Search

This paper systematises the theoretical perspectives that inform the consumer-object relationship (C-OR) debate and its evolutionary trajectories to organise how a theory of the object has been developed in marketing and consumer research. We build on a diachronic critical reading of the key turning points in the debate to conduct a systematic review, combining a bibliometric and semantic-lexicographic analysis. Our analysis organises the contribution that each theoretical perspective offered to the development of a theory of the object, highlighting the interplays, contrasts, mesh-ups, and distinctions in terms of theoretical underpinnings, vocabularies, and ideological viewpoints. In so doing, it raises awareness about the significance of embracing diverse theoretical perspectives to guide further inquiry on the expanding role of smart and technological objects in C-OR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketers today are increasingly using storytelling to engage their audiences. However, the design of narrative visuals is often inspired by a text-centric understanding of narratives. Despite the fast increase in visual content and the distinct processing it induces, extant research on visual narrativity remains fragmented, lacking a comprehensive framework to explain how a single still image can convey a narrative. Our literature review addresses this gap through the lens of narrative transportation theory. Based on a systematic review of 64 articles from marketing and adjacent disciplines, the authors propose that an image must narrate, act, and resonate (NAR) to stimulate narrative processing and transport viewers into its narrative. They also identify specific visual features that can facilitate this process and explore how characteristics of the storyteller, story receiver, and story settings can influence the strength of visual narrative transportation (VNT). Finally, the authors highlight affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses of transported viewers. This research extends narrative transportation theory to the visual domain, offering practical design principles that can be easily applied by marketing professionals. It also outlines an actionable research agenda for marketing scholars to further explore visual narrativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors detail the theme of mitigation of negative effects of maximization in marketing. The concepts are defined, a history of mitigation in marketing research is presented, as well as an overview of the articles presented in the special issue and an agenda for future research in this area.

We explore marketing activity at the micro level as it contributes to the co-creation of sustainability and leads to transformational shifts towards sustainable futures. Utilising a value co-creation lens our study implements a novel four phase case research process. Three sustainable fashion brands are analysed via brand-generated content on their Instagram accounts, through interviews with thirty self-confessed brand enthusiasts and using consumer focus groups. Analysis provides insights into how sustainability is co-created between brands and consumers demonstrating that marketing and brands have the power to harness sustainability and instigate change. The paper contributes an innovative 'Co-creating sustainable futures' framework providing a platform to implement marketing activity and future research by marketing/brand managers and researchers committed to sustainability and initiating transformation towards sustainable futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades, marketing literature has persistently been interested in how marketers and consumers alike engage with the past through past-themed brands, products, and services. However, our knowledge on past-themed marketing is scattered and treated in largely separated literature streams on retro, heritage, nostalgia, and vintage. This article reviews marketing literature on retro, heritage, nostalgia, and vintage – and their ontological, methodological, and axiological underpinnings – to synthesise a differential overview of these streams and contribute shared future research directions for researching and understanding past-themed marketing. Thus, based on our review, we identify and discuss areas for future research on marketing the past, specifically concerned with authenticity complexities and marketing management perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature reviews are an essential feature of academic research because, fundamentally, the advancement of knowledge must be built on prior existing work, and to push the frontiers of knowledge, one must be clear as to where these frontiers presently are. By systematically analyzing, synthesizing, and summarizing bodies of related literature, hypotheses can be tested and/or new theories and insights developed. However, despite the recent increase in systematic review research in business and management, and particularly marketing literature, arguably, many reviews continue to be poorly undertaken and reported due to a lack of a rigorous modus operandi for their journal editors, reviewers, and readers. The purpose of this paper is twofold, first to offer marketing researchers and practitioners a modus operandi to better demonstrate the optimization of rigor when undertaking quantitative systematic review research, and second to represent a call-to-action for marketing scholarship to engage further with optimizing rigorous systematic review research in the future. The paper thereby contributes to marketing literature by offering researchers and practitioners a three-stage protocol to demonstrate the optimization of rigor when undertaking