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When does a business gift become a bribe? Although there is a world of difference between a million or two from Lockheeds and a ballpoint from a local trader, the principles raised are worrying British business men, says Alec Snobel in this special report.

This study seeks to identify antecedents of trust among top managers representing partners in international joint ventures (IJVs) and to show how this trust influences IJV performance.

The paper proposes that the national cultural distance of the foreign partner, the business similarity of partners' organizations and behavioural integration are antecedents to trust, and that trust is a key mediator through which these antecedents affect IJV performance. Data are collected through a field survey from IJVs in Beijing and Shenzhen, PRC, and employ regression analysis to test these propositions.

It is found that: trust across IJV factional subgroups is influenced by partners' business similarity and by the behavioural integration of top managers representing the partners from both sides; and this trust mediates the relationship between the behavioural integration of top managers in Sino‐foreign IJVs and overall venture performance. The effects of business similarity and partner national cultural distance on overall performance were not mediated by trust.

The sample of the study used is limited to one country only – China. Besides, the paper's measures of cultural distance and categorization of national origin of foreign partners of IJVs may be subject to criticism.

First, the paper explicitly hypothesizes and tests the role of trust as a mediator of the relationships between trust antecedents and IJV performance. This is done in order to develop a more detailed understanding of how fixed partner characteristics and adjustable group processes affect IJV outcomes. Second, the study finds evidence that supports situational perspective and developmental perspective of trust development, but not the deterministic perspective. This is also consistent with some additional qualitative evidence which the authors collected through interviews. Third, the results indicate that some trust antecedents have direct effects on IJV performance, while others affect IJV performance through partner trust.

The study's exploratory results offer important new information for IJV researchers and for managers of IJVs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key drivers of share of wallet for credit cards issued by either a credit union (CU) or bank using a Wallet Allocation Rule (WAR) framework.

A survey approach engaging 1,649 current CU members at nine CUs regarding their use of 3,487 different credit cards is employed. Binary logistic regression is used to discriminate when CU issued vs bank issued credit cards are perceived to be “best” by their owners.

This research indicates the key drivers differ significantly when CU members prefer a CU-issued credit card vs a bank-issued credit card. For example, CU-issued credit cards are attractive to some CU members because of prior relationships with the CU and offering lower interest rates on revolving balances. By contrast, customers who choose a bank-issued credit card are much more likely to be driven by the rewards offered on the card.

Using the WAR key driver approach, managers can identify differentiating attributes that influence customers’ perceptions of their rank vis-à-vis competition and thereby grow share.

This research provides a significant contribution to both the banking literature and the scientific literature by examining the robustness of a relative metrics approach within the retail banking and CU market. It represents the first empirical analysis of a WAR key driver approach in the scientific literature.

Mobile-based payment is increasing exponentially but in the developing country like India, consumers’ perception is highly positive in daily cash transaction. The purpose of this research is to identify and examine the important challenges for mobile wallet (m-wallet) implementation in India. In the wake of COVID-19, one of the transmission mechanisms of this virus has been the coins and paper money passed between a buyer and a seller. As such m-wallet considered as a convenience of payment has become a necessity in light of the pandemic.

The authors explored 19 unique sets of challenges selected from the literature and collected data from 14 experts from private sector, multinational corporations and mixed private and public partnership who have significant knowledge and experience of mobile payment implementation and use in their respective organisations. Also, the authors have used Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) methodology in developing a hierarchal model for the identified challenges. The authors implemented Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) analysis to classify the identified challenges.

The ISM-based framework is divided into nine different hierarchical levels. “Lack of strong regulatory compliance (Ch6)” has been recognised as the most important challenge, which inhibited the mobile wallet implementation, whereas “Perception of customers about the value of using mobile wallets (Ch11)” is the most dependent critical challenge. There are seven hierarchical layers in between the top and the bottom level with the varied number of challenges based on their driving and dependence power.

This is the first research to the best of our knowledge that has not only comprehensively reviewed the m-wallet literature but also employed a unique ISM-MICMAC-based approach to develop a framework of challenges for the m-wallet implementation.

This paper has been timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the publication of In Search of Excellence. Observing this anniversary, the paper aims to offer a critical review of the works of Tom Peters – a man vaunted as the guru of management. Reviewers have observed that Tom Peters' narratives of business build and depend upon organizational stories to achieve their effects. Recognising that tales of the organization play an important role in sensemaking and sensegiving endeavours, this paper reviews Peters' organizational storytelling in the light of critical academic reflection in this arena.

The paper analyses the eight key works on management produced by Tom Peters between 1982 and 2003 from a storytelling perspective. Building upon Yiannis Gabriel's account of the essence of the poetic tale, the paper compiles a catalogue of Tom Peters' storywork.

On the strength of the cataloguing exercise, the paper charts a decline in this guru's storytelling; the predominance of certain story types; Peters' transmutation from narrator for, to hero of, the business world.

While acknowledging the need for further research and analysis, the paper suggests that the quantitative and qualitative changes evident in Peters' storywork catalogue suggest that this guru's connection to the world of business has become increasingly remote and unproductive. Accordingly, this review questions Peters' status as an organizational storyteller/organizational “sensegiver”, and so, questions his future prospects as a guru.

The satisfaction and loyalty research argues that customer satisfaction is an antecedent to share of wallet (SOW). The double jeopardy view, however, argues that satisfaction and SOW levels are driven exclusively by penetration levels. Customer satisfaction and penetration, however, are not always positively related. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance and validity of these two divergent perspectives to creating growth in customer share of spending.

