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This study investigates how price, promotion and consumer characteristics affect consumer choice of high over medium- and low-equity cosmetic brand under different macroeconomic conditions.

The study uses purchase records from MarketingScan's Behaviour Scan panels (a GFK – Mediametrie Company) covering the period from 2008 to 2009. The panel analysed represents a sample of 2,149 households representative of the national population.

Results indicate that regular price and relative brand price increase high-equity cosmetic brand choice over both low- and medium-equity brands, while reference price decreases it. Brand feature promotion activity and joint promotion positively affect high-equity cosmetic brand choice, whereas display promotion decreases it. In comparison to medium-equity cosmetic brands, gender and education slightly increase high-equity cosmetic brand choice, while age decreases it. Surprisingly, household income does not affect high-equity cosmetic brand choice. The effect of regular price decreases over worsening macroeconomic conditions. However, the effect of relative brand price decreases between low and moderate contraction periods, but increases between moderate and high contraction times. Feature promotion is effective only when the contraction is moderate, while the negative effect of display promotion is stable over time.

The paper underlines the moderating role of macroeconomic conditions on the relationship between pricing decisions as well as promotion activity and consumer choice of high-equity cosmetic brands.

Trust is a crucial element in business exchanges. Trust has been the subject of considerable research. Most prior studies are insensitive to context studies. However, the advent of the extended enterprise with the disintegration of production and innovation processes, the digitalization of interactions, and the increased competition in global markets, among other factors, fundamentally alter the contexts of buyer–supplier relationships. New enriched perspectives and adapted approaches of trust in B-to-B settings are necessary.

This volume addresses new issues showing evidence from advanced, emerging, and developing markets by applying different theoretical and methodological perspectives. The findings lead to identifying consistencies, richness, and distinctiveness of antecedents, processes, and consequences of trust in various B-to-B contexts. It provides suggestions for future research and new levers and guidance for managers to build successful business relationships.

This paper aims to develop and validate a scale measurement of trust in long-term relations, specifically in the maintenance phase, between buyers and sellers. Relying on a cognitive conception, existing scales do not measure the affective trust occurring in the maintenance stage of the relationship.

Three surveys were conducted with purchasing managers of enterprises in various business-to-business (B2B) sectors to build a bi-dimensional measurement scale of affective trust as a sentiment of security and affective attachment. For measurement scale development, established construction procedures were followed, including qualitative and quantitative surveys. The process can be summarized as: domain specification, generation of questionnaire items, empirical survey and iterative process of scale purification based on reliability assessment and validity checks.

The results indicate satisfactory psychometric properties of the new Affective Trust Scale (ATS). Furthermore, they demonstrate the scale’s measurement invariance across business sectors. The research confirms the importance of affective aspects of trust and supports the reliability and validity of the measure. Nomological validity assessment of the scale shows that sentiment of security-based trust impacts investment in business relationships.

The ATS developed and tested in the B2B French context needs to be evaluated taking into account several limitations. First, the specific context was a sample of buyers in France experiencing lasting relationships, suggesting that an extension of the study to other countries would be desirable. Also, the ATS needs to be further validated and confirmed in other contexts, for instance, within buyer–supplier relationship intensity.

The ATS can help firms to identify key parameters in buyer–seller relationships. It is important for the seller to collect information to determine the stage of the relationship before spending money on targeting customers, as they may not be ready to broaden the scope of their contract. The ATS can be very useful for companies to assess the state of the relationship and the strength of the bond in a timely manner and, therefore, anticipate the relational orientation. Segmentation based on relational phases requires tailoring to each form of trust strategies and hence the accurate identification of the relationship phase could help to better categorize and subcategorize customers with respect to the sentiment of security and affective attachment degrees. Furthermore, an understanding of the two dimensions is useful for key account managers to adjust relationship management toward specific actions (e.g. sentiment of security and/or affective attachment). The ATS could be very useful to guide managers in taking the right decision, by focusing both on sentiment of security and affective attachment dimensions of affective trust.

Affective trust is important to B2B managers, who frequently struggle to build and maintain close relationships with customers and suppliers. This paper adds insights into the complex but important construct of trust. The scale could be used for empirical studies of affective trust in B2B relationships. It may also help marketing managers develop better relationships with partners.

This paper examines how inter-organizational and interpersonal trust are created and how these trust levels can be balanced to create positive outcomes in high-involvement customer–supplier relationships. Using a theoretical analysis and conceptual development, we propose a framework highlighting different drivers and moderators of the two trust levels. The integrative framework emphasizes the antecedents of interpersonal and inter-organizational trust (competence, honesty, and benevolence vs transparency and foreseeing conflicts) and the role of relational signaling as a moderator to catalyze the “leap of faith,” as well as the articulation of trust-level bases and outcomes. The paper contributes to the discussion on trust levels’ drivers and the need to use relational signaling in order to create and maintain effective trust at the interpersonal and inter-organizational levels. Unlike most of the existing literature, we argue that interpersonal trust does not necessarily develop into the fold of inter-organizational trust. Studying the antecedents and consequences of trust in the context of high-involvement relationships adds new insights to the understanding of customer–supplier relationships.

The purpose of this article is to show that, within a process perspective, calculus is not only compliant with trust but also that trust forms are integral to its dynamics. Having demonstrated the theoretical bases of compatibility between reputation, economic interest and trust, and the necessary inclusion of a social context in business-to-business (B2B) exchange, this paper proposes a conceptual framework that will enable us to understand a multi-form concept of trust.

The approach to the topic is one of theoretical analysis and conceptual development.

This proposal indicates that the presence of calculus in the earliest stages of exchange relationships gives way to other forms of trust that are more cognitive and affective in nature. The elucidation of the evolutionary nature of trust shows that calculus and trust theory are complementary and provide, respectively, insight for the whole process.

The presented research by incorporating forms and time dimension adds theoretical insights and produces an incremental step toward better understanding of trust dynamics in industrial and business markets. The main challenge to the proposed model will be the empirical test.

This conceptualization should help managers understand trust creation better, and provide them with valuable information for understanding the evolution of relationships with suppliers. Segmentation based on relational phases requires tailoring each form of trust strategy, and, hence, accurate identification of a relationship phase could help categorize and subcategorize customers regarding calculative, cognitive or emotional dominant forms of trust.

The paper contributes to the discussion on how integrative approaches (calculative and non-calculative) improve our understanding of buyer–supplier relationships and promotes the emergence of a coherent vision of trust evolution.