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Mapping the intrinsic value of the art of architecture and the art of nature within the context of Kakunodate and the preservation of its samurai manors and Sakura heritage trees, this paper proposes that from the perception of tourists, the preservation of both items is important. Extending the psychology of pricing that is subject to consumers’ preference and expectation to the context of valuation of cultural heritage assets, the purpose of this paper is to suggest that including the art of nature and the aesthetic of Sakura to the art of architecture (Samurai manors) will add more value to the cultural heritage of Kakunodate than when only the art of architecture is mentioned.

This paper uses Contingency Valuation Method to solicit tourists willingness-to-pay to preserve the architecture and the nature in Kakunodate. The survey uses a double bounded dichotomous choice model to elicit the various levels of tourists preference in various scenarios. Response from more than 1,000 tourists in three scenarios were collected. Through a maximum likelihood method and a subsequent truncated calculation, results are reported.

The results support the conceptual argument that the art of nature adds value to the art of architecture only. Tourists are found to be willing to pay more to support both the architecture (samurai houses) and nature (cherry trees) than the samurai houses alone.

The research findings add to the inventory of research on prior works in heritage trees, conservation of trees and heritage tourism, and cultural heritage assets in general. The empirical findings support prior theoretical works that examined the relationship of nature and art, art and architecture, and architecture as visual consumption.

The findings have managerial implications for policy makers relative to a possible increase of revenue by adding accompanying-nature component to focal architectural assets when soliciting funding support.

The originality and this piece stems from extending trees as an art form in nature and its added value to architecture within the context of cultural heritage assets. The empirical findings add to the much discussed relationships among art, nature, and architecture.

Debt is at a peak and consumers purport needing help with financial planning. To better understand the antecedents of financial planning behavior, the purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of cultural values in financial decision making within the context of Hispanic American consumers. A new conceptual model is proposed to integrate affect (cultural value) and cognition (financial knowledge) in financial planning.

To uncover respondents’ views on cultural values, financial knowledge, financial attitude, and financial planning behavior, an online survey hosted on a business school’s website was distributed to members of two Hispanic Chambers of Commerce. The survey consisted of five parts, and took each respondent an average of 15 minutes to complete. The final data set has 158 observations.

Results analyzed using structural equation modeling confirmed the hypotheses that financial knowledge, attitude, and perceived control simultaneously influence Hispanic consumers’ intentions to purchase financial planning products or services. More interestingly, these results confirm that multiple different routes coexist in the decision-making process, especially within the Hispanic financial planning context.

Key contributions of this paper include the conceptualization of cultural value as an antecedent to Hispanic financial behavior; detailing the different routes to financial decision making for US Hispanic consumers; and informing financial service managers on marketing strategies toward Hispanic consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of adaptive selling (AS) when “click and brick” in control multichannel consumers (MCCs) encounter in-store salespeople.

An online survey was administered to 387 college students from several southeastern colleges in the USA. The study consisted of a single manipulated factor (AS: high vs low) and a second measured factor (degree of MCC search: high vs low). Covariance-based structural equation modeling was selected and analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS AMOS 22.0.0.0.

The findings indicate that while perceptions of control in the retail store increase as customers engage in more multichannel search behavior, the path from perceived control (PC) to purchase intention (PI) is also positively affected by AS as multichannel search increases.

To increase in-store purchases by consumers using the physical location as an information channel, professional sales training, specifically AS skills, should be considered by retail managers for in-store sales personnel. Our findings suggest that salespeople can use AS skills to increase the likelihood of the MCCs’ in-store PI while not reducing their feelings of PC.

In a time where many marketers struggle with how to combine multichannel retailing efforts effectively, this research confirms that new channels create MCCs who desire control. AS shows promise as a technique for retailers to use when selling to a consumer who values control.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of how different forms of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and simultaneous marketing communications (MC), two crucial components of relationship marketing, affect consumer persuasion when presented in a business-to-customer (B2C)-sponsored vs a customer-to-customer (C2C)-sponsored social network site (SNS). A concise typology of eWOM is also proposed.

An experiment involving different social network movie sites was conducted testing the effects of different eWOM along with a comparison to MC on consumers’ interest in, and likelihood to watch movie DVDs.

The empirical results showed that not all eWOM types have the same persuasiveness and community sponsorship as a source credibility cue is more influential from a C2C-sponsored SNS than from a B2C one, particularly for many-to-one eWOM communications.

Future research should include both positive and negative types of eWOM using different product categories to increase the generalizability of the results.

Not all eWOM types are created equal, and thus, SNS sponsorship can lead to source bias and affect the persuasiveness of eWOM embedded in SNSs. The results also imply that not all positive word-of-mouth has a more positive effect than MC.

The approach of measuring two forms of communications simultaneously adds to the much-needed integrative approach of studying the simultaneous delivery of MC and WOM and provides a more nuanced view of persuasion knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to categorize customer‐to‐customer (C2C) interaction as a sub‐component of relational capital and conceptualize C2C interaction adding value to business‐to‐customer (B2C) relational capital.

This work empirically tests the concept of C2C interaction and its added value to a firm's B2C relationship within the movie industry. Both business data and consumer interaction from blockbuster movies are collected to test their impact on movie sales.

The results support the hypotheses that C2C interaction (user messages on Yahoo movie message board) adds more explanation to movie sales than B2C interaction (advertising budget) alone, and that there is an inverse relationship between the impact of a firm's B2C interaction and C2C interaction on a firm's sales performance, with the former diminishing over time and the latter increasing over time.

For intellectual capital (IC) researchers, the main implication from the results of this paper is that the value of C2C is “in addition” to the existing customer relations already managed by the firm. The results of this paper confirm C2C relational capital within the movie context. Future research should use more textual‐based data to evaluate the positive and negative consumer interactions and their impact on IC value.

The findings of this paper stress the importance of practitioners, including the voice of customers in their financial reporting. Managers can now extract and incorporate the content of C2C interaction to a firm's day‐to‐day decision‐making process.

The originality of this paper resides in extending relational capital conceptual framework by dividing relational capital into B2C and C2C subcomponents, hypothesizing the added value of C2C interaction to B2C relational capital and the inverse relationship between B2C and C2C relational capital over time, and empirically providing a reference sample for practitioners for future IC reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to present a buying process for the multichannel consumer (MCC) that starts at online information search and ends at the offline retail channel and then seeks to determine the universality of such behavior across countries.

A structured questionnaire was administered to MCCs from Russia, Singapore and the USA. The model was estimated using partial least square and country comparisons were conducted with a multi-group analysis.

The empirical results validated the conceptual model. In country comparisons, there is both converging (online information search) and diverging (retail store) MCCs’ behavior exhibiting nuanced differences.

Future research should examine values of MCCs at the individual level so as to increase the generalizability of the findings.

The convergence of MCCs information search behavior suggests that there is an opportunity for companies to standardize their online information strategy to educate global MCCs prior to their visiting brick and mortar stores. In-store salesperson remains important and effective for MCCs in the USA and Singapore, but not Russia.

A new conceptual framework that integrates economic and psychology theories is presented to depict the shift of control tilting in favor of MCCs in the buying process and introduces the concept of “reversal” information asymmetry in which consumers perceive to have more knowledge than the vendors.