systematic review research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a popular management tool that is used in a variety of ways by firms, not-for-profits, and government. This study firstly provides an overview of the various ways in which the NPS is used. It then canvasses four concerns raised by researchers, authors and commentators about the NPS. These relate to (1) its presumed link to business growth, (2) the assumption that low NPS scores indicate negative word of mouth, (3) the weak association between stated likelihood to recommend and actual recommending, and (4) the claim that NPS is a superior metric to customer satisfaction. The evidence pertaining to those concerns is examined. The study then discusses another problem with the NPS that many practitioners are aware of, but has not been studied. The problem is that the counting method used to calculate the NPS introduces additional variation in scores compared to mean average likelihood-to-recommend scores. This additional variation occurs both across brands in a study, as well as for the same brand over survey waves. This variation is likely to be difficult for market research providers, or those who commission NPS work, to explain. The study concludes with alternative courses of action for NPS users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Journal of Market Research (IJMR) is celebrating its sixty-fifth anniversary. Over the past decade, the journal has experienced significant growth in readership, impact factor, citations, and submissions. While the majority of accepted papers come from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany, the journal aims to bridge the gap between academia and practice in the field of market research. In order to enhance its relevance and accessibility, IJMR will transition to an online-only format, adopt an interdisciplinary focus, provide guidelines for more user-friendly article formats, and publish a list of research priorities based on the perspectives of leading practitioners. [Extracted from the article]

Introduction As artificial intelligence and social media continue to expand into everyday life and pose further risk for credible information, educators, scholars, journalists, and politicians are increasingly focused on addressing [...]

Retro jerseys across many sports have grown increasingly popular in recent years and previous research has given credence to their use by sport organizations. Specifically, recent research has found the freshness and outdatedness of retro jerseys to impact consumer attitudes (Dwyer et al., 2020). Although nostalgia is at the core of literature on retro merchandise, scholars have yet to examine various types of nostalgia and their impact on retro merchandise. Therefore, the current study sought to assess the influence of nostalgia--and specifically its three dimensions personal, historical, and collective--on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions. An online sample of 434 participants were surveyed and results exhibited mixed findings, with the three dimensions of nostalgia varying in impact toward the outcomes of team attitude and purchase intentions. Also, examination of the role of age, income, and length of time as a fan were also explored with results exhibiting differences based upon consumer income and length of time as a fan. Although the results varied based on type of nostalgia and consumer outcome, it was clear that nostalgia plays a role in consumers' feelings toward their favorite team's merchandise. Further examination of these results are provided and suggestions for future research on the topic of sport retro apparel are discussed. Keywords: nostalgia, retro marketing, branding, logos, apparel, Introduction In late 2020, the National Hockey League (NHL), in collaboration with Adidas, unveiled reverse retro alternative jerseys for all 31 teams. The initiative was the first retro jersey rollout [...]

Retailer price promotions, and in particular multi-unit deals such as the ubiquitous "buy one, get one," are often criticized as a cause of food waste, presumably because they lure households into buying more than they can realistically consume. In this research, the authors combine field data and experiments to provide the first systematic test of this claim. The field data, which span eight frequently purchased perishable foods, show no evidence of a positive relationship between single-unit or multi-unit price promotions and food waste. In fact, households that took advantage of a multi-unit deal reported wasting less than did households paying regular prices (RPs), but only when the quantity purchased was larger than usual. Given this result, and that households also reported consuming and freezing more, the authors hypothesize that promotion-induced overbuying triggers a concern for food waste that encourages waste prevention. One experiment finds support for this mechanism. A second experiment shows that the effect on food waste concerns is moderated by perishability and versatility but unaffected by convenience and healthiness. Overall, then, this research invites regulators and other professionals to rethink their stance on price promotions and work with retailers to design smart campaigns that motivate waste awareness and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on the anomaly-first research methodology, which focuses on marketplace disruptions, in marketing research. The article also presents a paradigm development framework for paradigm shift. In the article, six stages of this framework are detailed which beings with seeking out the disruption-driven anomalies, developing new paradigms around these anomalies, and ultimately making these new paradigms legitimate.

