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The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how the segmentation of voters based on decision‐making processes, using means‐end laddering research innovations and real‐time interactive online interviewing, can aid in the formation of political communications strategy, including theme and message development.

To demonstrate the application of these innovations in a political context, the paper uses data from a sample of 114 voters who were interviewed during the 2004 US presidential election campaign. The paper draws on three recent innovations to the means‐end laddering methodology: elicitation questioning techniques that allow for a decision equity analysis between targeted groups; decision segmentation analysis; and real‐time interactive online interviewing; and applies them to an electoral context. It provides an interpretation of the identified decision segments and an exposition of how these common networks of meaning can serve as the basis for targeted theme and message development.

These three innovations, in concert, were found to provide an efficient set of methods to serve as the foundation for the campaign message development process.

This paper provides deterministic research techniques for campaign strategists who want to understand voter decision making and demonstrates a combination of methodological and technological innovations that addresses the time, cost, and geographic limitations often associated with conducting voter decision making research.

Proposes responding to earlier calls for further research into “fraudulent” or “feigned” customer complaints, and providing insights which explore and describe the motivations and forms of such deliberate “illegitimate” customer complaints.

Critical incident technique was utilized in analyzing 104 interviews with customers who had knowingly made an illegitimate complaint within the six months prior to the interview. Data collection stopped at the point of theoretical saturation and was subsequently analyzed according to the coding procedures advocated by Strauss and Corbin (open, axial and selective coding).

Two key insights emerged from data analysis. First, coding procedures revealed four distinct forms of customer complainants. These are labeled; “one‐off complainants”, “opportunistic complainants”, “conditioned complainants”, and “professional complainants”. Second, six main motives for articulating fraudulent complaints were uncovered during data analysis. These are termed; “freeloaders”, “fraudulent returners”, “fault transferors”, “solitary ego gains”, “peer‐induced esteem seekers”, and “disruptive gains”.

The study is constrained by its exploratory design and qualitative methods employed. Subsequently, future studies could employ survey methods to improve empirical generalizability. Future studies could adopt a more inclusive approach and incorporate insights from employees, managers, and other relevant actors within service encounters.

Practical implications highlighted by the study include a need for businesses to examine and, in many cases, reevaluate their personnel training, customer complaint and service recovery procedures. Furthermore, managers may wish to enforce mechanisms wherein customer complaints are monitored and tracked in a manner that assists in the identification and challenging of re‐offending fraudulent complainers.

The study constitutes the first systematic attempt to explore and describe illegitimate customer complaining behaviors.

In this study the authors aim to explore the impact of customer misbehavior on frontline employees and managers and to elucidate the management tactics and strategies that managers employ in an attempt to minimize the impact of customer misbehavior on the workplace.

Following a discussion of the research design and methodology employed, the findings of 88 in-depth interviews are presented.

These data suggest that customer misbehavior impacts on frontline employees, managers, and managerial strategies. Three main effects of customer misbehavior on customer-contact employees are uncovered: physiological, cognitive, and attitudinal. These are connected with four main management challenges: conflicting pressures, recruitment and retention, counseling and motivation, and time expenditure. Finally, data analysis finds evidence of six main ways in which managers attempted to reduce or to alleviate harmful customer misbehavior: selective recruitment, changes to training and induction procedures, enhanced rewards, work-team design, increase counseling, and alterations to the servicescape.

The authors recommend that practitioners undertake a misbehavior audit that explores not only the extent of customer misbehavior but also the mechanisms, systems, and procedures the organization has for identifying, recording, and attempting to minimize the effects of dysfunctional customer behavior.

This study contributes insights into how customer-contact personnel and managers are both affected and cope with customer misbehavior. These insights are helpful for service managers faced with customer misbehavior and academicians interested in how employees respond to contemporary customers.

