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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new strategic marketing tool: a peripheral product anecdote (PPA), or a brief, interesting story that is loosely connected to a product but not connected to its history, quality or usage. A PPA is contrasted with similar tools, such as product/brand heritage claims. This study investigates when PPAs are most effective at increasing willingness to pay.

Five experiments examine the effect of different PPAs on willingness to pay. This study examines product-use situation as a moderator (Studies 3 and 4) and conversational value as a mediator (Studies 2 and 4).

Customers will pay a premium for products with PPAs, but only when they intend to use the products in social situations where they could share the anecdote with others. Mediation analyses reveal these anecdotes are valuable because they provide purchasers with a conversation topic (a source of social currency).

In contrast to brand heritage stories, nearly any firm can associate a PPA with their product. These anecdotes are a low-cost way for firms to increase willingness to pay for products. PPAs are innovative and varied, unlike brand heritage stories which tend to be static.

This paper shows that customers sometimes want packaged goods, such as beer and snacks, to help them have conversations and will pay more for products that do so. It introduces the PPA as one way marketers can help customers achieve this goal of conversation.

This paper aims to show that whether new customers respond well or poorly to small talk at the beginning of a service encounter depends on their relationship orientation, i.e. how exchange or communally oriented they are. The authors provide service providers with tactics to identify first-time customers’ relationship orientation or set customers’ small talk expectations and thus help them use small talk more effectively.

The authors examine the effect of small talk and relationship orientation on customer intentions to use a service provider in three experiments and one cross-sectional survey. The scenario-based experiments show causality and the effect in online and in-person scenarios. The survey replicates the effect among current customers of a small business.

Communally oriented customers respond positively to small talk, but exchange-oriented customers respond negatively to it. Mediation analyses reveal this occurs because small talk differentially leads to initial feelings of rapport and impatience for people high (versus low) in relationship orientation.

Service providers should consider customers’ relationship orientation before starting a conversation with small talk. The authors find providers can identify exchange-oriented customers by their choice of meeting format (in-person v. video chat). Managers can also use marketing materials to attract customers with a specific relationship orientation or to set customer expectations for small talk in the interaction.

Prior research has largely shown benefits to small talk, but the authors show significant downsides for some customers and to the best of the authors’ knowledge are the first to show process evidence of why these drawbacks occur.

The US fossil fuel industry is vulnerable to opposition from other sectors of the ruling class. Non-fossil fuel capitalists might conclude that climate breakdown jeopardizes their interests. State actors such as judges, regulators, and politicians may come to the same conclusion. However, these other elite actors are unlikely to take concerted collective action against fossil fuels in the absence of growing disruption by grassroots activists. Drawing from the history of the Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies, I analyze the forces determining government climate policies and private-sector investments. I focus on how the climate and Indigenous movements have begun to force changes in the behavior of certain ruling-class interests. Of particular importance is these movements' progress in two areas: eroding the financial sector's willingness to fund and insure fossil fuels, and influencing judges and regulators to take actions that further undermine investors' confidence in fossil fuels. Our future hinges largely on whether the movements can build on these victories while expanding their base within labor unions and other strategically positioned sectors.

This chapter examines the definitions of bullying used by students and adults in elementary schools and the effects that these definitions had within the broader school culture.

I combine interviews with 53 students and 10 adults and over 430 hours of participant observation with fifth grade students at two rural elementary schools.

Definitions of bullying held by those in these schools typically differed from those used by researchers. Even when individuals held definitions that were in line with those used by researchers, however, a focus on identifying bullies rather than on behaviors that fit definitions of bullying contributed to a school culture in which negative interactions were normalized and student reports of these behaviors were discouraged.

This study is limited to two elementary schools in the rural Midwest and cannot be seen as representative of all schools. Support for my findings from other research combined with similar definitions and school cultures in both schools, however, suggest that these definitions and practices are part of a broader cultural context of bullying in the United States.

These findings suggest that schools might be better served by focusing less on labels like “bully” and more on particular behaviors that are to be taken seriously by students, teachers, staff members, and principals.

Although other researchers have studied definitions of bullying, none have combined these definitions with observational data on the broader school contexts in which those definitions are created and used.

The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesise 149 hospitality-related studies published in the past two decades pertaining to environmental management (EM). The review was divided into three main stages: 1993-1999, 2000-2009 and 2010-2014 and provided future research directions.

The study sample consisted of articles published between 1993 and 2014 in four leading hospitality journals. The four journals chosen were the International Journal of Hospitality Management, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research. The title, abstract and the content, as needed, of all EM-related full-length articles from these four journals were content analysed. Editors’ notes, book reviews, industry news, conference papers and research notes were excluded from this paper.

EM research in the hospitality industry during the first two stages focused on the development of environmental policies and practices, green consumerism, managers’ environmental attitudes, indoor air quality and smoke-free environments, sustainable development, environmental performance, environmental cost control and environmental management systems (EMSs). During the third stage from 2010 to 2014, topics about environmental benchmarking and indicators have surfaced. Notwithstanding this, EM in the environmental reporting, and green marketing have been pursued less enthusiastically.

Compared with the mainstream management literature and considering the future development of EM, hospitality scholars are encouraged to extend their research to include green marketing, environmental technologies, environmental reporting, carbon footprint, employees’ green behaviour, the effects of EM on hospitality firms’ stakeholders and small- and medium-sized hospitality firms. In addition, more effort should be spent on developing hospitality-specific theories for EM.

