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Attachment theory is emerging as an important theoretical foundation in marketing because of the relational nature of consumption, but little guidance exists as to which of many attachment style measures is most suitable for use by researchers. As a result, many measures are being used with little justification, and frequently, these scales are being adapted due to poor measurement fit, length or wording unrelated to the focal attachment figure. This paper aims to evaluate seven existing attachment style measures and provides recommendations regarding which measure is the most suitable for assessing the impact of chronic attachment styles on marketing outcomes.

A literature review identified seven measures of attachment style for analysis. Two studies examine the psychometric properties, susceptibility to response bias and predictive validity of the seven measures (Study 1n = 325 and Study 2n = 205).

Among the seven scales evaluated, the Johnson et al. (2012) [Johnson, Whelan, and Thomson (JWT)] measure exhibited the best psychometric properties and predictive validity for general (i.e. not relationship-specific) attachment styles. In addition, two relationship-specific measures, also with strong psychometric properties, were better able to capture their respective relationships or relationship types than general attachment styles, as expected.

This research provides guidance to researchers on which measure to use when examining the impact of attachment style in marketing.

This research provides marketing researchers guidance on which measure to use when examining the impact of general attachment styles. Because the JWT scale is brief, psychometrically sound and demonstrates strong predictive validity, it can be used for academic and managerial purposes. The authors also confirm previous research suggesting that relationship-specific measures of attachment style may act differently than general interpersonal attachment style measures and vary in their ability to predict marketing outcomes.

This research is the first to provide guidance regarding which measure of attachment style to use in marketing and consumer research. This research can serve as a reference point for future researchers in selecting measures of attachment style and may allow for convergence on a narrow set of measures to advance research in marketing.

This paper seeks to investigate the effects of relationship benefits on relationship quality and aspects of service quality, namely technical and functional quality, and the subsequent influence on word‐of‐mouth behavior.

The paper reports results from a structural equation model that utilizes data from 591 consumers across a range of services.

The findings highlight the important role of relationship benefits in driving customer perceptions of technical, functional and relationship quality. While confidence, social and special treatment benefits drive technical and functional quality, it is only confidence benefits that drive relationship quality. Furthermore, it is found that functional and relationship quality drive word‐of‐mouth behavior.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature by showing the differential impact that relationship benefits have on quality – technical, functional, and relationship – and subsequently the effect that functional and relationship quality have on word‐of‐mouth behavior.

The paper provides firms with the knowledge needed to more effectively implement relationship‐marketing activities. As the service economy continues to grow, competition intensifies, and to ensure service excellence, firms need to establish strong relationships with their customers as the quality of the customer‐provider relationship can increase word‐of‐mouth behavior.

The paper empirically investigates the role of relationship benefits in enhancing perceptions of quality while also providing an analysis of the differential role of functional, technical, and relationship quality in enhancing customers' word‐of‐mouth intentions.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that assuming an increase in satisfaction will always lead to greater loyalty oversimplifies the complex association between these constructs. A more accurate view of the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship is gained by examining the moderating effect of involvement, switching costs, and relationship benefits.

This paper reports the results of a hierarchal‐moderated regression analysis on data gathered from a national mail survey of 509 customers across nine service types.

The findings of this study suggest that the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship is not as simple as it seems. Specifically, the negative effect that switching costs have on the association between satisfaction and loyalty declines as customer involvement with the service relationship grows, but increases as the customer perceives greater relationship benefit. These findings suggest that simply enhancing satisfaction will not always generate greater customer loyalty.

Future research should consider the effects of other moderating variables, such as relationship investment and quality, on the satisfaction‐loyalty link.

This paper provides managers with insight as to how to best increase customer loyalty.

This paper is the first to simultaneously examine the moderating effect of customer involvement, switching costs, and social benefits on the satisfaction‐loyalty association.

This paper seeks to examine the central role that commitment plays in driving customer loyalty and to identify the effect that confidence, social and special treatment benefits as well as relationship investment, communication and management have on the development of commitment, and ultimately customer loyalty.

The paper reports the results of a national mail survey of 591 consumers across nine different service industries.

The findings of the study suggest that relationship commitment drives customer loyalty and that confidence, social and special treatment benefits affect commitment to the service, as does relationship investment and management. Surprisingly, relationship communication was found to have a negative effect on commitment to the service.

This paper provides managers with insight as to how they can better create and sustain loyal relationships through the creation of customer commitment.

The paper empirically demonstrates the importance of commitment in developing and sustaining loyal relationships while also providing a detailed assessment of the role of relationship benefits and maintenance in creating committed customers.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating roles of materialism and self-esteem in explaining how family conflict leads to adolescent compulsive buying. Despite the importance of family as a primary socialization agent, scant research has focused on how family conflict impacts adolescents’ attitudes and behaviors as consumers.

A survey of 1,289 adolescents was conducted in a public high school in the Midwestern USA. Regression analyses were used to assess the mediating roles of materialism and self-esteem on the relationship between family conflict and compulsive buying. Additionally, gender was hypothesized to moderate the relationship between family conflict and the two mediating variables.

Results showed that family conflict increased adolescent materialism and lowered self-esteem. Gender moderated the relationship between family conflict and self-esteem with a more pronounced effect for females than males. Materialism and self-esteem were significantly related to compulsive buying. Family conflict had a significant indirect effect on compulsive buying through materialism for females and through self-esteem for both male and female.

