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This research proposes studying how consumers' familiarity with products impacts the degree to which consumers are sensitive to a seller's violation of procedural fairness norms in pricing. Past research has either studied the role of familiarity or the role of fairness in influencing consumer behavior. However, it is unclear how familiarity and fairness combine to influence consumer behavior. The present research proposes filling this gap.

An experiment is designed to manipulate consumers' perceptions of procedural fairness of a seller's pricing tactic, and consumers' levels of familiarity with a product. Each variable is manipulated to be either high or low. Thus, outcomes are observed for four purchase conditions.

Results indicate that the degree to which consumers rely on procedural fairness to evaluate a product is related to consumers' level of familiarity with a product. Consumers who are less familiar with a product are more likely to rely on procedural fairness to form purchase intentions. Also, unlike their more knowledgeable counterparts, consumers who are less familiar with a product are more likely to equate procedural fairness with perceived quality.

The research stresses the need to differentiate between the roles played by procedural and distributive fairness in shaping consumer behavior. The authors study only procedural fairness, but a natural next step for future research is to study simultaneously the role of both facets of fairness.

The results of our study underscore the importance of following procedural fairness norms especially for retailers who deal in product categories where the pace of innovation is so rapid that it creates a large dispersion in knowledge of product attributes among consumers. The study' findings suggest that in such situations, consumers may rely excessively on cues that signal a seller's adherence to or violation of social norms relevant to business practices. Thus, the authors encourage sellers to monitor keenly levels of product knowledge among their customer base. This would enable sellers to identify situations that merit an enhanced sensitivity to upholding social norms such as procedural fairness.

The paper brings to attention the interaction between consumers' familiarity with a product and procedural fairness in pricing. Although an expectation of procedural fairness underlies all exchanges this research identifies consumers' familiarity as a variable that influences the degree to which procedural fairness is relied on in shaping consumer behavior.

In a simulated three‐issue organizational dispute, subjects were interrupted by a third party (their supervisor) who recommended—and eventually imposed—one of five different outcomes. Each outcome provided subjects the same overall payoff, though the arrangement of payoffs across each of the three issues varied. The design allowed us to evaluate four different perspectives regarding negotiators' perceptions of their outcomes. In addition, third parties provided justifications, apologies, or excuses for their actions. Fairness judgments and supervisory evaluations were most favorable when negotiators received an outcome reflecting favorable settlements on the majority of the issues, or the midpoint compromise; the least favorable reactions occurred when subjects received favorable outcomes on only their most important issue. Third parties who offered a justification for their actions were seen as fairer than those offering apologies or excuses. The findings reiterate the importance of considering both the symbolic characteristics of outcomes and the interactional justice inherent in different types of explanations.

The purpose of this study was to identify how individuals form fairness judgments about a tax system and what factors they attend to when comparing the fairness of a flat tax system with the current tax system. Based on equity theory and prior tax research the complexity of the tax system, the policy objectives achieved by the tax system and the financial effect of the tax system were hypothesized to influence individuals' fairness judgments. Further, the function served by an individual's attitude toward the tax system was expected to further explain when, self-interest would be particularly salient.The study's hypotheses were tested using the responses to a questionnaire sent to a cross-section of U.S. citizens. The study participants compared the current federal tax system with a flat tax system that differed from the current system on three dimensions. The alternative system was less complex than the current tax system, it achieved different policy objectives than the current system and the personal tax liability of the participants differed between the two systems. Regression analysis was used to assess the relative influences on the respondents' fairness judgments. Respondents' comparative fairness judgments were influenced by their judgments regarding economic goals achieved by each tax system, unjustified complexity, and, especially, self-interest.

This study aims to investigate interrelationships among perceived service fairness, emotions and behavioral intentions in a restaurant context.

Data were collected from two casual dining restaurants in the USA. The data were analyzed following Anderson and Gerbing's two‐step approach, utilizing both a measurement model and a subsequent structural model.

This study shows different roles for each fairness perception in relation to emotions and behavioral intentions based on the Mehrabian‐Russell model. Setting reasonable prices and providing efficient services in a timely manner were found to be the key to negate negative emotion. At the same time, the findings suggest that providing high‐quality tangible outcomes and intangible services are critical to evoke positive emotions and eventually to generate future favorable behaviors.

The data were collected from only casual dining restaurants. Therefore, generalizing the results to other segments of the restaurant industry may not work.

The results of this study can help restaurant managers to develop more effective and efficient strategies for ensuring fairness, thus resulting in higher levels of customer retention and profits.

