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Discusses product line change ‐ the process by which a company alters its product offering ‐ and how it is one of the most important kinds of business activity. Suggests that product modification and product elimination decisions be treated together as two amongst a number of alternative courses of action. States that the concern is with the “weak product identification” stage of the product modification/elimination process. Posits that there are a number of key performance dimensions/criteria though some of the approaches in this category are concerned only with identifying weak products. Aims to put forward some empirical evidence with regard to the identification of weak products. Implies, in conclusion, that the study indicates that the identification of weak product activities does not resemble the normative models in this area. Identifies that further research needs to be conducted and that these researches should include performance measures to allow normative conclusions to be drawn, perhaps using company interviews

This paper aims to empirically analyze the extent to which advertising reception among consumers with a migration background (German-Turks) is influenced by a person’s strength of national identifications with his/her country-of-origin (COO) and with his/her country-of-residence (COR). The focus is on Turkey-sensitive advertisements (ads) of telecommunication service suppliers in Germany because such communication measures are quite common and about three million German-Turks constitute an economically important group.

Measures of COO and COR identification as well as of three ad reception criteria were obtained in a survey of 291 German-Turks and analyzed via moderated regression models.

Strength of COO identification was a significantly positive predictor of the frequency with which participants remembered Turkey-sensitive ads for telecommunication services. Additionally, COO identification related significantly to two criteria that capture facets of attitudes toward such ads. By contrast, COR identification acted partly as a moderator which attenuated links between respondents’ COO identification and two ad reception measures. Nevertheless, German-Turks with a strong COR identification (i.e. “accultured” consumers) were still receptive to Turkey-sensitive telecommunication services ads even if their self-image was simultaneously strongly dependent on their COO. “Alienated” German-Turks who identify neither with their COO nor with their COR were least responsive to ethnic ads.

The research indicates that marketing practitioners should not use uniform communication measures to address migrant consumers with a specific COO but segment this target group further by simultaneously considering their members’ COO and COR identifications.

The contribution of this paper results from the simultaneous inclusion of both COO and COR identifications as factors explaining differences in reactions to communication measures among migrant consumers which share the same COO. Furthermore, the scarcity of empirical work on reactions of German-Turks to ethnomarketing is reduced.

The study seeks to examine two variables of interest to marketers in the area of services advertising, ethnicity and service involvement. The goal of this study is to investigate the relative effectiveness of ethnic‐targeting in services advertising, specifically, Hispanic‐targeted advertising. The purpose of this research is to understand what types of services can benefit from Hispanic‐targeted service advertising and develop practical implications for practitioners trying to spend advertising dollars more efficiently.

The impact of the advertising model's ethnicity on post‐exposure attitude toward high and low involvement service brands was explored.

The results of this quasi‐experimental study suggest that appealing to strong Hispanic identifiers may be highly desirable in terms of creating favorable attitudes toward service brands when advertising low involvement services, where, by definition, the consumer does not engage in intensive decision making and considers few attributes. Since few attributes are evaluated, obvious attributes such as ethnicity can easily influence choice. Finally, the findings of this study suggest that employing Hispanic‐targeted advertising may not be an effective strategy in promoting high‐involvement services since consumers consider more attributes and, therefore, ethnicity does not play a major role.

Of interest to marketers in the area of services advertising, ethnicity and service involvement.

From a distinctiveness theory and elaboration likelihood model (ELM) perspective, this study aims to investigate the determinants, the direct and indirect effects of ethnic identification on brand attachment, brand love and behavioral outcomes. The authors examine two types of products (high- vs low-involvement).

In a survey, participants were randomly assigned to four conditions consisting of two high-involvement (i.e. a smart watch and a car) and two low-involvement (i.e. a soda/soft drink and a shampoo) stimuli. A total of 192 respondents participated in this study; 39% were male, 61% were female and 90% were 18-22 years old.

In line with ELM, the authors offer evidence that ethnic advertising is more effective for low-involvement products targeted at African American consumers. Results also showed that brand attachment partially mediates the effect of ethnic identification with the ad (EthIdenAD) and brand love. In summary, the structural equation modeling (SEM) results support the efficacy of ethnic-targeted ads for developing brand attachment, brand love and behavioral outcomes.

Using ethnically targeted ads to target minority groups may not be sufficient to increase the efficacy of ads. According to distinctiveness theory, African Americans with different levels of ethnic identification will respond differently to ad attitudes, brand attachment, brand love, identification with the model in the ad and varying degrees of belief that the ad was targeted toward them.

This study examines the effect of ethnically targeted advertising on brand love, and behavioral outcomes with the mediation effect of brand attachment and moderation effect of product involvement. The results of this study suggest several theoretical and practical implications for marketing and brand management, including directions for advertising strategy and consumer–brand relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to test the ability of the theory of planned behaviour to predict worker intent towards an employee involvement (EI) programme, and the impact of union identification on workers’ decision making.

Union workers at a small manufacturing company in the Midwestern United States completed two questionnaires. The first questionnaire provided measures of the attitudinal, normative, and behavioural control components of the theory of planned behaviour and the degree to which they identified with their labour union. In the second questionnaire, the same respondents answered questions to measure their intention to support or oppose an employee involvement (EI) programme.

Intentions to support EI were accurately predicted from attitudes, normative support, and perceived behavioural control (0.05 level). Level of union identification moderated the impact of attitudes on intention to support EI for workers that did not identify heavily with the labour union (0.05 level), but did not moderate the effect of normative support on intention for workers who identified heavily with the labour union.

The results indicate that the theory of planned behaviour has the potential to be an effective tool in predicting the behavioural outcomes of union members in the workplace, and that the level of union identification affects decision making. Research is limited by same source methodology and no direct measure of behaviour.