This systematic literature review enhances paradigmatic/metaphysic analyses by examining how value-based commitments, intellectual personae, and stances impact the diversity, relevance, and consideration of ethics in gender research published by the top-tier marketing journals in the past 30 years. Theoretical contributions (1) explain how commitments to research values and practices constitute personae and particular stances toward research, (2) attribute value commitments to quantitative/positivist as well as qualitative/neohumanist research, and (3) implicate stances that favor particular theories and procedures and in turn enable the hierarchical development of gender research and its marginalization in the field. Recommendations elaborate the analytic, reflexive, and administrative training and research activities that will foster and reward more relevant, accurate, and ethical research on gender in the marketing academy and in industry. This work is of interest to persons dealing with gender identities, communities, and social issues, those working for greater gender representation and participation in firms and civic organizations, and those concerned with leveraging better marketing research for a better world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a rigorous and in-depth systematic review of the literature on Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT) and its applications in marketing research. Despite the widespread use of conventional models and theories in marketing research, motivational theories, such as BPNT, which have demonstrated significant effectiveness in driving motivation, have been relatively neglected. BPNT proposes that fulfilling basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (ACR) leads to intrinsic motivation, emotional stability, and strong attachment. Our systematic review identifies how the constructs underpinned by BPNT have been utilized, as well as what research designs, contexts, and methodologies have been applied in marketing research. By integrating BPNT into marketing research, the authors aim to provide researchers with much-needed directions for future research and advocate for its continued growth. Specifically, the review notes tensions in terms of contradictory findings, identifies major gaps, and operationalizes BPNT in marketing research by establishing a set of marketing priorities (provided in the form of testable propositions) in seven major domains under the lens of BPNT. As the first systematic literature review of its kind, this theoretical study serves as an essential reference and valuable resource for scholars and practitioners aiming to explore and integrate BPNT into their research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have ethnically diverse populations and marketing practitioners need to consider these diversities when undertaking research, particularly when exploring sensitive topics. In Australia, Indigenous Australians make up 3.3% of the population and are a commonly researched audience to gauge attitudes and ensure cultural offense does not occur due to unintended consequences of marketing activity. However, obtaining information from such a vulnerable group using quantitively based surveys is often inappropriate or insensitive. This paper introduces to Euro-western market researchers the concepts of flipping and yarning as a market research approach that has been used by Indigenous Australians for thousands of years. This circular market research approach demonstrates that ensuring a cultural understanding of the community can provide a foundation for a research approach that is 'considered' and respectful. It is hoped that this type of methodology can be used with other vulnerable communities as well as other diverse groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goat production is essential to South African rural livelihood despite being faced with numerous challenges. Goat trade is crucial for African rural households' welfare, and food security. The study aimed to assess market price determinants of live goats in three Eastern Cape Province district municipalities. A pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire obtained information from randomly selected 210 out of 350 goat farmers. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science to generate means, frequency, and percentage. Pearson's chi-square test was used to analyze farmers' demographic profiles, flock structure, and price determinants of goats. The results revealed that goat farming in the study areas was dominated by men (78%), and 43% were between 41 and 60 years. More than 40% of the respondents had advanced secondary education and more than 10 years of farming experience, holding between 2-5ha land with a household size ranging from 4-6 members. Regarding flock structure, female goats accounted for a higher proportion (53.2%) than their male counterparts (46.8%). Cash income (42.3%) was the main reason for keeping goats in the study areas. This is followed by traditional ceremonies purpose, while milk purpose was the least reason goat's farmers in the study area keep goats. Findings revealed that body size (p Key words: Income, size, colour, season, live goats, South Africa, INTRODUCTION There has been a rapid increase in human population within the past decades. Consequently, the rising demand for disposable income coupled with progressive urbanization has led to global demand [...]

