Search results

Great savings can be achieved by detecting and isolating design problems early in an electronic programme. Many design problems, including electrical overstress, poor thermal design and circuit layout problems, are detectable by their infrared (I‐R) signature. A reliability and design improvement tool utilising current I‐R scanning technology has been developed. Specifically, an I‐R scanning method for making accurate temperature measurements for the purpose of electronic design reliability improvement and qualification has been developed and verified experimentally. Field‐actual conditions, in which radiative and convective heat losses from the components are negligible, are simulated with a thermally insulating enclosure. The enclosure is designed for rapid removal just before the scan, obviating the need for exotic materials that are transparent to I‐R in the scanner's passband. With typical hardware thermal lags, the method allows determination of true temperatures simulating field conditions. Corrections for unwanted scanner‐produced radiation and for the target emissivity are made with a three‐scan method and specially designed apparatus. An integral part of this apparatus is the aforementioned quickly removable thermal enclosure. The three scans take approximately an hour for a typical circuit board after initial set‐up time. True‐temperature measurements of circuit boards can be made with the I‐R design improvement tool now.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate young adult consumers' (i.e. university undergraduates') evaluations of consumer behavior scenarios as ethical or unethical in relation to the respondents' philosophies of human nature.

An existing ethical decision making model in marketing was applied to consumer ethical decision‐making. Based upon the model, the marketer's solution to ethical dilemmas is influenced by factors such as attitudes. This study focused on a specific type of attitude (philosophies of human nature). Subjects completed a questionnaire that contained philosophies of human nature (PHN) items and three consumer behavior scenarios. Factor analysis was conducted on the PHN scale to assist in factoring items into subscales. One‐way analysis of variance was used to determine if a relationship existed between consumer ethical response scores and responses to the PHN scale.

For two of the PHN factors, the consumer ethical response scores differed significantly among the low, moderate, and high PHN groups. Subjects who were less believing that people behave dishonestly for personal gain had higher ethical response scores in all of the scenarios than subjects who were more believing. Subjects who were less believing that people will stand by their convictions had higher ethical response scores in the “returned garment after use” scenario than subjects who were more believing.

This study is one of a few that addresses variables related to how consumers make ethically related decisions and the results can be useful to employers in the apparel industry when screening job applicants.

Trade in contraband amounts to billions of dollars each year, and yet the buyers of these products are still a mystery. The purpose of this study was to model the decision to purchase illicit goods, using four predictor measures: product type, buying situation, perceived criminal risk, and price. Part‐worth conjoint analysis was used to obtain individual weights of main effects and selected interaction effects on the willingness to purchase. Individual respondents evaluated the purchase of illicit goods differently. Cluster analysis was used to segment the respondents. Discriminant analysis was used to assess variable importance. The overall model was shown to be significant. Although the results varied by cluster, the main effects of product type, buying situation and price were all significant predictors of willingness to buy. The interactions of risk with product type and price with product type were also significant predictors for some clusters.

This paper aims to examine the associations between individual factors (personality and demographic variables) and contextual factors (servicescape and situation‐specific variables), and the motives that drive episodes of dysfunctional customer behavior.

Self‐report data were collected from a survey of bar, hotel, and restaurant customers (n=380). Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis were utilized to analyze the data.

Analysis of the data revealed three clusters of motives labelled: financial egotists, money grabbers, and ego revengers. Statistically significant differences were revealed across the personality, servicescape, and situation specific variables for each motive. However, no differences were found concerning demographic variables.

This research emphasizes the primacy of three customer behavior motivations. Future research might investigate the motives for dysfunctional customer behavior across different organizational contexts and the dynamics between such motivations.

The findings of the study indicate that service managers can proactively control and manipulate servicescape and situation‐specific variables that relate to customer misbehavior motives.

No existing scholarly research has developed a data‐grounded understanding of the motivations of dysfunctional customer behaviors. Moreover, to date, no study has explored the associations between customer's motives to misbehave and personality, situation specific, servicescape, and demographic variables.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight important issues in the study of dysfunctional customer behavior and to provide a research agenda to inspire, guide, and enthuse. Through a critical evaluation of existing research, the aim is to highlight key issues and to present potentially worthy avenues for future study.

