Card-Contingent Discounts As Sources Of Customer Satisfaction And Dissatisfaction: An Exploratory Inquiry

The reported exploratory study was undertaken to illuminate the effects of card-contingent discounts (CCDs) on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction.  CCDs are price reductions on certain items that are given only to customers who present a card issued by the seller.  Results from our survey of 953 grocery store patrons indicate that shoppers tend to frame CCDs as price reductions to which they are entitled; denying discounts is judged unfair.  Typical customers are content, rather than delighted, when CCDs are granted and are disappointed or annoyed when CCDs are withheld.  CCDs, therefore, seem more likely to engender dissatisfaction than enhance satisfaction

Ethical Reputation, Not Fees Drive Auditor Selection At Inc. 500 Companies

Acquiring a new client is an arduous task.  Accordingly, losing an important client can be devastating to a firm and demoralizing to the accounting team assigned to the client, particularly if the client represents a significant portion of the firm’s revenue stream.  This research study reflects the concern of CEOs that poor customer service can result in firing the present accounting firm. Besides completing the work required by the client, the accounting firm needs to build the perception of being a problem-solver and an initiator of ideas that markedly helps a client’s overall financial health and well-being.  To do otherwise will result in the client putting its need for professional services “out to bid.&rdquo

Nintendo’s Next Move

In the 1980s and 1990s, Nintendo was dominating the video game industry with a market share of 90 per cent. Since that time, market share has dropped substantially with new competitors, new technology and changing consumer preferences. This case examines the history of Nintendo including its loss of market share in a rapidly changing industry

An Investigation into How the Modes of Persuasion and Valence affect Perceptions of Online Reviews

Consumers ubiquitously rely on assessments provided by strangers when seeking knowledge or making consumption decisions. Whether buying a car or a toaster, or choosing a restaurant, most consumers would feel lost if they attempted to make these decisions without first seeking verification via an online review. Despite the importance of online reviews in consumers’ daily lives, research on the effectiveness of online reviews is still in elementary stages and questions remain regarding how online review content style affects consumer judgments. Correspondingly, little is known about how message construction (e.g., rhetorical strategies) affects consumer judgments. Using an experimental design, this paper provides a valuable contribution to online review literature by examining the effects of Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion (referred to as “modes” in the manuscript: ethos, pathos, and logos), in conjunction with valence (positive vs. negative), on review usefulness and trustworthiness. To conduct the experiment, a full-factorial between-subjects design was used, resulting in 14 discrete conditions based on modes and valence combinations. In addition, general attitude towards online reviews was included as a control variable. Extensive pretesting and a pilot study were employed to refine stimuli and study design. The study was administered via Qualtrics and TurkPrime to collect data from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) participants with recommended precautions for improving sample quality (e.g., restrict to one IP address). The MTurk data collection resulted in 893 usable questionnaires after accounting for the attention and manipulation checks and sample sizes per cell ranged from 59 to 67 participants. MANCOVA was used to assess manipulation effects on review uselessness and trustworthiness. Multivariate significance was demonstrated for modes, the attitudinal control variable, and valence while univariate results further indicate that both modes and valence significantly affected usefulness and trustworthiness perceptions. Examination of pairwise comparisons suggest a superior positive effect for the logos appeal on both usefulness and trustworthiness. When taking into account valence, results revealed that the superior positive effect of the logos appeal seems to be isolated to negative reviews. This study’s findings highlight the value consumers place on logos appeals over other appeals for negative reviews in an online review context. Organizations should be relieved that participants found pathos appeals in negative reviews to be less trustworthy and usefulness. A supplementary analysis suggests that people perceive pathos-laden negative reviews to be left by a “bad” customer. Organizations and online review platforms should consider using message framing strategies to increase the likelihood of logos appeals to enhance the value that reviews have for consumers

Measuring Country Images to Explain Product Attitudes

Business Administratio

Exploring Impact Philanthropy, Altruistic, Hedonic, and Egoistic Motivations to Support Animal Causes

Due to unpredictable economic turbulence, it is imperative that nonprofit organizations understand and implement segmentation practices to better target donors to maintain continual growth in donations. While such strategies are well implemented in for-profit arenas, non-profit organizations still lag behind in the implementation of segmentation and targeting practices. The targeting of donors by nonprofit organizations tends to be unfocused and sporadic at best. Early research on the practice of segmenting potential donors suggest that nonprofit firms should resist profiling their existing donors based upon demographic characteristics alone and should rely on examining demographic variables in relation to meaningful motivational forces. This study addresses a gap in the literature by examining altruistic, hedonic, impact philanthropy, and egoistic motives in an exploratory fashion to investigate which motivational are the strongest among animal sanctuary supporters. These motivational dimensions are also examined relative to past visitation behavior and membership. In addition, gender and age are examined in the study. A cross-sectional sample of 109 animal sanctuary supporters is obtained from an avian sanctuary in the Southeastern United States and paired sample t-tests were used to examine the relative effects of the motivational dimensions. Results indicate that impact philanthropy was a stronger motivational force than hedonic, altruistic, and egoistic motives. No substantial difference was found between hedonic and altruistic motives while both hedonic and altruistic motives were substantially greater than egoistic motives. In addition, hedonic motives were found to have a substantial relationship with sanctuary membership while past visitation was strongly associated with both impact philanthropy and hedonic motives. As shown in past research women rated higher on altruistic motives while no difference in motives was found based upon age. The results of this study indicate that impact philanthropy may be a major motivational force for donating to animal causes. This finding suggests that animal causes should focus on appeals attractive to impact philanthropists, individuals motivated by the desire to make a difference