The authors examine a series of models evaluating the impact of both the relative penetration of a brand, and the satisfaction ratings of its customers on SOW using data covering 11 industry sectors, 188 brands, and 4,263 customers.

The authors find that part of the problem in reconciling these two views has been in how satisfaction is measured and analyzed. When using absolute satisfaction ratings of the firm/brand, the explanatory power of satisfaction on SOW is very weak at both the individual and firm level. When using satisfaction metrics relative to other competing brands, however, satisfaction is a strong predictor of customers’ share of category spending.

As predicted by double jeopardy, penetration is a strong predictor of firm-level SOW, but has almost no explanatory power at the individual level.

Managers need to focus on both improving penetration/reach and becoming the preferred brand in a customer’s usage set.

The research examines if (and if yes, how) satisfaction and penetration contribute to customers’ SOW allocations both at the individual and brand level.

The major findings of this exploratory research are that a firm’s level of market commitment through future investments will increase in strategically important markets, regardless of high consumer complicity to purchase fake goods; that companies will employ additional anti‐counterfeiting tactics in markets with a high level of pirates and a high degree of enforcement of its intellectual property rights; and that companies employ a standardized approach of anti‐counterfeiting tactics targeted at consumers.

Customer loyalty is a focal concern for marketers who seek to identify its antecedents and causal structure with the aim of better understanding, predicting and managing loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to model both current behaviour (measured as share of wallet) and future intentions as measures of customer loyalty, to quantify the link between current and future behaviour.

A hybrid model, combining reflective and formative constructs, was developed, moving away from the traditional “reflective only” approach to explain customer loyalty. New predictors such as variety seeking, “resistance to change” and risk taking behaviour were tested to explain loyalty.

While “risk” is traditionally viewed as a key variable in financial services, this study finds that variety seeking and “resistance to change” predicted current behaviour and future behavioural intentions better than risk. Higher explanatory power and better model fit was found for a hybrid model combining formative and reflective constructs; in contrast to the more common fully reflective approach.

This study adds to the emerging debate on whether concepts such as loyalty should be treated as reflective and/or formative. The implications from this study suggest that future research can usefully model current behaviour as formative and future intentions as reflective. Future research should test the extent that these findings apply across products and services beyond banking.

This study establishes that variety seeking and “resistance to change” can usefully explain and predict loyalty. The examination of “formative” and “reflective” concepts in explaining loyalty is also novel.

Information system continuance model has been used in a number of studies to explain information system continuance in different contexts. However, very little research attention has been given to continuous use of mobile financial services (MFS). The purpose of this study is to fill this research gap by identifying the main factors that influence the continual use of MFS.

A sample was randomly taken from MFS registered accounts or mobile wallets. A five-point Likert scale survey was conducted in Ghana. Structural equation modelling was used to test the data. Constructs such as continual use, satisfaction, perceived usefulness and confirmation were adapted from information system continuance model to suit the requirement of MFS. A pilot study was then carried out after the questionnaire was developed to gauge the appropriateness of the survey questions.

Results from the survey indicated that user satisfaction has the greatest impact on the continual use of mobile financial services. Good agent quality and satisfaction were the second most influential determinant. Satisfaction was, in turn, confirmed to be determined by perceived usefulness. Another important contributor to MFS continual use was found to be perceived ease of use (PEOU) with an impact surprisingly higher than that of perceived usefulness. There was a significant impact of good agent quality on satisfaction, which could be attributed to the characteristics of the technology for the study.

Although a relatively high R2 (71%) was indicated by the proposed model, there is need for additional factors to be identified to improve the ability to predict and explain the continual use of MFS. A longitudinal study would have enhanced the identification of determinants and the understanding of their inter-relationships to influence MFS continual use.

To ensure continual use of MFS, PEOU as identified by the study is important to ensure that customers can use the service with little effort. Good agent quality can promote PEOU in the sense that competent agents can render relevant tutorials to customers’ right after the registration process. This will address a major barrier to continual use, which is the lack of understanding of how MFS operate.

This study contributes to ensuring financial inclusion such that the unbanked can have access to financial services and also improve digital inclusion.

The study provides empirical evidence to support the substantive differences between acceptance and continual use behaviours, integrating the constructs of good agent quality and PEOU into our understanding of information system continual use literature. The authors also theorized and evaluated a model of MFS continual use.

The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer socialization of preschool age children in a peer‐to‐peer context as they participate in dramatic play in a grocery store setting.

This research employs a case study approach as outlined by Yin. A preschool located within a major metropolitan area in the Southeastern USA was selected for investigation. Located within each of the three classrooms was a grocery store learning center. This learning center provided children the opportunity to engage in dramatic play while enacting grocery shopping scripts. A total of 55 children between the ages of three‐ and six‐years old were observed over a six‐week period. Observations were recorded via field notes and transcribed into an electronic data file. Emergent themes were compared with theoretical propositions, fleshing out an overall interpretation and description of the case context.

Findings indicate that even very young children (ages three to six years) are able to successfully adopt and utilize adult shopping scripts within the grocery store shopping context. The children followed a common sequence of behaviors that mimicked adult shopping patterns. Furthermore, the children demonstrated peer‐to‐peer consumer socialization strategies, directing each other on how to perform appropriate shopping scripts.

This study differs from previous research in that the data reveal that preschool age children do in fact exhibit peer‐to‐peer influence while enacting shopping scripts. Although research has examined children as consumers, no researchers have used dramatic play to study young children in a grocery store setting. The rich content obtained from observing children in dramatic play in a grocery store learning center is unique to the marketing literature and provides a better understanding of the consumer socialization of young children.