In reviewing recent and past advances in the study of customers behaving badly, an overview of existing research into customers behaving badly and addressing issues of terminology and definition is provided. Thereafter, three perspectives that provide the most opportunity and insight in studying the darker side of service dynamics are outlined. This leads to a review of some of the research design and methodological problems and issues that are faced when rigorously studying these issues. Subsequently, the paper devotes a section to the provocative idea that while dysfunctional customer behavior has many negative influences on customers, employees, and service firms, there are actually some positive functions of customers behaving badly.

A research agenda is provided that is believed to identify and discuss a range of projects that comprises not only insightful theoretical contributions but is also practically relevant.

The paper identifies a range of issues about which managers should be aware and proactively manage.

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of shopping intention and the moderating roles of employee incompetence and consumer similarity in the relationship between consumers’ personal traits and their shoplifting behaviors

Drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the authors develop and test a model that links personality traits to shoplifting intention and behavior. The results from a sample of 507 consumers.

The results from a sample of 507 consumers show that shoplifting intention mediates the effects of personality traits (materialism, alienation and sensation seeking) on shoplifting behavior. In addition, both employee incompetence and consumer similarity are found to moderate the relationship between shoplifting intention and behavior. The findings offer some useful theoretical and managerial implications.

Drawing on the TPB, the authors investigate how personality traits (i.e. materialism, sensation seeking and consumer alienation) influence shoplifting behavior via shoplifting intention. They find that the effects of materialism, sensation seeking and alienation on shoplifting behavior are mediated by shoplifting intention. More importantly, they also find strong support for the moderating roles of employee incompetence and consumer similarity on the relationship between shoplifting intention and behavior. While employee incompetence enhances the relationship between shoplifting intention and shoplifting behavior, consumer similarity negatively moderates the relationship between shoplifting intention and shoplifting behavior.

Various studies showed that unethical behaviours committed by consumers occur more frequently than may be expected. People have stolen from a shop at some time in their life and remained silent, people walk out of a grocery store have stolen something from the store and employees have stolen from their workplace. Why seemingly good people do bad things and vice versa? What factors contribute to this discrepancy? Hence, the purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to examine the impact of ethical ideology on self-control and guilt proneness; second, to examine the roles of self-control and guilt proneness in consumer ethical decision making; and finally, to explore the mediating effects of self-control and guilt proneness on the relationship between consumer ideology and ethical decision making.

The authors collected a non-probability sample using a cross-sectional online survey of adult consumers across Australia wide. The sampling frame was from a pre-recruited online panel company Permissioncorp. Consumers were introduced to the study in relation to their beliefs in general consumer ethics behaviours. The response rate for the survey invite was 17.9 per cent, with a final sample size of 311 consumers out of 3,246 that were invited to participate based on the these screening criteria, i.e. their country of birth (Australia only), gender, age group, and state in which they reside to ensure representation across these groups.

The results showed that idealism was a positive determinant of guilt proneness and self-control, whereas relativistic individuals were less prone to guilt and less able to control their behaviour. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between self-control and unethical consumer behaviour. Finally, both self-control and guilt proneness had an indirect mediating effect on the relationship between ethical ideology and consumer behaviour.

This is one of the first studies to explore the interactions between ethical ideology, self-control, guilt proneness, and consumer ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how and when a reputation for corporate social responsibility (CSR) can deter dysfunctional consumer behaviors (DCBs) such as shoplifting or negative word-of-mouth (WOM) in response to firm failures. The authors predict that congruency of the CSR activities and the basis for the firm failure (e.g. environmental protection, environmental harm) provides protection for firms while incongruency (e.g. environmental protection, social harm) does not. The authors base this prediction on the process of retroactive attribution and sense-making.

Across two studies the research finds support that a reputation for CSR can deter consumer dysfunctional behavior. Study 1 uses an experimental design with a Mturk sample, and a behavioral outcome using an overpayment situation, to examine when consumers will act honestly and recognize overpayment. Study 2 uses secondary data, across three novel data sources (Google trends data, an existing data set of consumer perceptions of CSR and Factiva to uncover press coverage of negative firm events). Study 2 examines how CSR reputation impacts consumers’ participation in negative WOM in response to firm failures.

