Ritual blessings with companion animals

This research focuses on the blessing of animals. Blessings are a form of human-animal shared experience that manifests a belief in animal spirituality. Using a multi-method approach, this article investigates the presence of themes that previous research has identified on animal companions. The present study identifies new themes in the context of human-animal sharing experiences by focusing on a recurring ritual blessing event over a six-year period. Ritual blessings reflect the animal companion-consumer relationship lifecycle, particularly the consumption and disposition stages. The emotional bonds between humans and their companion animals affect many consumption-related lifestyle, diet, leisure, and healthcare decisions.

ADVERTISING'S EFFECT ON THE PRODUCT EVOLUTIONARY CYCLE

Criticism of the product life cycle (PLC) concept concerns problems with theory, empirical validation, and practical use. It has been suggested that the product evolutionary cycle (PEC), an alternative concept based on the field of biology, provides a more complete picture of marketing mix effects and competition on product sales (Tellis and Crawford 1981 ). In this research, the U.S. cigarette industry is used as the arena in which to assess empirically the PEC framework. Advertising-sales causation is tested on three levels of segment competition: (1) individual brand (2) intracategory, and (3) intercategory competition. Our findings indicate that more distantly related "organisms" compete as well as those closely related in terms of background. Specifically, we demonstrate a gradual but marked decrease in the effect of advertising on sales as products with more distant lineage co-exist and compete. The PEC is demonstrated to be an information-laden framework to use in making marketing mix decisions

To Extend or Not to Extend: Success Determinants of Brand Line Extensions

12th most cited article published in JMR in 1994 (out of 150) as of Sept 2010</p