Christopher Lovelock originated the term “jaycustomer” behavior to refer to customers who deliberately act in a thoughtless or abusive manner, causing problems for the firm, employees, or other customers. An overview of existing literature reveals the focal concentration of empirical research regarding the listing or categorization of jaycustomer behaviors has been on individual forms. While the need for a development of a typology of general or all‐embracing jaycustomer behaviors has been recognized, and forwarded by a small number of researchers, such efforts have been anecdotal or conceptual in nature, or have emerged as part of wider research. The aim of this study is to advance understanding of the different forms of jaycustomer behaviors through providing empirical insights that explore and describe the activities and motivations of such “deviant” or “dysfunctional” customer behaviors through garnering empirical insights from both customer‐contact employees and customers themselves. After a review of existing literatures and a discussion of the research design and approach adopted, the findings from over 100 in‐depth interviews, utilizing critical incident technique, are presented and the implications of the study discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a selection of papers on such subjects as: increased application of marketing to modern politics; the perceptions of its effectiveness – particularly in closely contested elections; the escalation in funding of campaigns; and the increase in international collaboration.

There has been a marked increase in the quantity and quality of research since the first EJM special issue in 1996. Political marketing is now in the mainstream of research in marketing. The themes in the earlier special issues are tabulated to provide a comparison with those in this issue. The contributions in each paper are summarised.

The paper reveals key issues for research. One is the rapid rise in influence of the internet in the political sphere, particularly in blogging and social networking, although it presents major methodological challenges. There is also a need for more studies crossing cultures and electoral systems and empirical work to establish a firm basis for key constructs and relate those to voter attitudes and behaviour.

Drawing on a number of these papers, key issues for research in political marketing going forward are identified.

This chapter provides the structure of an engaging intercultural, out of class, integrative curricular Somali Immersion Experience (SIE) offered to University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Education Studies majors and nonmajors who are not exposed to many different races, ethnicities, and people from different cultures because of the demographics of Eau Claire.

SIE participants complete 24 classroom hours and a weeklong immersion into the Somali Community of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Critical Race Theory provides the framework for the coursework. Quantitative data is collected via pre- and post-SIE online surveys and classroom assignments. Qualitative data is collected via summative papers and reflective sessions.

The results indicate that participants develop understanding and knowledge of Somali culture, religious practices, life styles and school lives, as well as their performance in teaching, reading, mathematics, and social studies to nonnative speakers of English. The participants’ preconceived notions about Somalians, Muslims, and Islam were based on what they saw portrayed in the media. After the SIE, participants expressed how much knowledge they gained about best practices in English as a Second Language instruction, communicating: “Somalians and Muslims are a peaceful people.” One participant exclaimed “I have learned more in a week than I have learned during my field teaching experience and more than I have learned by taking a semester long class.”

This chapter offers help to individuals and institutions wanting to improve students’ exposure to diversity through domestic immersions.

The focus of this study lies in understanding the extrinsic vs intrinsic motivators which drive the m-coupon sharing behaviour in social networking sites (SNSs). A consumer can make promotional tool (in our case m-coupons) viral if the cues trigger an apt motivation. This study fills the need gap by identifying which motivations must be focused to make a promotional tool viral by the consumer especially in an emerging economy like India.

We designed conceptual framework based on extensive literature review and employed hierarchal regression methodology to investigate the motivation to share m-coupon.

Sense of self-worth, Socializing and Reciprocity emerge as strong reasons for a consumer to share m-coupons amongst friends and peers in SNS. Results have shown that intrinsic motivation works very effectively when a consumer shares m-coupons in SNSs.

This study has certain limitations. First, the impact of age, gender and education can also influence the results as perception evolves with age and education. Second, in our study, we have not classified m-coupons in different categories. Different types of m-coupons may have a different impact on consumers.

The paper presents findings, which are useful for marketers to develop a customer-centric viral promotional strategy.

This study is one of the few studies in integrating types of motivation with coupon proneness and coupon sharing in social media. This study has specifically targeted the emerging economy where m-coupons usage has seen a surge. Study has shown that it is the intrinsic motivation which is very crucial for encouraging consumer for participating in SNSs and share e-word of mouth amongst friends and peers.

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.