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Given the importance of third-party endorsements as external cues during purchase evaluations, the manipulation of endorsements may raise consumers’ suspicion and thereby reduce the effectiveness of marketing messages. Consumers find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between authentic and biased brand reviews. This research conducts two experiments regarding brand rankings of third-parties in four industries. Study 1 aims to probes the interaction effect of persuasion knowledge and fairness of rating method (fair vs. unfair) on brand rankings’ credibility and brand image enhancement. Study 2 examines the interplay of dispositional persuasion knowledge and reputation of third parties (high vs. low).

This research builds on an analysis of data (Study 1, N = 122; Study 2, N = 123) from Taiwan, where brand rankings held by third-party organizations are regular. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS’s PROCESS macro.

Drawing on previous research of persuasion knowledge, the authors find that a fair rating method and a high reputation of third-party organization can mitigate the negative effect of persuasion knowledge.

The results of this research suggest that marketers need to manage third-party endorsements carefully. Consumer skepticism toward these endorsements (e.g. third-party’s brand rankings) can be weakened when persuasion attempt is considered appropriate.

This is one of the first efforts to empirically explore the influences of persuasion knowledge on third-party endorsements. The importance of this work is underscored by the fact that a growing number of third-party endorsements are sponsored or even manipulated by brand owners.

Who started it we will never know. But from the birth of newspapers, advertisers realised that the third party endorsement of apparently independent editorial reporting delivered their message more cheaply – and arguably more credibly – than paid advertising. Thus in the 17th century the publicist was born to service “the fellow who cannot lye sufficiently himself [who] gets one of these to do’t for him”. Any history of public relations is a running commentary on the techniques used to deliver third party endorsement as the media has evolved: from Ivy Lee’s simple packaging of information approach, through Bernays’ “engineering consent”, to today’s use of bloggers on the web or the more sophisticated “journo lobbying”, it is a record of how practitioners deliver public relations’ unique selling proposition, the plausible deniability which is third party endorsement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore British Petroleum’s (BP) crisis response on Facebook and factors contributing to its stakeholders’ perceptions of its crisis response strategies during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Applying crisis response strategies, this study content analyzed BP’s crisis communication messages and Facebook users’ comments on BP America’s Facebook page.

The results revealed that information giving strategies dominated BP’s crisis response, and Facebook users were more likely to comment favorably when BP used information giving strategies and accommodative strategies. Bolstering strategies and third-party endorsement did not achieve anticipated effectiveness.

The findings of this study will contribute to effective application of crisis response strategies.

The purpose of this article is to conduct a formal study of how the prices for online MBA programs in the USA are determined. The paper examines the effects of perceptual (e.g. rankings and accreditation) and structural characteristics (e.g. program length, program format) of online MBA programs on tuition levels charged.

Publicly available secondary data from a sample of 115 online MBA programs in the USA, including program characteristic information and prices, is used. Regression analysis is used to uncover the underlying pricing model.

Perceptual variables are found to have significantly greater effect on prices charged than structural variables, at times enabling institutions to nearly double their revenue stream on a per‐student basis.

The research approach can be extended to uncover the pricing models used in distance learning programs in fields other than business, and to examine such relationships outside the scope of American institutions.

The use of distance learning methods for delivering course instruction in degree‐granting institutions has witnessed significant growth over the last decade. This trend has enhanced the ability of business schools to serve students that are geographically dispersed, and today nearly 400 such programs are offered in the USA alone. Despite the growth, no formal study has examined how prices (tuition levels) for such programs are determined.

Although endorsers are thought to be highly effective when they match-up with a product, the current understanding of endorser match-up offers little insight for distinctions between equally attractive and trustworthy endorsers who have equivalent expertise in the product category, yet still diverge in their performance. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to understand how a match between social judgments (i.e. warmth vs competence) of a celebrity endorser and specific advertising appeals (i.e. symbolic vs utilitarian) can improve consumer responses to an endorsement.

A preliminary study empirically distinguishes perceptions of warmth and competence from prevailing celebrity endorser evaluative criteria. Then, the authors conduct multiple 2 (warmth vs competence) × 2 (symbolic vs utilitarian) between-subjects experiments to demonstrate the effect of matching social judgments and advertising messaging, across celebrity genders (i.e. male and female), forms of marketing communications (i.e. print ads and interactive online ads) and types of brands (i.e. well-established and new/unknown).

The findings demonstrate that matching celebrity endorser social judgments with the appropriate type of advertising messaging positively influences consumer response to the brand for both male and female endorsers. Additionally, despite a commonly held belief that celebrity endorsements are more effective at changing attitudes than actual behaviors, for interactive online ads, the authors find that the match strategy can motivate consumer response through two different pathways. For well-established brands, the match improves overall brand response predominately through cognitive and behavioral mechanisms. Alternatively, for new or unknown brands, the match initially impacts affective responses, which are subsequently related to consumers shopping a brand’s product category, rating a brand higher in customer recommendations, choosing a brand’s products over top competitors and paying more for the brand’s offerings.

The main contribution of this research is the demonstrated support for an alternative and effective application of the match-up hypothesis, based on a fit between the endorser and the advertising messaging itself.

