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Although stress has become a prominent research theme in consumer behavior and occupational health, to the authors knowledge there is only one review on the relationship between consumer behavior and stress (i.e., when internal and external factors exceed an individual’s resources and endangering the individual’s well-being) and this was published 10 years ago. Further, research on occupational stress has yet to be fully integrated into the consumer stress literature. In this chapter, the authors attempt to advance research on consumer stress by a drawing on a satisfaction mirror framework which outlines that consumers and employees influence each other through a “mirror” where they positively and cyclically influence each other in a service environment. The authors argue that consumers and employees may likewise mirror each other in a negative cycle of stress and well-being depletion. First, the authors describe how stress is viewed in consumer behavior and marketing. Second, the authors review evidence that consumption serves as a form of coping with stress. Third, the authors discuss the role of consumption as a stressor that may drive consumer stress. Finally, the authors introduce the satisfaction mirror model and outline the bi-directional influence on increased stress and well-being depletion at the consumer–employee interface in service encounters. The model introduced in this chapter serves as a framework for organizing findings related to stress and well-being in the fields of consumer behavior and occupational health. In addition, the model serves as a springboard for developing propositions for future research. Ultimately, the authors hope this chapter both updates and builds upon previous findings on stress and consumer behavior, as well as grounds future research on stress and well-being at the intersection of consumers and employees.

• To identify the social elements that emerge from interactions with the virtual fitting room in e-retailing applications

• To debate the influence of the socialisation of the virtual fitting room (SVFR) in brand experience

• To discuss the implications of the SVFR for retailers, consumers and managers

• To envision the future of e-retailing brand experience through the SVFR

To identify the social elements that emerge from interactions with the virtual fitting room in e-retailing applications

To debate the influence of the socialisation of the virtual fitting room (SVFR) in brand experience

To discuss the implications of the SVFR for retailers, consumers and managers

To envision the future of e-retailing brand experience through the SVFR

This case study of a union organizing drive at a Whole Foods Market, the world's largest natural and organic foods supermarket chain, considers the impact of the company's employee participation scheme and the accompanying organizational narrative on the outcome of the unionization effort. By relying on the language and symbolism of the existing organizational narrative, union organizers were able to give meaning to their movement, but not without limiting the movement's potential for significant change and success. Ultimately, their efforts served to reinforce the organizational narrative and the existing employee participation scheme, not transform it. Based on this case study, I argue that organizational narratives are an important location of organizational control.

Customer experience management is the managing of customer interactions, feelings and emotions at every touchpoint. These interactions and feelings define the customer's future behaviour and perceptions about the offering. Companies can use these touchpoint interactions as a source of competitive advantage. Companies can embark on a journey of experience management by understanding needs and insights about customer's behaviour. These are gathered through interactions, observations and structured surveys. Such feedback from customers is called Voice of Customer (VoC). Another source of understanding customers is employees who are involved in these interactions and also product and service delivery. Understanding employees is equally important. Companies need to even collate their feedback regarding problems in delivery and servicing, customers' expectations versus perceptions. Organisations committed to creating superior customer experience invest in tools like surveys, employee interactions both in formal and informal context to gather voice of the employee (VoE). Finally, both VoC and VoE have to be evaluated in a business context to define processes and measure the effectiveness of these processes. The voice of the process or VoP helps to understand the difference between customer perceptions and process performance. It gives an estimate of error and suggests methods for improving process efficiency.

This chapter explains the three essential ingredients that go into experience management, the tools used to collect information and how can these be used to design a superior and fulfilling experience for customers.

Acquisitions have generally been portrayed as a means to improving shareholders’ wealth. To date, the debate regarding how to measure acquisition performance has generally discarded the idea that performance should reflect the interests of stakeholders other than shareholders. In this chapter, I advance the importance of enlarging the domain of acquisition performance to include stakeholders other than shareholders. Drawing on literature streams related to corporate social performance and stakeholder theory and providing empirical data from an Italian merger in the banking industry, I demonstrate how the failure to consider neglected – but relevant – stakes put at risk by acquisitions, such as those of employees and consumers, produces measures of acquisition performance that do not do justice to the multiplicity of outcomes that these deals generally cause.

