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There is increasing recognition that a marketing, customer-based perspective in merger and acquisition (M&A) processes is needed. However, there is still limited information about how customers experience an acquisition and whether merging firms perceive their customers as assets to trade or as stakeholders to engage. In this chapter, the authors aim to contribute to this knowledge gap by developing a research agenda that incorporates a customer-based perspective in the investigation of M&A. The authors achieve this aim by reviewing 40 articles published in economic, marketing and management journals that examine customer and marketing issues in M&As. By engaging with existing studies and their hidden assumptions and drawing inspiration from current trends in the analysis of consumer behavior, the authors suggest four research avenues to inform future studies and to increase our understanding of M&As from the customer perspective.

The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of cultural distance on the reputation transferability from a made in Italy target firm to a foreign acquirer by analyzing local country consumers. The work compares two foreign acquiring firms a Chinese firm (large cultural distance to Italy) and a Spanish firm (small cultural distance to Italy). The findings show that Italian consumers have more negative attitudes toward the acquired firm and lower intentions to repurchase its products if the acquirer has large cultural distance rather than it has small cultural distance. Furthermore, the study aims at verifying that the case of small cultural distance fosters the reputation transferability more than the opposite case of large cultural distance. The work may be of value and interest because little has been studied dealing with the acquisition process in relation to market-based performance, particularly analyzing the consumer behavior toward a post-acquisition target.

The logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness have long been central to understanding behavior in organizations. However, scholarly work on the logic of appropriateness has consisted mostly of conceptual clarification and ex post explanation of observed behavior. In an effort to facilitate the study of the logic of appropriateness through experimental methods, this paper introduces an experimental paradigm that allows for the manipulation of decision logic as an independent variable. Using this paradigm, 710 participants played four iconic behavioral games in which profitability and ethics are both at play and, sometimes, at odds: Prisoners’ Dilemma, Dictator Game, Ultimatum Game, and Trust Game. The manipulation generated behavioral data, as well as qualitative data about participants’ considerations while deciding according to each logic. The behavioral data show that, compared to participants employing a logic of consequences, participants employing a logic of appropriateness rejected more unfair offers in an Ultimatum Game and were more generous when reciprocating trusting behavior in a Trust Game. In all other cases, behavior between the two logics was not significantly different. An analysis of the qualitative data suggests that a logic of consequences increased participants’ focus on monetary concerns, whereas a logic of appropriateness increased participants’ focus on moral concerns. Taken together, these data provide new insights into when, how, and why the two logics result in behavioral and cognitive differences. The authors conclude by considering directions for future research that they see as particularly amenable to study using the experimental manipulation presented here.