Search results

A first objective is to add insight into how constructs of ethnocentrism, xenocentrism and cosmopolitanism relate to each other. Knowledge of how these constructs overlap or work together in affecting consumer preferences will offer global marketers insights for designing appropriate marketing strategies. The second objective is to extend this knowledge by examining the correspondence of these three constructs to a nomological network of dispositional concepts pertinent for product positioning and market segmentation. The third objective is to empirically examine the extent to which the measures, construct structure and associative relationships are robust in different national research settings. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Surveying British and American consumers, this study examines and analyzes the correspondence of these identity-relevant constructs within a nomological net of pertinent concepts: consciousness-of-kind, global consumption orientation, materialism and natural environment concern.

The hypothesized negative links between CET-XEN and CET-COS, and the predicted positive connection between XEN-COS were all confirmed on the latent factor results for the combined data set. The negative correlation between CET-XEN was of a considerably lower magnitude than that for CET-COS.

To date, no research has used an identity theory framework and simultaneously examined in a cross-cultural context the interrelationships of consumer ethnocentrism consumer xenocentrism and cosmopolitanism – and their differentiating linkages to a multiplicity of consumer dispositions.

This paper identifies exigent factors that enable and constrain trust building in a science-based innovation ecosystem.

Set in the Northeast England, this study adopts a processual sensemaking approach to thematically analyse interviews with a diverse range of participants in six science-based SMEs.

The findings provide a unique exposition of trust building in an innovation ecosystem across geographic and platform relationships. In doing so, the findings highlight factors outside of contractual agreements that enable or constrain trust building in an innovation ecosystem.

Limitations centred on subjectivity in the use of thematic analysis, sample bias and size. Sampling limitations were mitigated through the research design and analysis.

The findings provide unique insights into understanding the exigent factors that enable or constrain trust building in a science-based innovation ecosystem.

The study identifies five exigent factors that constrain or enable trust building in science-based SMEs' innovation ecosystem at a micro-level – building network relationships, degree of novelty, protection of innovations, propensity for adding value, propensity for risk.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which personal values, moral foundations and gender-role identities affect, in sequence, consumers' constructions of their ethnocentric and cosmopolitan orientations. Achieving a better understanding of the psychological makeup of consumer ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism should help managers better design international market segmentation and brand positioning strategies.

The study's conceptual framework is anchored in attitude and values theories, and focuses on the social categorizations that consumers make and how these contribute to the formation of their ethnocentric and cosmopolitan orientations. Drawing data from consumers living in five European countries, we test our theoretical conjectures through structural equation modeling approaches, including multigroup analysis at the country level, as well as the identification and scrutiny of potential pan-European consumer segments.

Findings show that personal values, moral foundations and gender-role identities do exert direct and indirect (partially mediated) effects on the formation of consumers' ethnocentric and cosmopolitan orientations. These provide numerous insights for managers in terms of how they can segment domestic and international markets, as well as how to position products and communicate brand strategies.

The study focused on consumers' personal and role identities and offers implications based on data gathered from a sample of five European countries. Future work should broaden this perspective by including other identity facets, such as religious and ethnic identities, as well as product-category and brand-specific outcomes, in order to help develop a more comprehensive picture of the psychology underpinning consumers' identity-related orientations, and their effects on consumer behavior. Future research should also study these issues in a broader geographical context, by including national markets that have culturally diverse populations as well as places with dissimilar cultural and economic profiles.

The study shows that individuals' personal values, moral foundations and gender roles have a strong effect on the formation of consumer ethnocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism orientations. Consideration of how these antecedent constructs operate in concert to shape consumers' in- versus out-group orientations has been overlooked in the international marketing literature. Beyond the ramifications for theory, the study offers numerous substantive managerial implications in terms of how consumers are likely to respond to local and global/foreign products/brands based on these orientations.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the call by McMullen and Dimov (2013) for a clearer understanding of entrepreneurial journeys by investigating the entrepreneurial capitals and micro-processes of seven young early stage entrepreneurs who all exited their businesses within 3 years of start-up.

The authors analysed empirical data from concurrent in-depth interviews which generated rich longitudinal case studies. Theory-building then led to a proposed “Longitudinal Dynamic Process Framework” of entrepreneurial goals, processes and capitals.

The framework builds on prior studies by integrating entrepreneurial processes and decisions into two feedback loops based on continuous review and learning. It thereby enhances understanding of the dynamics of new business development and unfolds the early stage ventures entrepreneurs' business exits.

The findings are based on a small purposive sample. However, the main implication for research and theory is showing how the entrepreneurial capitals are dynamic and influenced by entrepreneurs' environment, and also separating entrepreneurs' personal issues from their business issues.

The findings challenge some assumptions of policymakers and offer new insights for practitioners and early stage entrepreneurs. These include having more realistic case-studies of the entrepreneurial journey, recognizing the need to be agile and tenacious to cope with challenges, understanding how capitals can interact in complementary ways and that entrepreneurial processes can be used to leverage them at appropriate stages of the start-ups.

The concurrent longitudinal analysis and theory-building complements extant cross-sectional studies by identifying and analysing the detailed processes of actual business start-ups and exits. The proposed framework thereby adds coherence to earlier studies and helps to explain early stage entrepreneurial development, transformation of capitals and business exit.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how digital creative graduates develop new businesses on graduating from university, and how their creative, business and personal lives interact until their nascent ventures fail financially.

