Embrace•perform•model: Complexity theory, contrarian case analysis, and multiple realities ☆

This essay describes tenets of complexity theory including the precept that within the same set of data X relates to Y positively, negatively, and not at all. A consequence to this first precept is that reporting how X relates positively to Y with and without additional terms in multiple regression models ignores important information available in a data set. Performing contrarian case analysis indicates that cases having low X with high Y and high X with low Y occur even when the relationship between X and Y is positive and the effect size of the relationship is large. Findings from contrarian case analysis support the necessity of modeling multiple realities using complex antecedent configurations. Complex antecedent configurations (i.e., 2 to 7 features per recipe) can show that high X is an indicator of high Y when high X combines with certain additional antecedent conditions (e.g., high A, high B, and low C)-and low X is an indicator of high Y as well when low X combines in other recipes (e.g., high A, low R, and high S), where A, B, C, R, and S are additional antecedent conditions. Thus, modeling multiple realities-configural analysis-is necessary, to learn the configurations of multiple indicators for high Y outcomes and the negation of high Y. For a number of X antecedent conditions, a high X may be necessary for high Y to occur but high X alone is almost never sufficient for a high Y outcome

Advancing Customer Experience Theory: Five-Way Conversations in Two-Person Customer-Marketer Talk

This study advances customer experience theory (CET) by configuring research on talk, storytelling, customer-marketer interactions, and customer assessments of experiences in encounters with sales and hospitality/service representatives. Customers’ introspections and assessments of their meetings with marketers constitutes one genre of storytelling that include not only surface talk between two persons but surface and subsurface (nonconscious) talk between persons and within self. Practical implications include creative storytelling scripts for performing in sales and service training programs in firms and classroom contexts. Given the centrality of face-to-face meetings in many consumer shopping contexts (e.g., cars, houses, medical services; campus visits by high school seniors and parents, insurance selling, clothes shopping; tourism and hospitality), advancing CET and personal selling/buying effectiveness represent worthwhile pursuits. The study is one step forward in reducing the relative scarcity of extant research on customer-marketer talk. Empirically, the study includes customers’ thick descriptions of their self-marketer interactions via subjective personal introspections (SPI) and assessments of these exchanges. Interpersonal verbalization is only one of five levels of processing that take place when a researcher observes a decision-maker in a marketing organization interact with a decision-maker in a customer organization. At level 2, the speaker, listener, and observer are consciously editing thoughts as well as surfacing unconscious thoughts to combine and change conscious editing of what is said, heard, or observed. Level 3 is an automatic process in which unconscious thoughts are brought into working memory to mingle with conscious processing and to send some of the conscious processing into unconscious storage. Level 4 includes unconscious processing between or among individuals that do not become part of conscious processes or verbalization. Level 5 processing spreads activation within the person’s unconscious so that automatic thoughts and behaviors are set into motion without the individual being aware of the process. Customers’ introspections and assessments of their meetings with marketers constitutes one genre of storytelling that include not only surface talk between two persons but surface and subsurface (nonconscious) talk between persons and in within self. The study here includes customers’ thick descriptions of their self-marketer interactions via subjective personal introspections (SPI) and assessments of these exchanges. SPI uses the researcher as the subject of the study and allows for rich, thick, impressionistic narratives of the author’s own experiences in a particular context. Students in various marketing classes in five nations participated in a Trade Tales project. The Appendix provides a common set of instructions used by the Trade Tales Team members. All Trade Tales had a title page, abstract, story (with dialogue), five possible solutions with points awarded for choosing a particular solution and the rationale behind the choice, and surface (explicit) and deep (implicit/personal) assessments of the situation, story, and outcome assessments. Theory and practical implications: the participating student experiences “proper pleasure” in the re-telling of his or her story and also achieves better sense making and problem solving. The finalized versions of the Trade Tales can be used in other classes as case lets for studying customer-marketer interactions. The following case study illustrates one of the stories collected for the Trade Tales Team project. To achieve anonymity, the names of firms and persons are disguised. “AbsolutelyBest Ham to Pocatello, Idaho, USA: Arrival Delay in Customer\u27s Order” is the title of the case study. A customer goes on-line at firm’s (AbsolutelyBest) website and orders 9-lb ham to be delivered to daughter’s home in Pocatello, Idaho, on December 29th. Customer pays extra for two-day delivery service. Ham fails to arrive on December 29 due date. Customer asks for a credit on service not received. Bad weather hit most of the U.S. on December 28. What should the firm do? The full story appears in the paper with possible solutions for students to assess. Practical implications for Trade Tales include creative scripts for performing in sales and service training programs in firms and classroom contexts. Trade Tales are useful as case studies in classroom instruction. Given the centrality of face-to-face meetings in many consumer shopping contexts (e.g., cars, houses, medical services; campus visits by high school seniors, insurance selling; clothes shopping; tourism and hospitality), the relative scarcity of extant research on customer-marketer talk is surprising and represents a vacuum that researchers need to fill

