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This paper aims to investigate how to design a firm’s customer demotion policy and communication styles differently for customers demoted from top-tier and bottom-tier to promote their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions.

Four scenario-based experiments were conducted in the customer demotion context of an airline’s hierarchical loyalty program. A total of 796 customers recruited from a survey panel participated in the study.

The results reveal that customers in top-tier demotion significantly increase their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions when a short evaluation period (vs a long evaluation period) is given. Further, customers in bottom-tier demotion improve their willingness to restore and, in turn, their loyalty intentions more with a gain-focused communication style than with a loss-focused communication style. Willingness to restore lost status plays a mediating role in the process by which an appropriate match between demotion type and evaluation period type/communication styles leads to higher loyalty intentions.

This study extends the research stream on customer demotion by examining how to execute customer demotion to mitigate its detrimental effects and facilitate demoted customers’ approach motivation and behavioral intentions, a critical but understudied topic that has been ignored by researchers.

Managers are advised to offer customized customer status evaluation periods and communication styles for top-tier and bottom-tier demoted customers to effectively promote their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions.

This study is among the first to explore the possible varying effects of differential demotion policy and communication style on different tiers of customers.

This study applies a new taxonomy of racial/ethnic misclassification that considers shifts in racial/ethnic status to investigate physical and emotional responses to racial treatment among different misclassification types. It finds that the odds of reporting physical and emotional symptoms increase 3.3 and 2.9 times, respectively, among individuals who experience racial/ethnic status loss (i.e., are misclassified into a racial/ethnic category with lower status compared to their self-reported category) compared to their correctly classified counterparts. In contrast, individuals who experience racial/ethnic status gain (i.e., are misclassified into a racial/ethnic category with higher status compared to their self-reported category) are no more likely to suffer from symptoms compared to correctly classified individuals. The results suggest that being misclassified per se does not necessarily harm well-being, but the loss of social status inherent in some types of misclassification does.

The purpose of this paper is to answer two research questions which are “What are key factors which influence Chinese to adopt mobile technology?” and “Do these key factors differ from factors which are identified from western context?”.

The findings from a pilot study with 45 in-depth interviews are used to develop questionnaires and test across 800 residents from the three research cities. The data were analyzed by structural equation modeling together with multi-group analysis.

The data suggest eight important concepts, i.e. utilitarian expectation, hedonic expectation, status gains, status loss avoidance, normative influence, external influence, cost, and quality concern, are influential factors affecting users’ intentions to adopt 3G mobile technology. Differences are found between the samples in the three research cities in the effect of hedonic expectation, status gains, status loss avoidance, and normative influence on mobile technology adoption intention.

As the stability of intentions may change over time, only measuring intentions might be inadequate in predicting actual adoption behaviors. However, the focus on potential users is thought to be appropriate, given that the development of 3G is still in its infancy in China.

Previous research into information technology adoption among Chinese users has not paid attention to regional diversity. Some research considered China as a large single market and some was conducted in only one province or one city. Culturally, China is a heterogeneous country.

The purpose of this paper is to extend research on customer loyalty status and customer demotion by investigating if the effect of demotion on customer attitudinal and behavioral responses is the same for top-tier and low-tier customers in the context of airlines.

A survey was conducted with travelers intercepted at large airport terminals in Australia. Multivariate analyses examined group differences across status change (no change vs demoted) and status level (high status vs low status). Multi-group moderation structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis tested the moderating role of status (high status vs low status) on the effects of demotion on the relationship between customers’ attitudes and loyalty intention, and between loyalty intention and share of wallet.

This study shows that the detrimental effects of demotion on the relationship between customer satisfaction/commitment/perceived betrayal on loyalty intentions, and on the relationship between loyalty intentions and share of wallet are stronger for “high status” than “low status” customers.

A cross-sectional design was employed to investigate customer demotion in the airline industry. Future studies could investigate different types of demotions in other industries by employing a longitudinal design.

The study provides new insight about the effects of status demotion and highlights that service firms could be jeopardizing the loyalty of numerous valuable customers, especially among the “high status” customer group.

This study reveals loyalty status moderates the effect of demotion on customer attitudinal responses and loyalty behaviors. It draws on social identity, social comparison, emotion and equity theories to explain the different effects of demotion on customers from different status level groups.

This chapter proposes and provides evidence for a conceptual framework for understanding the restoration of justice. Specifically, there is a fundamental distinction between two primary symbolic concerns that follow from transgressions: concern over the status/power relations between the involved parties, and over the violation of the values those parties expect to share. Recognizing these concerns is paramount to understanding the psychological needs of injustice victims, how they conceptualize the restoration of justice, and the processes by which various interventions instill feelings of justice. This framework also elucidates when alternative avenues towards justice might be more effective than traditional retributive responses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how refugees from a professional career domain restore a coherent narrative when confronting barriers to recognition of their former career status. It focuses in particular on the identity work in which they engage in order to reconcile tensions between their current status as refugees and their professional identity.

