Carmen-Maria Albrecht

Customer response to interactional service experience: The role of interaction environment

The purpose of this paper is to examine causal attribution in interactional service experiences. The paper investigates how triggers in the environment of a customer-employee interaction influence customer behavioral response to employees’ negative and positive affect. Additionally, it studies the role of sympathy and authenticity as underlying mechanisms of this relationship.,Two scenario-based experimental designs (N1=162; N2=138) were used. Videotaped scenarios served as stimulus material for the manipulation of two focal variables: the employee’s emotional display as either negative or positive and the availability of an emotion trigger in the interaction environment to convey the attribution dimension of cause uncontrollability. The emotion trigger’s visibility was varied in the two studies. Customer response was captured by buying intentions.,Customer responses are more favorable for both positive and negative interactional experiences when customers have access to information on cause uncontrollability (i.e. notice triggers in the interaction environment). Analyses reveal that these effects stem from feelings of sympathy for negative experiences and authenticity for positive experiences.,This research supports the relevance of causal attribution research on interactional service experiences, which have high-profit impact. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of the experience of fact in service interactions and thereby provide a more nuanced view on the discussion of whether service providers should use impression management strategies to engender customer satisfaction even when this behavior is “faked.”

Die Wirkung irrelevanter Attribute in der Markenkommunikation

Prof. Dr. Hans H. Bauer ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Marketing II und Wissenschaftlicher Direktor des Instituts für Marktorientierte Unternehmensführung (IMU) an der Universität Mannheim, L5, 1, D-68131 Mannheim, Tel.: 0621/ 181-1572, Fax: 0621/181-1571, E-Mail: hans.bauer@bwl.unimannheim.de. Dipl.-Kffr. Carmen-Maria Albrecht ist Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Marketing II an der Universität Mannheim, L5, 1, D-68131 Mannheim, Tel.: 0621/ 181-1573, Fax: 0621/181-1571, E-Mail: carmen-maria.albrecht @bwl.uni-mannheim.de. Dipl.-Kfm. Marcus M. Neumann ist Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Marketing II an der Universität Mannheim, L5, 1, D-68131 Mannheim, Tel.: 0621/ 181-1547, Fax: 0621/181-1571, E-Mail: marcus.neumann @bwl.uni-mannheim.de. Dipl.-Kfm. Tobias E. Haber ist Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Marketing II an der Universität Mannheim, L5, 1, D-68131 Mannheim, Tel.: 0621/181-1561, Fax: 0621/181-1571, E-Mail: tobias.haber@bwl.unimannheim.de. Die Wirkung irrelevanter Attribute in der Markenkommunikation

Enhancing Customer Trust in E-Commerce Through Web Portals

The appearance of interactive media environments is often deemed to cause a lack of trust. Our study investigates the potential role of Web portals in enhancing customer trust, reducing perceived risk, and improving the intention to purchase online. An online experiment (n=862) supports the hypothesized effects.

Branding Universities: An Updated View of Factors Underlying College Choice

One consequence of the slowdown in the U.S. economy has been decreasing funding for state colleges and universities. As a result, higher education branding initiatives that result in increased enrollment are more important than ever. “With the increasing cost of university tuition, the competition for students and, in the case of state colleges and universities, decreasing state funding, colleges are continually looking for ways to attract students, fund their mission and stand out from the crowd” (Shampeny 2003, p. 1). University (or college-level) branding has historically been done to create awareness among prospective students and their parents; or target donors, professors, business leaders, alumni, and elected officials with branded messages. Many universities also brand themselves in order to improve their rankings in publications such as US News & World Report (Bunzel 2007). Whatever the motive, there appears to be many differentiation approaches to university branding with the most common being academic quality, high profile athletics, convenience, co-branding, and/or unique programs or majors (Kurz et al. 2008).

Together We Can Make it: Exploring Why Consumers Engage in Boycotts

Nowadays companies are more and more judged by consumers whether they act in a socially responsible way. But more and more often, consumers do not only judge the behavioral acts of the company, but also overtly express their discontent with the company. In other words, companies risk being the target of boycotts, in that consumers refuse to buy their brands if they act unethically. Based on a literature review and several in-depth-interviews, the current study identifies antecedents to consumers’ boycott participation. A second empirical study reveals key drivers of consumers’ boycott participation intention. While some of them are useful for boycott organizers to arrange boycotts successfully, others are manageable factors for companies to prevent consumers from participating in boycotts.

