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The purpose of these studies is to determine how maximizing sport fans seek optimal outcomes through team identification. Maximizers seek optimal outcomes but do not always obtain them. This may be particularly true of sport fans, who often identify with teams for reasons that run deeper than team success. Maximizing fans may be more concerned with being the best fans than following the best teams.

In Study 1, the authors measured maximizing tendency and identification with participants’ favorite National Football League (NFL) teams. The authors then used moderated regression to predict identification levels from the interaction of maximizing and the historical win–loss records of these teams. In Study 2, the authors manipulated team success by providing participants either an optimistic or pessimistic preview of their college basketball team’s upcoming season. The authors measured maximizing tendency as a moderator of this relationship and identification with the college basketball team as the dependent variable.

In Study 1, maximizers identified more strongly with their favorite NFL team when their favorite team was a historically unsuccessful team. In Study 2, maximizers identified more strongly with their college basketball team after reading a pessimistic preview of the team’s upcoming season than after reading an optimistic preview of that season.

Study 1 required participants to self-report their favorite NFL teams, so the results were only correlational. However, the authors were able to address this limitation with an experimental Study 2.

There are a number of potential implications for sport marketing strategy. For one, sport marketers may want to appeal to fans’ desire to be the best by supporting their teams when they need it most, particularly for teams that are not performing well.

This is the first examination of team or fan identification in the context of maximizing tendency.

This article assesses a rational-choice model of bureaucratic behaviour - the bureau-shaping model - as an explanation of budget-making in British local government. The bureau-shaping model is essentially a reconstructed rational-choice model of bureaucratic behaviour in liberal democratic states, which emerged from critiques of its rival budgetmaximising model. The explanatory power of the bureau-shaping model is significantly superior to the budget-maximising model. However, the explanatory power of the bureaushaping model is limited because, as a supply-side model, it cannot explain how budgets are demanded and controlled by political sponsors, who in turn are constrained politically. Budgetary decision-making takes place in a political arena where both supply and demand are mediated; a supply-side model, at best, can explain only half the budget-story.

Showrooming presents a complex and evolving challenge to retail managers, as it signifies the emergence of new forms of exchange rules. The purpose of this research is to investigate how factors responsible for information search and evaluation affect showrooming and also consider the consumer mindset as a moderator.

This research undertakes three experimental designs to investigate how the push (i.e. assortment size), pull (i.e. price discount), and mooring (i.e. sunk cost) factors influence consumers' showrooming intention. Specifically, consumers' maximizing tendency plays the role of moderator.

The results reveal that push, pull, and mooring factors are significantly related to consumers' showrooming intention. Furthermore, the findings show that maximizers have higher showrooming intention than satisficers in the context of the push, pull, and mooring factors.

By integrating the push-pull-mooring framework and the maximizing mindset theory, this research proposes a novel research model and the empirical testing results support six hypotheses. The findings add to the body of knowledge in showrooming behavior by taking consumer mindset into account. The results also provide implications for practitioners to develop their retail strategies.

This article examines the alleged conflict between authors and publishers whereby authors allegedly prefer a sales‐maximising price while publishers prefer a profit‐maximising price. It is shown that: (1) given some initial royalty rate proposal, there is limited scope for royalty rate changes which can make both parties better off by maximising profits‐plus‐royalties compared with profit or sales maximisation; (2) where publishers adopt a profit‐maximising price, there is an inverted‐U relationship between authors′ royalty receipts and the royalty rate with a consequent “maximal” rate; (3) appropriate demand and cost assumptions yield royalty rate predictions broadly in line with those observed, without assuming any bargaining bias in favour of the publisher.

The purpose of this paper addresses the issue of inconsistent findings regarding the impact of consumers' need for touch (NFT) on webrooming behavior. It investigates the moderator of maximization by drawing on maximizing mindset theory.

Three studies were carried out to test the hypothesized relationships. The first study investigated the impact of autotelic NFT on webrooming intention. The second study examined the impact of instrumental NFT on webrooming intention. The third study tested all hypotheses by the structural equation modeling approach.

The results confirm moderation by consumers' maximizing mindset. The moderated mediation analyses show that the interaction effect of autotelic NFT and maximization influences webrooming intention indirectly via anticipated sensory pleasure. Likewise, the interaction effect of instrumental NFT and maximization influences webrooming intention indirectly via product fit uncertainty.

The study draws on maximizing mindset theory to show that consumers' autotelic NFT and instrumental NFT drive their webrooming intentions depending on the activation of their maximizing mindset. The nonsignificant relationship between autotelic NFT and webrooming intention in the context of satisficers explains the conflicting findings reported in the literature. Consumers' affective and cognitive responses were also studied to uncover the underlying mechanisms of their webrooming intention. This research contributes to the literature by enhancing the understanding of webrooming behavior.

Recent research supports the role of productive government spending as an important determinant of economic growth. Previous analyses have focused on the separate effects of public investment in infrastructure and on investment in education. This paper aims to introduce both types of public investment simultaneously, enabling the authors to address the trade‐offs that resource constraints may impose on their choice.