Little has been done to determine the main research agendas in hospitality EM. A review of recent research on this topic provides an inventory of existing knowledge and points out areas requiring further knowledge exploration.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the meaning of fake news in the digital age and on the debate on disinformation in scholarly literature, in the light of the ethics of library and information profession.

Revision of a keynote address at the BOCATSSS2020 conference, this paper offers an overview of current literature comparing it with a moment in the past that was crucial for information: post-Second World War time, when Wiener (1948) founded cybernetics and C.P. Snow advocated for “The two cultures” (1959).

The complex issue demands a multi-disciplinary approach: there is not one solution, and some approaches risk limiting the freedom of expression, yet countering the phenomenon is a moral obligation for library and information science professionals.

Comparing the present digital revolution with the past, this paper opens questions on the ethical commitment of information professionals.

The processual ordering branch of symbolic interaction has long recognized the importance of rhetoric and power to the social constitution of reality. However, little systematic effort has been devoted to probing their intertwined effects in the public policy arena.

The purpose of this paper is to employ the processual ordering perspective to examine the dramaturgical styles used in shaping public policy – expressed in terms of the “public administration” and “realpolitik” forms of rhetoric – among contending political factions as they negotiate mental health public policy. A latent content analysis of the minutes of key U.S. congressional debates, augmented with secondary archival material from the press is employed. It is concluded that both forms of rhetoric play a role in shaping public mental health policy and that both factions modify their rhetorical form as the debate progresses. Those modifications strengthen the position of one faction while weakening that of the other. Theoretical implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theory of consumer and product orientation in the realm of political branding to illustrate how politicians can choose to position and present themselves to voters. It is evident that some politicians play an active role in shaping the beliefs and actions of their constituents, while others are more influenced by voter sentiment. The effectiveness of the political strategy is highly influenced by the market realities of the voting body in question.

A dichotomy is presented to shed light on how consumer and product orientation might influence the way in which politicians choose to address the public. Specifically, four modified strategic orientation archetypes are presented and analyzed with particular focus on political brands and strategy.

Product and consumer orientations have been shown to also be applicable to the strategic positioning of political brands. While it can be argued that no strategy is superior over another, careful consideration of the political environment in question and subsequent execution of an appropriate stance can be used to better manage the relationship between the electorate and politicians.

This study provides academics in this area with a comprehensive examination of strategic orientation literature in political contexts, and lays out a strong groundwork for future studies. In this burgeoning area of research, there are several opportunities for marketing and political strategy academics to dive deeper into the intricacies that drive politicians to adopt specific strategic orientations, and how these strategies evolve over time and in differing political environments.

This analysis suggests that there are opportunities for political strategists to explore the relationship between the identified strategic orientations and political brands, and for political marketing scholars to investigate the modes of focus presented.

This analysis provides better understanding of how politicians can influence voters and voters can influence political brands, and how the strategic orientation archetypes can be used to influence decisions about political strategy.

This study aims to investigate the influence and impacts of stakeholders on the awareness and attitudes towards environmental management practices (EMPs) among hotel managers in Malaysia.

A total of 159 hotel managers participated in the survey. Structural equation modelling using the partial least squares (PLS) technique was used to test the hypotheses.

Owners and regulators influence hotel managers' environmental awareness and attitudes and their adoption of EMPs. Managers with a greater environmental awareness are more likely to adopt basic EMPs, while those with a greater environmental attitude are more likely to adopt advanced EMPs. In addition, stakeholder influence on managers' awareness and attitudes differs for hotels with and without an environmental policy.

Other types of accommodation and stakeholders, demographic variations of hotels and different data collection methods could provide additional insights into the hotel sustainability issue.

Coercion may be needed to translate hotel managers' environmental awareness and attitudes into practices. Therefore, regulators should provide rules and penalties to enforce mandatory requirements and incentives to encourage environmental sustainability initiatives.

The joint effort among stakeholders could create a societal norm that appreciates and maintains a sustainable environment and tourism industry.

This study emphasises the importance of stakeholder salience theory to understand the association between stakeholder influence on managers' awareness and attitudes and the adoption of EMPs by hotels in Malaysia. It is one of only a handful of studies that focuses on stakeholders' influence on environmental stewardship from managers' perspectives.

This paper aims to investigate whether the managers’ emphasis on audit in the management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) section of the 10-K filing, as part of the firm’s “tone at the top,” is linked to audit quality.

Adopting a computational linguistics approach, the authors measure the manager’s audit emphasis as the frequency of audit-related words in the MD&A. The authors then assess the relationship between audit emphasis and audit quality with ordinary least squares and probit regression models.

This study finds that the manager’s audit emphasis, proxied by the count of audit-related words, is positively associated with audit fees, audit delay, the appointment and retention of Big 4 and industry-specialist auditors, and the probability of switching to Big 4 auditors, while negatively linked to abnormal accruals and the possibility of financial misstatements.

The audit emphasis measure suffers from limitations. The computer program determining audit emphasis may misinterpret words in the MD&A. Researchers need to consider procedures to minimize misinterpretations.

Frequency of audit words in the MD&A reflects the firm’s aspiration for audit quality. Auditors, regulators and investors could ascertain such aspiration from past and current MD&As.

This study associates the manager’s emphasis on audit, measured with computational linguistics from the MD&A, with realized audit quality.