Combined effects of franchise management strategies and employee service performance on customer loyalty: a multilevel perspective

Although franchisee performance is likely to be influenced by franchisors’ management strategies, little is known about whether and how franchisors’ strategies affect franchisee employees’ performance. This study examines the combined effects of three franchisor management strategies, namely innovative culture, support services and autonomy on service performance of the franchisee store employees and the loyalty of their customers. Data were collected from a total of 38 employees and 679 customers of 25 franchisee stores. The study employs multilevel analysis on a nested data-set created by matching customer data with employee data for each store. The results reveal that customer loyalty of a franchisee store is positively influenced by the service performance of its employees and the support services received by the employees of the store from its franchisor. On the other hand, it has been found that franchisor management strategy such as innovative culture and autonomy negatively influence customer loyalty of the franchisee store. The paper discusses relevant theoretical and managerial implications of the findings

An Investigation of The Phenomenon of Customer Relationship Fading and Its Restoration

This research conceptualizes the phenomenon of customer relationship fading in terms of why and how do customer relationships fade over time and indicates how firms can restore such fading relationships. This study revealed a three stage process of customer relationship fading, unfolded drivers, feelings and thoughts of the customers across the fading process. It also identified six restoration efforts and assessed their effectiveness to restore relationships from each of the stages of the fading process

Impact of Gender, Age and Rank on Job Satisfaction in Bangladesh Perspective

Job satisfaction is a pleasant state of mind of an employee derived from his or her job experience. It depends on what one expects and what he or she receives. This study is to explore the impact of gender, age and rank on job satisfaction in organizations operating in Bangladesh. 255 valid responses were collected on random basis from respondents of different organizations on four questions. It was found that most of the employees in Bangladesh were satisfied with their job. It was also found that neither gender by itself, nor when it was considered with age nor when it was considered with rank nor when it was considered with age and rank together, had any statistical significant effect on determination of job satisfaction. However, age and rank either individually or jointly, were found having statistically significant impact on job satisfaction

How Envy Encourages Beliefs in Unethical Consumer Behaviour:The Role of Religiosity and Moral Awareness

The literature on ethics currently recommends more research on the emotional underpinnings of ethical decision-making. The current study takes up the challenge, addressing this research gap by theorising and empirically testing, through four studies (with different methodologies, e.g., survey design, lab experiment), the link between envy—malicious versus benign—and beliefs in unethical consumer behaviour as moderated by religiosity. We show that while malicious envy enhances different types of unethical consumer beliefs, this effect is dampened by the presence versus absence of religiosity (when religiosity was both measured and manipulated through thoughts of God priming). We also show that moral awareness mediates this effect. The findings contribute to theory and practice.</p

Consumers’ digital self-extension and pro-brand social media engagement – the role of culture

Purpose: Digital self-expression, recently one of the most important research themes, is currently under-researched. In this context, this study aims to propose a parsimonious research model of self-extension tendency, its drivers and its outcomes. The model is tested in the context of social media engagement intentions (liking, sharing and commenting) with focal brands and across individualist versus collectivist cultures. Design/methodology/approach: The model is tested in two individualist cultures (N = 230 and 232) and two collectivist cultures (N = 232 and 237) by conducting surveys in four countries (Australia, USA, Qatar and India). Nike and Ray-Ban are the focal brands studied, with Facebook serving as the targeted social networking site (SNS) platform. Findings: Self-monitoring and self-esteem are found to drive the self-extension tendency across cultures, with stronger effects in the individualist culture than in the collectivist culture. The self-extension tendency has a relatively stronger positive influence on social media engagement intentions in the individualist culture than in the collectivist culture. This tendency is also found to mediate the link between self-monitoring, self-extension and social media engagement intentions across both cultures, albeit in different ways. In collectivist culture, self-monitoring’s influence on the self-extension tendency is moderated by public self-consciousness. The study’s findings have important theoretical and practical implications. In individualist culture, self-monitoring’s influence on the self-extension tendency is moderated by public self-consciousness. Research limitations/implications: The present findings confirm that the tendency to incorporate the brand into one’s self-concept and to further extend the self is indeed contingent on one’s cultural background. The role of public self-consciousness may vary between individualist and collectivist cultures, something recommended by past research for empirical testing. Practical implications: Managers can leverage this research model to entice pro-brand social media engagement by nurturing consumers’ digital selves in terms of maneuvering their self-extension tendency and its drivers, namely, self-monitoring and self-esteem. Second, promoting the self-extension tendency and its drivers varies across cultures, with this finding offering practical cultural nuances supporting marketing managers’ decisions. Originality/value: This is one of the pioneering studies that tests a cross-cultural parsimonious model based on theories of self-extension, self-monitoring and self-esteem, especially within the context of brand engagement intentions on an SNS platform

An analysis of the labour market and its policy of Bangladesh

Labor market policy is significant for a country’s higher investment and economic growth. The labor forces of Bangladesh are splited in different sectors like agriculture, industry, service sectors, foreign wage earners, etc. But the labor market of Bangladesh is suffering from different types of problems like wage discriminations, existence of child labor, lack of workforce security, lack of updated information, lack of technology, and so forth. This paper is an attempt to highlight different issues and problems of Bangladesh labor market. It also focuses on the analysis of the labor market and the contribution of different sectors in national GNP. The paper also pinpoints on the different problems of Bangladeshi wage earners in foreign countries, their remittance and their contribution in national GNP. Finally, the paper attempts to recommend some policy measures to handle the pertaining problems of different sectors and for the smooth development of the same

Women involvement in dry fish value chain approaches towards sustainable livelihood

Coastal fisherwomen of Bangladesh are marginalized yet they play a significant role in different levels of dry fish marketing chain. This study covers seven different villages of Cox’s bazaar districts. A total of 280 women fishers among - 140 fisherwomen and 140 women workers, were selected for the study. The paper applies different aspects of DFID Sustainable livelihood model in the study areas to learn the livelihood pattern of sample respondents and explores to what extent the respondents have access to these basic livelihood assets like physical, natural, financial, social and human capital. It points out that the sample women are involved in different income generating activities like drying, sorting and grading, cleaning and salting. It focuses on respondents opinion regarding the factors that affect their ability to adopt different livelihood strategies like natural resource based strategy, non-natural resource based strategy and migration strategy. Finally it suggests some innovative marketing strategies to overcome the vulnerable situation faced by the fisherwomen and adopt better livelihood strategies and thus attain sustainable livelihood through better livelihood outcome