Value Creation for Luxury Brands through Brand Extensions1

Ein Buch, das sich mit dem Management von Luxusmarken beschaftigt, darf sich nicht nur auf Strategien und blose Techniken fokussieren, sondern muss die Klarung der Frage, was man unter Luxus zu verstehen hat, voranstellen. Dies gilt umso mehr, als dass die Ambivalenz des Luxusbegriffs und seine Konnotationen auch heute noch dazu fuhren, dass die Verwendung des Begriffs, wie zum Beispiel auf der Webseite der Fondazione Altagamma (2015), dem Dachverband der italienischen Luxusmarkenunternehmen, vermieden wird [29]. Anders prasentiert sich das Comite Colbert (2015) in Frankreich auf seiner Startseite: “Founded in 1954, the Comite Colbert gathers French luxury houses and several cultural institutions. They work together to promote French art de vivre at international level” [16]. Die Grunde fur das eine oder das andere Verhalten, die der franzosische Luxusmarkenforscher Kapferer (2015) im Kontext seiner Darlegungen zu den verschiedenen weltweiten Modellen des Luxus ausfuhrlich erlautert, sollen hier nicht weiter diskutiert werden [42, S. 182f.]. Tatsache ist jedoch, dass wir es hier mit einem Begriff zu tun haben, der eine sehr lange Geschichte hat, von dem viele verschiedene Auffassungen existieren und der bis heute kontrovers diskutiert wird. Vor diesem Hintergrund beschaftigt sich der folgende Beitrag zu Beginn mit der Definition des ambivalenten Luxusbegriffs und der Bedeutung und Akzeptanz des Luxus im Zeitverlauf. Im nachsten Schritt erfolgt eine kurze Einfuhrung in die Besonderheiten des Geschafts mit Luxusgutern und die Klarung der Frage, welche Bedeutung der Marke fur den Erfolg dieses Geschaftsmodells zukommt. In Anlehnung an die einschlagigen wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse werden anschliesend die wichtigsten Merkmale von Luxusmarken identifiziert und beschrieben. Nachdem die Trennung zwischen Luxusmarken und Premium-, Mode- und Lifestyle-Marken nicht immer ganz einfach und eindeutig ist und die viel diskutierten Markerweiterungen der Luxusmarken in die anderen Geschaftsfelder heute vielfaltige Chancen und Risiken fur die Unternehmen darstellen, schliest dieser Beitrag mit der Beschreibung der begrifflichen Grundlagen und der Verbindungen und Abgrenzungen zwischen diesen unterschiedlichen Markenkonzeptionen.

The Interplay of Brand Attachment and Brand Extension Success

Brand extensions serve as an important marketing strategy for many new product introductions. Given that new products are prone to failure, the use of an established brand can help facilitate acceptance of the new product by reducing consumers’ perceived risk, enhancing efficiencies associated with distribution and promotional activities, and reduced overall costs associated with launching a new brand. Prior research on brand extensions has clearly demonstrated that the fit between a parent brand and its extension is an important driver of the extension’s success. Apart from the level of the fit, research has also found other drivers of brand extension success, like extensions’ marketing support and retailers’ acceptance. In addition consumers’ perceptions of parent brands’ characteristics like parent brand conviction or the perceived quality of the parent brand are identified as brand extension success drivers.

What if the CEO is perceived as a corporate psychopath? The effects of perceived corporate psychopathy on product, stock and employer attractiveness