Broadening the concept of luxury : Transformations and contributions to well-being

Luxury has always been an intrinsic part of human societies. Prior research shows how luxury transforms from being-to-having and owning-to-searching for meaningfulness via shifting from having-to-being and from owning-to-experiencing. The study here is a critical commentary of foundational literature that includes examining the ongoing luxury transformation in the ongoing COVID-19 era in a world of climate change and disaster displacements, environmental degradation, and awareness of future pandemics. Building on prior advances in luxury transformations and the macromarketing literature on well-being, this commentary takes a fresh look at the prevailing role of luxury and its accompanying well-being in Western European societies amid the progressing tripartite storm. This critical commentary serves to clarify and broaden luxury's meaning and roles in making the shift from a micro individualistic focus to a macromarketing sustainable foundation. Entering the fourth year of COVID-19, the commentary implies that luxury goes beyond experiencing to catalyze cherishing self-care, nurturing, and the well-being of others.Peer reviewe

A native-visitor in Western Australia: an account of an insider-outsider

Purpose – This study aims to apply confirmatory personal introspection (CPI) to illuminate the experiences of the authors as partial native-visitors to Western Australia. The native-visitor is the tourist who is able to see beyond Urry’s shallow conception of the Tourist Gaze through their lengthy immersion as “insiders” in the destination’s culture. In this paper, the experiences of two immigrants, the authors, to Western Australia illustrate the different perspectives of the Tourist Gaze 4.0. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses CPI, as this is a more reliable method of uncovering a traveler’s experiences than subjective personal introspection because CPI uses additional data sources such as written historical records and photographs for confirming the researcher’s accounts. In this study, accounts of both authors alongside photographs are used to both confirm and contrast their individual experiences. Findings – The paper demonstrates the varied forms of the tourist gaze, with an emphasis on that of the native visitor. The findings illustrate how individuals’ both maintain aspects of their original cultural identity and adopt those of the new country after an extended time living in that country. This enables individuals to see attractions and destinations from an insider perspective. Practical implications – This study shows how even after an extended period of time living in a new country, visitors may not have the cultural confidence to behave as local residents at tourist attractions and destinations, which could limit their engagement and enjoyment of these experiences. Marketers should take this into account in designing and promoting tourist experiences to visitors. Originality/value – CPI provides a valuable means for illustrating the range of perspectives within the Tourist Gaze 4.0. The method enables individuals’ rich experiences to be uncovered but at the same time uses multiple data sources to provide additional rigour

Dynamic pricing in regulated automobile insurance markets with heterogeneous insurers: Strategies nice versus nasty for customers ☆

