Joseph A. Cote

Interrelationships of Work Commitment Constructs

Bivariate correlations have typified research on interrelationships of work commitment constructs. A model of work commitment is presented which specifies multivariate relationships among organizational commitment, career salience, work group attachment, job involvement, and the Protestant work ethic. Data from a sample of university employees reveal that multivariate findings are generally consistent with reported bivariate correlations. While four of the five hypothesized relationships in the theoretic model are supported, the study highlights the need for further conceptual and empirical work to improve the models fit.

Impression Management Using Typeface Design

This article develops empirically based guidelines to help managers select typefaces that affect strategically valued impressions. The authors discuss the potential trade-offs among the impressions created by typeface (e.g., pleasing, engaging, reassuring, prominent). The selection of typeface can be simplified with the use of six underlying design dimensions: elaborate, harmony, natural, flourish, weight, and compressed.

Measurement Error and Theory Testing in Consumer Research: An Illustration of the Importance of Construct Validation

There have been numerous calls to improve measures of consumer behavior constructs, yet theoretical relationships are often evaluated in the absence of validity. This article presents an illustration of the impact of measurement error upon theory testing. We hope that this will highlight the need to improve construct measures that are used in consumer behavior research.

Measurement errors in the behavioral sciences: the case of personality/attitude research

It has been established that construct measures often contain measurement error and method effects. However, the extent of these measurement problems and their effects on personality constructs has not been fully examined. In this study, an analysis of published data sets affords estimates of the amount of trait, method, and error variance of measures used in the social/behavioral sciences. It was found that traits accounted for less than 50 percent of the variance in construct measures among the entire group of data sets included in the study. Measures of attitudes and personality variables contain considerably less trait variance. Implications for theory testing are discussed.

Structural Equations Modeling

I would like to hear comments from more experienced experimental researchers about standard practices for recruiting and compensating participants in consumer and marketing experiments. What are the pros and cons of using student participants? (I know there was a debate about this in the literature a few years ago, but what is the current prevailing opinion?) Is there a difference between using undergraduate students (business majors or nonbusiness majors) and graduate students? When using student participants, is it better to compensate them with extra course credit or to pay them? And, is one time of the semester or quarter (i.e., beginning, middle, or end) preferable for using student participants? I am especially interested to know if anyone has conducted a systematic study of these last two issues. I have recently run experiments using student samples from the same population, but paying one sample and giving extra credit to the other, which definitely affected the rate at which students showed up for their assigned sessions. It may also have affected the variance in the quality of students that chose to participate. Also, in an experiment that I recently ran at the end of a semester (during the last week and a half of class meetings before the final exam week), I collected informal statements from participants in debriefing sessions that indicated that they were no busier or more distracted than they would have been in the middle of the semester. Also, what are the standard practices for recruiting and compensating nonstudent participants (e.g., ordinary folks off the street)? And, for experimental marketing and organizational research (on which I am presently embarking), what are the equivalent standards for industry-based samples (i.e., executives, managers, executive MBA students)? (This information is critical for budgeting grant proposals. I recently called the National Science Foundation and they could not offer much help on this point.) Also, does anyone have any great suggestions for increasing our success rate for getting such populations to participate in experimental research? I was discouraged by a recent conversation with George Day and David Montgomery, who said that even they are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit managerial research participants in the executive courses at the Wharton School and Stanford University. (So, where does that leave the rest of us?) Professor Prashant Malaviya University of Illinois at ChicagoIn the spring of 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was put into orbit, the culmination of work by a multitude of astronomers, engineers, technicians, and researchers over a period of many years. Its proponents hail it as a key tool to understanding the universe, while its critics write it off as a monumental waste of resources that will never fulfill the expectations of those who designed it. Almost immediately after it went on-line, concern arose about the robustness of its inner workings, yet the demand for access to this device is immense.This special issue poses anonymous questions, then provides the answers and a discussion of the issues by the expert who responded. The answers are not anonymous--partly to give credit to the experts and partly to encourage future communication and debate on whatever lingering controversies may arise. After a number of questions, the special issue concludes with a discussion by the guest editor that summarizes the answers and provides straightforward answers to questions that were not addressed by the experts.