While many companies are engaging in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, little attention has been given to assess whether the disclosure of evidence used to support ESG programs impacts public perceptions of corporate trust. For instance, does the provision of evidence to the impact of an initiative matter to individuals or is the mere act of developing and communicating an ESG program sufficient? Does providing evidence of more than one ESG initiative amplify the effects? Using a between-subjects experimental design, the results suggest there is a positive impact on public perceptions of trust when a company provides evidence of the impact of at least one ESG initiative. However, there were no enhanced effects on perceptions when evidence of the impact of more than one initiative was provided., INTRODUCTION ESG, or environmental concern (e.g., resource consumption reduction), social responsibility (e.g., impact on communities), and governance (e.g., code of conduct), is an ever-present acronym used in modern day marketing [...]

Sales tax is generally not included in the advertised price quoted to consumers in the United States. In contrast, value added taxes (VAT) are embedded into the price in most other countries. This article investigates how the two different pricing structures and consumers' decision-making process affect the intensity of price competition. The two pricing structures yield identical market outcomes with fast-computing consumers who are willing and able to recompute the exact sales tax each time there is a price change. With slow-computing consumers, prices and profits are higher when sellers quote and compete in prices without sales tax. In this case, a model extension with two-stage decision making shows that the entire tax burden is shifted to the consumers when they completely ignore sales tax during their initial search. Key words: price competition, price comparisons, sales tax, value added tax, fast and slow-computing consumers, mental accounting, inattention, consumer decision making JEL classification: D43, H29, L13, M3, 1. Introduction The last stage in the supply chain of any product or service is the final sale to the consumer. Governments levy a tax on this final transaction which [...]

An editorial is presented on the manuscript peer review process at the Journal of Marketing Research. Topics include the increase in number of manuscript submissions since 2010, a description of the review process, and a sampling of manuscripts was conducted to provide empirical results about the overall review process at the journal.

Ritual, which connects participants within brand communities, is a vehicle for creating and understanding time. Consumer and marketplace rituals have been theorised with respect to staging, enactment, outcomes, and place-making, but little consideration has been devoted to the timescapes that shape them. The study of time in marketing research is broadening beyond the chronos of chronology to the kairos of apperception or momentous liminality. We analyse distinct and interwoven chronos and kairos temporal strands experienced through the course of the vestaval ritual embedded within a brand community, in a plaiting process that ensures that contrasting temporalities co-exist, leaving the participant unmoored in time and resonant with deep personal significance of the moment. We theorise a temporal plaiting process and interpret its significance for ritual efficacy. We conclude with a discussion of research and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is home to 27 of the world's 28 poorest, marginalised and most vulnerable countries. There are limited studies on the challenges and opportunities of researching marginalised consumers in Africa, even though more than 440 million marginalised consumers consume products and services that require market research. This paper aims to critically identify and discuss the challenges and opportunities for researching marginalised consumers in Africa using insights from empirical studies conducted in various countries between 2009 and 2022. The paper proposes a conceptual framework that outlines the methodological and operational challenges and enablers for market research and concludes with practical guidelines of considerations that researchers should take for researching the marginalised in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cause-and-effect relationship between incentives and market research response rates is well documented. In general, we understand that - mediated by factors such as privacy and difficulty - the greater the compensation offered to participants, the greater propensity for task completion. However, there is little understanding of how the way in which an incentive is communicated impacts results. We believe studying this field will help insight industry practitioners who are often challenged by limited or fixed incentive budgets. By exploring and ranking framing methods, we aim to recommend to researchers the tactical options that will maximise return on investment. In this initial exploration, we have narrowed framing choices to a set identified by the field of behavioural economics. In particular, we investigate the relative impact of: (1) financial incentives, (2) the endowment effect, (3) social proof, (4) altruism and, (5) financial incentives plus loss aversion. These conditions can be considered to broadly fit within one of three categories: (a) financial incentives alone, (b) behavioural principles alone, (c) financial incentives plus