Gender-specific effects of HIV protease inhibitors on body mass in mice

Protease inhibitors, as part of highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART), have significantly increased the lifespan of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected patients. Several deleterious side effects including dyslipidemia and lipodystrophy, however, have been observed with HAART. Women are at a higher risk of developing adipose tissue alterations and these alterations have different characteristics as compared to men. We have previously demonstrated that in mice the HIV protease inhibitor, ritonavir, caused a reduction in weight gain in females, but had no effect on male mice. In the present study, we examined the potential causes of this difference in weight gain. Low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDL-R) null mice or wild-type C57BL/6 mice, were administered 15 mug/ml ritonavir or vehicle (0.01% ethanol) in the drinking water for 6 weeks. The percent of total body weight gained during the treatment period was measured and confirmed that female LDL-R gained significantly less weight with ritonavir treatment than males. In wild type mice, however, there was no effect of ritonavir treatment in either sex. Despite the weight loss in LDL-R null mice, ritonavir increased food intake, but no difference was observed in gonadal fat weight. Serum leptin levels were significantly lower in females. Ritonavir further suppressed leptin levels in (p \u3c 0.05). Ritonavir did not alter serum adiponectin levels in either gender. To determine the source of these differences, female mice were ovariectomized remove the gonadal sex hormones. Ovariectomy prevented the weight loss induced by ritonavir (p \u3c 0.05). Furthermore, leptin levels were no longer suppressed by ritonavir (p \u3c 0.05). This study demonstrates that gonadal factors in females influence the hormonal control of weight gain changes induced by HIV protease inhibitors in an environment of elevated cholesterol

TEF, Vol. 5 No. 1

The fifth issue of the annually published literary magazine TEF.https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/tef/1004/thumbnail.jp

Specific Expression of Human Intelectin-1 in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma and Gastrointestinal Goblet Cells

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a fatal tumor. It is often hard to discriminate MPM from metastatic tumors of other types because currently, there are no reliable immunopathological markers for MPM. MPM is differentially diagnosed by some immunohistochemical tests on pathology specimens. In the present study, we investigated the expression of intelectin-1, a new mesothelioma marker, in normal tissues in the whole body and in many cancers, including MPM, by immunohistochemical analysis. We found that in normal tissues, human intelectin-1 was mainly secreted from gastrointestinal goblet cells along with mucus into the intestinal lumen, and it was also expressed, to a lesser extent, in mesothelial cells and urinary epithelial cells. Eighty-eight percent of epithelioid-type MPMs expressed intelectin-1, whereas sarcomatoid-type MPMs, biphasic MPMs, and poorly differentiated MPMs were rarely positive for intelectin-1. Intelectin-1 was not expressed in other cancers, except in mucus-producing adenocarcinoma. These results suggest that intelectin-1 is a better marker for epithelioid-type MPM than other mesothelioma markers because of its specificity and the simplicity of pathological assessment. Pleural intelectin-1 could be a useful diagnostic marker for MPM with applications in histopathological identification of MPM

American Society of Clinical Oncology/College ofAmerican Pathologists guideline recommendations forimmunohistochemical testing of estrogen andprogesterone receptors in breast cancer

Purpose: To develop a guideline to improve theaccuracy of immunohistochemical (IHC) estrogen receptor(ER) and progesterone receptor (PgR) testing in breastcancer and the utility of these receptors as predictivemarkers.Methods: The American Society of Clinical Oncologyand the College of American Pathologists convened aninternational Expert Panel that conducted a systematicreview and evaluation of the literature in partnership withCancer Care Ontario and developed recommendations foroptimal IHC ER/PgR testing performance.Results: Up to 20% of current IHC determinations ofER and PgR testing worldwide may be inaccurate (falsenegative or false positive). Most of the issues with testinghave occurred because of variation in preanalyticvariables, thresholds for positivity, and interpretationcriteria.Recommendations: The Panel recommends that ER andPgR status be determined on all invasive breast cancers andbreast cancer recurrences. A testing algorithm that relieson accurate, reproducible assay performance is proposed.Elements to reliably reduce assay variation are specified. It is recommended that ER and PgR assays be consideredpositive if there are at least 1% positive tumor nuclei in the sample on testing in the presence of expected reactivity of internal (normal epithelial elements) and external controls. The absence of benefit from endocrine therapy for women with ER-negative invasive breast cancers has been confirmed in large overviews of randomized clinical trials.(Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2010;134:907–922