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In the advertising strategy called pseudo-ownership advertising appeal, ownership-implying language (e.g. my, our or your) is used to induce consumers’ “ownership” of a brand. This study aims to investigate the influence of pseudo-ownership advertising appeal on brand psychological ownership and consequent brand attitude, purchase intention and choice. This study also assessed the relative effectiveness of different types of possessive pronouns in different customer segments.

Four experiments, involving both students and non-students, were conducted to test the hypotheses. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the effects of the first-person singular and plural possessive pronouns (“my” and “our”) on psychological ownership and on brand attitude, purchase intention and choice. Experiment 3 investigated the interacting effects of self-construal (independent vs interdependent) and possessive pronoun (singular vs plural) on psychological ownership and brand attitudes. Experiment 4 investigated the interacting effects of customer type (potential vs current) and possessive pronoun (first-person vs second-person) on psychological ownership and brand attitudes.

Pseudo-ownership advertising appeal resulted in the development of brand psychological ownership, as well as inducing favorable attitudes, purchase intentions and brand choice. Furthermore, consumers with interdependent self-construal developed stronger psychological ownership when pseudo-ownership advertising appeal incorporated plural possessive pronouns, and consumers with independent self-construal developed stronger psychological ownership when pseudo-ownership advertising appeal incorporated singular possessive pronouns. Potential consumers developed stronger psychological ownership when pseudo-ownership advertising appeal incorporated second- vs first-person possessive pronouns, and current consumers developed the same psychological ownership for first- and second-person possessive pronouns.

Possessive pronouns used in advertising can enhance brand psychological ownership. Conditions that moderate the relative effectiveness of first- vs second-person and singular vs plural possessive pronouns on brand psychological ownership and consequential consumer responses can be identified. These findings extend research focusing solely on the self-referencing effects of second-pronoun use (“you”) in advertising on consumer attitudes and behaviors by paying attention to the “ownership” effects of possessive pronouns.

Researchers have become increasingly interested in the construct of psychological ownership in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to extend the target of psychological ownership to planet Earth as a whole and investigate its relationship with materialism and pro-environmental behavioral intentions.

The paper is based on a survey with 236 college students from a public university in the Southeast of the USA. The model fit from a confirmatory factor analysis is very satisfactory. Mediation of psychological ownership for the planet is formally tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and Hayes’ (2013) macro for SPSS.

The findings of this paper support the expectation that both the individual (my planet) and the collective-oriented dimensions (our planet) of individual-level psychological ownership are positively related to recycling intentions and the intention to purchase green products. Further, formal mediation tests show that psychological ownership for my planet, but not for our planet, mediates the relationship between material values and pro-environmental behaviors.

Companies that aim to gain competitive advantage through green citizenship can highlight the individual or shared ownership of the planet to align the political agenda of government officials with their company mission, vision and brand positioning.

The current paper contributes to the emerging body of literature on psychological ownership by extending its target to planet Earth as a whole. It is the first paper to explain the previously observed negative relationship between materialism and pro-environmental behaviors through the mechanism of psychological ownership.

This study aims to understand consumers' attitudes towards luxury products based on the stereotype content model, brand anthropomorphism and the psychological ownership theory.

The authors collected data from Indian consumers using the online questionnaire survey method. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS AMOS version 24 and PROCESS SPSS macro, using both mediation and moderated mediation models.

The findings suggest that increasing brand anthropomorphism and stereotypes enhance consumers' attitudes through a significant mediating role of brand credibility. The results also show that consumers' psychological ownership positively moderates the mediating path via brand credibility from low to high levels.

In doing so, this study contributes to the literature on luxury retail by examining how brand stereotypes and brand anthropomorphism impact consumers' attitudes towards luxury brands through the mediating role of brand credibility and the moderating role of psychological ownership. In the process, the study provides an understanding of Indian consumers' attitudes in the context of the Indian luxury retail sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore product adoption beliefs and actions of a large retail food organization with both corporate-owned stores and privately held franchise stores.

The authors used a case study approach involving survey data collection from 190 corporate-owned and licensed retail outlets that were members of a large, single organization. Ordinary least squares regression and mean differences (t-tests) were used to test the data. Findings were elaborated upon based upon structured interviews.

Corporate-owned retail outlets invested heavily in food safety innovation, while franchised retail outlets pursued minimal investment to retain product flexibility. The level of adoption is contingent upon ownership structure, as well as institutional forces emanating from the corporate environment, the customer, and peer organizations.

