Martin Reimann

When Does International Marketing Standardization Matter to Firm Performance

The topic of standardization of international marketing programs represents an important issue faced by managers of global firms and has attracted significant research attention. Although previous research has established that standardization enhances performance outcomes, more recent theorizing suggests that this may not always be the case. However, empirical investigators have paid little systematic attention to moderating conditions. The major purpose of this article is to investigate the organizational factors that moderate the standardization–performance relationship and, thus, to explore the types of firm for which standardization is particularly beneficial. The authors examine survey data from 489 firms, and their results indicate that the standardization–performance link is significantly stronger for large firms with a homogeneous product offering, high levels of global market penetration, a cost leadership strategy, and strong coordination capabilities. The authors conclude that managers evaluating the adequacy of a standardization strategy should consider the list of contingencies advanced in this research.

What Drives Key Informant Accuracy

In an effort to establish and enhance the accuracy of key informant data, organizational survey studies are increasingly relying on triangulation techniques by including supplemental data sources that complement information acquired from key informants. Despite the growing popularity of triangulation, little guidance exists as to when and how it should be conducted. Addressing this gap, the authors develop hypotheses linking a comprehensive set of study characteristics at the construct, informant, organizational, and industry levels to key informant accuracy. Two studies test these hypotheses. The first study is a meta-analysis of triangulation applications. Using data from 127 studies published in six major marketing and management journals, the authors identify antecedents to key informant reliability. The second study, using eight multi-informant data sets, analyzes antecedents to key informant validity. The results from these studies inform survey researchers as to which conditions particularly call for the use of triangulation. The authors conclude by offering guidelines on when and how to employ triangulation techniques.

A neuropsychological approach to understanding risk-taking for potential gains and losses

Affective neuroscience has helped guide research and theory development in judgment and decision-making by revealing the role of emotional processes in choice behavior, especially when risk is involved. Evidence is emerging that qualitatively and quantitatively different processes may be involved in risky decision-making for gains and losses. We start by reviewing behavioral work by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and others, which shows that risk-taking differs for potential gains and potential losses. We then turn to the literature in decision neuroscience to support the gain versus loss distinction. Relying in part on data from a new task that separates risky decision-making for gains and losses, we test a neural model that assigns unique mechanisms for risky decision-making involving potential losses. Included are studies using patients with lesions to brain areas specified as important in the model and studies with healthy individuals whose brains are scanned to reveal activation in these and other areas during risky decision-making. In some cases, there is evidence that gains and losses are processed in different regions of the brain, while in other cases the same region appears to process risk in a different manner for gains and losses. At a more general level, we provide strong support for the notion that decisions involving risk-taking for gains and decisions involving risk-taking for losses represent different psychological processes. At a deeper level, we present mounting evidence that different neural structures play different roles in guiding risky choices in these different domains. Some structures are differentially activated by risky gains and risky losses while others respond uniquely in one domain or the other. Taken together, these studies support a clear functional dissociation between risk-taking for gains and risk-taking for losses, and further dissociation at the neural level.

Power decreases trust in social exchange.

Significance Trust is pivotal to the functioning of society. This work tests competing predictions about how having low vs. high power may impact people’s tendency to place trust in others. Using different experimental paradigms and measures and confirming predictions based on motivated cognition theory, we show that people low in power are significantly more trusting than more powerful people and that this effect can be explained by the constructs of hope and perceived benevolence. Our findings make important contributions to the literatures on trust, power, and motivated cognition. How does lacking vs. possessing power in a social exchange affect people’s trust in their exchange partner? An answer to this question has broad implications for a number of exchange settings in which dependence plays an important role. Here, we report on a series of experiments in which we manipulated participants’ power position in terms of structural dependence and observed their trust perceptions and behaviors. Over a variety of different experimental paradigms and measures, we find that more powerful actors place less trust in others than less powerful actors do. Our results contradict predictions by rational actor models, which assume that low-power individuals are able to anticipate that a more powerful exchange partner will place little value on the relationship with them, thus tends to behave opportunistically, and consequently cannot be trusted. Conversely, our results support predictions by motivated cognition theory, which posits that low-power individuals want their exchange partner to be trustworthy and then act according to that desire. Mediation analyses show that, consistent with the motivated cognition account, having low power increases individuals’ hope and, in turn, their perceptions of their exchange partners’ benevolence, which ultimately leads them to trust.

Effect of relationship experience on trust recovery following a breach

Significance Will people be more likely to forgive a breach of trust in an earlier or later stage of an interpersonal relationship? The present article reports behavioral and neurophysiological experiments that speak to this important question. Results show that trust recovery is facilitated with increasing relationship experience. Differential activation in the controlled social cognition system (C-system) and the automatic social cognition system (X-system) indicate that decision making is less controlled and more automatic following a later as opposed to an earlier trust breach. These findings have important implications for the study of trust recovery after a breach, as well as the neuroscience of trust. A violation of trust can have quite different consequences, depending on the nature of the relationship in which the trust breach occurs. In this article, we identify a key relationship characteristic that affects trust recovery: the extent of relationship experience before the trust breach. Across two experiments, this investigation establishes the behavioral effect that greater relationship experience before a trust breach fosters trust recovery. A neuroimaging experiment provides initial evidence that this behavioral effect is possible because of differential activation of two brain systems: while decision making after early trust breaches engages structures of a controlled social cognition system (C-system), specifically the anterior cingulate cortex and lateral frontal cortex, decision making after later trust breaches engages structures of an automatic social cognition system (X-system), specifically the lateral temporal cortex. The present findings make contributions to both social psychological theory and the neurophysiology of trust.