Prior studies on the social security tax have focused on it being regressive; a system that is detrimental to savings in the United States; a system that will bankrupt itself; and a host of economic inquiries examining labor market and product demand elasticities and the impact of the substitution effect. However, there is scant evidence on the shifting mechanisms employed by the owners of millions of small businesses in the United States. As a result, this study revisits the issue by surveying 4,431 small businesses in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi (ArkLaMiss). Results indicate, in the ArkLaMiss area, that the largest share of the tax burden is borne by customers. When compared to past literature, a relatively larger portion of the incidence of payroll taxes is likely to fall on employees in the ArkLaMiss, as opposed to the burden being borne by firms and customers. Also, stronger anti-tax sentiment was noted in the ArkLaMiss as compared to prior literature. Little support was found for the proposition that firm size impacts the incidence of taxation. On the other hand, statistical analysis indicates that the industry within which a firm operates was influential in the incidence of taxation. Moreover, in the sample, the banking/financial industry passed the largest percentage of the tax on to employees, the public accounting profession passed the largest percentage on to customers, and the legal profession bore the largest share of the tax in the form of reduced profit.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

The impact of increasing competition occurring within the UK retail environment.

Consumers efforts to reduce the disparity between beliefs and behaviours, as conceptualised within cognitive dissonance theory.

The alignment with marketing, the wider economy and the retail sector as a means to identify ways to shape value creation.

This chapter captures the interrelatedness of sustainable production and consumption, which can be brought together in the concept of sustainable market exchange. The purpose of this chapter is to develop and present a framework of sustainable market exchange, including the key players, factors that influence sustainable behavior and issues that need to be addressed to achieve sustainable market exchange. The framework includes the ecological, economic, and social dimensions, while factors in the framework are classified into three groups: individual, relational, and societal. The sustainability spheres and stakeholders contribute to raising the importance of the phenomenon in the long run. The authors subsequently conduct an exploratory quantitative study to examine the features of the framework which is empirically examined from the perspective of one group of stakeholders that needs to be understood better, that is, consumers. Searching for answers to research questions on how consumers perceive their sustainable behavior, company sustainable behavior, how perceptions of production and consumption are related and what are the differences according to individual factors, the authors demonstrate different emphasis that consumers place on different sustainability dimensions and suggest recommendations for encouraging sustainable market exchange for management and public policy stakeholders.

Scanning both the academic and popular business literature of the last 40 years puzzles the alert reader. The variety of prescriptions of how to be successful (effective, performing, etc.) 1 Organizational performance, organizational success and organizational effectiveness will be used interchangeably throughout this paper.1 in business is hardly comprehensible: “Being close to the customer,” Total Quality Management, corporate social responsibility, shareholder value maximization, efficient consumer response, management reward systems or employee involvement programs are but a few of the slogans introduced as means to increase organizational effectiveness. Management scholars have made little effort to integrate the various performance-enhancing strategies or to assess them in an orderly manner.

This study classifies organizational strategies by the importance each strategy attaches to different constituencies in the firm’s environment. A number of researchers divide an organization’s environment into various constituency groups and argue that these groups constitute – as providers and recipients of resources – the basis for organizational survival and well-being. Some theoretical schools argue for the foremost importance of responsiveness to certain constituencies while stakeholder theory calls for a – situation-contingent – balance in these responsiveness levels. Given that maximum responsiveness levels to different groups may be limited by an organization’s resource endowment or even counterbalanced, the need exists for a concurrent assessment of these competing claims by jointly evaluating the effect of the respective behaviors towards constituencies on performance. Thus, this study investigates the competing merits of implementing alternative business philosophies (e.g. balanced versus focused responsiveness to constituencies). Such a concurrent assessment provides a “critical test” of multiple, opposing theories rather than testing the merits of one theory (Carlsmith, Ellsworth & Aronson, 1976).

In the high tolerance level applied for this study (be among the top 80% of the industry) only a handful of organizations managed to sustain such a balanced strategy over the whole observation period. Continuously monitoring stakeholder demands and crafting suitable responsiveness strategies must therefore be a focus of successful business strategies. While such behavior may not be a sufficient explanation for organizational success, it certainly is a necessary one.