behavioural principles. To replicate the real-world challenges of insight professionals, this was tested in an experimental design that sought to recruit existing Aegon customers into a new research panel. The experimental case study format also lends itself to high volumes. The results of this study are based on 91,289 recruitment emails delivered to Aegon customers across various weekday mornings. Each email contained either neutral information regarding the incentive to join - the opportunity to win up to £250 - or the same message framed using one of the experimental methods in test. Messages were repeated both in the subject line and the email body. Results were measured and analysed at the points of: (A) email open, (B) email click, (C) conversion as defined by screener completion, (D) conversion as defined by panel account created, and (E) engagement as defined by completing at least one task on the panel eligible for a point reward within 3 months of signup. Additionally, the unsubscribe rate was measured and compared across all messages. Prior to the launch of the study, our hypotheses were that email communications which utitlised the endowment effect, social proof or altruism would lead to higher conversion rates than messages regarding incentivisation. Further, we hypothesised that emails which utilised both financial incentives plus loss aversion framing in an additive capacity would deliver the highest conversion rate. Our analysis led to a rejection of all hypotheses. Ultimately, it was concluded that none of the tested framing effects performed significantly better, as per chi-squared tests, than the financial incentive group across open rate, click rate, conversion rate or engagement rate. However, the addition of loss aversion performed on par with the incentive only group for panel engagement. Further, the use of loss aversion, altruism and the endowment effect all led to significantly lower unsubscribe rates than the incentive only group. This led to a nuanced conclusion which surmised that the loss aversion tactic, when used in an additive capacity to a financial incentive, appears to offer the most balanced risk profile for research professionals, whilst the endowment effect, social proof and altruism offer moderate to worse risk profiles. Finally, we highlight the need for more proof in this field - suggesting that future efforts replicate the study with a general population sample or non-financial services case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trajectories of attention capture the accumulation of brand utility during complex decision-making tasks. Thus, attention trajectories, as reflected in eye movements, predict the final brand choice of 85% of consumers before they implement it. Even when observing eye movements in only the first quarter of the decision process, attention already predicts brand choice much better (45%) than chance levels (20%). This superior prediction performance is due to a "double attention lift" for the chosen brand: The chosen brand receives progressively more attention toward the moment of choice, and more of this attention is devoted to integrating information about the brand rather than to comparing it with other options. In contrast, the currently owned brand grabs attention early in the task, and its attention gain persists for brand-loyal consumers and shifts for brand-switching consumers. A new attention and choice model used in tandem with the Bayesian K-fold cross-validation methodology on eye-tracking data from 325 representative consumers uncovered these attention trajectory effects. The findings contribute to closing important knowledge gaps in the attention and choice literature and have implications for marketing research and managerial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of neoliberalism affecting the higher education sector, critical research in marketing and management remains dominated by Western Eurocentric theories. As a result, non-Western researchers are expected to socialise with the Western theoretical discourse to succeed and progress in Western academia. In this paper, we reflected on our personal experiences as early career researchers from Southeast Asia who have studied and are currently working in the UK as we navigate around the structural expectations, challenges, and strategies in pursuing our research. We merged our voices with those of other doctoral students from non-Western backgrounds in the discipline to present some coping mechanisms that researchers like us adopt to avoid failure in academia. We argue that the conformity to Western academia and its hidden struggles produce risk-averse junior researchers; thus, limiting creativity, diversity, and potential growth in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cryptocurrency market has undergone significant turbulence, characterized by enormous volatility shifts, as recently experienced during the COVID-19 shock. Although there is an abundant literature dealing with various aspects of cryptocurrencies, little attention has been devoted to understanding the interconnectedness among different cryptocurrencies, particularly the role of abrupt changes. This paper aims to fill this gap by conducting an intraday analysis to assess the contagion hypothesis within the cryptocurrency markets, with particular focus on the aprubt changes and whether it is a driver of co-aprubt changes in other markets. Specfically, we investigate four major cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Ripple) both prior to and during the COVID-19 shock, April 2019 to September 2020. Using the Diebold and Yilmaz methodology, we decompose the realized volatility into continuous and jump components, and examine how these spillovers evolve across cryptocurrency markets before and during the COVID-19 crisis. Our findings reveal that while the volatility and returns spillovers across the cryptocurrency market escalate during the crisis, there is a notable decrease in the jumps and co-jumps between cryptocurrencies. This suggests that the heightened interdependency observed is not rooted in fundamental factors. Morever, our findings show that spillover is especially prominent in the continuous part of the realised volatility dynamic. Notably, XRP emerges as the predominant transmitter in the context of continuous part of the realized volatility. