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The purpose of this paper is to assess the robustness of effects found by Barone et al. that partially comparative pricing enhances consumers' relative price beliefs about its comparatively priced products, but risks adversely affecting these beliefs about the retailer's non‐comparatively priced products.

Research uses an experimental methodology in which the presence or absence of a price comparison is manipulated and the effects on relative price beliefs about non‐comparatively priced products are assessed.

Four studies replicated Barone et al.'s findings that a competitive price comparison enhances consumers' relative price beliefs about comparatively priced products, but did not replicate their findings that these beliefs about the non‐comparatively priced products are affected adversely unless suspicion was induced experimentally. Otherwise, consumer suspicion about the lack of price comparisons, found to be a driver of the adverse effects in Barone et al., did not spontaneously emerge in the current research.

Research examines only university students in a controlled setting devoid of real‐world distractions. Like Barone et al., effects focus on non‐comparatively priced products in categories lacking any price comparison rather than the non‐comparatively priced products residing within the same category as the comparatively priced product. Findings reinforce the value of replication.

The potential risks to retailers of using partially comparative pricing appear far less prevalent than observed previously.

The paper raises questions about the stability of consumer response, particularly those involving consumer suspicion, to pricing tactics.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of qualitative demand factors in companies' pricing decisions.

An empirical study was carried out, interviewing price managers in a selection of 74 companies from Andalusia (Spain).

It has been observed that qualitative aspects play a secondary role in pricing decisions. There are two main reasons: quantitative information is easier to obtain, use and interpret than qualitative information; and most companies, and in particular smaller ones, have no budget available for qualitative market studies.

The empirical research is based on a sample of companies in the food sector. This opens several lines of future research: to diversify the areas of activity participating in the study; to include other company characteristics in the analysis; and to design operative methods for incorporating qualitative demand factors into pricing decisions.

The relevance of this study lies in the strong influence that can be exerted over consumers' purchasing decisions by qualitative aspects of demand.

The aim of the research reported is to investigate consumers'reactions to advertisements containing misleading information on price. The underlying thesis is that such advertising generates negative consumer reactions in terms of attitude and intention and that these are heightened in the presence of suspicion.

A qualitative study was employed to identify the most frequently used misleading price communication strategies in Italy, and subsequently, an experimental study examined consumer response to a selection of advertisements that rely on these.

The qualitative study allows for the development of a typology of eight different misleading price communication practices which includes those based on the provision of purely false information alongside those employing an unclear or incomplete application of complex price communication strategies. The experimental study reveals that, when price information is communicated using misleading practices, consumers develop lower levels of trustworthiness toward the source of information as well as willingness to buy. Furthermore, these effects are heightened in the presence of suspicion.

These results provide evidence that consumers may react unfavourably to misleading price information. In addition, the research demonstrates that this negative response is greater for suspicious rather than non‐suspicious consumers.

The paper contributes to the growing body of literature that demonstrates consumers' negative reactions to unclear and incomplete price information generated by the misleading usage of complex price communication strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure for identifying a corporate social responsibility (CSR) model with best goodness‐of‐fit. This research constructed a model of which CSR was mainly influenced by four core components: accountability, transparency, competitiveness, and responsibility.

The data presented in this study were collected from companies in the year 2009 in Taiwan using questionnaires, and in total 185 companies were analyzed. Structural equation modeling was applied to assess the proposed CSR model containing four latent factors and 13 observation indicators.

The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the correlation among four latent variables was significant, and the second‐order factor structure fit the observed data well.

The result supported the proposed model that four constructs played a dominant role toward CSR. Business leaders therefore could have clearer perspectives while facing challenges regarding CSR issues.

The paper shows that while developing business strategies, companies taking accountability and transparency as priority would strengthen their competitiveness and generate responsibility and in turn lead to CSR. Companies would obtain great advantages in the long run.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the causal relationships among four components in corporate social responsibility (CSR) domain. This study posits that CSR is mainly influenced by: accountability, responsibility, transparency, and competitiveness.

A path analysis is employed to determine the relationships, while confirmatory factor analysis is applied to assess the construct validity of the model. The data presented in this study were collected from Taiwanese companies in the year 2009 using questionnaires. A total of 170 companies were analyzed.

The results show that both accountability and transparency provide statistically significant contributions to the prediction of competitiveness, which in turn has a significant effect on responsibility.

First, the paper encompasses four core factors influencing the measurement of CSR. Second, the sample size used to analyze the diversity of concepts may appear small and therefore the result may not be considered precise since the total number of companies in Taiwan is over one million. Large sample size may lead to different results and therefore needs to be further explored. Third, while the proposed model was only tested in Taiwan, a country with 97.8 percent SMEs, the outcome of the research may only be applicable to Taiwan rather than to other countries with different national systems of business‐society relations. Finally, this study only investigated the relationships among core components of CSR.

While developing business strategies, companies taking accountability and transparency as priority will strengthen their competitiveness and in turn generate responsibility and lead to CSR, a way to reach corporate sustainability.

The results provide business leaders with practical advice that implementing CSR is not only the smart and right thing to do from a business perspective, but also the right thing to do from a society perspective.

Applying for international standards could be a feasible and optimal way to show commitments to CSR implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of complete versus partial observations of service failure and recovery. This study also aims at investigating the effect of observing customers’ need for cognitive closure and types of compensation that a service provider offers.

Two experiments are conducted to test the research hypotheses. The authors use scenarios describing failure and recovery encounters that occur to a target customer at restaurant settings, and through manipulation of complete versus partial observations, they investigate observers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions.

