Carol M. Megehee

Consumer sociability and service provider expertise influence on service relationship success

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of consumer sociability and service provider perceived expertise on service relationship success.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 281 consumers in the USA, randomly selected with the assistance of a commercial list service, completed the survey. Structural equations modeling, was used to test the proposed model.Findings – The findings show that customer sociability and service provider expertise are important to relationship success. In addition, the duration of the relationship was found to be a consequence of satisfaction and a driver of social benefits, which strengthens customer commitment.Research limitations/implications – Personality traits have been previously examined in a low involvement retail setting and not found to be a significant influence on commitment. This study finds that sociability does have a significant impact on service relationship success; thus, providing support for the importance of customer traits in relati...

Travel Storytelling Theory and Practice

ABSTRACT Building on semiological research (i.e., the study of signs and symbols of all kinds) investigating the use of symbols in cinematic portrayals of travel behavior, this article describes a phase dynamics theory of epiphany travel behavior. Core propositions of the theory include (1) epiphany travel behavior and storytelling about such travel includes identifiable phases: prequel, awakening, journey, catharsis, and post-journey storytelling and reinterpreting; (2) world and personal blocks occur; (3) during the journey the protagonist recognizes the need for help and experiences help from key facilitators to reach desired physical locations and other goal objects; and (4) experiencing an archetypal force is an outcome of the journey. Such theory building provides a gestalt view and understanding of epiphany travel behavior.

The Impact of Perceived Peer Behavior, Probable Detection and Punishment Severity on Student Cheating Behavior

A study was conducted among marketing students to assess perceptions of their own and others’ plagiarism, likelihood of being caught, and appropriate sanctions for cheating. Students admitted to having plagiarized, though overwhelmingly they believed these activities were more common among classmates. Perceptions of peer behavior was positively related to cheating, while likelihood of being caught and punishment had a negative impact on cheating behavior involving paper writing; however, likelihood of being caught did not have an impact on cheating related to tests and homework. Prescriptions for marketing educators are provided addressing preventative policies/procedure, a culture of academic integrity, teaching techniques to reduce cheating, and sanctions that motivate students to be honest.

Students’ Views of Ethical Behavior and the Impact of Association

This study provides support for the better-than-average effect with respect to ethical decision-making, and the influence of personal contact on these perceptions. Using data from marketing students at two major universities over two time periods, the findings indicate that students believe their own behavior to be more ethical than either their friends’ or advertising agency executives’ behavior. Gender influenced perceptions of ethical decision-making for some types of questionable behavior, with women reporting higher ethical standards in these cases. Few changes were observed over time. Implications of these findings for teaching business students are discussed.

Segmenting tourists by direct tourism expenditures at new festivals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a method for estimating new direct tourism spending resulting from a new event in an existing destination.Design/methodology/approach – Intercept surveys were conducted on site at six of nine festival locations. Of the 308 festival participants approached at random and asked to participate, 264 agreed to participate (86 percent response rate). On further inquiry, only 47 percent of those agreeing to participate were found to be from zip codes outside of the Horry/Georgetown County “Grand Strand” tourist area. These 145 festival participants were administered surveys.Findings – Less than 30 percent of total tourist spending at the festival is attributable to new tourists – those who specifically travelled to the destination primarily for the event and have historically attended Myrtle Beach less than one time per year. Consequently, the economic impact of the festival, in terms of new spending, was relatively small compared with the total amount of tourist ...

Do Perceptions of Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising Vary Based on Urban Versus Rural Living?

This study explores the connection between perceptions of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising based on where people live and shop. Urban consumers were found to be more skeptical of DTC advertising, but more likely to believe that physicians select pharmaceuticals based on the efficacy of the product. Those living in rural areas were more motivated to visit a doctor and more likely to feel an equal doctor−patient relationship after exposure to DTC advertising. Interaction effects among gender, income, and education were detected, as well as an interaction effects between location and income on views of DTC advertising.

Decoding southern culture and hospitality

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue of the International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research (IJCTHR) on “Decoding southern culture and hospitality”.Design/methodology/approach – The editorial outlines the primary objective of the IJCTHR special issue and introduces a southern tourism schema.Findings – The special issue serves as a valuable platform for new theory and research that integrates multidisciplinary perspectives in describing, explaining, predicting, and influencing culture, tourism, and hospitality in the US Southern States. This region of the USA is distinguishable from other regions by its cultural values and practices. Tourism in the US South is multi‐faceted and includes destination‐, ritual‐, heritage‐, and experiential‐based attractions. The articles in the special issue touch on these various aspects of southern‐based tourism and reveal its unique attributes as it relates to culture and southern hospitality.Originality/value – This ...

Four-Corner Outcomes in Strategic Management: Successful and Unsuccessful Paddling Down versus Upstream

Abstract This chapter elaborates on the usefulness of embracing complexity theory, modeling outcomes rather than directionality, and modeling complex rather than simple outcomes in strategic management. Complexity theory includes the tenet that most antecedent conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for the occurrence of a specific outcome. Identifying a firm by individual antecedents (i.e., noninnovative vs. highly innovative, small vs. large size in sales or number of employees, or serving local vs. international markets) provides shallow information in modeling specific outcomes (e.g., high sales growth or high profitability) – even if directional analyses (e.g., regression analysis, including structural equation modeling) indicate that the independent (main) effects of the individual antecedents relate to outcomes directionally – because firm (case) anomalies almost always occur to main effects. Examples: a number of highly innovative firms have low sales while others have high sales and a number of noninnovative firms have low sales while others have high sales. Breaking-away from the current dominant logic of directionality testing – null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) – to embrace somewhat precise outcome testing (SPOT) is necessary for extracting highly useful information about the causes of anomalies – associations opposite to expected and “statistically significant” main effects. The study of anomalies extends to identifying the occurrences of four-corner strategy outcomes: firms doing well in favorable circumstances, firms doing badly in favorable circumstances, firms doing well in unfavorable circumstances, and firms doing badly in unfavorable circumstances. Models of four-corner strategy outcomes advance strategic management beyond the current dominant logic of directional modeling of single outcomes.

Computing with Words in Modeling Firms’ Paradoxical Performances

Abstract The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

How Recipes of National Cultural Values, Wealth, Economic Inequality, and Religiosity Explain Consumer Tipping Behavior: An Abstract

This chapter proposes a holistic (i.e., “recipe” or “algorithm”) post-positivistic approach to theory and data analysis to learn the impacts of alternative cultural complex wholes on the proportion of service professions within a nation. The study here includes substantially re-examining and extending the theory and findings by Lynn et al. (1993) to better explain tipping behavior and to show that, depending on the other ingredients in a recipe, each cultural attribute can work in different ways to explain tipping frequency. The findings offer a deeper, richer, perspective of how cultures affect consumer behavior than conventional positivistic tests. While voluntary tipping is becoming more common around the world, the antecedents of tipping behavior are ambiguous in the existing literature and do not provide a clear mechanism for researchers or policy makers to understand tipping expectations and behavior nor how to influence them. Partly, this ambiguity is caused by studies that deconstruct the ingredients of culture and report on the symmetric “net effect” of each ingredient (i.e., each specific capability and habit) rather than investigating culture as a “complex whole” (Tylor 1871/1920).