Leaders, labour and management, who intend to implement new programmes, should give strong consideration to how workers’ social cohorts influence their decision making and plan for this contingency when considering programme changes.

The level of union identification influences perception and decision making but has not been considered in models of member decision making. EI research has tended to center on EI as the antecedent to outcomes such as job satisfaction, cooperation, retention, and quality of work life. This paper addresses the role of union identification in support for EI programmes, and uses a well‐established behavioural theory to explain workers’ decision‐making process.

This paper revisits the causes of product deletion, an important if somewhat neglected part of product management theory. The causes of product deletion are important in the way they compromise a product manager’s ability to pursue the organisation’s product objectives. Without a knowledge of when or why a product may become sick, it is doubtful that proactive product management can be successfully accomplished. The documented causes of why products become terminally ill are explored to provide a conceptual background for the reported study. The findings of a qualitative study into the factors that cause product deletion in the financial services sector are presented. The key issues relating to both the financial services and the physical goods sector are analysed and discussed. The outcome of this is a realisation that the development of a universal model for the identification of why products become weak is unsafe. The results of this study suggest that there is a clear need for research that explores the relationship between the causes of product decline and the formulation of triggers of deletion.

The categorization of different manifestations of teacher activist behaviour is the central focus of this paper. Evidence for the analysis is obtained from interviews with teacher activists and from an extensive period of participant‐observation within an Australian teachers' organization. A matrix of nine categories of activism is described in which teacher unionists are classified according to the strength of their identification with the union (“Us”) or the union leadership's internal and external opponents (“Them”) during a period of intense political and industrial conflict. Some of the personal and attitudinal characteristics of the groups of activist teachers so described are discussed in general terms. The study presents a more complex picture of teacher activism than is implied by the more usual classifications of “left”, “right” and “moderate”. The conclusions drawn might also provide material for more extensive research, perhaps of an empirical nature, into teacher involvement in various forms of political and industrial activism.

When consumers help other users of the same brand, both the brand and consumers benefit. To determine when consumer‐to‐consumer helping behaviors occur and to help managers encourage this value‐creating activity, this paper aims to investigate relationships between social identification and helping behavior intentions within a consumption community and its subgroups.

Surveys were given to consumers identified as members of a consumption community during an annual consumption event. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Consumers' identification with the overall community was positively related to helping behavior intentions toward the overall community, but not subgroup level. Subgroup identification was positively related to helping at the subgroup but negatively related to helping behavior intentions at the community level. When consumers identify with the overall community, they assist other consumers. However, consumers are less likely to help consumers in the overall community when identifying with a subgroup.

When consumers identify with a consumption community and its subgroups, their identification can lead to helping between members. Voluntary helping between consumers provides value to consumers and contributes to the firm's value‐creation process. This study helps managers understand how consumption community development simultaneously encourages and discourages consumer value‐creation through helping behaviors.

This study examines consumer value‐creation through the context of consumer helping intentions within consumption communities on a continuum, as opposed to the dichotomy implied by prior research. This study empirically demonstrates how consumers' membership in subgroups can motivate consumers to help some, but not other consumption community members.

Despite the importance of the ability of service firms to rationalise their service ranges in today's competitive environment, the area of service elimination decision‐making is one of the least researched in the literature on services marketing. Responding to this knowledge gap, this paper reports part of the findings of a broader exploratory investigation into the service elimination process in the British financial services sector. In detail, the paper presents qualitative and quantitative empirical evidence on the way in which British financial institutions audit their service range in order to identify financial services as candidates for elimination. The evidence showed that the British financial institutions studied follow a periodically conducted service range auditing process, which is often documented and computer‐aided. The audit is operationalised by a set of financial and non‐financial audit criteria (performance dimensions). The evidence also showed that the service range auditing process is not static but dynamic. As such, the relative importance of the audit criteria used varies in relation to service‐specific, organisational and environmental variables, such as type of financial service, business strategy pursued overall, degree of market orientation, intensity of competition, intensity of legislation and rhythm of technological change.

This paper seeks to reconsider the Euler equation of the Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM), to derive a regression‐based model to test it, and to present evidence that the model is consistent with reasonable values for the coefficient of relative risk aversion (CRRA). This runs contrary to the findings of the literature on the equity premium puzzle, but is in agreement with the literature that estimates the CRRA for the purpose of computing the social discount rate, and is in line with the research on labor supply. Tests based on General Method of Moments (GMM) for the same sample produce results that are extremely disparate and unstable. The paper aims to check and find support for the robustness of the regression‐based tests. Habit formation models are also to be evaluated with regression‐based and GMM tests. However, the validity of the regression‐based models depends critically on their functional forms.

The paper presents empirical evidence that the conventional use of GMM fails because of four pathological features of GMM that are referred to under the general caption of “weak identification”. In addition to GMM, the paper employs linear regression analysis to test the CCAPM, and it is found that the regression residuals follow well‐behaved distributional properties, making valid all statistical inferences, while GMM estimates are highly unstable.

Four unexpected findings are reported. The first is that the regression‐based models are consistent with reasonable values for the CRRA, i.e. estimates that are below 4. The second is that the regression‐based tests are robust, while the GMM‐based tests are not. The third is that regression‐based tests with habit formation depend crucially on the specification of the model. The fourth is that there is evidence that market stock returns are sensitive to both consumption and dividends. The author calls the latter “extra sensitivity of market stock returns”, and it is described as a new puzzle.

The regression‐based models of the CCAPM Euler equation are novel. The comparison between GMM and regression‐based models for the same sample is original. The regression‐based models with habit formation are new. The equity premium puzzle disappears because the estimates of the CRRA are reasonable. But another puzzle is documented, which is the “extra sensitivity of market stock returns” to consumption and dividends together.