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Aaker’s brand personality scale (BPS) published in 1997 has revived hitherto sluggish interest in brand personality research. With time, the BPS, most cited work in brand personality, also faced criticism across dimensions. This paper aims to review the popular journals published after 1997 for criticism related to BPS.

Papers using Aaker’s BPS without change/with change are identified and scrutinized for reasons for the usage of BPS. Papers on brand personality that have avoided BPS are also scrutinized for reasons of avoidance. Independent efforts of understanding brand personality without Aaker’s framework are also reviewed. In-depth study of all these papers is done to report the criticism of Aaker’s BPS.

This review identifies the criticism of BPS and classifies it across six categories – definition, dimension, methodology, concept, words and generalizability related criticism. This paper argues that some issues such as definition, conceptual understanding of brand personality and methodology used to develop BPS need further attention of scholars. On the other hand, issues of dimensions, words used and generalizability can be attributed to evident reasons, such as culture and meaning given to words because of native language.

This criticism and interest in Aaker’s BPS are unprecedented. It has been 20 years since BPS was published. Many scholars have countered the Aaker’s BPS through their work; however, a comprehensive review covering all criticisms and issues of BPS is still missing in literature. This paper is filling this gap in literature.

La Escala de Personalidad de Marca de Aaker fue publicada en 1997 y desde entonces ha motivado el interés por la investigación de la personalidad de la marca. Con el tiempo, esta escala se ha convertido en la más citada, pero también ha sido objeto de crítica. Este artículo revisa las principales críticas a la escala desde su publicación en 1997.

Se analizaron los artículos que utilizaron la escala de personalidad de marca de Aaker sin cambios o con cambios y los motivos de uso. Se examinaron los trabajos que evitaron utilizar la escala y las razones argumentadas. También se analizaron los esfuerzos realizados para comprender la personalidad de marca al margen de este enfoque. El análisis en profundidad de todos estos trabajos permitió sintetizar las principales críticas vertidas hacia la escala de personalidad de marca de Aaker.

Las críticas a la escala de personalidad de marca fueron clasificadas en seis categorías - Definición, Dimensión, Metodología, Concepto, Palabras utilizadas y Capacidad de generalización. El artículo argumenta que algunas cuestiones como la definición, la comprensión conceptual de la personalidad de la marca y la metodología utilizada para desarrollar la escala requieren mayor atención por parte de los académicos. Por otra parte, los problemas relacionados con las dimensiones, las palabras utilizadas y la capacidad de generalización pueden atribuirse a razones evidentes como la cultura, diferente significado de las palabras en distintos países, etc.

Las críticas e interés generado por la escala de personalidad de marca de Aaker no tienen precedentes. Han pasado 20 años desde su publicación y son muchos los investigadores han vertido sus críticas específicas. Sin embargo, en la literatura se echa en falta algún trabajo que revise todas estas críticas de forma integrada. Este artículo pretende cubrir este vacío en la literatura.

Contemporary organizations face challenges when they have an increasing need for trust, and yet there are decreasing opportunities for the development of interpersonal trust. Thus, the organizations cannot rely only on that and there is a need for complementary forms of organizational trust. Vanhala et al. (2011) developed the scale for measuring impersonal trust. The purpose of this study is to validate the scale in terms of discriminant and nomological validity as well as to test generalizability.

The validities and generalizability is tested on two samples from two industries in Finland: a forest company (411 respondents) and ICT company (304 respondents). Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling are used.

The scale represents both discriminant and nomological validity. Furthermore, the scale is generalizable in different industries.

A more holistic approach to organizational trust is proposed, and the scale for the impersonal element of the organizational trust is validated.

This paper validates the scale for the less studied impersonal element of organizational trust. To manage and develop organizational trust, all of its dimensions should be measured. The scale validated allows the measurement of the impersonal dimension, and the more refined measure also makes it possible to focus development efforts on certain operational areas.

The scale validated represents a step forward toward the reliable measurement of organizational trust. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first study to show that previously developed scale is valid and generalizable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the purchase behavior of consumers towards green products by adapting and extending the theory of planned behavior with the inclusion of three pertinent environmental factors posited to reflect environmental consciousness in the form of environmental concern, environmental knowledge and environmental values.

The data was collected from 410 consumers at shopping malls with retail stores selling green and non-green products in a developing country using cluster sampling and analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study indicate that environmental factors reflecting environmental consciousness positively influence consumers’ attitude towards purchasing green products, wherein consumers’ environmental values have a stronger influence than their environmental concern and environmental knowledge. The findings also reveal that subjective norm, attitude and perceived behavioral control toward purchasing green products positively shape green purchase intention. The same positive effect is also witnessed between green purchase intention and behavior. However, perceived behavioral control towards purchasing green products had no significant influence on green purchase behavior.