The results suggest that customers with a partial observation are less forgiving than those with a complete observation. In particular, the former sympathized more with a target customer, blamed a service provider more and a target customer less and had lower repurchase intentions than the latter. The authors find that the need for cognitive closure heightens this tendency following a partial observation of service failure. They also find that following a complete (versus partial) observation, observers reacted more favorably to service recovery when it included (versus did not include) monetary compensation.

This research studies the effect of locus of causality following a partial versus complete observation. Future research could further examine the effect of stability and controllability. Also, the authors examined the effect of the need for cognitive closure on evaluations of service failure following a partial versus complete observation. Future research could examine the effect of some other individual difference variables.

The results offer some measures to be taken by practitioners. In particular, practitioners are advised to not offer monetary compensation when majority of observers have had a partial observation. Moreover, they are advised to offer some explanation in a timely and effective manner to ensure observers who are under the negative impact of a partial observation have some information so that they revisit their service evaluations.

The literature assumes that in failure and recovery incidents, all observing customers would know the entire story. This research challenges this assumption and highlights the key role of observation type (partial versus complete observation). Further, this research examines the effect of the need for cognitive closure on service evaluations following a partial versus complete observation. The current research finds that supposedly favorable measures by a firm (i.e. monetary compensation) may in fact backfire when a partial observation is at play.

This study aims to examine how consumers perceive the persuasion intent and sincerity of brand messages differently and to what extent the advertised brand sounds opportunistic within the context of a crisis, depending on what the message offers.

In Study 1 (N = 163), the brand messages were manipulated in terms of control (an empathetic claim only), monetary reward (with a discount offer) and cause-related marketing (CRM) conditions. In Study 2 (N = 150), the message effects were replicated using a different product category. In Study 3 (N = 216), the three brand messages were examined under high vs low involvement conditions.

The results revealed a linear decrease in negativity in consumer responses when the brand message offers CRM activity, followed by one that offers a discount. It was also found that the monetary reward message was perceived to have greater persuasion intent and be more opportunistic than other message types under low involvement, whereas such effects disappeared under high involvement. Conversely, the CRM message was perceived to have greater persuasion intent and be more opportunistic under high involvement (vs low).

Amidst the global economic impact and corporate landscape changes, there is limited understanding of consumer responses to crisis-related brand messages. Rooted in the attribution theory and the persuasion knowledge model, this study fills the gap by examining how consumers assess the underlying motives of different message types and perceive brands as taking advantage of the crisis situation.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in the commercial real estate market dynamics as a function of and conditional to the shifts in market state-space environment that can influence agent responses.

The analytical design uses a comparative computational experiment to address the performance of property assets in the current market based on comparison with prior structural patterns. The latent variables developed across market sectors are used to test agent behavior contingent on the perspectives of capital asset pricing conditionals (CAPM) and a behavioral momentum/herd construct. The state-space momentum analysis can assist the comparative analysis of current levels and shifts in property asset performance given the issues that have arisen with the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

An analytic approach is employed framed by a situation-dependent model. This frame considers risk profiles characterizing the perspectives and preferences guiding a delineated market state. This perspective is concerned with the possibility of shifts in market momentum and representativeness conditioning investor expectations. It is observed that the current market (post-crisis) has changed significantly from the prior operations (despite the diversity observed in prior market states). The dynamics of initial findings required an additional test anchored to the performance of the general capital market and the real economy across time. This context supports the use of a modified CAPM model allowing the consideration of opportunity cost in a space-time dynamic anchored with the consideration of equity, debt, riskless asset and liquidity options as they varied for the representative agents operating per market state.

This paper integrates neoclassical and behavioral economic constructs. Combines asset pricing with prospect theory and allows the calculation of endogenous time-preferences, risk attitudes and formulation and testing of hyperbolic discounting functions.

The research shows that market structure and agent behavior since the financial crisis has changed from the investment and valuation perspectives operating as observed and measured from 1970 up to 2007. In contradiction to the long-term findings of Reinhart and Rogoff (2008), but in compliance with common perspectives and decision heuristics often employed by investors, this time things have changed! Discounting and expected rates of return are dynamic and are hyperbolic and not constant. Returns and investment for property assets are situational (market state-space specific) and offer a distinct asset class, not appropriately estimated by many of the traditional financial models.

Assist in supporting insights to measure in errors and equations that result in inefficient resource allocation and beta discounting that supports the financial crisis created by assets subject to long-term decision needs (delta function).

The paper offers a combination and comparison of neoclassic asset pricing using a modified CAPM (two-pass) approach within the structural frame of Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) prospect theory. This technique allows the consideration of the effects of present bias, beta-delta functions and the operation of the Allais Paradox in market states that are characterized by gains and losses and thus risk aversion and risk seeking behavior. This ability for differentiation allows for the development of endogenous time-preferences and hyperbolic discounting factors characteristic of commercial property investment.

The predominant view of positioning in both the literature and practice – a remarkably uni- or two-dimensional view – asks these questions: (1) What dimension should the product or service be positioned on, for example, unique styling, design, performance, and quality? (2) What category does the product or service compete in or belong to? So marketers therefore ask: Should the computer brand be positioned as reliable (Dell), or faster (Toshiba)? Research on economic value is well established in the pricing literature, especially in business-to-business pricing. Most of this literature focuses on differentiation value, that is, how to calculate the worth of the differential benefits a customer receives from using the firm's product versus the competitive substitute. But a much less studied area of this research deals with the price of the competitive reference product, or competitive frame of reference. Rarely do marketers extend positioning strategy to the level of economic value, asking: How is the product framed, and how valuable is the frame? The purpose of this chapter is to explore competitive frames of reference in business-to-business positioning. Specifically, what are alternative types of frames of reference? What is the role of the reference price in frames of reference? What are the implications of choosing one type of frame of reference versus another?