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on the interconnectedness of price movement/co-mouvement across cryptocurrencies, offers a novel adaptation of the Diebold and Yilmaz methodology to capture the unique features of cryptocurrency prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study constructs a monthly index of skilled analysts (ISA) regarding the coverage by such analysts and explores their predictive ability on the future excess returns of Chinese A-share market. The empirical results reveal that ISA significantly and positively predicts excess stock market returns, with R2s of 4.39% and 4.13% in- and out-of-sample respectively, which surpasses the predictive ability of most commonly used economic variables. High ISA precedes a higher investor sentiment index (ISI) and lower idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) at firm level. The conclusion remains valid after controlling for a series of other predictor variables and performing robustness tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing competition between the products in the market, packaging design is getting maximum attention in product sale. In order to sell any product, manufacturers use marketing strategies and effective communication. The aim of this study is to perform a product packaging analysis on perfume bottles, using eye gaze tracking technology to identify most viewed and consumer-friendly packaging design. To examine visual attention and emotional arousal in reaction to packaging design features in an ecommerce environment, we had conducted an eye gaze tracking experiment with 75 female participants. In this research, we analyzed pupil and eye monitoring metrics to identify emotional and cognitive processes, with an emphasis on emotional arousal, visual attention and cognitive effort. Our findings identified prominent packaging designs that sellers can use to display product advertisements according to consumer preferences to further enhance sales and revenue for their business. This study's empirical application could be extremely beneficial to marketers, content managers and advertisers in terms of managing and designing web content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption that ownership has an effect on the diversity of news is based on the forms of control that ownership allows and the market conditions in which ownership is exercised. In this study, we perform a large-scale analysis of the Swedish newspaper market, surveying 130 newspapers and parliamentary speeches over a period of six years (2014–2019), to substantiate to what extent market and for-profit ownership forms impact political viewpoint diversity. Our analysis shows that newspapers with market leadership and chain ownership offer more political viewpoint diversity than number two and single-owned papers. In contrast, the ownership forms surveyed here (private, foundation, and publicly traded ownerships) display little effect on newspapers' internal diversity. We also find that a greater number of papers in a local market does not imply more external diversity in that market. The analysis thus offers some nuance to the notion that ownership form and market pluralism are prerequisites for viewpoint diversity, highlighting instead the importance of scale effects for pluralistic media systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contaduría y Administración is the property of Facultad de Contaduria y Administracion-Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Questionnaire consumer survey research is primarily used for marketing research. To obtain credible results, collecting responses from numerous participants is necessary. However, two crucial challenges prevent marketers from conducting large-sample size surveys. The first is cost, as organizations with limited marketing budgets struggle to gather sufficient data. The second involves rare population groups, where it is difficult to obtain representative samples. Furthermore, the increasing awareness of privacy and security concerns has made it challenging to ask sensitive and personal questions, further complicating respondent recruitment. To address these challenges, we augmented small-sized datawith synthesized data generated using deep generative neural networks (DGNNs). The synthesized data from three types of DGNNs (CTGAN, TVAE, and CopulaGAN) were based on seed data. For validation, 11 datasets were prepared: real data (original and seed), synthesized data (CTGAN, TVAE, and CopulaGAN), and augmented data (original + CTGAN, original + TVAE, original + CopulaGAN, seed + CTGAN, seed + TVAE, and seed + CopulaGAN). The large-sample-sized data, termed "original data", served as the benchmark, whereas the small-sample-sized