Liability of foreignness (LOF) has been one of the central constructs in the field of international business and management. Over the past two decades, a significant body of theoretical and empirical research has accumulated, theorizing on the sources of these LOFs, investigating their magnitude, and prescribing approaches to mitigate these disadvantages. However, much of this research is almost exclusively related to firms expanding their products, services, and operations to other countries as part of their global expansion. The difficulties firms face in foreign product markets is just one dimension of the costs they can face in their attempts to secure resources abroad.

We expand the domain of the LOF construct to include liabilities faced by firms accessing foreign capital markets in light of the increasing integration of capital markets. We identify four sources of LOF in capital markets: regulatory costs, information costs, unfamiliarity costs, and costs arising out of cultural differences. Based on an extensive review of “home bias” in equity markets, we propose four strategies to erase the legitimacy deficits that firms encounter in foreign capital markets: bonding, signaling, adoption of business practices isomorphic with the host country, and certifications and endorsements by third parties. We also offer suggestions for operationalizing and measuring LOF in capital markets as well as several directions for advancing further research on LOF in the context of capital markets.

This paper aims to investigate whether and to what extent equity crowdfunding (ECF) is able to build enduring businesses. This research explores the post-campaign growth of equity-crowdfunded companies and analyses the impact of intellectual capital (IC) on their growth. To achieve the above aim, we provide a theoretical framework that includes the three well-known dimensions of IC – i.e. human, structural and relational capital – as independent variables and company growth, meant as sales and employment growth, as dependent variable.

This research uses a quantitative methodology based on two regression analyses. The authors use hand-collected data on 51 successful equity-crowdfunded projects listed on seven Italian platforms.

The authors find that three variables, namely prior industry experience (human-capital), product innovation (structural-capital) and equity offered (relational-capital) are significant and positively related to the growth of equity-crowdfunded companies. In particular, prior industry experience positively influences sales growth; product innovation positively influences employment growth. Equity offered, instead, has a strong positive impact on both sales and employment growth. Companies that offer a larger percentage of equity during the campaign disclose higher probabilities of growth.

The study has useful implications for several stakeholders, in particular, founders, platform managers, crowdfunders, policy makers and authorities.

The results shed some light on the nascent research field related to post-campaign scenarios of equity-crowdfunded companies. This paper is the first to explore the impact of IC on the growth of companies funded through ECF.

The role of trust encompasses the exchanges and interactions of a retail bank with its customers on various dimensions of online banking. Specifically lays stress on the bank‐to‐customer exchanges taking place through the technological interface. Hypothesizes shared value, communication and opportunistic behaviour as antecedents to trust. Trust and commitment also have a causal relationship. Proposes and empirically tests five hypotheses with a sample of 510 Internet users of various profiles in India. Develops a structural equation model (Lisrel) and establishes all hypotheses. Observes that shared value is most critical to developing trust as well as relationship commitment. Communication has a moderate influence on trust, while opportunistic behaviour has significant negative effect. Also finds higher perceived trust to enhance significantly customers’ commitment in online banking transaction. An important contribution concerns how trust is developed and sustained over different levels of customer relationship in online banking. The future commitment of the customers to online banking depends on perceived trust.

Crowdfunding (CF) is a digital-financial innovation that, bypassing credit crisis, bank system rigidities and constraints of the capital market, is allowing new ventures and established companies to get the needed funds to support innovations. After one decade of research, mainly focused on relations between variables and outcomes of the CF campaign, the literature shows methodological lacks about the study of its overall behavior. These reflect into a weak theoretical understanding and inconsistent managerial guidance, leading to a 27% success ratio of campaigns. To bridge this gap, this paper embraces a “complex system” perspective of the CF campaign, able to explore the system's behavior of a campaign over time, in light of its causal loop structure.

By adopting and following the document model building (DMB) methodology, a set of 26 variables and mutual causal relations modeled the system “Crowdfunding campaign” and a data set based on them and crafted to model the “Crowdfunding campaign” with a causal loop diagram. Finally, system archetypes have been used to link the causal loop structure with qualitative trends of CF's behavior (i.e. the raised capital over time).

The research brought to 26 variables making the system a “Crowdfunding campaign.” The variables influence each other, thus showing a set of feedback loops, whose structure determines the behavior of the CF campaign. The causal loop structure is traced back to three system archetypes, presiding the behavior in three stages of the campaign.

The value of this paper is both methodological and theoretical. First, the DMB methodology has been expanded and reinforced concerning previous applications; second, we carried out a causation analysis, unlike the common correlation analysis; further, we created a theoretical model of a “Crowdfunding Campaign” unlike the common empirical models built on CF platform's data.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of e‐security seals on web sites and their relative impact on e‐commerce firm reputation in influencing customers' perceptions of trust in a service provider.

Two interrelated empirical studies are conducted to evaluate the use and impacts of e‐security seals in e‐commerce. An exploratory study methodology investigates the use of e‐security seals and a questionnaire survey is used to gauge consumer knowledge of seals.

Using survey data from 211 web users, the results show that 106 respondents are cognitive and affective of e‐security seals. The results also provide further clarification of the relationship between e‐security seals and sales effectiveness. The findings point towards a positive belief by consumers in e‐security seals.

Third‐party e‐security seals organisations should undertake more promotional activities and advertising to educate comsumers about the use and benefits of e‐security seals.

An important issue in e‐commerce is how trust is developed between consumers and e‐vendors. This paper investigates the use of e‐security seals and their influence on consumer confidence in the online environment.