Product Differentiation by Aesthetic and Creative Design: A Psychological and Neural Framework of Design Thinking

As firms increasingly use design to successfully differentiate their products from competitors, the concept of design thinking has lately received raised attention among practitioners. Many consider design thinking to fundamentally change the way firms will strive to innovate. Design thinking can be thought of as a methodology for innovation that systematically integrates human, business, and technical factors in problem-forming, problem-solving, and design. As initiatives for design thinking grow significantly, we need to better understand how design thinking helps to foster creativity of designers and product managers and how it supports firms’ goal of creating aesthetically appealing products. Despite the relevance of the concept of design thinking, its underlying mechanisms have been poorly understood. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the processes of design thinking by integrating extant literature from psychology and neuroscience. In particular, this research focuses on aesthetics and creativity as crucial processes of design thinking. Subsequently, a definition of design thinking is offered, which is accompanied by a psychological and neural framework of design thinking.

Trust is Heritable, Whereas Distrust is Not

Significance Social scientists have devoted much attention to studying the sources and consequences of the disposition to trust but have only recently begun to investigate the disposition to distrust. An increasing consensus is emerging that distrust is not merely the opposite of trust. This article provides initial empirical evidence indicating that the sources of the dispositions to trust and distrust indeed do differ in important ways. Notably, although both trust and distrust are strongly influenced by the individual’s unique environment, interestingly, trust shows significant genetic influences, whereas distrust does not. Rather, distrust appears to be primarily socialized, including influences within the family. These findings provide new support for the bidimensionality of trust and distrust by demonstrating their distinct antecedents. Why do people distrust others in social exchange? To what degree, if at all, is distrust subject to genetic influences, and thus possibly heritable, and to what degree is it nurtured by families and immediate peers who encourage young people to be vigilant and suspicious of others? Answering these questions could provide fundamental clues about the sources of individual differences in the disposition to distrust, including how they may differ from the sources of individual differences in the disposition to trust. In this article, we report the results of a study of monozygotic and dizygotic female twins who were asked to decide either how much of a counterpart player’s monetary endowment they wanted to take from their counterpart (i.e., distrust) or how much of their own monetary endowment they wanted to send to their counterpart (i.e., trust). Our results demonstrate that although the disposition to trust is explained to some extent by heritability but not by shared socialization, the disposition to distrust is explained by shared socialization but not by heritability. The sources of distrust are therefore distinct from the sources of trust in many ways.

Can Smaller Meals Make You Happy? Behavioral, Neurophysiological, and Psychological Insights into Motivating Smaller Portion Choice

Can smaller meals make you happy? Four studies show that offering consumers the choice between a full-sized food portion alone and a half-sized food portion paired with a small nonfood premium (e.g., a small Happy Meal toy or the mere possibility of winning frequent flyer miles) motivates smaller portion choice. Importantly, we investigate why this is the case and find that both food and the prospect of receiving a nonfood premium activate a common area of the brain (the striatum), which is associated with reward, desire, and motivation. Finally, we show that the choice results are mediated by a psychological desire for, but not by liking of, the premium. Notably, we find that choice of the smaller food portion is most pronounced when the probability of obtaining the premium is not disclosed compared to when the probability is disclosed or when the receipt of the same premium is stated as being certain. Taken together, motivating choice and consumption of less food may be successful if smaller portions are accompanied by an incentive.

Personal involvement is related to increased search motivation and associated with activity in left BA44—a pilot study

Numerous studies explore consumer perception of brands in a more or less passive way. This may still be representative for many situations or decisions we make each day. Nevertheless, sometimes we often actively search for and use information to make informed and reasoned choices, thus implying a rational and thinking consumer. Researchers suggested describing this distinction as low relative to high involvement consumer behavior. Although the involvement concept has been widely used to explain consumer behavior, behavioral and neural correlates of this concept are poorly understood. The current study aims to describe a behavioral measure that is associated with high involvement, the length of search behavior. A second aim of this study was to explore brain activations associated with involvement by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We presented participants information cues for different products and told them that they had to answer questions with respect to these products at the end of the experiment. Participants were free to stop the information search if they think they gathered enough information or to continue with collecting information. Behavioral results confirmed our hypothesis of a relationship between searching behavior and personal involvement by demonstrating that the length of search correlated significantly with the degree of personal involvement of the participants. fMRI data revealed that personal involvement was associated with activation in BA44. Since this brain region is known to be involved in semantic memory, the results of this pilot study suggest that high involvement consumer behavior may be linked to cognitive load and attention towards a product.

On the heritability and socialization of trust and distrust

Our article (1) presents evidence for the heritability of trust and the shared socialization of distrust. Goldfarb et al. (2) downloaded our dataset, which we had made publicly available for all researchers. We thank them for their reanalysis, which precisely replicated all point estimates reported in our article (1). Our reply focuses on three issues in response to their comments. Our original research investigated the heritability of distrust, and our finding of a point estimate of 0.00 [which Goldfarb et al. (2) replicate twice in their table 1] is in considerable contrast to prior claims stating that all human traits are significantly heritable (3). As we emphasize in our work (1), “[a]lthough it … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: reimann{at}arizona.edu or kcook{at}stanford.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1