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Product design is an important marketing variable. Most literature about consumer preference for product design focuses on aesthetic product value. However, the appearance of a product also influences consumer perception of functionalities, quality, and ease of use. This paper therefore, seeks to assess how preference for visual complexity and symmetry depends on the type of product value that is important to people.

In a conjoint study the utility of visual complexity and symmetry in determining preference for eight VCR pictures are assessed (n=422). These utilities are used as dependent variables in regression analyses with the different product values (aesthetic, functionalities, quality, and ease of use) as independent variables.

The effects of visual complexity and symmetry on consumers' preferences depend on the product value to which consumers paid attention.

To increase insight into the relationship between design and consumer product preference, the impact of a design on consumer perception of all types of product value – not only aesthetic value – should be taken into account.

This research has direct implications for managers overseeing aspects of product development relating to aligning the design effort with target customers and determining specific product design executions.

Past research on consumers' post‐purchase behavior has focused on understanding satisfaction. However, the consumer‐product relationship is much broader. This paper aims to deal with another aspect of post‐purchase behavior: the emotional bond consumers experience with their durables during ownership. The paper contributes to the literature on this topic by testing a conceptual model of product attachment and its relationships with satisfaction, and the determinants: utility, appearance, and memories.

Two experiments are presented in which the product categories photo cameras and mobile phones were used as stimuli to test the conceptual model.

Results show that the product's utility and its appearance positively affect both product attachment and satisfaction. For both product attachment and satisfaction, the pleasure elicited mediates the effects of utility and appearance. Only for product attachment, the presence of memories serves as an additional determinant that also moderates the effects of utility and appearance. Importantly, satisfaction has no direct effect on product attachment.

The paper contributes to the lack of knowledge concerning consumers' post‐purchase behavior by exploring the relationships between product attachment and satisfaction.

Diffusion of many successful communication technologies, like telephony and television technology, follows an almost perfect S‐shaped curve. This curve implies that, after their introduction, subsequent sales of products on the basis of these technologies can be predicted accurately. However, the diffusion of other breakthroughs in communication technologies, like interactive television, videotelephony or broadband mobile communication technology, shows a more erratic pattern. Introduction of these technologies is often postponed or, once introduced, they are quickly withdrawn from the market after the first disappointing results. Rather than distinguishing alternative patterns, this article shows that the S‐shaped curve and the more erratic patterns represent subsequent phases in one pattern of development and diffusion of breakthrough communication technologies. Three phases are distinguished in this pattern. Managerial implications of the differences between these phases are discussed. the paper shows that a company trying to introduce a new communication technology has to adopt different strategies in each phase.

Retailers' new product acceptance in base of pyramid (BoP) markets is crucial to marketers in this segment. This paper seeks to develop propositions for research on factors that affect retailers in new product introduction. The propositions also aim to make a distinction between urban and rural BoP markets.

The paper provides a broad description of India's BoP market (one of the world's largest BoP markets) to better understand context. It uses literature from developed country context to BoP markets to arrive at research propositions for further research.

The key research propositions derived relate to exogenous and endogenous factors. Exogenous factors relate to store trading area, competitive environment, shopper characteristics and product diversity. The endogenous factors include store atmosphere, assortment and shelf space allocation, price and promotion. The differences across rural and urban BoP markets are highlighted for each proposition.

Understanding differences between rural and urban BoP retailers can help make crucial new product introduction decisions. Considering endogenous and exogenous factors that influence retailer acceptance decisions will make product introduction decisions successful.

BoP literature has been replete with research on marketers and products but less on retailing. This paper addresses that gap. In addition, very few papers make the distinction between urban and rural BoP markets and mostly across countries but not within a country. This paper places the distinction within the country. Finally, explaining how various factors influencing retailing differ in urban and rural contexts and developing propositions is a major original contribution of this paper.

Previous research in the context of feature fit has examined the effects of congruence (i.e. more specifically, the extent to which a new feature and the product are similar in the hedonic-utilitarian benefits they provide to consumers). The purpose of this paper is to examine a second dimension of feature fit: complementarity (i.e. the extent to which a new feature is related and contributing to the main functionality of the product).

The role of feature fit is examined in two experimental studies (n=593) in the context of feature additions, and also for feature deletions.

The results showed that complementarity adds value to a product as an additional dimension of feature fit beyond congruence, complementarity matters more for a hedonic than for a utilitarian product, and complementarity can compensate for lack of congruence.