Exploring the organizational commitment— Performance linkage in marketing: A study of life insurance salespeople

Abstract This study explores the impact of organizational commitment on performance in a marketing context. A model is set forth in which organizational commitment is associated with performance through higher levels of exertion (working hard) and well-directed effort (working smart). Hypothesized relationships are tested using survey responses from a sample of life insurance agents in Singapore. Results revealed the influence of organizational commitment was mediated by working hard and to a lesser extent, working smart. A strong positive relationship was detected between working hard and performance. Implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research suggested.

Cross-National Logo Evaluation Analysis: An Individual-Level Approach

The universality of design perception and response is tested using data collected from ten countries: Argentina, Australia, China, Germany, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, and the United States. A Bayesian, finite-mixture, structural-equation model is developed that identifies latent logo clusters while accounting for heterogeneity in evaluations. The concomitant variable approach allows cluster probabilities to be country specific. Rather than a priori defined clusters, our procedure provides a posteriori cross-national logo clusters based on consumer response similarity. To compare the a posteriori cross-national logo clusters, our approach is integrated with Steenkamp and Baumgartner’s (1998) measurement invariance methodology. Our model reduces the ten countries to three cross-national clusters that respond differently to logo design dimensions: the West, Asia, and Russia. The dimensions underlying design are found to be similar across countries, suggesting that elaborateness, naturalness, and harmony are universal design dimensions. Responses (affect, shared meaning, subjective familiarity, and true and false recognition) to logo design dimensions (elaborateness, naturalness, and harmony) and elements (repetition, proportion, and parallelism) are also relatively consistent, although we find minor differences across clusters. Our results suggest that managers can implement a global logo strategy, but they also can optimize logos for specific countries if desired.

Effects of Unexpected Situations on Behavior-Intention Differences: A Garbology Analysis

This study explores the usefulness of unanticipated situational occurrences for explaining the disparity between stated intention and actual behavior for 15 commonly consumed food and beverage products. Unlike previous research on unexpected situations, actual situational occurrences were monitored for effects on actual consumption (measured by garbage analysis and self-report). The results show that behavior-intention inconsistency is partly attributable to unexpected situations.

Measurement issues concerning the use of inventories of job satisfaction

In spite of the fact that the JDI is one of the most widely used measures in the organizational sciences, there has been relatively little validation work done since Smith, Kendall, and Hulins (1969) development of the JDI. This paper is an examination of the psychometric characteristics of the JDI and other inventories of job satisfaction across a sample of validation studies. Like most other measures in the behavioral sciences, the construct validity of these inventories is modest. Although this problem may minimize the applicability of certain statistical techniques with job satisfaction data, the problem can be corrected through the proper application of structural equation models. Although this problem may be corrected statistically, the need for collateral work on the further conceptual development of the job satisfaction construct is suggested.

Does the Customer Matter Most? Exploring Strategic Frontline Employees’ Influence of Customers, the Internal Business Team, and External Business Partners

Marketing relationships have evolved from simple dyadic transactions between the firm and its customers into scenarios in which the firms frontline employees are required to manage a portfolio of stakeholder relationships. The authors begin by characterizing the “strategic” frontline employee (SFLE) as a focal marketing employee who, in the execution of his or her work, must influence a variety of stakeholder target groups, including (1) customers, (2) the internal business team, and (3) external business partners. The authors leverage data from SFLEs at two firms to explore the similarities and differences in SFLE influence tactic effectiveness across the three stakeholder groups. They find that the effectiveness of influence tactics in driving performance differs across stakeholder target types and, somewhat surprisingly, that the SFLEs influence of both the internal business team and external business partners has a greater effect on his or her performance than does influence directed at customers. The authors close with a discussion of the implications for theory and practice.