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The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the small but growing body of research examining the influence of founder gender on new venture access to venture development programs.

Hypotheses were tested utilizing a sample of 482 nascent technology ventures which applied for admittance into a venture development organization headquartered in the southern region of the United States from March 2004 through February 2016.

Findings suggest that female-founded applicant ventures experience a higher likelihood of acceptance into venture development programs than male-founded applicant ventures. Results further suggest that social attention to gender equality reduces this effect for female-founded applicant ventures. Findings extend the understanding of the gendered nature of high-technology venturing and venture development organizations.

The findings of this study may not generalize to new ventures operating in other contexts (e.g., non-U.S., low-tech, and other venture development programs). Additionally, this study's design and data limitations do not allow for the establishment of causality or address founder motivations to apply for acceptance into venture development programs.

This study adds to empirical findings regarding the influence of founder gender on new venture acceptance into venture development programs by developing and testing competing hypotheses. This study also extends extant research by examining the moderating effect of social attention to gender equality on the hypothesized relationships between founder gender and acceptance into venture development programs.

This study aims to examine how perceptions of the globalness or localness of a brand affect the purchase intentions of consumers through the building of consumer–brand identification (CBI). This paper also explores the moderating effect of brand positioning (underdog vs top dog) on the relationship between perceived brand globalness or localness (PBG or PBL) and purchase intention.

The proposed hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies. Data were collected through a set of structured questionnaires and analyzed using PROCESS modelling and analysis of variance.

The results show that CBI mediates the effect of PBG/PBL on purchase intentions. Moreover, the findings of Study 2 reveal that participants show greater purchase intention for PBL than for PBG in response to underdog positioning. However, in top dog positioning, the difference in purchase intention for PBL compared to PBG is attenuated.

This research investigates how CBI influences purchase intentions of consumers in regards to a brand’s perceived globalness or localness, which adds to the growing body of international branding research. This paper also addresses the effects of interaction between brand localness (globalness) and underdog (top dog) brand positioning on purchase intentions. Finally, this study concludes with a discussion of practical actions that international brand managers can take to enhance the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.

Brand stories are often created around the company’s humble beginnings as an underdog. The authors explore the effects of who is telling the underdog story and thus draw attention to the nature of the brand source by differentiating between family and non-family firms. The authors expect that who is telling the underdog story impacts consumers’ attitude toward the brand in terms of brand authenticity and trustworthiness perceptions.

The authors conducted an online experiment with a 2 × 2 between-subject design and an overall sample size of 314 respondents.

Most importantly, the authors find that the family-firm nature of the brand storyteller significantly impacts the underdog effect. The positive effects of underdog biographies on brand attitude in terms of authenticity and trustworthiness loom significantly larger for family firms compared with non-family firms.

The authors find that the underdog effect is significantly stronger for family firms that tell the underdog story. Managers of family firms with underdog roots should take advantage of this finding by integrating underdog stories into their marketing concepts. The findings of this study show that the communication of a company’s roots can serve as a valuable tool to build and maintain a positive brand image and help to increase purchase intentions, which is particularly true for firms capitalizing on their family nature when telling the underdog story.

The authors combine research on brand stories using the underdog effect with research on the consumer’s perception of family firms, further exploring the role of the brand storyteller in underdog narratives, resulting in important theoretical as well as practical implications.

Brand storytelling is an effective marketing tool. However, when choosing whether to tell more or tell less, it remains unclear which of these two narrative styles is most effective. This study aims to examine whether blank-leaving(less) leads to favourable brand attitudes and compares its effects on consumers’ story immersion, to non-blank-leaving(more).

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, a single-factorial design was used with 252 participants assigned at random to one of two narrative conditions: blank-leaving or non-blank-leaving. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and investigated the moderating role of implicit mindsets.

The results show that a blank-leaving narrative style increases favourable brand attitudes. Consumers present deeper immersion in the brand story that uses blank-leaving, as compared to non-blank-leaving, leading to a more favourable brand attitude. Furthermore, this effect is stronger for individuals with growth mindsets.