The authors employ a two‐sector endogenous growth model, with physical and human capital. Physical capital is produced in the final output sector, using human capital, physical capital, and government spending on infrastructure. Human capital is produced in the education sector using human capital, physical capital, and government spending on public education. The introduction of productive government spending in both sectors yields an important structural difference from the traditional two‐sector growth models in that the relative price of human to physical capital dynamics does not evolve independently of the quantity dynamics.

The model yields both a long‐run growth‐maximizing and welfare‐maximizing expenditure rate and allocation of expenditure on productive capital. The welfare‐maximizing rate of expenditure is less than the growth‐maximizing rate, with the opposite being the case with regard to their allocation. Moreover, the growth‐maximizing value of the expenditure rate is independent of the composition of government spending, and vice versa. Because of the complexity of the model, the analysis of its dynamics requires the use of numerical simulations the specific shocks analyzed being productivity increases. During the transition, the growth rates of the two forms of capital approach their common equilibrium from opposite directions, this depending upon both the sector in which the shock occurs and the relative sectoral capital intensities.

These findings confirm that the form in which the government carries out its productive expenditures is important. The authors have retained the simpler, but widely employed, assumption that government expenditure influences private productivity as a flow. But given the importance of public investment suggests that extending this analysis to focus on public capital would be useful.

Two‐sector models of economic growth have proven to be a powerful tool for analyzing a wide range of issues in economic growth. The originality of this paper is to consider the relative impact of government spending on infrastructure and government spending on human capital and the trade‐offs that they entail, both in the long run and over time.

This paper considers Baumol‐type, revenue‐maximising firms in an explicit oligopoly framework. It shows, somewhat surprisingly, that, in contrast to the profit‐maximising case, an increase in firm numbers leads to an increase in market price in revenue‐maximising equilibrium.

Presents and compares two contrasting managerial attitudes towards strategic decisions. The first attitude is called maximizing behaviour, and it is founded on a set of assumptions that are unattainable in real‐world decision making. The use of this attitude invariably results in a failed strategic decision. The second managerial attitude is called satisficing behaviour, and its use is demonstrably conducive to strategic decision success. Applications of real‐world successful and failed strategic decisions tend to confirm the case for satisficing behaviour in quest of successful strategic outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to find the optimal environmental quality criteria for a strategic eco-labeling authority with three objectives (i.e. maximizing the aggregate environmental quality, maximizing the industry profit and maximizing the social welfare). Particularly, the authors investigate how the existence of imperfectly informed consumers affects labeling criteria determination and competition among firms.

A game-theoretic modeling approach was adopted in this paper. A three-stage sequential game was modeled and backward induction was used to solve for a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. To investigate the impacts of the existence of imperfectly informed consumers, the equilibrium, if all consumers are perfectly informed of the eco-label, was studied as a benchmark.

A more strict eco-labeling criterion improves revenues for both the labeled and unlabeled firms. It is interesting to find that the eco-labeling criteria to maximize industry profits are stricter than the criteria to maximize social welfare. Moreover, when the fraction of imperfectly informed consumers increases, the eco-labeling criteria to maximize aggregate environmental quality or industry profits will be more strict, while the criteria to maximize the social welfare will be looser.

The authors analyze the equilibrium strategies for firms against the eco-labeling criteria certified by authority with different objectives. The obtained optimal labeling strategies could provide insightful guidelines for the certifying authority to select the best suitable labeling criteria to achieve its goals.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the interaction between a profit maximising mortgagor and a newcomer to a mortgage market with Bertrand competition where the newcomer has a populistic entry strategy and undercuts mortgage market rates. The intention of the paper is to relate the populistic entry strategy to mortgage market characteristics and the strategic market position of both the established mortgagor and the newcomer in question.

The paper analyses a mortgage market by combining the behaviour of a profit maximising mortgagor with that of a newcomer to the mortgage market which has a populistic entry strategy and does not maximise profits. The short-run market solution provides comparative statics on the strategic market position of both the established mortgagor and the newcomer to the mortgage market during the entry phase both related to product differentiation and to price mirroring and undercutting of mortgage rates.

The model finds a mortgage market solution where a lower mortgage rate helps the newcomer gain a customer base. As the newcomer's strategy to mirror prices makes it unable to pass-through funding cost to its mortgage rate, the strategy is unsustainable over time. The established mortgagor has a strategically beneficial position as the mortgage market rates only relate to its funding cost. Unless the newcomer has a funding cost advantage, the established mortgagor has a higher interest rate margin. Differentiation impacts the newcomers’ interest rate margin positively. If the newcomer lacks a funding cost advantage, there is a critical mirroring rate that ensures it a higher interest rate margin. The higher the newcomers’ own funding cost, the higher is the upper bound for price mirroring, relating market entry to a small undercutting of mortgage rates and a mortgage market with weak competition. The funding cost of the established mortgagor pulls pricing in the opposite direction, allowing for a lower mirroring rate and tougher mortgage market competition during entry.

The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of market equilibrium in the absence of profit maximising behaviour. Framing a mortgage market in terms of a duopoly where a newcomer enters with a populistic entry strategy offering a lower mortgage rate and a mortgage product with a different loan-to-value (LTV) ratio, a novel mortgage market case comes about. The populistic entry strategy produces an augmented reaction curve, crucial for the mortgage market rates.