services and make competent choices in regard to financial management.

The article builds theory by combining consumer cognitive capacity and customer knowledge theories with findings from prior studies of consumer difficulties with financial services to introduce a comprehensive model of the antecedents and consequences of financial numeracy with testable propositions for many psychographic and cultural influences and moderators.

Financial numeracy demands that consumers possess sufficient financial information processing capacity and ability as well as sufficient prior knowledge of financial concepts. Although partly a function of individual cognitive ability, it can be enhanced through appropriate experience with financial instruments and familiarity through personal financial materials when consumers are motivated to process them. Financial numeracy directly affects financial management outcomes related to borrowing, saving, and taxes. It indirectly affects higher‐order financial consequences, such as a consumer's credit score, interest rates charged on subsequent loans, net worth, likelihood of bankruptcy, and size of inheritance.

Consumers around the world are increasingly experiencing difficulties with financial services. To advance research in financial services marketing beyond documenting troublesome financial behaviours of consumers, this conceptual model provides insights to help increase consumer proficiency in comprehending and managing financial services based on knowledge about consumer information processing, learning, memory and the cultural and psychographic influences on these internal processes.

Purpose – The objectives of this study are to explore how consumers achieve, maintain, and/or regain privacy and to more fully understand the meaning consumers ascribe to privacy.

Methodology/approach – Image-elicited depth interviews were conducted on a theoretical sample of 23 informants.

Findings – Consumers are active participants who assert their dominance in the marketplace and resist organizational practices that impinge upon their privacy. Seven categories of privacy management practices were identified: withdraw, defend, feint, neutralize, attack, perception management, and reconcile. The findings also reveal that when informants desire privacy and engage in these practices, they are ultimately in a quest for the meta-goal of sovereignty over their respective personal domains.

Research limitations/implications – This study provides support for and expands upon knowledge of the privacy management practices identified in extant literature, and offers an encompassing conceptualization of privacy as it applies in the context of contemporary consumption.

Social implications – This study may assist policy makers and managers in their efforts to develop appropriate solutions to manage consumers’ privacy concerns and support them in their pursuit of privacy.

Originality/value of the paper – This study injects the voice of the consumer into the privacy debate. A broad theoretical framework for understanding what consumers mean when they talk about privacy and the practices they engage in to “do privacy” is presented. It is hoped that this study provides a basis for managing consumer privacy concerns and future research on the issue so that improved outcomes can be attained for all.