Yuliya Strizhakova

Branded Products as a Passport to Global Citizenship: Perspectives from Developed and Developing Countries

This article focuses on belief in brands as a passport to global citizenship, defined as a persons perception that global brands create an imagined global identity. The authors assess the effects of this belief on the importance consumers assign to branded products and also examine the antecedent effects of cultural openness and consumer ethnocentrism. Their work focuses on the global youth market in the developing countries of Romania, Ukraine, and Russia and the developed U.S. market. The findings contribute to a broadened understanding of branding in a global marketplace by examining the associations between beliefs about global brands and the importance consumers attach to branded products in their daily lives.

Drivers of Local Relative to Global Brand Purchases: A Contingency Approach

Consumers around the world are choosing between local versus global brands in the marketplace. The authors draw on the dual-drivers theory of consumer choice and global consumer culture theory to offer a sociocultural-historical perspective on purchases of local (relative to global) brands. Their framework focuses on two local–global consumer values (ethnocentrism and global connectedness) and the identity- and quality-signaling functions of local (relative to global) brands. The authors argue for a contingency approach such that the effects of these local–global consumer values are moderated by country level of economic development and product category symbolism. This research uses consumer-level data (n = 2,197) and country-level data (from Euromonitors Global Market Information Database) from seven countries (Australia, Brazil, China, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). They find that purchases of local (relative to global) brands are predicated on local–global consumer values, mediated by perceptions of the identity function of local (relative to global) brands, and moderated by the countrys level of economic development and product category symbolism.

Coping with service failures: The role of emotional intelligence, self‐efficacy and intention to complain

Purpose – This study seeks to draw on the theories of personality to investigate antecedents and outcomes of consumer coping in instances of service failure. Specifically, the authors focus on the effects of emotional intelligence and self‐efficacy on three coping strategies – active, expressive, and denial. The authors further investigate the effects of coping strategies on consumer intention to complain.Design/methodology/approach – An online panel of 252 respondents representative of the Australian population participated in this study. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze data and test hypothesized relationships.Findings – Emotional intelligence has a positive association with active and expressive coping strategies but a negative relationship with denial. Expressive coping leads to greater complaining, whereas denial decreases it. Furthermore, consumer self‐efficacy mediates the relationship between emotional intelligence and active coping strategy. In contrast, the effect of self‐effica...

And now, goodbye

While most sponsorship research focuses on the initiation and maintenance of properties and the brands that sponsor them, little is known about how brands fare when they terminate sponsorship relationships. Building on balance theory and attribution theory, we examine contextual characteristics that mitigate negative effects of sponsor exit, including the brand’s motives for sponsorship, sponsorship duration and the number of sponsors supporting the event. The results of two experimental studies show that, although exit generally harms attitudes towards the exiting brand, contextual characteristics along with the consumer’s involvement with the domain of the event shape differential consumer responses to sponsor exit. The findings have implications for sponsorship theory as well as practical implications for sponsored properties and the brands they seek to attract and maintain as sponsors.

Reclaiming the Future: Understanding Customer Forgiveness of Service Transgressions

Service transgressions, and how customers respond to them, are of ongoing interest to researchers and practitioners. However, whether and how customers forgive such transgressions remains unexplored. Grounding our investigation in interdisciplinary research on forgiveness, and leveraging self-determination theory as an enabling theoretical foundation, we analyze 34 in-depth interviews with customers who experienced transgressions in the health-care, financial, and retailing sectors. We conceptualize customer forgiveness as a motivational process involving customers’ relinquishing of vengeful thoughts and feelings about transgressors. Four distinct pathways of forgiveness emerge as follows: forgiveness as transgressor’s atonement, as disillusionment, as self-healing, and as grace. Customers anchor their forgiveness pathways in motivations that are either self-focused (autonomous) or transgressor-focused (controlled). Each pathway reflects differences in customers’ internal reconciliations of the transgression. Further, we demonstrate the role of transgression circumstances, service recovery, and broader marketplace realities in customer forgiveness. We identify the key underlying moral premise of each pathway. Finally, we show how each forgiveness pathway impacts restoration of customer-service provider relationships.

Being Socially Responsible in Russia: Does it Matter to Flobal or Local Firms?

Many multinational corporations that associate their brands with social causes in developed countries do not emphasize or disclose their socially responsible actions in emerging markets. However, increasing globalization and global media are likely to make consumers aware of corporate actions regardless of whether companies engage in them in one’s country or in other parts of the world. Our goal is to assess effectiveness of cause-related green marketing by global and local firms in Russia. The study uses an experimental between-subjects design in which a company (global vs. local), a non-profit foundation supporting the cause (global, local, or none) and the social cause (global, local, or none) were manipulated.

Insights into Gendered Consumption: Modeling Retailer Outcomes and Consumer Shopping Characteristics

The study focuses on modeling the attitude-behavior model of gendered consumption. We find that age is a strong moderator of female lingerie purchases. Although hedonic consumption predicts total purchases among segments, its effects and mean value are significantly lower among older females. For younger females, brand involvement, shopping satisfaction, propensity to shop at expensive stores, product attributes, and the fitting process positively predict hedonic consumption, whereas importance of store advice decreases this enjoyment. For older females, only product attributes and brand involvement positively impact hedonic consumption. Although the fitting process increases satisfaction among older females, this satisfaction does not lead to higher levels of enjoyment. Product managers and retailers should be cognizant of such age differences in gendered consumption and consider them in tailoring their atmospherics and marketing campaigns.