The findings offer greater insight into methodological issues associated with measurement of new product adoption in particular. The authors have shown that it is critical for researchers to clarify the level of analysis of the study. Quantitative survey analysis revealed both safety and economic motivations to be desirable issues in product adoption considerations. However, when quantitative and qualitative results were combined, very different outcomes were realized as ownership structure differences appear to dominate product adoption decisions. Therefore, when conducting plural organizational form research, the data gathering efforts must be carefully undertaken to ensure that critical drivers of phenomena explored are not overlooked.

Adoption of new product adoption involves the complex interplay between ownership structure/control, economic cost/benefit, managerial choice, and societal norms. Often, organizational research relating to adoption of new processes and innovations collects individual-level data. However, this study shows that adoption decisions occur at multiple levels and that the ownership/structural context must be considered.

The study has implications from social innovation/responsibility perspectives. Recent press regarding food safety has put pressure on food processing establishments to consider methods of reducing food safety breaches. No doubt, this has alerted the consumer to potential risks in food processing and influenced their preferences in favor of food safety innovations. Nonetheless, perceptions of the importance of “safety” can be interpreted in a variety of ways, leading to differing courses of action. Interviews with corporate-level executives revealed that they preferred both corporate-owned and franchised retail outlets adopt case ready (CR) meats to stem safety concerns. Yet, this aspiration diffused throughout the organization differently.

Multiple organizational structure forms operating within the same organizational entity, or “plural form” organizations, offer unique opportunities for examination. Applying various theoretical lenses, including agency theory, the resource-based theory, and institutional theory, the authors offer rationale for why different structural types within the same corporate entity may differ in their beliefs and actions concerning product safety, cost, and adoption.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how mental imagery evoked from sensory in-store experience influences consumer anticipatory emotion, perceived ownership and decision satisfaction which eventually impact positive consumer responses such as behavioural intent. In this study, gender difference is proposed as a moderator to completely understand the role of mental imagery in the in-store decision-making process.

Using a market research agency in South Korea, an online survey was employed to collect data. A total of 455 useable respondents (men = 224 and women = 231) largely living in the two most populous provinces in South Korea (i.e. Seoul and Gyeonggi provinces) completed the survey. A number of path analyses were conducted to test hypotheses.

The results of the study showed that mental imagery evoked from sensory product experience played a critical part in facilitating the consumer decision-making process by influencing anticipatory emotion and perceived ownership. The relationship among anticipatory emotion, perceived ownership, decision satisfaction and behavioural intent was significant except for the relationship between perceived ownership and behavioural intent. This study further indicated that the way mental imagery influences the in-store decision-making process differs between men and women.

The effect of mental imagery in a physical retail context is largely ignored. This study addressed the crucial role of mental imagery in a physical apparel retail setting and examined its impact on consumer decision-making processes. By exploring how to enhance consumers' in-store sensory shopping experiences through mental imagery to influence their positive shopping outcomes, this study offers vital insights into how retailers operating physical stores can successfully utilize their stores.

The purpose of this study is to investigate impacts of counterfeit branded products (CBP) ownership on branded products (BP) and to explore determinants of CBP purchase intention of both CBP owners and CBP non‐owners.

Following four focus group discussions, a quantitative survey of 430 adults in Glasgow, UK was conducted measuring consumers' brand perceptions of CBP and BP, CBP non‐deceptive ownership, and CBP purchase intention.

Consumers were found to have more favourable perceptions of BP than CBP, with exceptions of financial risk and security concerns. Significant perception differences concerning CBP were identified between CBP owners and non‐owners. In contrast, CBP ownership had no significant effect on consumers' evaluations of BP. Several perception dimensions appeared to be significantly influential on CBP behavioural intention, with brand personality playing the dominant role. Evidence of an interaction effect of CBP ownership with consumers' perceptions of CBP on CBP purchase intention did not exist.

This study is one of the few which have examined the impact of CBP on its counterpart BP from both brand and product perspectives. Insights into how CBP as a brand and also a product are perceived differently to BP, and how CBP ownership alter consumers' perceptions of CBP/BP and thereafter CBP purchase intention, contribute to the literature in counterfeiting study and provide a platform for more conceptual and theoretical research on the effects of symbolic and expressive value on cognitive behaviour in counterfeits related research settings.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the interaction between access-based consumption (ABC) and consumer culture in the specific context of baby products, and connect the two streams of consumer research and design theory, by associating ABC with product service systems (PSS) which are seen as desirable as they offer a promise of sustainability.

