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The purpose of this paper is to guide managers' choices of rightmost digits in retail prices by acquiring a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms by which price endings can influence sales.

The paper observes and compares the price endings used in large matched samples of advertised prices in two countries with considerable cultural differences, the USA and Japan.

Although the digit 9 predominates among the rightmost digits of advertised prices in the USA the digit 8 predominates in Japan. In contrast to this difference, the US and Japanese prices are similar in that both show greater use of 9 or 8 endings when this choice lowers the price's leftmost digit and when the advertised price is claimed to be a discount price.

Future research should include a wider range of price advertising media and should examine usage patterns of less frequently occurring digits.

Setting a price that falls just below a round number can be helpful in creating a low‐price image. Setting this just‐below price with a 9‐ending would be appropriate in the USA and European countries, but in Japan and other Asian countries, it would be more appropriate to set this just‐below price with an 8‐ending.

These results provide guidance to the retail price setter and illustrate to the basic researcher how universal psychological processes and specific cultural meanings can interact to determine consumer perceptions of marketing stimuli.

Although it has been proposed that recall processes play a role in the retail sales effects of 9‐ending pricing, substantial effects of price endings on the level of recalled prices has not been demonstrated. With an improved testing procedure, it is found that the level of a set of prices with low ending digits (such as 1 or 2 in the dollars place) is more likely to be overestimated in recall than the level of equivalent sets of prices with high ending digits (such as 6, 7, or 9 in the dollars place). The results of the study support the role of left‐to‐right processing of price information and point out some consequences for retailers of the use of low numbers in price‐ending digits.

This paper compares the shopping behavior of Chilean consumers with those in China. Both Chinese and Chilean mall visits are driven, first and foremost, by purchase; however, consumers in Chile tend to be less single minded than their Chinese counterparts. Differences also exist between the two populations in their way of selecting the mall, shopping characteristics, and purchase patterns. Most importantly, Chinese shoppers relied more on their mall visits than Chileans in searching for information and finalizing their purchase decisions; at the same time, they were much more cautious in committing themselves to a purchase.

Effective project learning can prevent projects from repeating the same mistakes; however, knowledge codification is required for project-to-project learning to be up-scaled across the temporal, geographical and organisational barriers that constrain personalised learning. This paper explores the state of practice for the structuring of codified project learnings as concrete boundary objects with the capacity to enable externalised project-to-project learning across complex boundaries. Cross-domain reconceptualisation is proposed to enable further research and support the future development of standardised recommendations for boundary objects that can enable project-to-project learning at scale.

An integrative literature review method has been applied, considering knowledge, project learning and boundary object scholarship as state-of-practice sources.

It is found that the extensive body of boundary object literature developed over the last three decades has not yet examined the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning and boundary-spanning capacity. Through a synthesis of the dispersed structural characteristic recommendations that have been made across examined domains, a reconceptualised schema of 30 discrete characteristics associated with boundary-spanning capacity for project-to-project learning is proposed to support further investigation.

This review makes a novel contribution as a first cross-domain examination of the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning. The authors provide directions for future research through the reconceptualisation of a novel schema and the identification of important and previously unidentified research gaps.

This paper describes the personal history and intellectual development of Morris B. Holbrook (MBH), a participant in the field of marketing academics in general and consumer research in particular.

The paper pursues an approach characterized by historical autoethnographic subjective personal introspection or HASPI.

The paper reports the personal history of MBH and – via HASPI – interprets various aspects of key participants and major themes that emerged over the course of his career.

The main implication is that every scholar in the field of marketing pursues a different light, follows a unique path, plays by idiosyncratic rules, and deserves individual attention, consideration, and respect … like a cat that carries its own leash.

In the case of MBH, like (say) a jazz musician, whatever value he might have depends on his originality.

Based on Greimas' contributions in 2002 and on qualitative research, this paper aims to focus on a semiotic analysis of the meaning of nostalgia related to products and brands.

This paper involves a two‐stage interview process. Informants were interviewed first in T1 (July‐August 2005) about products and brands connected to nostalgic feelings. They were re‐interviewed a year after in T2 (June‐July 2006). Pictures of products and brands evoked in T1 were shown and informants where asked what came to mind when they where exposed to such material. Based on the transcription of the interviews, a three‐step content analysis was performed: a first reading of the corpus made it possible to identify the two dimensions of time that structure the informant's discourse: “continuity” and “discontinuity”. Then a lexical analysis of the vocabulary associated with nostalgic experience was computed. Finally, a semiotic analysis of the texts was performed.

The two opposing dimensions of a semiotic square, “continuity” versus “discontinuity” provide a structure for understanding the most important features of nostalgia: “long‐standing nostalgia” (continuity) and “first‐time nostalgia” (discontinuity). This provides a typology of four nostalgic moments: everyday past, uniqueness, tradition and transition which are linked to specific brands and objects.