Telling the brand story using a blank-leaving narrative style is more effective in catching consumers’ attention than non-blank-leaving. In particular, a blank-leaving narrative is a good approach for targeting consumers who have a growth mindset.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to investigate and compare the effects of blank-leaving and non-blank-leaving narrative styles on brand attitudes in the context of storytelling marketing.

While extensive research exists on how positive life circumstances and positive personality traits promote entrepreneurship, there is little research focusing on how negative personal circumstances may potentially breed entrepreneurship. This study aims to build upon the theory of underdog entrepreneurship to examine the effect of challenging life circumstances such as poverty on the development of entrepreneurial traits in underdog entrepreneurs. This research analyzed the effect of risk-taking (RT) on the entrepreneurial success (ES) of underdog entrepreneurs and the role of optimism (OPM) and persistence (P) as mediating variables and poverty as a moderator variable.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data from 400 micro-finance borrowers of Akhuwat Foundation Pakistan. Akhuwat provides interest-free small loans to the poor segment of society. Preliminary testing of the survey questionnaire with a sample of 35 borrowers of Akhuwat Foundation in Lahore city was conducted before data collection. Data was collected from four randomly selected branches in Lahore city.

The authors found that OPM and P significantly mediate the relationship between RT and ES. In addition, the authors analyzed the moderating effect of poverty on the relationship between OPM and ES and found a negative moderating effect. A strong positive moderating effect of poverty was found on the relationship between P and ES. The results of multi-group analysis show that successful and unsuccessful underdog entrepreneurs differ in their RT propensity, which is significantly mediated by OPM and P.

This study provides empirical evidence on entrepreneurial traits and success of poor entrepreneur in an emerging economy. This work is original and has not been submitted elsewhere.

Across Europe, national governments have moved to implement policies which deal exclusively with autistic people, indicating a reframing of autistic people as needing something additional to or different from existing disability policy. In England, a clear and positive reframing of autistic people as having the potential to solve the problems they face when given the right support is evident in national autism policy. This can be linked to the actions of a group of self-advocates who sit on policy decision-making bodies.

This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial passion, entrepreneurial support programs and entrepreneurial intention, and the moderating role of entrepreneurial support programs in the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial intention, among students with physical disabilities in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

This study used a closed-ended questionnaire survey, composed of previously validated scales, to sample 209 students with physical disabilities at tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Hierarchal regression was performed to assess the relationships between the variables and test the hypotheses.

Both entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial support programs were found to be significantly positively related to entrepreneurial intention, and entrepreneurial support programs also moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and entrepreneurial intention.

This research paper identifies that developing entrepreneurial passion and providing accessible and inclusive entrepreneurial support programs are valuable in supporting and facilitating a passage into entrepreneurship for those with disabilities.

This research paper addresses calls for further understanding of how those with disabilities can be supported into entrepreneurship, by identifying supporting factors. The research paper provides further understanding of the entrepreneurial passion and intention nexus by exploring the relationship within those with a physical disability, where significant barriers exist and within a developing country context where entrepreneurship might be a necessity rather than driven by passion.

The major purpose of this research article is to empirically analyze a moderated-mediated model to comprehend the interrelationships between religiosity, life hardship, attitude toward social entrepreneurship (SE) and corporate social entrepreneurial orientation (SEO).

The constructivist grounded theory method was used to analyze interviews, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was selected to analyze the developed nine hypotheses.

Based on the structural model outcomes, the practicing religious believers reported a significantly higher level of corporate SEO and propensity for social proactiveness, innovativeness, risk-taking, socialness and persistence (dimensions of SEO) than the nonpracticing believers.

This study provides the practical implication that social entrepreneurs with a higher degree of congruence with the prevailing religious institutionalized logic in a society have a higher inclination to create social value through corporate practices and operations.

This study presents an SEO scale that incorporates the dimensions of two SEO scales developed by Kraus et al. (2017) and Syrjä et al. (2019). To the best of the author’s knowledge, the applicability and generalizability of this scale were supported for the first time in the SE discipline, particularly tourism SE. This scale effectively captures more characteristics of SE, particularly in the face of inefficient political and institutional forms.