Within an action research approach consisting of the establishment of a pilot service provision, we conducted ethnographies including in-depth interviews and focus groups.

The adoption of access-based provisions is constrained by low compatibility with consumer culture. Consumers are concerned with the provision’s ability to satisfy their needs, what this mode of consumption says about them, and the extent to which it associates them with communities of practice.

The limitations are the typical ones of action research, which is linked to a unique, researcher-generated context where the researcher is also a participant, and therefore are difficult to generalize.

The large-scale implementation of PSS underpinning ABC is problematic as it challenges consumers’ needs for self-expression and affiliation; however, we found that consumers in this specific context are responsive to the environmental efficiency of PSS.

Our research explores the intersection between consumer research and design, and consumers’ response to sustainable business models which underpin ABC.

With the aim of shedding new light on the characteristics of human capital in its relationship with organizational innovation, this paper develops a novel theoretical and empirical exploration of the characteristics of human capital, both executives' experience and employees' average education level, as well as the moderating effect of female ownership, on two different aspects of organizational innovation.

Data were obtained from the World Bank's China private manufacturing enterprise questionnaire survey. The study employs regression analysis of a logistic model using 1,598 samples, because the dependent variable of an organization's innovation index is a binary variable.

Using World Bank survey data of Chinese private manufacturing enterprises, the authors find that executives' experience has a significantly positive effect on process innovation. Female ownership strengthens the relationship between executives' experience and process innovation. Moreover, the results indicate that employees' average educational level has a significantly positive effect on product innovation. Female ownership strengthens the relationships between employees' average educational level and organizational innovation including product innovation and process innovation. This study highlights the importance of simultaneously testing the effects of human capital and gender heterogeneity on organizational innovation activities.

This study explores the impact of human capital on organizational innovation activities in the context of the Chinese manufacturing industry. Moreover, organizational innovation activities are divided into two aspects: product innovation and process innovation. This study separately discusses the effect of human capital on these two kinds of innovation in detail. Finally, female ownership is selected as a moderating variable, and it is demonstrated that interactions of female owners with executives' experience and employees' average educational level have a positive impact on increasing different kinds of organizational innovation. The authors identify new boundary conditions for the domain of female research that are sorely lacking in the present literature.

This study investigated the interrelations of US consumers' perceptions of their ownership of digital media content, their perceived importance of various digital rights and ownership rights and their preferences for owning vs accessing media content.

This study used an online questionnaire survey and analyzed data from 437 participants recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk mechanism.

Participants' perceived importance of digital rights correlates with consumers' ownership perceptions, and people who value certain digital rights tend to have narrower ownership perceptions. Users' ownership and access preferences vary with their perceived importance of ownership rights, especially concerning music and movies. Notably, people who prefer the access model were less concerned about ownership rights to possess, use and resell content.

The study provides empirical evidence of consumers' ownership perceptions in the digital age and warns consumers of the dangers of the erosion of their digital ownership rights.

Legal ownership and psychological ownership are usually considered separate constructs and seldom examined together. By showing the correlation between consumers' ownership perceptions and their perceived importance of digital rights, this study demonstrates the connection between legal ownership and psychological ownership.

Product as a service (PaaS) is a method of business innovation for traditional product companies to make their offerings more attractive, move up the value chain and find more customers. However, the customer acceptance of PaaS depends on the market in which it operates. The purpose of this study is to understand, through an automotive lease PaaS evaluation and from an outside-in user perspective, the effects of the main intrinsic and extrinsic factors of a product, its design and brand, on the lease versus buy decision of automobiles by consumers in an emerging market, to help companies transition to a PaaS business model.

A survey of actual car owners and lease car users was conducted. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the measurement model, followed by logistic regression for statistical modeling. As a practice evaluation of an existing PaaS example, this study further explored the expectations and experience of automotive lease users to link practical insights to analytical results and help businesses make a successful transition to PaaS.

The results of the study showed the effect of the brand as significant in lease versus buy decisions. Brand loyalty is more important when leasing than when buying a car. However, brand awareness/association is less important for leasing than buying. There was no significant difference in consumer expectations of product design in automotive lease PaaS. Customers who buy and lease cars have the same expectations of the overall product in terms of its key design attributes.

The literature on PaaS has mostly focused on strategies, frameworks and guidelines for implementation and empirical studies are limited. Comparative analyses between PaaS and traditional ownership models are also limited. It is unclear how consumers’ expectations differ between PaaS and traditional ownership models, especially in emerging markets, because PaaS’s success depends on the market in which it operates. This study addresses this gap in the literature.