Seven digital creative nascent graduate entrepreneurs were followed for up to five years. Although independently assessed as having promise of business success, they were young and lacked business experience. They were followed through six-monthly semi-structured interviews which investigated their business, creative and personal development. The interviews were transcribed and key statements manually coded and extracted for analysis to identify issues, tipping points and outcomes.

The primary contribution is the finding that, despite a promising beginning and very generous start-up support, all seven nascent ventures failed financially and most were closed down in favour of employment, particularly when personal issues such as parenthood sharpened the need for stable levels of income. The graduates demonstrated weaknesses in their commercial skills, especially selling (human capital) and insufficient utilization of networks (social capital) so that in the mainly mature low entry-barrier markets they were entering they were at a disadvantage from the outset. The research has also demonstrated the value of a real-time longitudinal qualitative approach to investigating businesses from business start-up to eventual exit.

The insights gained have practical implications for start-up and survival support for creative graduate businesses, as well as raising issues about the effectiveness of postgraduate entrepreneurship education and cultural policy relating to this economically important sub-sector.

The longitudinal approach has brought new insights and indicates several areas where more research would be valuable, especially in dealing with the consequences of unsuccessful nascent business ventures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of individualism and collectivism at an individual level, in the context of an emergent market economy of Eastern Europe. More specifically, the effects of the psychological constructs of independent/interdependent self on a number of clothing‐related consumer behaviour phenomena are examined.

Data were collected through a home‐based face‐to‐face survey of some 1,000 Bulgarian respondents.

Evidence was found supporting the notion that the relationship between individualism and collectivism is complex, and individualist and collectivist values do not characterise two opposing cultural dimensions. Additionally, being autonomous or being interrelated with important, others were found to play an important part in consumer preference for self‐ and social‐symbolic meanings of clothing artefacts, as well as on shopping attitudes held and actual purchase behaviour.

Conclusions and implications of the research are limited to the factors considered in the conceptual model. The use of face‐to‐face interviews can lead to the interviewer's intentional or unintentional influencing of the survey results. The use of self‐reporting measures in the structured interview can result in acquiescence.

Findings suggest that marketers and retailers will benefit from individualising their activities.

The paper develops further our understanding of the effects of the independent/interdependent self‐concept on diverse consumption phenomena and provides empirical evidence in support of the proposed conceptual model using a nationally representative sample.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how attitudes and subjective norms predict channel migration across the three channels based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA).

A self‐administered questionnaire was administered to the participants comprised of staff, faculty, and students from four different universities in the southern and midwestern USA. The survey instrument was administered online and a total of 503 completed surveys were obtained.

TRA was successful in predicting channel‐migration intention in brick‐and‐mortar stores, catalogues, and the internet. Utilitarian beliefs were more relevant in predicting attitude toward channel migration for all three channels. Normative beliefs for bricks‐and‐mortar stores and catalogues were significant in predicting subjective norms, the relationship was negative. Attitude and subjective norms were the predictors of the channel‐migration intention for all three channels.

These findings may not be generalizable to the study population because the sample was restricted to a small area. Additionally, the survey was administered online, which made it difficult to calculate the response rate.

The paper adds insights into the subject by examining channel‐migration behaviour using TRA.

The purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model of the effects of customer and service orientation (SO) behaviours of individual retail employees on individual customers' perceptions of service encounter quality (SEQ), service quality (SQ), value, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions (BI).

The sample (n=271) was customers of a supermarket in central India, and they completed questionnaires following mall intercept. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modelling using LISREL 8.7 was employed.

It was found that: service and customer orientation (CO) behaviours are positively related to SEQ and SQ; SEQ is positively related to SQ and customer satisfaction; SQ is positively related to value perceptions and customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction is positively related to retail customers' BI. However, value is not related to customer satisfaction.

More research is needed on customer perceptions of value in non‐Western contexts and service evaluation frameworks in other cross‐cultural contexts.

Retail managers need to train or select retail personnel who are able to perform their roles in a service‐oriented and customer‐oriented way, and value does not appear to be as important to Indian retail customers as it is to Western retail customers.

This paper extends current service evaluation frameworks by including SO and CO as antecedents, and it analyses an Indian retail context.

The aim of the paper is to explore how hypothetical scenarios can be used to study individual employee attitudes towards diversity and equality initiatives in retailing.

In total, 40 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with a range of staff working in three business units belonging to a UK retailer. As part of the interviews, respondents were asked to comment on four work‐based scenarios exploring customer and employee diversity issues.

The paper proposes that scenarios can be a useful method for exploring the hidden meanings retail employees have towards ethical issues such as diversity management. However, they may not always be useful for furthering knowledge of the area. This is because responses to the scenarios in this study frequently contradicted the respondent's real‐life work experiences explored in the rest of the interview. This suggests that, when commenting on the scenarios, interviewees did not always ground their responses so that they reflected their role in the retailer and their own diversity.

The paper argues that hypothetical scenarios, if used in retail research or for retail training and development purposes, should have ecological validity. In order to obtain an accurate picture of individual attitudes and to tease out what an individual might do (the rhetoric) from what they have actually experienced (the reality), those researching in the retail industry should use a range of qualitative methods to study the same issue.