This study suggests that green marketers should promote environmental consciousness among consumers to influence and shape their planned behavior towards green purchases. This could be done by prioritizing efforts and investments in inculcating environmental values, followed by enhancing environmental knowledge and finally inducing environmental concern among consumers. Green marketers can also leverage subjective norm and perceptions of behavioral control toward purchasing green products to reinforce green purchase intention, which, in turn, strengthens green purchase behavior. This green marketing strategy should also be useful to address the intention–behavior gap as seen through the null effect of perceived behavioral control on purchase behavior toward green products when this strategy is present.

This study contributes to theoretical generalizability by reaffirming the continued relevance of the theory of planned behavior in settings concerning the environment (e.g. green purchases), and theoretical extension by augmenting environmental concern, environmental knowledge and environmental values with the theory of planned behavior, resulting in an environmentally conscious theory of planned behavior. The latter is significant and noteworthy, as this study broadens the conceptualization and operationalization of environmental consciousness from a unidimensional to a multidimensional construct.

This paper aims to identify how a public client’s use of control systems (process, output and social control) affect innovation possibilities in construction projects.

Semi-structured interviews about six infrastructure projects were conducted to identify respondents’ views on innovation possibilities. These possibilities were then analyzed from an organizational control perspective within principal–agent relationships between the Swedish Transport Administration (STA) and their contractors.

How the client uses control systems affects innovation possibilities. Relying on process control could negatively affect innovation opportunities, whereas output control could have a positive influence. In addition, social control seems to have a weak effect, as the STA appears not to use social control to facilitate joint innovation. Public clients must comply with the Public Procurement Act and, therefore, retain the requirements specified in the tendering documents. Much of the steering of the execution is connected to the ex ante phase (before signing the contract), which affects innovation possibilities in the design and execution phases for the contractor.

This study was conducted with only one client, thus limiting its generalizability. However, the findings provide an important stepping stone to further investigation into balancing control systems and creating innovation possibilities in a principal–agent relationship.

Although public procurement has increasingly been emphasized as a major potential source of innovation, studying how a public client’s use of organizational control systems affects innovation possibilities in the construction sector has received scant attention.

While digital transformation holds immense promise, organizations often fail to realize its benefits. This study aims to address how policies for digital transformation benefits realization are translated into practice.

The authors apply a qualitative, comparative case study of two large, public-sector health care organizations in Sweden. Through document and interview data, the authors analyze the process of translation.

The study finds that practice variation is primarily caused by two types of decoupling: policy-practice and means-ends. Contrary to previous studies, coercion in policy compliance is not found to decrease practice variation.

The limitations primarily stem from the empirical selection of two large public health-care organizations in Sweden, affecting the study’s generalizability. Reducing practice variation is more effectively achieved through goal alignment than coercion, leading to implications for the design of governance and control.

Policymakers should, instead of focusing on control-related compliance, work to align organizational objectives and policies to decrease practice variation for successful benefits realization.

The study contributes to better benefits realization of digital transformation initiatives in health care. As such, the authors contribute to a better functioning and more transformative health care in times of increased demand and decreased supply of health-care services.

The study challenges conventional wisdom by identifying that coercion is less effective than goal alignment in reducing practice variation, thereby enhancing the understanding of policy implementation dynamics in health-care settings.

Deployment of knowledge management systems (KMSs) suffers from low adoption in organizational reality that is attributed to a lack of perceivable added value for people in actual work situations. Poor task/technology fit in the process of knowledge retrieval appears to be a major factor influencing this issue. Existing research indicates a lack of re-contextualizing stored information provided by KMSs in a particular situation. Existing research in the area of organizational memory information systems (OMISs) has thoroughly examined and widely discussed the topic of re-contextualization. The purpose of this paper, thus, is to examine how KMS design can benefit from OMIS research on approaches for re-contextualization in knowledge retrieval.

This paper examines OMIS literature and inductively derives a categorization scheme for KMS according to their strategy of re-contextualizing knowledge. The authors have validated the scheme validated in a multiple case study that examines the differentiatory value of the scheme for approaches with various re-contextualization strategies.

The classification scheme allows a step-by-step selection of approaches for re-contextualization of information in KMS design and development derived from OMIS research. The case study has demonstrated the applicability of the developed scheme and shows that the differentiation criteria can be applied unambiguously.

Because of the chosen case study approach for validation, the validation results may lack generalizability.

The scheme enables an informed selection of KMSs appropriate for a particular OMIS use case, as the scheme’s attributes serve as design rationale for a certain architecture or constellation of components. Developers can not only select from various approaches when designing re-contextualizaton but also come up with rationales for each candidate because of structured representation. Hence, stakeholders can be supported in a more informed way and design KMSs more effectively along organizational change processes.

The paper addresses an identified need for systematic characterization of KMS approaches and systems intending to meet the objectives of OMISs. As such, it allows streamlining further research in this field, as approaches can be judged according to their originality and positioned relative to each other.

As the superiority of sports celebrities' endorsements has been questioned, the purpose of this study is to identify various types of endorsers' direct and indirect effects on consumers' purchase intentions.