In total, 15 refugees to the UK who were professionally qualified in medicine or teaching in their country of origin took part in interviews or focus groups exploring career barriers, plans and future aspirations. Initial inductive thematic analysis identified recognition of professional identities as a primary concern. Further analytic iterations between theory and empirical material sharpened the focus on identifying the tensions in their professional identity work.

Participants struggled both to restore their former professional identity and to develop alternative identities. Professional identity work limited, but also sustained them in the face of barriers they encountered as refugees.

More support for refugee career development would facilitate adaptation to local job markets, thereby addressing gaps in education and health services in the UK.

The paper highlights the tensions in refugee professional identity work and particularly the challenges and rewards of professional identification in the face of employment barriers.

The adoption of mobile payment remains low in certain regions, highlighting the need to identify the factors that enable and inhibit its adoption. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the role of information security, loss aversion and the moderating influence of the herd effect on Inertia and behavioral intentions in the adoption of mobile payment systems.

A structural equation model was developed and tested with 332 valid questionnaires to examine the proposed hypotheses.

The empirical results reveal that information security plays a significant role as an enabler, while loss aversion acts as an inhibitor of mobile payment adoption. Furthermore, the study uncovers the moderating influence of the herd effect on the relationship between Inertia and behavioral intentions.

This study was conducted in a specific region and may not be generalizable to other regions. Future studies could expand the sample size and scope to enhance the external validity of the findings.

This study offers practical implications for mobile payment service providers. Understanding the key enabling and inhibiting factors identified in this study can guide providers in designing and improving their services. Strengthening information security measures can help build trust among potential adopters, while offering incentives can mitigate the impact of loss aversion and encourage early adoption.

The findings of this study have social implications as they contribute to promoting the adoption of mobile payment systems. Increased adoption can enhance financial inclusion and stimulate economic development.

This study provides novel insights into the enabling and inhibiting factors of mobile payment adoption and highlights the moderating role of the herd effect. By shedding light on the influence of social norms on individual behavior in the context of mobile payment adoption, this study contributes to the existing literature and advances our understanding of this phenomenon.

In managing hierarchical loyalty programs (HLP), firms often use a reward point expiration and status demotion policy to reduce financial liability and to encourage repeat purchases. This study aims to examine how point expiration and status demotion policies affect customer patronage, the role of extension strategies in mitigating the negative effects of these policies on customers and the moderating role of status endowment in the effect of point expiration on customers patronage following status demotion experience.

Three experiments were conducted using the hotel industry as the context. The hypothesized relationships were tested using ANOVA and a serial moderated mediation analysis using SPSS PROCESS Macro.

Customers subjected to reward point expiration exhibited a higher level of anger and perceived severity of the problem than those subjected to status demotion in HLP. Consequently, when customers experienced both point expiration and status demotion, the point extension strategy rather than the status extension strategy was found to be a more effective remedy for reducing perceived unfairness, although there was no change in the level of patronage reduction between the two extension strategies. Importantly, the effect of point expiration on patronage reduction was stronger among endowed-status customers than earned-status customers, serially driven by heightened feelings of embarrassment and perceived unfairness.

The study adds to the existing literature on HLP by comparing the effects of point expiration and status demotion on customer patronage with practical insights for HLP managers.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that in cross-cultural and strategic management, we must pay attention to the processes creating and maintaining culture. How can everyday interactions give rise to national, “deep” cultures, recognizable across centuries, or organizational cultures, recognizable across decades?

This is a conceptual paper using the evidence provided by research about cultural patterns, and using sociological status-power theory to explain the causation of these patterns. Emergence, also called self-organization, is introduced as mechanism connecting individual-level causation with resulting system-level patterns. Cases are used to illustrate points.

Simulation gaming and computational social simulation are introduced. These methods allow “growing” a system, thus allowing to experiment with potential interventions and their unanticipated effects.

This essay could have major implications for research, adding new methods to survey-based and case-based studies, and achieving a new synthesis. Strategic management today almost invariably involves cross-cultural elements. As a result, cross-cultural understanding is now strategically important.

The suggestions in this essay could lead to new collaborations in the study of culture and organizational processes. Examples include team formation, negotiation, mergers and acquisitions, trans-national collaboration, incentive systems and job interviews.

The suggestions in this essay could contribute to our ability of proactively steering processes in organizations. In particular, they can provide a check to the notion that a control measure necessarily results in its intended effect.

The synthesis of biological, sociological and cross-cultural psychological viewpoints with design-oriented method, using games or social simulations as research instruments, is original in the field.

In order to deepen our understanding of contemporary social structures, we must often trace their distant origins in our evolutionary past. The origins of two structures are analyzed here. Both religion and collective ascription are shaped in part by a common imperative to access rewarding emotional arousal release protected by a special set of arouser screening rules. Only certain enhanced arousers with an attractive ratio of contrast values to access costs can regularly tap these emotional reservoirs. In these two cases, it is the larger social group context that must supply the enhancements. The result is that some group processes are marked by emotional dynamics deeply rooted in the pursuit of these extraordinary arousers.