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Cultural differences in moral judgements are generally recognized by marketing ethicists. Attempts to investigate the issue of cross‐cultural ethical differences by comparing US marketers and Thai marketers with respect to their professional and personal values. A self‐administered questionnaire was used as the data collection technique. Results indicate that US marketers are significantly different from Thai marketers based on the combination of professional and personal values.

Confirms the empirical test of Hunt and Vitell’s general theory of marketing ethics by Mayo and Marks across four cultures. Uses path analysis to show the core relationships of the general theory of marketing ethics were successfully replicated using over 1,500 students from seven universities in the USA, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia. States that tomorrow’s managers appeared to use a more deontological approach to making ethical judgements about personal selling. Extends its original research by confirming the positive relationship between the probability and the desirability of consequences. Concludes that, although the model was originally intended to explain management ethical decision making, the study shows that it may be possible to generalize as to how individuals make ethical life decisions.

This study aims to examine the ethical beliefs and moral philosophical typologies, the relative effect of religiosity on personal ethical beliefs and behavior of the collectivist and individualistic business executives.

This research assesses the relative impact of significant cultural factors on the business ethical decision-making process in a Western and individualistic cultural context (the USA) in comparison to a non-Western and collective cultural context (Morocco). To understand how cultural variations influence business ethical practices, this study adopts Hofstede’s cultural framework for comparison of business executives’ ethical decisions within a cross-cultural context. Hypotheses are tested on survey data on 172 business executives.

Results show that most collective business executives are “Situationists”. The findings reveal a strong, positive relationship between business managers’ religiosity and their idealism degrees. This study also reveals mixed findings in examining the correlation of religiosity with various components of ethical intentions.

The link between religiosity and ethical intentions needs to be viewed with caution. This calls for expanding the scope of this study into other cultures and religions.

Differences of the findings in ethical typologies between collective and individualistic business executives may lead to different negotiation styles on ethical business decisions and issues. Managers from a collective culture are not as likely to exhibit much change in their initial ethical orientation(s). There is a strong positive relationship between a business manager’s religiosity and his/her degree of idealism. Thus, the more religious business managers are, the more Absolutist they are when making ethical and moral judgments.

This research works to fill the gap by examining the impact of culture on the business/marketing ethical decision-making processes within the contexts of a Western cultural and developed nation and a non-Western cultural, and developing/Mediterranean/North African nation. The findings clarify the influence of culture on business ethical decisions. Such an understanding can assist corporate managers in developing and successfully implementing business ethical codes that lead to enhanced moral conduct in their organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the influence of national cultural dimensions on the evolution of national innovation adoption over time. The paper considers the moderating effects of national wealth, population density and illiteracy rate on the role of cultural dimensions in the timing of innovation takeoff in national markets.

The empirical study investigates 137 national innovation adoption time series; the dependent variable being the time it takes for innovation adoption to take off. The independent variables are Hofstede's five cultural dimensions and the moderating variables are gross domestic product (GDP), population density and illiteracy rate.

The outcome of the study shows that cultural dimensions have a greater influence on takeoff time in countries with highly developed economies, dense populations and low illiteracy rates. The study also shows that especially the cultural dimension of individualism has a significant context independent influence on takeoff dynamics, whereas masculinity has no such effect.

The paper provides evidence that the influence of cultural dimensions may be more complex than previously believed. Contribution of the research to the academic community especially lies in results regarding moderation effect of GDP, population density and illiteracy. Other independent and moderating variables could provide useful subjects for further research.

The results of this study could assist companies conducting business in cross‐national settings in planning their international operations in such areas as designing marketing promotions and deciding the entry order into national markets. Especially, useful the results are in pre‐takeoff phase of the evolution of innovation adoption.

The paper extends our understanding of the relationship between the national cultural dimensions and the early evolution of innovation adoption. Incomplete understanding of the cross‐national dynamics of the innovation adoption takeoff is scrutinized and the findings support earlier research that cultural dimensions affect adoption dynamics. The study demonstrates that the influence of cultural dimensions may be dependent on and moderated by other national attributes.

This work aims to use equity theory to explore how consumers assess prosocial actions as part of a mental portfolio of purchases and behaviors in a broader marketplace, seeking balance in market exchanges. Conceptualizing marketing exchange as both an exchange of perceived value and a balance between self- and collective-interest allows for segmentation by consumer sensitivity to equity and sheds light on why prosocial consumption might occur.

Two studies validate and segment consumers via their equity sensitivity. Between-subject designs with samples of consumers and marketing managers validate an equity sensitivity index that segments how people balance self- and collective-interests in marketplace exchange and predicts prosocial consumption choices.

The results indicate that Entitled decision makers are more willing to exchange collective-interest for self-interest and emphasize choices that maximize lower prices for consumers or greater profits for firms in lieu of prosocial outcomes. Benevolent decision makers, however, are more willing to exchange self-interest for collective-interest and support prosocial outcomes.

This work moves beyond research that focuses on attitudes, values and situational factors, instead using equity theory to uncover broader marketplace motivations for prosocial consumption. The research reveals that a motivating force behind prosocial consumption is how much consumers perceive they have given to, and gotten, from, the marketplace. Segmenting the market according to how consumers balance gains and losses provides an alternate approach to studying prosocial consumption, as well as a practical approach to developing targeted marketing strategies.

The plague of unethical practices in global businesses has sparked much research on the role of ethics in today’s business and society. One of the most effective tools to understand consumers’ motivation and behaviour is segmentation. Hence, the purpose of this study is segment ethical consumers based on consumer-ethics variables (i.e. actively benefiting, passively benefiting, questionable behaviour, no-harm, recycling and doing good).