Findings suggest that family conflict impacts compulsive buying through its impact on both materialism and self-esteem. Future research is needed to explain why adolescents use compulsive buying as a coping mechanism for family conflict. Then, whether such behavior leads to improved well-being.

Results suggest that adolescents use compulsive buying to cope with family conflict. The study’s focus on family conflict, not simply divorce, expands its implications to all households, intact or not.

This study created a new model of family conflict’s impact on adolescent consumers’ attitudes and behavior.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

It is difficult to replicate evidence-informed models of psychosocial and assertive care interventions in non-research settings, and means to determine workforce capability for psychosocial therapies have not been readily available. The purpose of this paper is to describe and provide a rationale for the Therapy Capability Framework (TCF) which aims to enhance access to, and quality of, evidence-informed practice for consumers of mental health services (MHSs) by strengthening workforce capabilities and leadership for psychosocial therapies.

Guided by literature regarding the inadequacies and inconsistencies of evidence-informed practice provided by publicly-funded MHSs, this descriptive paper details the TCF and its application to enhance leadership and provision of evidence-informed psychosocial therapies within multi-disciplinary teams.

The TCF affords both individual and strategic workforce development opportunities. Applying the TCF as a service-wide workforce strategy may assist publicly-funded mental health leaders, and other speciality health services, establish a culture that values leadership, efficiency, and evidence-informed practice.

This paper introduces the TCF as an innovation to assist publicly-funded mental health leaders to transform standard case management roles to provide more evidence-informed psychosocial therapies. This may have clinical and cost-effective outcomes for public MHSs, the consumers, carers, and family members.

The authors explore complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory as an updated theoretical perspective for managing product returns that better matches the chaotic nature of recent consumer behaviors. CAS theory highlights the importance of agents who create and self-organize to help systems adapt in unpredictable environments.

This research utilizes data collected from return managers in an online survey and applies regression analyses to estimate the influence of the focal variables.

Empirical evidence of the firm flexibility–firm adaptability link is established, and return processor creativity positively relates to this link. The firm flexibility–firm adaptability link fully mediates the relationship between return processor creativity and returns management performance and partially mediates the relationship between return processor creativity and relationship quality. Nonmediated effects were observed for turnover and revenue size.

Managers of returns who embrace an adaptability approach become facilitators of returns by supporting processor creativity. Enhancing the autonomy of processors in their day-to-day work increases the knowledge-creation capabilities of the firm, which helps the firm move forward and adapt in an uncertain environment.

This research presents empirical evidence of the underlying mechanisms of CAS theory in the product returns context by studying processor agents and argues that CAS theory better fits the current dynamics of the product returns environment. Further, this paper extends work by Espinosa et al. (2019) and Nilsson (2019) by studying how a specific human characteristic – creativity – impacts product returns management.

The purpose of this paper is to study how repeat customers utilize their established overall restaurant brand image (ORBI), overall restaurant loyalty, satisfaction and behavioral intentions (revisit, recommend) to reengage with a casual-dining restaurant brand.

The study design consists of a mixed-methods, two-phase research approach that includes both qualitative and quantitative data. First, focus groups and in-depth interviews with adult customers reveal preliminary insights on restaurant dining patterns and familiarity with franchised casual dining restaurants. Second, an online self-administered survey tests the influence of ORBI on repeat customers’ overall restaurant loyalty, satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

For repeat customers, ORBI positively predicts loyalty and satisfaction. Loyalty and satisfaction mediate the relationship between ORBI and intentions to recommend, while loyalty alone mediates the relationship between ORBI and intentions to revisit a casual dining restaurant.

Managers looking to stimulate recommendation intentions can increase ORBI, loyalty or satisfaction among repeat customers; or choose some combination of these three predictors. To improve revisit intentions, managers should first increase loyalty, followed by ORBI. Importantly, management needs to tailor information given to repeat customers differently than other customers.

This paper provides a first conceptualization of how both loyalty and satisfaction jointly mediate the relationships between ORBI and two behavioral intentions (revisit, recommend). The results show that loyalty plays a significant role in these predictive relationships and is more important than satisfaction for enhancing intentions to revisit a restaurant.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediators that occupy the gap between information processing theory and supply chain agility. In today’s Mach speed business environment, managers often install new technology and expect an agile supply chain when they press<Enter>. This study reveals the naivety of such an approach, which has allowed new technology to be governed by old processes.

This work takes a qualitative approach to the dynamic conditions surrounding information processing and its connection to supply chain agility through the assessment of 60 exemplar cases. The situational conditions that have created the divide between information processing and supply chain agility are studied.

The agility adaptation typology (AAT) defining three types of adaptations and their mediating constructs is presented. Type 1: information processing, is generally an exercise in synchronization that can be used to support assimilation. Type 2: demand sensing, is where companies are able to incorporate real-time data into everyday processes to better understand demand and move toward a real-time environment. Type 3: supply chain agility, requires fundamentally new thinking in the areas of transformation, mindset and culture.

This work describes the reality of today’s struggle to achieve supply chain agility, providing guidelines and testable propositions, and at the same time, avoids “ivory tower prescriptions,” which exclude the real world details from the research process (Meredith, 1993). By including the messy real world details, while difficult to understand and explain, the authors are able to make strides in the AAT toward theory that explains and guides the manager’s everyday reality with all of its messy real world details.