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This paper investigates why and when messages regarding unsustainable luxury products lead to negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) through a focus on the role of guilt, need to warn others and consumers' cultural orientation.

Three experiments test whether messages describing unsustainable versus sustainable luxury manufacturing processes elicit guilt and a need to warn others and whether and how the need to warn others affects consumers' NWOM depending on their cultural orientation.

Consumers experience guilt in response to messages emphasizing the unsustainable (vs sustainable) nature of luxury products. In turn, guilt triggers a need to warn other consumers, which leads to NWOM about the luxury company. Furthermore, the results suggest that two dimensions of Hofstede's model of national culture – namely individualism/collectivism and masculinity/femininity – moderate the effect of the need to warn others on NWOM.

Luxury managers should design appropriate strategies to cope with consumers' different reactions to information regarding luxury brands' unsustainability. Managers should be aware that the risk of NWOM diffusion may be higher in countries characterized by a collectivistic and feminine orientation rather than an individualistic and masculine orientation.

Consumer reaction to unsustainable luxury, especially across different cultural groups, is a neglected area of investigation. This work contributes to this novel area of research by investigating NWOM stemming from unsustainable luxury manufacturing practices in different cultural contexts.

Describes a research project that explores differences in values between male and female flying instructors. Hazardous attitudes and practices in aviation have been attributed to masculine values associated with the flying culture. Data were collected from male and female flying instructors and their approaches to resolving instructional dilemmas were compared. Findings were used to predict whether female instructors were likely to shift the culture towards more feminine values, or whether the culture was likely to shift the values of the female instructors. Finds evidence of female instructors being less analytical in their view of instructing, and more achievement oriented than men. Suggests that female instructors are reacting to existing masculine culture rather than promoting feminine values.

While the consumer engagement (CE) concept is gaining traction in the literature, little remains known regarding the ways in which consumers displaying differing cultural traits engage with brands and their differences. The purpose of this paper is to explore CE with brands for consumers exhibiting differing cultural traits, and develop a set of research propositions for these individuals’ cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social CE in brand interactions. These propositions, collectively, reflect consumers’ individual-level cultural CE styles – consumers’ motivationally driven disposition to think, feel, act, and relate to others in a certain manner characteristic of their specific individual cultural traits in brand interactions.

In this conceptual paper, literature is reviewed in the areas of CE and its conceptual relationship with Yoo et al.’s (2011) individual cultural values.

Key differences between individual-level cultural traits and consumers’ ensuing cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social CE with brands are addressed in a set of research propositions based on Yoo et al.’s model of individual cultural values, from which the concept of individual-level cultural CE styles is developed.

This research explores differences across individuals displaying differing cultural traits and their ensuing CE with brands, which remains underexplored to date. It also develops the concept of individual-level cultural CE styles, which reflect consumers’ characteristic cultural trait-based cognitions, emotions, behaviors, and social dynamics in engaging with particular brands.

The outlined managerial implications reveal that unique marketing approaches are expected to be effective for engaging consumers exhibiting different cultural traits with brands, based on their distinctive CE styles (e.g. focusing on personalized interactions/interactions that stress consumers’ similarity to and fit with salient others for individualist/collectivist consumers, respectively).

This paper makes two important theoretical contributions. First, by offering a conceptual analysis of consumers displaying differing cultural traits and their ensuing engagement with brands, it provides an early attempt to explore individual-level cultural CE-based differences. Second, it develops the concept of individual-level cultural CE styles, which is expected to hold important theoretical and managerial implications.

Recent literature on customer engagement has introduced the concept of “actor engagement,” which serves as the foundation for this study. The study aims to investigate the formation of engagement and engagement's impact on the performance of sharing economy platforms in an international context.