This study examines a phenomenon in one nation's automobile insurance market where insurers adopt diverse pricing strategies in this regulated industry that does not allow for such diversions-a homogeneous, insurance industry in which a government authority sets the official pricing formula as well as all of the rating factors. Insurers use a claim coefficient that reflects previous claim records of policyholder as an implicit pricing tool to over/under charge new and repeat customers. The aim here is not so much to blow-the-whistle on pricing practices that violate regulations but to describe execution details of the practices and their outcomes. The results show that firm-level, systematic, price variances that occur differ from prices that follow from applying regulated individual-claim coefficients. Based on the unique firm-level pricing strategies, this study finds that some insurers are more nice to new customers and nasty to repeat customers to increase market shares while other insurers earn high profits by being nasty to repeat customers. The assumption that a behavioral primacy effect may exist in the market may guide some firms' pricing strategies

Applying configurational theory to build a typology of ethnocentric consumers

Purpose – Individuals showing high consumer ethnocentrism (CE) prefer domestic over foreign-made products and their preferences may contribute to barriers to international market entry. Therefore, how to identify such consumers is an important question. Shankarmahesh’s (2006) review reveals inconsistencies in the literature with regard to CE and its antecedents. To shed theoretical and empirical light on these inconsistencies, the purpose of this paper is to contribute two new perspectives on CE: first, a typology that classifies ethnocentric consumers by the extent to which they support government-controlled protectionism and consumer-controlled protectionism; and second, a configurational (recipe) perspective on the antecedents. Design/methodology/approach – The study applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of survey data from 3,859 consumers. The study contrasts the findings with findings using traditional statistical hypotheses testing via multiple regression analysis. Findings – The results reveal several configurations of antecedents that are sufficient for consistently explaining three distinct types of CE. No single antecedent condition is necessary for high CE to occur. Practical implications – The findings help global business strategists in their market entry decisions and in their targeting and segmentation efforts. Originality/value – The authors show the value of asymmetrical thinking about the relationship between CE and its antecedents. The results expand understanding of CE and challenge conventional net-effects thinking about its antecedents

Unconscious Thinking, Feeling and Behavior Towards Products and Brands: Introduction to a Journal of Brand Management Special Issue

This introduction reviews the motivating forces behind this issue, exploring the role of nonconscious consumer behavior in branding environments. The article establishes a foundation of unconscious research in psychology and consumer behavior, and then provides an introduction to the four articles that follow. The article concludes with a call to adopt an inclusive interpretive-positivistic stance to the study of unconscious consumer-brand behavior, attitudes and beliefs

Deepening Understanding of Certification Adoption and Non-Adoption of International-Supplier Ethical Standards

This study presents a theory of causally complex configurations of antecedent conditions influencing the adoption versus non-adoption of international supplier ethical certification-standards. Using objective measures of antecedents and outcomes, a large-scale study of exporting firms in the cut-flower industry in two South American countries (Colombia and Ecuador) supports the theory. The theory includes the following and additional propositions. No single (simple)-antecedent condition is sufficient for accurately predicting a high membership score in outcome conditions; the outcome conditions include a firm’s adoption or rejection of a product certification. No single (simple)-antecedent condition is necessary for accurately predicting high scores in the outcome condition. A few complex antecedent conditions (configurations) are sufficient but the occurrence of each is not necessary for accurately predicting high scores (e.g., adoption) in an outcome condition. Causal asymmetry of antecedent conditions indicating adoption versus non-adoption of specific ethical standards occurs—that is, causal conditions leading to rejection are not the mirror opposites of causal conditions leading to adoption

Rapha: weaving story strands of luxury

British cycling company Rapha presents itself as a premium brand offering high quality apparel, concierge travel services, boutique 'clubhouses' and beautiful publications. Since 2004, it has enjoyed year-on-year growth and in 2016 sales increased almost 30% to £63 million (Wood 2017). This chapter critiques how we can know that and know how (Roberts and Armitage 2016) Rapha is a luxury brand – contrary to its labelling as 'premium' – and how this can be established through socio-cultural sense-making of the brand offerings, through critical textual analysis. This chapter interrogates how Rapha has developed a luxurious 'storyworld' (Abbott 2008) and charts how story strands of luxury are woven through its material artefacts, texts and environments, acting as a symbolic 'red thread' that cohesively binds the brand together