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After a negative consumer review (NCR) has been posted on an online shopping site such as Amazon.com, the immediate concern of a brand holder should be to focus on the steps the brand should take to rebuild the unhappy consumers’ trust. The purpose of this paper is to employ the signalling theory to analyse whether a brand response, a customer response or a response that combines both when responding to a NCR leads to better product purchase intentions at the customer end.

In a laboratory study comprising 351 respondents, six different response scenarios are tested, both for a well-known and an unknown brand. The experiment employs a 6 (response scenario: single brand response, single customer response, brand response and one customer response or vice versa, brand response and three customer responses or vice versa)×2 (customer-based brand equity: strong/weak) between-subject design.

The findings show that after a NCR, the subjects perceive a customer response as more trustworthy than a response from an unknown brand. However, customer-based brand equity changes the whole story. If a strong brand responds, the purchase intentions of the subjects are similar to those generated by a single customer’s response. In addition, after considering multiple responses, it can be seen that a response combining a brand and a customer response has a higher effect than from a single response. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that perceptions are more favourable if several customer responses are sent in case of an unknown brand.

The originality of this paper lies in the fact that it tries to explore how the consumers perceive multiple responses from different sources after a NCR has been posted. The results highlight that a response that combines a brand and a customer response has a significantly higher effect than what is achieved from a single response. It must also be noted that customer-based brand equity plays a key role.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of symbolic product information (symbolic product design) on consumers’ perceived brand evaluations. In an experimental setting, the authors consider as key factors the congruence between symbolic product design and product category, the level of product involvement as well as brand strength.

In an experiment of 490 participants, consumers are confronted to different symbolic product designs connotations. Based on the cognitive process model “SARA” (selective activation, reconstruction and anchoring), the authors examined how symbolic product design associations are used as heuristics in the working memory when making brand judgement.

The results show that product design associations are used in consumers’ information processing as anchor for brand evaluations. This effect is stronger if symbolic design associations are incongruent to the product category because of consumers’ deeper elaboration process. Furthermore, the impact of symbolic product design is higher for weak compared to strong brands.

This research supports the cognitive process model “SARA” being an appropriate foundation explaining the effects of symbolic product design. Further research should extend this experiment, using a field study in a more realistic setting and/or a choice situation between different alternative product designs at the point of sale. Furthermore, the consumers’ elaboration process should be manipulated differently, e.g. in a mental load condition.

Symbolic product design is important to enhance brand association networks in the consumers’ mind, particularly if the brand is weak. Marketers should use incongruent symbolic product information to differentiate from competitors who use “stereotype” product designs.

Research about product design in the marketing discipline is still limited. The authors analyse the impact of symbolic product design on brand evaluations in an experimental setting of 490 respondents in four product categories. The findings support that consumers use product design as heuristics to evaluate brands.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of different response options to a negative consumer review. When consumers buy online, they are often confronted with consumer reviews. A negative consumer review on an online shopping website may keep consumers from buying the product. Therefore, negative online consumer reviews are a serious problem for brands.

In an online experiment of 446 participants, different response options towards a negative consumer review on an online shopping website were examined. The experimental data were analysed with linear regression models using product purchase intentions as the outcome variable.

The results indicate that a positive customer review counteracts a negative consumer review more effectively than a positive brand response, whereas brand strength moderates this relationship. Including a reference to an independent, trusted source in a brand or a customer response is only a limited strategy for increasing the effectiveness of a response.

Additional research on other product categories and with subjects other than students is suggested to validate the findings. In future research, multiple degrees of the phrasing’s strength of the reference could be used.

Assuming high quality products, brands should encourage their customers to write reviews. Strong brands can also reassure consumers by responding, whereas weak brands cannot.

This research contributes to the online consumer reviews literature with new insights about the role of brand strength and referencing to an independent, trusted source.

The purpose of this paper is to extend work on the leader‐follower identity transfer by providing the first empirical evidence for the causal relationship between leader and follower organizational identification.

The proposed causal relationship between leader and follower organizational identification (OI) was tested in a scenario study and in a laboratory experiment. Additionally, in the laboratory experiment the impact of leader OI on follower performance was examined.

The results suggest that highly identified leaders positively influence their followers' attitudes and performance by affecting their self‐concept, i.e. increasing their OI.

Improving leader OI provides a promising way for organizations to increase their employees' OI and performance.

The paper provides the first empirical evidence for the proposed causal relationship between leader and follower OI, with implications for individual and organizational effectiveness.

This study aims to investigate how manufacturing firms in the creative industries harness digital technologies to undertake business model innovation.