The study analyses unstructured data from 145,434 service providers and 1,703,266 customers on Airbnb across seven countries (USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, China and Singapore). Machine learning techniques are used to measure actor engagement, and the research model is tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings suggest that actor engagement, encompassing the reciprocal relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement, has a significant impact on platform performance. The moderator analysis highlights the role of cultural differences in the relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement and between actor engagement and platform performance. Specifically, the study reveals that actor engagement exhibits a more pronounced impact on platform performance in Western countries (such as the USA, Australia and the UK), compared to Eastern countries (such as China and Singapore).

The analysis of the conceptual model is based on the utilisation of behavioural data obtained from the Airbnb website. Due to the nature of the available data, proxies are employed as measures for variables such as platform performance.

This research is amongst the first to provide empirical evidence for actor engagement formation and the function's role in platform performance in the sharing economy. The global nature of Airbnb as a platform facilitates the investigation of country-level factors, specifically cultural values, across seven diverse countries and highlight differences from business to customer (B2C) business models.

Respect is an important indicator of intragroup status, and it can influence within-group behavior. Being respected by other group members indicates a positive standing within the group that is relevant to two important identity concerns: belongingness and social reputation. Belongingness refers to the extent to which a person feels included in the group, and social reputation refers to how other in-group members evaluate a person. We review a series of studies that show that respect indeed communicates information relevant to these identity concerns, and as such influences a person's sense of affiliation, self-esteem, and cooperation (all variables considered to be important for the viability of groups). In addition, we also discuss whether the source of respect (i.e., peers vs. authority), culture, and group size matter in influencing these group-related variables. Finally, some implications for research on groups are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to add to the debate on governance and, second, to describe a value set theory of the firm.

The methodology has centred on good governance amongst employees – management and workers alike.

It is noted that committees are appointed in firms to ensure that good governance is practised across a range of issues to do with audit, remuneration and appointment. However, the debate on governance has largely overlooked the importance of good governance amongst all employees. It was found that governance at the employee level requires a code of ethics that is not just about right and wrong, but emphasises a contractual sense of duty to fellow employees as stakeholders in the firm. This defines the essence of obligation and duty within the stakeholder firm, the s‐firm.

One practical implication of the paper is that the practice of good governance at the employee level should begin by asking whether the employees as rational individuals in a state of nature would freely have agreed to the contract or work arrangement within the firm that obligates them to do X. A value set theory of the firm could assist employees by allocating responsibilities among all employees in such a way as to maximise joint effort.

The paper proffers a new approach to understanding governance and it concludes that every rational being is in the state of being an end in itself – a firm should teach people morality. An s‐firm teaches people morality. This is the quintessence of employee governance. The paper should be of value to shareholders, workers, management, trade unions and commentators on the theory of the firm.

The authors’ research examines the impact of cross-cultural difference in dialectical thinking on consumers' responses to androgynous brands and its implication for brand equity. Their research also aims to see how consumers take both feminine and masculine attributes into consideration to form their judgments of androgynous brand equity and whether this process is moderated by brand positioning.

The authors did two experiments with 400 Chinese consumers (high in dialectical thinking) and 528 British consumers (low in dialectical thinking) to test our framework.

The authors’ experimental results suggest an androgynous brand has higher brand equity in China than in the UK. Furthermore, Chinese consumers rate higher feminine/masculine attributes of masculine/feminine brands. In addition, an androgynous brand's equity is mainly driven by its less dominant attributes. Finally, their results suggest that brand positioning moderates the mediating role of less dominant attributes, more evident when brand positioning matches (vs mismatches) an androgynous brand's more dominant attributes.

By focusing on cross-cultural differences in dialectical thinking, the authors’ research offers a novel approach to reconcile existing inconclusive results on androgynous brand equity. Second, to their best knowledge, their research is the first to examine how feminine and masculine attributes jointly decide androgynous brand equity. Finally, by focusing on brand positioning, their research highlights the importance of an androgynous brand's less dominant attributes in driving its brand equity and provides a tool international marketing managers can use to strengthen such influence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of brand gender on brand equity across countries and cultures in various product domains.

