Nicholas Grigoriou

Consciousness of Social Face: The Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Desire to Gain Face Versus Fear of Losing Face

ABSTRACT This article describes the development and validation of a scale that measures two distinct needs for individuals to manage their social “face”. Scale development process resulted in an 11-item Consciousness of Social Face (CSF) scale made up of the following two correlated dimensions: desire to gain face and fear of losing face. The two-factor correlated structure of CSF scale was stable across multiple samples of both students and non-students subjects. The construct validity of CSF scale, including convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity was also demonstrated by examining relationships with other personality or demographical variables.

The welfare organization agenda: Revisiting the epistemological boundaries of management thought based on the writings of Ibn Khaldun

Purpose The role of managers is crucial to achieve holistic organizational goals to benefit the key stakeholders. However, a Western perspective is dominant as management literature where the work of Anglo-Arab philosophers is largely ignored. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap and promulgate the writings of Ibn Khaldun (a fourteenth-century Muslim philosopher) to advance management knowledge. Design/methodology/approach This paper is primarily based on the review of Ibn Khaldun’s book Muqaddimah. Findings This study provides valuable insights to the leaders as well as management practitioners by offering some useful directions to the management researchers for further research. The analysis revealed five themes: Fikr (mindfulness), Ta’awun (cooperation), Ta’akhi (brotherhood), ethical leadership and Adal (justice). Originality/value This paper is an original contribution to the extant literature available on organization development and scant literature available on imparting employee welfare agenda in contemporary organization from the perspective of a Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun.

Exploring the Role of Brand Equity and R&D as Drivers of Product Innovation and Market Performance: An Abstract

This paper investigates the mediating role of product innovation on the effects of brand equity and R&D investments on firms’ market share. We use data from 10,282 households for 1945 food brands consisting of 531 retailers, 1124 small- to medium-sized enterprises (SME) and 290 multinational corporation (MNC) brands. Our results show that the product innovation strategy works best for MNC but only partially for SME and retailers, especially for organic (vs. conventional and functional) brands. We extend the growing research on marketing resources and branding by exploring the antecedents and outcomes of product innovation, using a common theoretical framework, and provide useful managerial implications for improving marketing strategy through product innovation.

Online Perceived Value in the Low Cost Airline Business

The global airline industry has been hit hard by the global financial crisis (Goetz and Vowels, 2009). While full service airlines have struggled to be financially viable in this lean global environment, low cost carriers (LCCs) such as Air Asia and Firefly have changed the value proposition experienced by consumers when considering airline travel by lowering their costs and ticket prices to remain competitive. By choosing to fly with LCCs, consumers forego some of the value-added services provided by full service carriers such as complementary onboard meals, in-flight entertainment, and airline lounge services (Mathews, 2004). The emergence of low cost carriers (LCCs) has also changed the way in which consumers engage with airlines, particularly with regards to air ticket purchasing behaviour (Park et al., 2004). Due to time constraints and advancements in information technology, there is an increasing consumer preference in using the internet compare prices and purchase flight tickets (Goh, 2005).

How dynamic marketing capabilities affect market share performance output: An innovative brand oriented approach

Resource-based theory (RBT) posits that firm performance is the result of how firms manipulate their resources and dynamic capabilities to achieve performance goals. Research to date has not focused enough on the relationship between brand innovation, product differentiation (as a marketing construct), and market share (as a performance metric). This is surprising given both the relatively large amount of academic research in each of these three areas, and the emphasis placed on each by industry practitioners. We bridge this gap in the extant literature by empirically validating the relationship between these phenomena and find that brand oriented dynamic marketing capabilities have limited effect on performance metric—market share. These findings are useful for both academics and practitioners because they address new and future research. In doing so, we advance the firm performance and branding literature with extension in the resource-based theory.

Exploring the Influence of Brand Innovation on Marketing Performance Using Signaling Framework and Resource-Based Theory (RBT) Approach

Consumer markets are imperfect and asymmetric information exists between consumers and firms. Firms signal credible production and commitment to consumers by applying different levels of production and market standards. From consumer’s perspective, production standards are a proxy for product quality and a strong signal of the performance that they can expect from the product. The strong market credibility lowers the consumer’s information search cost and thus provides greater overall utility to consumers (Erdem and Swait 2004). Signaling theory suggest that brands are an important medium of quality assessment between the consumers and firms. This theory can be useful for describing behavior when two parties have access to different levels and types of information. One of the ways consumers can resolve their uncertainty is through signals from the brand, yet signaling theory does not address how this mechanism affects brand performance and influences a firm’s success and competitiveness. Resource based theory (RBT) can help bridge this knowledge gap as it incorporates traditional strategy insights concerning a firm’s distinctive capabilities (Mahoney and Pandian 1992).

Factors Affecting Brand Loyalty Among Malaysian Consumers in Their Choice of Mobile Phone Brands

Brand loyalty is the means with which consumers express their affective connection with a brand; a key factor in brand selection. Brand loyalty has been described by Keller (2003) as ‘brand resonance’, which refers to the relationship between the brand and its customers and the extent to which the customer feels they are aligned with the brand. Customers, with true brand resonance, have a high degree of loyalty, actively seek means to interact with the brand and share their experience with others or even recommend the brand to others. In other words, brand recognition and loyalty ultimately depends upon consumer brand resonance. A review of the extant literature reveals there are many factors affecting brand loyalty (Lau et al, 2006). These factors include brand name (e.g. Aaker, 1991,: Aaker and Joachmisthaler, 2000; Keller, 2003), brand design (Lindstrom, 1992; Roth and Romeo, 2005; Vincent, 2005) perceived quality (e.g., Boulding et al, 1993; Fornell, 1992; Yoo and Donthu, 2000), price (e.g., Keller, 1993; Teas and Argawal, 2000) and promotion (Czerniawski and Maloney, 1999; Gupta, 1993).