Since this typology is qualitative, it must be confirmed on a larger scale in order to be implemented by managers in the marketing decision‐making process.

These four distinct moments enable a researcher to propose a typology of brands, products or objects that when considered in association, can provide a better understanding of emotional attachment.

The role of nostalgia in consumers’ lives and its application in the design of marketing strategies has been highlighted in prior research. However, the role of nostalgia as well as the consumers’ nostalgic inclination in the development of new products has not been investigated yet, either for existing products or new ones. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to underline and understand the collaborative process of value co-creation for both actors (companies and consumers) in the development of nostalgic new products.

A double methodology was used through a netnographic study (which is inspired by ethnography) and semi-directed interviews. Concerning the netnographic approach, the data collection were conducted on both general and specialized social networks, web sites and forums. The semi-directed interviews were conducted among 12 individuals. The verbatim were analyzed through a content thematic analysis. The use of both methodologies helped to underline recurrent and complementary findings.

The analysis highlights four main results: first, the main criteria for selection and purchase of products and services; second, the perception and dimensions of nostalgia; third, the link between nostalgia and consumption; and finally, the relationship between nostalgic experiences and the co-creation process.

This research is the first to study the value of the co-creation process for the development of nostalgic new products.

Retro branding is gaining unprecedented momentum. This study aims to empirically examine the moderating impact of nostalgia proneness on the relationship between retro branding and consumer behavioral intentions in the music industry. Nostalgia and retro branding are two paramount elements conceptually discussed in literature but rarely investigated together empirically despite their interconnections.

An experiment including four different scenarios blending retro and contemporary stimuli was conducted on 181 subjects. Two rock band variables were manipulated: song set list (i.e. list of songs) and band lineup.

The findings suggest that mixing the past and present for a retro brand impacts consumer behavior. A more nuanced explanation is suggested by showing that a retro brand has a strong effect on consumers’ intentions to attend and willingness to pay, but not on their WOM intentions, when these consumers are more prone to feeling nostalgia.

Nostalgia and retro branding appear to be interconnected concepts, but few studies have assessed how nostalgia proneness can impact consumers’ intentions toward a retro brand. Fewer have investigated consumers’ intentions toward an experiential, intangible retro brand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of nostalgia, especially nostalgia associated with place, and its potential in the development of branding and advertising images for the hospitality industry.

The paper achieves its aims by reviewing the relevant literature and illustrating the extant theory with the results of a small pilot study.

Nostalgia is an effective tool for developing brand and advertising images for the hospitality industry. It is relevant especially to place and place‐related aspects such as terroir and it communicates with consumers of all ages. As well as evoking a direct response, nostalgic images also bring to mind many related sounds, odours and objects, which may also be linked with expectation. However, nostalgic images must be chosen with care, since some individuals may be negatively affected by them.

Hospitality organizations can make greater use of their links with place, culture and food by incorporating nostalgic imagery in their branding and advertising. The effects of nostalgia are felt by more age groups than is generally recognized.

There has been little, if any, attention to nostalgia as a marketing tool in the hospitality industry. This article, which addresses this shortfall, will appeal to hospitality managers and entrepreneurs who seek to improve the effectiveness of their branding and advertising.

This research solicits the opinions of the residents of the Keçiören district of Ankara, Turkey, in order to learn their preferences about their local postmodern environment where the municipality forces all contractors and architects to adhere to strict planning laws requiring Turkish folk and Islamic architectural references. The Municipality of Keçiören, as an agent of civil power, manages the architectural and urban transformation of the area from a district formerly composed of squatter housing to one comprised of, in the words of Robert Venturi, “decorated sheds,” in an effort to create a different looking environment rich in nostalgia and excitement. In this research, a total of 7 different sets of apartment façades were analyzed, with each set comprising three examples each of minimum complexity (representing the former condition of the district), intermediate complexity (representing “high” architecture designed by an architect, which does not exist in the district) and maximum complexity (representing the present postmodern condition of the district). The main hypothesis of the study was that preference rates would be high for intermediately altered “high style” houses by showing the existence of a U-shaped relationship between preference and complexity. That is, façades representing an intermediate level of complexity would be favored over less complex and more complex façades. It was also assumed that there would be a difference in the ratings of different age groups. A questionnaire was carried out with 50 adults (aged 30-45) and 50 high school students (aged 18-20) of Keçiören, who were asked to rate a total of 21 photographs from 7 apartment complexes with the help of a five-point semantic differential scales under three headings: preference, complexity and impressiveness. The results proved the existence of a U-shaped relationship between preference and complexity. On the other hand, younger respondents, compared to older respondents, gave more favorable ratings to the physical qualities of the photographed buildings.