This study used in-depth case studies to examine the complex interplay between digital technologies and business model innovation. A longitudinal approach was selected to capture major events both within the firm and in the business environment. Building on the firm’s archival data, interviews and secondary data that was available to the public, the authors carefully analyzed impactful digital technology events and the firm’s responses to the technological changes that occurred over the period of 2004–2020.

The findings suggest that digital technologies alone are not sufficient for business model innovation to be successful; support from sociotechnical factors is also required. Additionally, firms should reinvent a new business model when the existing ones seem to start to diminish.

In this study one firm was examined as the subject, using a qualitative method. This method allowed us to observe complex interplays among the resources required in business models. Future research can combine qualitative methods with computational case studies, which utilize a large volume of quantitative big data.

The results of this study suggest that managers must ensure that the resources within and outside organizations are loosely connected and are readily available to be mobilized for supporting business model innovation. To enable this, managers must prepare the required resources in advance.

The current findings add to a growing body of literature on business model innovation and digital technologies. In particular, this study describes the process of how a traditional firm from a least developed country pursues business model innovation with the support of digital technologies.

This research assesses the implications of integrating standardization activities into European research projects to foster the engagement of project internal and external stakeholders and into different project stakeholder management theories.

This paper analyzes the integration of standardization and the engagement of project internal and external stakeholders in standardization activities in a multi-case study of four European Framework Program projects and with the projects Advancing Resilience of Historic Areas Against Climate-Related and Other Hazards (ARCH) and Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) in two separate case studies more deeply. The multi-case study mainly evaluates the stakeholder participation in 10 CEN Workshop Agreements. While in the two case studies, among other things, two project surveys are used to investigate how stakeholder engagement was supported by standardization activities.

The results show that standardization significantly supports stakeholder engagement and lead to a proposal on how standardization can support achieving stakeholder engagement goals in the different research project phases.

This research provides practical information for policy-makers who support standardization as a tool for research, as well as for researchers and project managers who want to use standardization activities efficiently in research projects.

Within the Mondragón Valley – an industrial heartland in the Basque Country, in the North of Spain – there has been a growing need for a practical model of the new product development (NPD) process which fulfils a variety of needs, notably the integration of strategy and technology considerations.

The paper is based on a review of the state of the art in the NPD field, focusing on the use and limitations of both established and newer models for guiding product development. This is combined with the experiences of managing real NPD projects for companies in the Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa over the past several years.

The paper presents the Ikerlan new product creation (NPC) model, designed primarily in response to area needs, which attempts to combine the most useful aspects of existing NPD models.

In the first instance, the model is created for use by companies in the Mondragón Valley – therefore it may not be possible to generalise findings, yet the paper may be instructive in showcasing the real industrial innovation needs of a European region. The model evolved from several notable works in the NPD community which may address these limitations in part.

The model may be used as a basic guide for aspects including NPD outsourcing, idea generation and, ultimately, reducing time to market. This is specifically tailored to companies in the Mondragón Valley. However, depending on the operating context certain aspects may be transferable to other European areas.

The paper details the industrial context, introducing the Mondragón cooperative – the largest industrial cooperative in the world with over 100 companies in seven industrial sectors – the academic context, discussing state of the art in NPD processes and models, and concludes with short industrial cases which show the potential use of the developed model. As such, insight is presented into a European area with a tradition of innovation, together with some of the challenges it faces in the years ahead. A new NPD model, combining the most useful aspects of existing models may also be of use to certain members of the academic and industrial communities.

As a frequently observed business phenomenon, the use of product scarcity to improve a product’s market performance has received increasing attention from both academics and practitioners. The resulting literature has covered a wide variety of issues based on various theories, using different research methods, in a diverse range of settings. However, this diversity also makes it difficult to grasp the core themes and findings, and to see the outstanding knowledge gaps. This paper aims to review previous studies on the use of product scarcity in marketing and identifies new directions for future research.

A systematic review was conducted to identify and analyse 66 research papers published in business and management journals between 1970 and 2017.

The authors examined the underlying theories of scarcity-based marketing, and developed a conceptual framework that describes the key factors of product scarcity and how they influence both consumers and the market. They also highlighted some key achievements in modelling the processes involved in using product scarcity in marketing.

This analysis of the identified papers suggests that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of this field, which opens up new paths for future research. For future research, the authors identified three directions aimed at: addressing the practical needs of firms in understanding product scarcity; guiding the implementation of scarcity-based strategies; and measuring, monitoring and predicting the level of product scarcity and its impacts during implementation.