Using a sample from the general population in Australia (N = 517), a TwoStep cluster analysis was conducted using baseline consumer ethics psychographic measures. The analysis resulted in three distinct segments: “The Good Samaritans”, “The Mainstream Ethical Consumers” and “The Unethical Consumers”.

The results clearly reveal that segments do exist among consumers in regards to their ethical beliefs. The study shows that a large percentage of consumers are ethical, there is also a segment consisting of unethical consumers.

The study shows that only a small percentage of consumers are highly ethical (i.e. The Good Samaritans). This shows an opportunity for educators and public policy makers to push the “Mainstream Ethical Consumers” to become the “Good Samaritans”. The Good Samaritans are consumers who will go above and beyond to be ethical and more likely to do good toward the society.

Unethical consumers comprise a unique segment where researchers, educators and public policy makers need to focus on when addressing unethical consumer behaviour in the society.

This is one of the first few studies to segment consumers based on the consumer ethics scales. By understanding different segments within consumers, the results of this study will assist researchers, managers and public policy makers address unethical behaviour in society.

This paper aims to explore people’s beliefs towards Islamic advertising.

Being exploratory in nature, this paper applies qualitative method of research by adapting thought elicitation technique of data collection. This method rests in the projective techniques of data collection and is also known as “word association technique”. It allows free thinking of respondents that helps in generating rich data which is most required in qualitative studies.

Various beliefs regarding Islamic advertising were extracted and categorized into different dimensions. These dimensions pertained to Islamic advertising’s possibility, nature, characteristics, real-time decisions and potential outcomes.

Being an exploratory study, the data are collected from a small sample, hence raising generalization issues. Though, the same opens avenue for future research in that these dimensions should be subject to validation via large sample size.

This research will help in developing a scale to measure attitudes towards Islamic advertising, which the researchers can use to find justification for using Islamic advertising. Such application has great implications for businesses, as Islamic advertising concept stands contrary to the contemporary practices.

With a growing concern for business ethics, this research is an attempt to bring Islamic ethics into advertising practice. This will not only eradicate the ill-effects of contemporary advertising but also provide sound evidence for revising advertising policies.

It adds to the developing field of Islamic marketing, by being the first attempt of its kind in paving the way for Islamic advertising.

For entrepreneurs operating in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) environment, it is essential to monitor more systematically, both the interaction with the consumers and the sharing of information among the consumers. The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedents of word-of-mouth (WOM) in the online SME’s context in terms of consumers “citing the site” to peers in personal communications. A research model integrates the determinants of retail website-specific positive WOM communication, and proposes that WOM about a particular website is influenced by: site-level variables, that is, website quality and interactivity; and consumer-level variables, these being the site user’s satisfaction with and commitment to the website. The research advances the study of IoT entrepreneurship.

Data were collected from graduate and undergraduate students with business and entrepreneurship majors from a reputed school in the Northeast region of the USA, using an online survey. The hypotheses were then tested with SEM using AMOS 18.0.

Findings suggest that in an IoT context, WOM is influenced by a variety of factors of which the e-satisfaction and attitude toward website constructs play important roles. The study highlights the importance of the e-satisfaction construct and its metrics. E-satisfaction is not only a critical outcome metric, but also a primary predictor of customer e-loyalty, measured in terms of the customer’s positive attitude, stickiness and propensity to spread positive WOM.

The paper contributes to the entrepreneurship and IoT literature with a comprehensive framework of information sharing, interactivity and WOM, showing that specific antecedents drive consumers to cite and advocate for a website to fellow customers. The framework helps retail SME entrepreneurs in the IoT context to design appropriate strategies to influence website visitors’ endorsement of the site to fellow customers.

This study aims to explore the different dimensions of e-healthcare ethics and their relationships, influencing the ethical concerns of the consumer in making ethical e-healthcare choices.

A study was conducted at two identified major hospitals of Punjab (a private hospital) and Chandigarh (a public hospital), India providing e-healthcare services with the help of a self-administered questionnaire. The respondents were identified from the waiting areas of the selected hospitals, and only those respondents were selected for the study, who agreed to be aware of e-health services and were using them for some time. The statistical analysis was done using the structural equation modeling technique and included both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis using SPSS 20 and AMOS 21.

Exploratory factor analysis extracted five dimensions of ethical concerns of the consumer, which include service promotion, content quality, candor, professionalism and confidentiality. The results signify that content quality plays a significant role in ethics, followed by candor, service promotion and confidentiality. However, the relationship with professionalism did not prove to be significant for the ethical concerns of the e-health consumer.

This research delivers a practical significance in identifying the critical dimensions of the ethical concerns of the consumer while selecting e-health services. It gives an insight into the various dimensions, which should be considered by the e-health providers while crafting e-health services to make it more ethically acceptable by the consumers.

By using e-health services, consumers play an active role in their health-care decisions. The consumers need to consider ethics while choosing health-care services as an ethical judgment will also be the correct judgment. This study helps in the identification of the significant dimensions for the ethical concerns of the consumers.

This chapter reviews emergent research streams as a basis for a dynamic multilevel perspective on organizational buying behavior that can link seminal studies to more contemporary issues raised by managers and scholars alike. Since Johnston and Lewin's (1996) review, the literature does not include a comprehensive analysis of recent themes or general directions. From a managerial perspective, some of these issues that need coverage include the following questions. What are the best practices for integrating the organizational buying process with product design, development, and innovation? How can technology, media, and automation be leveraged in the buying process? For supplier relationships in which trust and commitment have been established, what are the best practices for using this to build competitive advantage? What are the best practices for leveraging the brands of products or services that are not owned by a firm? What are the best practices for managing buying processes across international markets?