Many corporate brands are strongly associated with the person the companies are headed by (Argenti & Druckenmiller, 2004). Attention for corporate psychopaths (CPs), defined as individuals who show psychopathic traits and work successfully in corporations, has been growing lately (Boddy, 2005). Psychopathic traits (e.g. charm, lack of remorse and empathy) can easily be interpreted as leadership characteristics (e.g. charisma and decisiveness) and therefore boost the career of the psychopath allowing him/her to climb up the corporate ladder (Boddy, 2011). Empirical evidence—although limited—supports this assumption. It has been found that CPs more frequently have senior level positions in organizations than junior ones (Boddy, Ladyshewsky, &Galvin, 2010b) and that the chances of finding a psychopath among CEOs is four times higher than in the general population (Bercovici, 2011). A CP in a high level position (e.g. a CEO) can not only be assumed to have the largest leverage on how the company’s resources are deployed, but the way s/he is perceived by others also has a great impact on the company’s image (McGrath, 1995). The willingness to trust an entity is “based on the expectation that the other party will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). Therefore, the perception of negative/psychopathic traits in a CEO is of considerable importance to organizations because it influences the CEO’s public image and subsequently the level of trust placed in the top manager. This, in turn, can have far-reaching consequences for the company he works for because an executive’s greatest capital consists in the trust placed in him/her and a company cannot be successful in the long run without the trust from stakeholder groups (Hage, 2012). The perception of psychopathic traits can thus have severe consequences for the company’s attractiveness to its stakeholders. The current research investigates the effects of perceived psychopathy of CEOs for the attractiveness of any form of interaction with the company. Results of a structural equation model based on a survey among 670 participants show that perceived corporate psychopathy negatively influences perceived trust in the CEO. Perceived trust in the CEO, in turn, has a positive effect on perceived attractiveness of products, of shares, and of perceived employer attractiveness. Furthermore, if an individual considers sustainability to be of high importance, the ethical standards concerning sustainable behavior seem to be stricter because the trustor cares about them more than the economic aspects of how the CEO manages the company. Therefore, it was found that attitude toward sustainability moderates the relationship between perceived corporate psychopathy and perceived trust in the CEO.

How to offer luxury products on the Internet : the influence of online assortment decisions and online purchase options on brand equity

Brand equity, “the marketing effects uniquely attributable to the brand” (Keller, 1993, p. 1), is at the heart of competition in the luxury goods market (Keller, 2009). While firms competing in this segment have come up with sophisticated ways to build brand equity, they are currently challenged by the increasing importance of the internet in consumers’ journeys (Kapferer & Bastien, 2012; Okonkwo, 2009). With online sales of luxury goods showing a twelvefold increase over the past 11 years (D’Arpizio et al., 2014), it is evident that luxury brands have to be present somehow in the digital environment today (Heine & Berghaus, 2014). The strategic purposes, business potentials, and consequences for brand equity of this presence, however, are still largely unexplored and remain a paradoxical topic. As a luxury brand’s website is the brand’s most valuable digital asset (Heine & Berghaus, 2014) and as there appears to be a consensus that luxury brands can use their websites to present their products in the digital environment, at least for purposes of communication, the question arises which products are most suitable for reinforcing the brand’s image. The roles a luxury brand’s products can play in relation to brand management can be classified between four poles spanning two dimensions, which this research terms ‘accessibility’ and ‘contemporariness’, in relation to Kapferer and Bastien’s (2012) luxury brand architecture map. Empirical evidence of these dimensions is, nevertheless, scarce, and yet no prior research has investigated these product roles in an e-commerce setting. The current study develops a model to test how an online purchase option and the contemporariness as well as the accessibility of the product assortment offered on the websites of luxury brands affect specific brand equity dimensions of luxury brands. Data of a 2x2x2-online scenario experiment were analyzed, showing that prestige and uniqueness value are non-significantly affected by offering an online purchase option, while functional value increases significantly. Regarding the displayed product assortment, the brand equity dimensions of functionality, prestige, and uniqueness are found to be significantly affected by the inaccessibility of the products, while their contemporariness elicits significant changes in uniqueness value. The study also assesses the mediating role of the brand attributes of availability, price premium, aesthetics, and innovativeness, as well as the moderating role of consumers’ prior brand ownership, for these effects. 1) carmen-maria.albrecht@bwl.uni-mannheim.de 2) pietro.haeger@me.com 2016 Global Marketing Conference at Hong Kong 174

Brand Stress and How Consumers Cope with it? An Exploratory Analysis

We explore a relatively new concept in marketing, namely brand stress. In the current study, brand stress in understood as strain caused by the felt pressure to own and consume certain branded products. We first conceptualize the construct of perceived brand stress and suggest how we can operationalize it. Furthermore, we attempt to shed light on the various ways in which consumers cope with perceived brand stress.