Compared with previous fairness studies, which have focused exclusively on the role of justice after service failure and recovery, this study considers all service delivery contexts (with or without service failure) in order to provide a richer portrait of service fairness. Also, this study contributes to the services marketing and consumer behavior literature by shedding light on the issue of “fairness” as an axiom for evaluating services in restaurants.

Purpose – This capstone chapter introduces Amartya Sen's important and innovative theory of justice to researchers on fairness in groups and organizations. Here, I discuss how Sen's theory can provide grounding for both philosophical and social scientific work on justice and how social science research can inform and be informed by Sen's theory.

Design/methodology/approach – In this chapter, I discuss Sen's new book, A Theory of Justice, and explain the main aspects of Sen's theory of justice. I then draw conceptual linkages between Sen's theory and those introduced in each of the other chapters included in this volume.

Findings – I show that Sen's view of justice goes beyond social contract theories that attempt to identify ideal institutional arrangements to seek practical solutions that increase justice as experienced by actual people in the world. Rather than parallel endeavors, Sen's approach reveals philosophy and social science to be deeply connected to each other and to justice by providing a unifying theme by which various social scientific traditions are shown to study aspects of the same underlying phenomena. Further, I demonstrate how philosophy and social science together can increase justice in the world.

Originality/value – Sen's theory of justice, though influential in economic and policy circles, is largely unfamiliar to social psychologists and organizational scholars. I introduce these fields to Sen's theory of justice and show how it is useful for social psychological approaches to the study of fairness in groups and organizations.

This chapter traces the development of the pricing research program of Kent Monroe, beginning with his doctoral dissertation and continuing to the present time. Drawing on psychophysics and adaptation-level theory the early research efforts concentrated on validating two important concepts relative to behavioral pricing research: reference price and acceptable price range. Then the behavioral pricing research program expanded to explore how the context of a purchase situation, including the structure of the prices available for judgment, influences buyers' price perceptions and willingness to buy. In the early years his research included pricing models and research on patronage behavior. Subsequently, concentrating primarily on behavioral pricing research, he began to integrate findings from the research program into examining how various sellers pricing strategies and tactics influence buyers' judgments and purchase decisions. These efforts led to the first edition of his book Pricing – Making Profitable Decisions published in 1979. The book was subsequently revised and expanded in 1990 and again in 2003.

Considering the adverse outcomes that job insecurity might have on employees and organizations (De Witte et al., 2016), this study aims to test the role of perceived justice in preventing job insecurity from occurring. Relying on social information processing theory (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978) and fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001), the authors analyze both an assessment of the extent to which the person is treated fairly by the organization (i.e. self-focused justice) and an individual's evaluation of the extent to which the person's co-workers are treated fairly (i.e. other-focused justice). The authors expect other-focused and self-focused justice to be negatively related to job insecurity.

The hypotheses were tested using cross-lagged structural equation modelling based on two-wave data from 126 employees working in a public sector organization undergoing structural changes.

The study results revealed that other-focused overall justice but not self-focused overall justice predicted lower job insecurity one year later. Moreover, other-focused overall justice did have a cross-lagged effect on self-focused overall justice.

By investigating the relationship between other- and self-focused overall justice and job insecurity over time, this study provides solid evidence into so far neglected longitudinal relationships between justice and insecurity. The results show that in the context of organizational changes, other-focused overall justice predicted lower job insecurity as well as higher self-focused overall justice one year later.

Misrepresenting the nature of an accident to obtain insurance money for a loss not covered by the insurance policy is definitely unethical and will cause serious harm to insurers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue and examine the impacts of insurance coverage and fraud sizes on the consumer attitudes toward the false representation.

Questionnaire surveys were collected with 210 adults in Taiwan.

Results indicated that insurance coverage affected ethical judgment and perceived fairness, and ethical judgment and perceived fairness related to the false representation. Perceived fairness is related to ethical judgment (the more people feel it is fair to cheat, the higher propensity they have to deem the cheating as ethical).

Concern for claim fraud in the insurance market has dramatically increased over the past few years. However, very little research has examined the impacts of coverage and fraud sizes on such behavior. This paper takes a further step in testing the effects of the two factors on individuals' intentions to commit false representation. The results suggest that coverage does affect the intention to misreport claim amounts.

Using the framework of fairness heuristic theory and social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating role of perceived overall justice in the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and attitudinal outcomes. In line with both theories, job insecurity is hypothesized to negatively relate to perceived overall organization-focused justice that subsequently relates to employees’ attitudes toward the organization.

A total of 291 white-collar employees were surveyed. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Overall justice was found to mediate the association between qualitative job insecurity and affective commitment, turnover intention and satisfaction with the organization.

The study is the first study to highlight the explanatory role of overall organization-focused justice (in contrast to the justice types) in the qualitative job insecurity–outcomes relationship.