The Warm Glow of Restaurant Checkout Charity

Checkout charity is a phenomenon whereby frontline employees (or self-service technologies) solicit charitable donations from customers during the payment process. Despite its growing ubiquity, little is known about this salient aspect of the service experience. The present research examines checkout charity in the context of fast-food restaurants and finds that, when customers donate, they experience a “warm glow” that mediates a relationship between donating and store repatronage. Study 1 utilizes three scenario-based experiments to explore the phenomenon across different charities and different participant populations using both self-selection and random assignment designs. Study 2 replicates with a field study. Study 3 examines national store–level sales data from a fast-food chain and finds that checkout fund-raising, as a percentage of sales, predicts store revenue—a finding consistent with results of Studies 1 and 2. Managers often infer, quite correctly, that many consumers do not like being asked to donate. Paradoxically, our results suggest this ostensibly negative experience can increase service repatronage. For academics, these results add to a growing body of literature refuting the notion that small prosocial acts affect behavior by altering an individual’s self-concept

The role of social media and brand equity during a product recall crisis: a shareholder value perspective

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you.Product recalls: companies fear them, customers hate them, and investors pay close attention to them. The goals of this dissertation are to examine whether and to what extent social media can hurt or help a company's shareholder value in the event of a product recall crisis and to provide insights into the role of brand equity as a potential moderator of the firm value impact. This study identifies and operationalizes four metrics of online WOM that may moderate the negative product recall effects: volume, valence, spread rate, and breadth. In addition, this study explores whether a company's engagement in online chatter potentially mitigates the negative effects of the social media. Finally, this study assesses whether social media effects are homogeneous across brands. Research to date has not yet considered whether the effects of social media are different for big versus small brands when assessing the negative impact of crisis events on firm value. The author utilizes an event study methodology from a sample of 186 product recall announcements reported in USASearch's product recall data. Online WOM data is collected from a social media company and firm value data is obtained from CRSP, COMPUSTAT, and 1/B/E/S. The findings suggest that product recalls result in significantly negative abnormal returns for firms. Furthermore, negative online WOM exacerbates the negative effects of product recall crises on firm value. The faster spread of online WOM also negatively affects firm value during product recalls. More importantly, such negative effects of the valence of online WOM on firm value are lower for big brands than small brands, indicating an insurance-like protection of shareholder value from big brands. In contrast, small brands benefit from the larger volume of online WOM, possibly due to overall brand awareness building. This dissertation contributes by highlighting the threats and opportunities presented by the new social media environment and the role of brand during a product recall crisis. This study provides practical implications for crisis management as well as theoretical insights for scholars in the field of product recall management and marketing communications

The Role of Social Media and Brand Equity During a Product Recall Crisis: A Shareholder Value Perspective

Utilizing an event study methodology of 185 product recall announcements, this study examines to what extent social media hurts a company’s shareholder value in the event of a product recall. In addition, we explore whether a company’s brand equity and engagement in online chatter potentially mitigate the negative effects of social media surrounding the recall. We operationalize four metrics of online word-of-mouth (WOM) that may moderate negative product recall effects: volume, valence, growth rate, and breadth. The findings suggest that product recalls result in significantly negative abnormal returns for firms. Furthermore, the volume, valence and growth rate of online WOM exacerbate this negative effect of a product recall on firm value. Most importantly, we find negative effects of the volume and the valence of online WOM on firm value are lower for brands with strong brand equity. Surprisingly, we find no effect of company involvement in mitigating the potential negative effects of social media during a product recall. Our findings highlight the threats of product recalls and demonstrate that building brand equity may help protect a company in the social media environment

How Consumers’ Styles of Thinking Can Control Brand Dilution

Understanding consumers’ ways of thinking can help identify strategies to limit brand damage and elicit more favorable reactions from disapproving consumers. Analytic thinkers’ beliefs about a brand are diluted when they see negative information; those of holistic thinkers remain unaffected. While both analytic and holistic thinkers blame the brand equally for quality and manufacturing problems, holistic thinkers are more likely to blame contextual factors outside of the brand than analytic thinkers. This ability of holistic thinkers to focus on the outside context is the reason why their brand beliefs are not diluted

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field