Empirical data were collected from 240 useful responses to an online experiment, and research hypotheses were tested using (moderated) serial mediation analyses.

The study's findings indicate that an endorser has a positive influence on consumers' purchase intentions through their perceptions of the advertisement and the endorsed brand. A moderated serial mediation analysis finds differences in the four types of endorsers analyzed. A sports celebrity is the most effective type of endorser in increasing consumers' purchase intentions, whereas endorsements by company managers and peer consumers, while also positive, are less effective in influencing advertising outcomes. An expert's endorsement is comparable to that of a manager but not significant.

The generalizability of the study's findings is limited because of a restricted data sample, the use of fictitious endorsers and the limited number of product categories and brands analyzed.

The study systematically analyzes the behavioral influence of four types of endorsers on consumers' purchase intentions, mediated by their perceptions of the advertisements and the endorsed brand. The results of this analysis extend the current state of endorsement research, indicating that endorsements should be integrated into companies' marketing strategies and provide marketing professionals practical guidance on which type of endorser is most effective in influencing advertising outcomes.

The service recovery paradox (SRP) is the phenomenon that happens when customer satisfaction level post-service failure and recovery surpasses the customer satisfaction level achieved at error-free service. The aim of this study was to identify how large the size of compensation has to be at recovery for customer satisfaction to surpass that of error-free service (i.e. to identify a threshold value for SRP). The purpose of this is to inform managers how to restore customer satisfaction yet avoid overcompensation.

The paper covers two studies. Study 1 used the novel approach of asking participants who had experienced a service failure in the hotel industry what amount of money (recovery) would make them more satisfied than in the case of error-free service. Study 2 then tested the compensation levels expressed by Study 1 participants to be sufficient for the service recovery paradox to occur.

Study 1 indicated that the threshold for the SRP was (on average) around 1,204 SEK, or just over 80% of the original room reservation price of 1,500 SEK (approx. $180). Study 2 found that (on average) the customer satisfaction of participants who received 1,204 SEK in compensation for service failure marked the point where it surpassed that of error-free service. Participants who received 633 SEK were less satisfied; participants who received 1,774 SEK were more satisfied.

The findings are context-specific. Future research should test the findings' generalizability.

The approach used in this paper could provide managers with a tool to guide their service recovery efforts. The findings could help hotel managers to make strategic decisions to restore customer satisfaction yet avoid overcompensation, given a legitimate service failure in which the organization is at fault.

Numerous previous studies have investigated the occurrence or absence of the SRP at predetermined compensation levels. This paper used a novel approach to find a quantitative threshold at which the magnitude of the recovery effort makes customer satisfaction surpass that of error-free service.

The role of managerial assumptions in the formulation of organizational strategies has been well recognized by previous studies, yet in marketing literature, the effect of such imperative on marketing practice choice tends to be ignored. Therefore, this paper aims to empirically investigate how management assumptions fit with the choice of marketing practices, and how such fit affects performance.

A model is developed and tested using survey methodology, and the data are analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) approach.

The results show that different marketing practices were coupled with different frames of reference, resulting in viable matching profiles.

Given the novelty of the approach adopted in this study, conclusions about association and not causation are drawn. In addition, the study is restricted to Qatar which may reduce the generalizability of its findings and conclusions.

The findings will help managers to examine carefully the internal logic of their marketing-related profiling, where coherent variables will enhance performance.

To one’s knowledge, this paper reports a work in an area not previously researched. In addition, this study is one of the rare papers that examines unobserved heterogeneity using the PLS-structural equation modeling (SEM) in the field of marketing.

The purpose of this study is to increase the current understanding of how public sector organizations dynamically balance exploration and exploitation of digital initiatives, i.e. the enactment of digital ambidexterity.

This study uses Zimmermann, Raisch and Cardinal’s perspective of configurational practices for addressing the enactment of digital ambidexterity. The method comprises a qualitative, interpretative case study of a large municipality in Sweden, using both interviews and secondary data.

Through the perspective of configurational practices, the study identifies and describes a set of sub-practices that constitute the enactment of digital ambidexterity. This is then used for theorizing how configurational practices involve the balancing of closeness and distance.

This study is limited by being a single, non-longitudinal case of a Swedish municipality that has implications for generalizability and transferability. Moreover, it opens up for new perspectives to the future study of the enactment of ambidexterity in the public sector.

Organizations striving for digital ambidexterity are recommended to use the configurational approach to assess and design their governance to build ambidextrous capabilities through a combination of closeness and distance.

This study is aimed at strengthening public sectors abilities for continued relevance for its stakeholders over time. With increased need for digital innovation within the public sector, the findings and recommendations derived from the study lead to increased innovation capability, which in turn is expected to lead to increased relevance of services.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that addresses how ambidexterity is enacted within the public sector following the configurational approach. As such, it opens up for new perspectives on organizational ambidexterity.