For a product developer, adding new features to a product offers an array of choices in terms of what feature(s) to include. Although having a large pool of potential features to choose from is attractive it can also prove problematic, as products may become overly complex and features do not fit well together. The results demonstrate the importance of both congruence and complementarity as predictors of feature fit when features are added to or deleted from products.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into nine sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management/Sundry; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Millennials’ formation of trust towards a travel website and identify the similarities and the differences in trust formation among consumers from two countries – Denmark and Portugal.

The study is based on online surveys conducted with convenience samples from two culturally-distant countries. Independent t-tests, structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis are used to verify the conceptual model and test the hypotheses.

Results support a strong relationship between initial trust towards a travel website and consumers’ behavioural intentions. The results also suggest that cultural differences between countries moderate the formation of initial trust and behavioural reactions hereto.

The study provides new insights into understanding how Millennials from Portugal and Denmark form initial trust towards an e-travel website.

The relationship between participation quality and commitment has received relatively limited attention in the industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM) literature. This paper seeks to fill some of the gaps in prior research. It aims to answer three questions: How do participation justice and satisfaction influence affective and normative organisational commitment? Does leader‐member exchange (LMX) influence satisfaction and perceived justice with participation? Do the three assumed indicators of participation quality mediate the relationship between LMX and affective and normative organisational commitment?

The research was conducted at three faculties of a Dutch university, and involved faculty staff. E‐mails and online questionnaires were distributed in Dutch. Hypotheses were tested. Three indicators of direct participation quality: satisfaction with participation, perceived distributive justice concerning participation, and procedural justice were included.

It was found that two indicators of participation quality mediate the LMX and affective organisational commitment relationship: satisfaction with direct participation and perceived distributive justice concerning direct participation. As a consequence, it can be concluded that supervisors' skills in fostering direct participation quality contribute to employees' positive attitudes towards the overall employment relationship and thereby perhaps also to organisational performance.

The paper explores the relationships between LMX, direct participation quality, and affective and normative organisational commitment.

Although trust and distrust as distinct phenomena are of increasing interest to operations and supply chain management (OSCM) scholars, they have been inconsistently conceptualized and there is a lack of evidence regarding the distinctiveness of their respective antecedents. This study, therefore, focuses on one of the most widely accepted dimensions of trust, benevolence, to help more fully analyse (supplier) trust and distrust (in a buyer) and explore the effects of relational norms and structural power as specific antecedents.

The study employed a scenario-based role-playing experimental method. The proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling.

The results that while relational norms increase supplier trust, power asymmetry can simultaneously generate supplier distrust, support the coexistence of supplier trust and distrust in a buyer–supplier relationship.

This study is one of the first to explore the antecedents of supplier trust and distrust in a buyer. It demonstrates that supplier trust and distrust can coexist when the relationship is characterized by relational norms and asymmetrical power. This opens important questions for future trust–distrust research.

In this paper the authors aim to argue that the existence of a strong corporate governance mechanism (a formal credibility-enhancing mechanism) and the presence of a more trustworthy-looking CEO (an informal credibility-enhancing mechanism) are substitutes.

By using machine-learning-based facial-feature-point detection technique, the authors construct a proprietary facial-trustworthiness database for a large-scale of CEOs in the US listed companies. First, the authors manually search for qualifying CEO image from websites and annual reports. Second, by following the neuroscience and psychology literature, the authors use the machine-learning-based face detector to identify the facial features in the CEO photos to calculate a rich and reliable set of facial-trustworthiness measures. The authors then construct a composite facial-trustworthiness index for each CEO. After obtaining accounting data, the authors’ final sample comprises 16,201 firm-year observations for 3,186 CEOs in the sample period of 2000-2018.

The results of the authors’ regression analyses show a negative association between board monitoring intensity and CEOs' facial trustworthiness, indicating that board directors may factor CEOs' facial trustworthiness into their monitoring decisions. Moreover, the authors find that these results are mainly driven by CEOs whose tenure is below the third quartile (i.e. eight years). The authors further find stronger results for externally hired CEOs than internally promoted CEOs. Finally, the authors’ results remain robust when using change models or subsample of CEO photos in recent years.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that adopts a large sample to provide systematic evidence on the directors' use of facial trustworthiness. This study extends the literature by documenting the impacts of CEOs' individual characteristics on the board monitoring intensity. Second, the results of this study emphasized the important role of perceptions based on executives' facial appearance in firm valuation, executive compensation and audit fee, and by presenting empirical evidence that CEOs' facial trustworthiness affects board monitoring intensity. Third, this study responds to the call for research on personalized trust by Hsieh et al. (2020).