Study 1 finds support for CSR congruency as a protection mechanism against dysfunctional behavior in response to negative events. The authors find that dysfunctional behaviors in conditions of congruency, while incongruent and a control condition do not provide such protections. Study 2 supports these findings using Google trends data in the form of online negative WOM. The authors find that when firms are known for their social performance, negative events in the social domain result in significantly lower levels of negative WOM.

The current paper makes the novel prediction that consumers will use a current negative event (corporate social irresponsibility) to re-evaluate previous CSR. Thus, in contrast with prior research, the authors argue that a negative event is not affected by previous CSR but that previous CSR is affected by a negative event. Furthermore, the authors posit that the congruency between the transgression and previous CSR moderates consumer perceptions, such that incongruent CSR and transgression contexts lead to increased DCBs through consumers’ retroactive sense-making process.

This research looks at the main effect of individuals’ moral philosophies, idealism and relativism, and its impact on the four dimensions of the consumer ethics beliefs – active benefit, passive benefit, no harm and doing good. The moderating impact of two dominant personalities – Machiavellianism and narcissism – was also analyzed. Based on Hunt–Vitell theory of ethics, this study aims to propose that there is a positive and significant impact of more relativistic and less idealistic moral philosophies on the decreased consumer ethical perceptions and that the narcissistic/Machiavellian personality traits drive that effect.

A total of 497 survey respondents were recruited via an online platform. All respondents were asked to answer questions, which were divided into four major parts. The first part consisted of scales related to both moral philosophies, the second part had both dark personality scales, the third part questioned about their consumer ethical beliefs and the final part was related to consumer demographics.

Relativists had higher scores in three consumer unethical belief dimensions. Idealists were not supportive of the active and passive illegal activities, as did their positive relation with doing good aspect of the ethical beliefs. Machiavellians strengthen the positive relativism relationship. The idealistic relation of narcissists, compared to relativistic relation, is stronger on unethical decision-making for consumers.

This study contributes to the current knowledge of individual’s moral philosophies and their impact on consumer ethical beliefs. It further demonstrates how the dark personalities of narcissism and Machiavellianism drive the relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model that focuses on the cultural drivers and trust outcomes of consumer perceptions on issues pertaining to the unethical marketing behavior of firms. It specifically investigates: the role of cultural orientation in forming consumer ethical ideology; the link between the consumer's ethical ideology and his/her perceptions regarding the unethical marketing behavior of firms; the effect of perceived unethical marketing behavior on trust in firms; and the moderating role of gender, age, and education of the consumer.

The article is based on a quantitative survey conducted among 387 Cypriot consumers aged 18 and above, using stratified random sampling procedures. The items comprising the constructs used were derived from multiple literature sources and these were measured on a seven‐point Likert scale. Data were gathered through personal, face‐to‐face interviews conducted at central locations in all major towns of Cyprus. To test the hypothesized relationships among the constructs of the model, structural equation modeling was employed.

The study confirmed that both power distance and uncertainty avoidance are important in forming idealistic attitudes, while both individualism and masculinity lead to an egoistic attitude. Idealism was observed to have a positive association with perceived marketing unethicality, while egoism was found to negatively affect consumer perceptions of unethical marketing behavior by firms. It was also revealed that perceived unethical marketing behavior decreases consumer trust. The study also revealed that the link between idealism and perceived marketing unethicality is stronger among male and older individuals, while consumer's level of education had no moderating impact on this link. Finally, none of the consumer demographics examined (i.e. gender, age, and education) moderated the association between egoism and perceived unethical marketing behavior.

The originality of the study lies in the fact that: it puts together in a single model both antecedents and outcomes of the marketing unethicality of firms, as this is perceived by the individual consumer; concurrently examines the role of cultural orientation and ethical ideology of the consumer in forming ethical attitudes and responses; focuses on the instrumental role of cultural characteristics on consumer ethical perceptions from the perspective of the individual, rather than the society as a whole; places emphasis on unethical issues taking place across all elements of the marketing mix; and provides useful examination of the effects of unethical marketing practices on consumer trust.