Rama K. Jayanti

The Antecedents of Preventive Health Care Behavior: An Empirical Study

A conceptual model of preventive health care behavior is proposed and tested. Results suggest that preventive health care behaviors are strongly influenced by the value consumers perceive in engaging in such actions. This value is greatly affected by response efficacy, or the person’s belief that a specific action will mitigate the health threat. A separate consideration affecting adherence to a prescribed preventive health care behavior is self-efficacy, or the person’s belief that the target behaviors can be enacted. Additionally, health motivation and health consciousness are also shown to influence preventive health care behaviors. Future research directions and managerial implications of the findings are outlined.

Pragmatic Learning Theory: An Inquiry-Action Framework for Distributed Consumer Learning in Online Communities

We examine consumer social learning from distributed inquiry capabilities in online communities. Using an inquiry-action framework rooted in pragmatic learning theory, we longitudinally trace community inquiry processes and their link to individual action in six health-related online communities. Our interpretive analyses reveal leaps and lapses in social learning. Generative learning is evident when collective productive inquiry is linked to expanding individual action repertoires. Individual disengagement diverts inquiry and disrupts inquiry-action linkages, creating lapses that degenerate learning. Within these extremes, instances of individual faltering are evident when inquiry is productive but individuals fail to leverage inquiry for empowered action.

What Goes Around Comes Around: Understanding Trust-Value Dilemmas of Market Relationships

The emerging cultural, societal, and environmental milieu of the twenty-first-century marketplace presents coping challenges for even strong and well-established companies. Few, if any, attempts have been made to examine systematically a firms symbiotic link with society by focusing on the complexity and interconnectedness of its disparate market relationships. To facilitate a grounded approach to such modeling, the authors use a trust–value framework to analyze market relationships, the interconnections among them, and the trust–value dilemmas that arise in the context of two case studies: (1) the 3M companys decision to pull Scotchgard from the market and (2) the Los Angeles Unified School District versus the Coca-Cola Company regarding the sale of soft drinks on school premises. The authors chronologically assembled and systematically analyzed data from public, secondary, and industry sources, using relationship marketing theory principles to develop the individual case studies. The analyses indicate that the trust–value framework is a useful foundation for theorizing and empirically examining the complexity of a firms market relationships by revealing interesting trust–value dilemmas and dynamics that connect the disparate relationships. The authors discuss implications for research and practice.

A Netnographic Exploration: Listening to Online Consumer Conversations

ABSTRACT Consumer conversations on a health-related electronic bulletin board are analyzed to investigate two key processes instrumental to creativity: analogical reasoning and reflective reframing. A netnographic analysis of these two creative strategies revealed two consistent themes of physician partnership and personal outcomes. To study the implications of these two themes for hospital communications, a content analysis of 40 comprehensive cancer-center Web sites was conducted. The results demonstrate a gap: although patients in online conversations emphasize physician partnership and personal outcomes, the majority of hospital communications emphasize reputation, expertise, and compassion. Strategic recommendations grounded in consumer conversations conclude the article.

Like Me … Like Me Not: The Role of Physician Likability on Service Evaluations

The authors investigate the influence of physician likability on service evaluations. Past research suggests that source likability is a peripheral cue and as such might be inappropriate for high-involvement services. However, the present study suggests that, given positive performance, physician likability has a significant influence on service evaluations. Managerial implications and future research directions conclude the paper.

The effects of aging on brand attitude measurement

Memory impairments in the elderly have been widely studied in the past. This study focuses on the effects of these memory impairments on the ability of mature consumers to respond to brand attitude scales. An experimental study investigates the impact of age and type of measurement scale on responses to brand attitude scales. Groups of seniors within the elderly market (55‐65, 66‐75, and over 75) are investigated as opposed to contrasting two extreme points on the continuum, namely the elderly versus the young. Three commonly used attitude scales were manipulated to determine how age interacts with the form of scale to generate response bias. Three types of response bias; extremity response, acquiescence, and item non‐response were investigated. Results indicate a significant interaction between age and type of scale. Implications of these results for those involved in marketing to seniors are highlighted.

Accentuate the Positive: Elderly Responses to Health Communications

Elderly responses to differentially framed health communications are the focus of this research. Systematic processing deficiencies imposed by the aging process are suggested to contribute to elderly preference for positively framed advocacies. Health motivation, health knowledge, and health efficacy are proposed to enhance the facilitative effects of positive framing on elderly adoption of healthy behaviors. A significant interaction between age and framing as well as significant influence of health motivation, health knowledge, and health efficacy on the persuasiveness of positively framed advocacies lend support to the arguments. Implications for research on aging and public policy conclude the paper.

Effects of airline bankruptcies: an event study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of bankruptcies on the market share effects of rival firms in the airline industry.Design/methodology/approach – Employing event study methodology, the authors examine the impact of bankruptcies on major and minor airlines by analyzing four different types of events: filing for bankruptcy by major carriers; coming out of bankruptcy by major carriers; shutdown by major carriers; and filing of bankruptcy by minor carriers.Findings – Empirical results indicate that filing for bankruptcy by major carriers and shutdown by major carriers resulted in positive abnormal returns around the announcement dates for rival firms, while coming out of bankruptcy by major carriers resulted in negative impact. As expected, the last type of events involving filing for bankruptcy by minor carriers resulted in insignificant abnormal returns.Originality/value – The results point to the importance of systematically incorporating bankruptcies by competitive firms in ...

Closing the Marketing Strategy-Tactics Gap: An Institutional Theory Analysis of Pharmaceutical Value Chain

This chapter identifies a strategy-tactics gap in most previous studies of pharmaceutical marketing, and addresses it by systematically analyzing the marketing strategies used in practice with the help of a unique dataset of court discovery documents unsealed in a recent litigation. Adopting an institutional theory perspective, we examine the dominant logic that underlies pharmaceutical marketing strategies, and contrast it with the organizing logics of the value chain partners. Four distinct marketing strategies with carefully crafted interdependencies emerge from our analysis: (1) market penetration strategy involving a focus on segmentation and penetration, (2) evidence-based strategy involving production of science, (3) medical education strategy involving development and dissemination of standards of care, and (4) surrogate selling strategy involving leverage of peer-to-peer influence among target physicians. Together, the strategies uncovered in our analysis provide coherence to the observed marketing tactics and show that they are largely consistent with the logic of consequences which conflicts with the logic of appropriateness guiding the actions of the value chain partners. The institutional theory analysis shows that: (1) pharmaceutical value chain is characterized by conflicted logics, (2) that are amplified by pharmaceutical marketing strategies thereby, (3) inviting regulatory intervention to constrain and restrict pharmaceutical marketing efforts. We propose an open systems framework that elaborates on value chain interdependencies and compare it with the economic framework that characterizes most current research. We close the chapter with an agenda for future research into the theory and practice of pharmaceutical marketing.

Cross Cultural Differences in Health Literacy and Consumers’ Empowered Engagement in the Management of Health

Perhaps no other area of human consumption offers more promise for transformative consumer welfare and, at the same time, presents more challenges for achieving it than consumers’ engagement in medical decisions that directly affect their health (Herzlinger 2006; Berenson 2005; Enthoven 2004). Consumers, even those who are literate by conventional standards of education and communication, are often functionally illiterate as they generally lack sufficient specialized knowledge to autonomously select medical professionals or evaluate medical advice (McCray 2005).