Florian Drevs

Do Patient Perceptions Vary With Ownership Status? A Study of Nonprofit, For-Profit, and Public Hospital Patients

Recent research indicates that consumers associate nonprofit organizations mainly with the trait “warmth,” whereas for-profit organizations are perceived as being “competent.” Trustworthiness is another dimension of consumer perceptions of nonprofit organizations. This article attempts to combine two strands of research: Aaker, Vohs, and Mogilner’s research on perceptions of warmth and competence and Handy et al.’s and Schlesinger, Mitchell, and Gray’s research on individuals’ perceptions of trustworthiness in nonprofits. Our study indicates that “warmth,” “trustworthiness,” and “competence” are distinct dimensions of patient perceptions of hospitals. Perceptions of these traits vary across different manifestations of ownership status. Nonprofit hospitals are perceived as more trustworthy and warm but less competent than their for-profit competitors. With nonurgent care, analysis shows that only trustworthiness and competence influence patients’ hospital evaluations. Nonprofit hospitals should try to make their ownership status public as well as to alleviate detrimental deviations of perceived competence from actual competence.

Guilt Appeals and Prosocial Behavior: An Experimental Analysis of the Effects of Anticipatory Versus Reactive Guilt Appeals on the Effectiveness of Blood Donor Appeals

This study investigates the effectiveness of guilt-arousing communication in promoting prosocial behavior. By analyzing the distinct effects of anticipatory versus reactive guilt appeals, we contribute to the discussion of guilt appeals as drivers of prosocial behavior, especially blood donation. Research on persuasive communication provides the theoretical basis of our study and we validate our hypotheses by means of two 2 × 2 factorial between-subjects designs. We find that anticipatory rather than reactive guilt appeals are more effective in generating prosocial action tendencies. Compared to noninformational reference group influences, messages endorsed by members of informational reference groups yielded more favorable attitudinal responses. Besides their significant main effect, two-sided messages reinforce the favorable impact of anticipatory guilt appeals. The study concludes with practical implications for nonprofit organizations and public blood donor services as well as avenues for future research.

Public Service Motivation as Driver of Social Support to Apply for Safety-Critical Organizations? An Empirical Study in the Context of German Military Service

This study analyses the role public service motivation and safety needs play when close friends and family are asked for advice by a potential applicant for the military, a typical public safety organization. Our survey data (N = 150) were collected among visitors to a German county fair where the German military had a recruitment stand. The results of a hierarchical regression show that, besides the organizational and employer-related image, the norm-based and affective dimensions of the public service motivation affect support intentions. Anxiety and work–family incompatibility as risk-related factors have a negative effect on support intentions. The study results indicate that recruitment advertising designed to promote social support should foster positive image perceptions among families and friends of potential applicants and should encourage their norm-based public service motivations. However, future campaigns should keep in mind that affective reactions such as anxiety may distract close friends and family from supporting an application.

Applying the concept of consumer confusion to healthcare: Development and validation of a patient confusion model

As patient autonomy and consumer sovereignty increase, information provision is considered essential to decrease information asymmetries between healthcare service providers and patients. However, greater availability of third party information sources can have negative side effects. Patients can be confused by the nature, as well as the amount, of quality information when making choices among competing health care providers. Therefore, the present study explores how information may cause patient confusion and affect the behavioral intention to choose a health care provider. Based on a quota sample of German citizens (n = 198), the present study validates a model of patient confusion in the context of hospital choice. The study results reveal that perceived information overload, perceived similarity, and perceived ambiguity of health information impact the affective and cognitive components of patient confusion. Confused patients have a stronger inclination to hastily narrow down their set of possible decision alternatives. Finally, an empirical analysis reveals that the affective and cognitive components of patient confusion mediate perceived information overload, perceived similarity, and perceived ambiguity of information.

Ownership status, symbolic traits, and housing association attractiveness: evidence from the German residential market

This study investigates whether the non-profit and for-profit status of housing associations implies a symbolic meaning and represents an informational cue that potential renters may value. Referring to the stereotype content model, we examine the relationship between renters’ perceptions of the stereotypical dimensions of ‘competence’ and ‘warmth’ of management-related images and, subsequently, rental housing attractiveness. Using a between-subject-experimental design (for-profit vs. non-profit housing associations) in a German rental market context, a sample of 200 respondents was placed in a hypothetical rental offering situation and asked to evaluate the rental provider with respect to stereotypical perceptions. The study results show that the extent to which the management of a housing association is perceived to behave unselfishly and consistently with moral codes (warmth) and is able to bring about ones intent (competence) are positively related to rental housing attractiveness. The results imply that symbolic trait inferences have incremental value beyond the instrumental attributes of a rental offering, such as rental price or housing comfort, in the explanation of rental housing attractiveness. For a citizen-oriented rental housing policy, the study suggests that policy-makers should make reflections on the limitations of privatisation measures and should promote the capacity of public and non-profit rental offers and housing associations.

The Challenge of the Unknown – The Effect of Pay-What-You-Want on the Market Success of Publicly Subsidized Films

Producers and exhibitors often rely on or emphasize artistic and cultural merit to counter the economic non-viability of publicly-subsidized films. They fail to exploit innovative pricing and promotion mechanisms to increase market acceptance. Pay-what-you-want (PWYW) options, especially, could compensate for small advertising budgets. This option would allow exhibitors of independent films to compete with large chains more successfully. The results of an empirical study show that for relatively unknown films, which were represented by a surprise movie screening in the empirical investigation, pay-what-you-want options lead to higher satisfaction and higher self-generated revenues for subsidized movies than fixed ticket prices. PWYW may be considered a pricing tool to increase movie attendance and word-of-mouth multiplier effects for publicly-subsidized films.

Crocodile Marketing: An Experimental Investigation into the Effects of “Crocodile-Tear” Apologies On Patient Loyalty Intentions

Crocodile-tear apologies are characterized as “pretend” apologies that customers perceive as insincere. We analyze the impact of crocodile-tear apologies on participants’ loyalty intentions after a service failure in an electronic word-of-mouth context. When there are controllable service failures our results suggest that crocodile-tear apologies weaken the detrimental efects on the loyalty intentions of customers who observe such service failures. For customers directly afected by, and for observers of, uncontrollable services failures, complete apologies are more efective. Our results imply that in the electronic word-of-mouth context, easily standardizable crocodile-tear apologies might serve as an alternative apology strategy.