Consumers from ten countries on four continents rated 20 global brands, leading to a total of 16,934 cross-clustered observations. Linear mixed effect models examined a series of nested models, testing three novel brand gender effects with respect to the impact of androgynous brands on brand equity and the moderating role of consumers’ biological sex as well as individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Additional robustness tests provide support on form, metric, and scalar invariance of the measurements and the robustness of the observed effects across countries and cultures.

The current research reveals that androgynous brands generate higher brand equity relative to exclusively masculine, exclusively feminine, and undifferentiated brands. The authors also show a brand gender congruence effect such that male consumers value masculine brands higher than females while female consumers value more feminine brands higher than males. Finally, highly masculine brands generate higher brand equity in more individualistic countries whereas highly feminine brands generate higher brand equity in more collectivistic countries.

This is the first research examining and demonstrating the positive influence of androgynous brand gender perceptions on brand equity. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first paper examining brand gender effects across countries and cultures.

Does gender stereotype endorsement play a role in the customer's cognitive evaluation of new ventures owned by women entrepreneurs? The authors’ cross-cultural study integrates literature on gender stereotype endorsement and cognitive legitimacy to address this research question.

The authors use a two-study experimental design and analyze our results by cultural context to test our hypotheses: one drawn from college students in Iran and one from working professionals in the United States.

The authors’ comparative results suggest that the evaluation of feminine versus masculine characteristics of women entrepreneurs varies depending on the evaluator's (in this case the customer's) endorsement of gender stereotypes and the cultural context. Specifically, the authors found that a new venture owned by a woman entrepreneur who displays feminine characteristics is perceived as more legitimate when the customer endorses feminine stereotypes, regardless of the country.

The authors’ research contributes to the literature on cognitive legitimacy and women's entrepreneurship by unveiling the cultural conditions and factors that allow women entrepreneurs to benefit from acting in a stereotypically feminine way. The authors use a binary approach to gender. Future research should extend our findings to also include a non-binary approach.

This study contributes to women's entrepreneurship research by unraveling the implications of gender stereotype endorsement, legitimacy and culture in customer evaluation of ventures owned by women.

Mixed-target brands with strong gender identities, whether it be feminine or masculine, are not always successful at targeting both men and women, particularly in symbolic product categories. While attempting to maximize their sales for both targets, managers often struggle to capitalize on a single brand, and they hesitate between different naming strategies. This paper aims to build on brand gender literature and understand these brands’ (i.e. brands targeting both men and women) potential to adopt an endorsed brand strategy rather than a branded house strategy.

The paper uses a before/after experimental design to examine the effect that introducing a gender-incongruent endorsed brand (i.e. feminine endorsed brand name of masculine master brands and masculine endorsed brand name of feminine master brands) can have on consumers’ brand attitude.

First, adopting an endorsed brand strategy increases the perceived brand femininity of masculine master brands, but there is no increase in feminine master brands’ perceived brand masculinity. Second, this strategy has a negative impact on consumer attitude toward the master brand, with a stronger negative effect for feminine master brands than for masculine master brands, which is mediated by the brand gender perception change. Third, a negative feedback effect on the brand’s gender-congruent users is revealed.

One limitation of this work is that the focus is on one sole extrinsic brand characteristic (i.e. brand name) in our experimental design, which artificially influences the relative brand name importance for consumers. Moreover, the studies offered a short text to introduce the renaming. This may have made the respondents focus on the brand more than they would have in real-world conditions.

This research provides many insights for masculine or feminine mixed-target brands managers in symbolic product categories, as it shows that changing from a branded house strategy to an endorsed brand strategy appears to be unsuccessful in the short run, regardless of master brand’s gender. Moreover, the study reveals negative feedback effects on the attitude toward the initial master brand, following its renaming, in the short run.

This research provides a warning to managers trying to gender-bend their existing brands because it can lead to brand dilution. It also emphasizes the asymmetrical evaluation of masculine vs feminine master brands, as manipulating a brand’s perceived masculinity appears very difficult to do successfully.