data acted as the foundation for synthesizing additional data. These datasets were evaluated using machine learning algorithms, particularly focusing on classification tasks. Conclusively, augmenting and synthesizing consumer survey data have shown potential in enhancing predictive performance, irrespective of the dataset's size. Nonetheless, the challenge remains to minimize discrepancies between the original data and other datasets concerning the values and orders of feature importance. Although the efficacy of all three approaches should be improved in future work, CopulaGAN more accurately grasps the dependencies between the variables in table data compared with the other two DGNNs. The results provide cues for augmenting data with dependencies between variables in various fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical loss analysis is used to define product markets for merger analysis and determine if market forces are sufficient to discipline prices in transitionally competitive regulated markets. Unlike the approval of a merger, however, regulatory forbearance is a reversible act. The threat of future (re)-regulation, or regulatory contestability, in combination with high price-cost margins and complementary demands can lower the critical loss (elasticity) necessary to justify the competitive classification of regulated services. This suggests that the intensity of competition sufficient to forbear from regulation can be considerably less than what regulators may believe is required a priori. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thorough dissection of prominent scholarly contributions can shed light on the evolution of research trajectories. Using marketing research as a case, this study aims to probe into the recognition and resonance that research enjoys across social media landscapes, employing the power of Altmetric. We employed an analytical approach involving descriptive statistics coupled with the Spearman correlation test, scrutinizing Altmetric data for the most heavily cited works in the marketing discipline (n: 137). Our examination illuminates that the United States and the United Kingdom are the dominant contributors to the majority of tweets and readership relating to these works. Noteworthily, marketing research featured in top-tier publications registered the highest Altmetric scores from both Twitter and Mendeley. An intriguing pattern surfaced in our exploration, highlighting a positive relationship between Altmetric scores drawn from social media platforms and citation counts on the Web of Science (WoS), as well as between Mendeley readership and WoS citations. These Altmetric insights underscore the pivotal role social media plays in propelling citation rates of research, implying that researchers can significantly amplify the visibility and citation impact of their work by strategically employing social media platforms and tapping into Altmetric indicators' potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review examines corporate sustainability research in marketing, using a perspective that encompasses the environmental and social, as well as economic, aspects of firm performance (i.e., the "Triple Bottom Line"). The authors describe major trends in the strategy-level corporate sustainability literature over several generations. Prior research has mostly focused on the organizational level, noting how firms have engaged with sustainability, while largely ignoring markets and the global economic system. Trends in economic, environmental, and social focus are highlighted, with environmental issues being of relatively greater importance in the nascent stages of corporate sustainability research. However, a growing preference for economic and social issues is observed over time. More recent research examines the tension between sustainability and profitability, examining potential trade-offs between bottom line financial results and achieving the sustainability goals of social and environmental progress. The paper concludes with an agenda for future research in strategic marketing sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a bottom-up marketing approach as a pathway to addressing the grand challenge of poverty and inequality for the marketing discipline. We derive this approach from the research stream on radically different contexts of subsistence marketplaces. Research on subsistence marketplaces has typically explored micro-level phenomena but also traversed upward and explained aggregate phenomena at higher levels. We present a conceptual framework to encapsulate general and granular elements of the bottom-up marketing approach. Study 1 demonstrates general elements of the framework through a retrospective examination of the global diffusion of a marketplace literacy program. Study 2 demonstrates the more granular elements of the framework through a qualitative analysis of five case studies of social enterprise start-ups. Though presenting a complementary counter-perspective to conventional thinking, we embed the process of interweaving the bottom-up with the macro level to present an actionable approach. We conclude with insights for marketing research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses bibliometric analysis to integrate, synthesise, and expand the knowledge regarding the relationship between automation and the labour market. In this paper, the authors examined the Web of Science (WoS) core collection database for articles published between 2002 and 2022. The co-citation, co-occurrence, and publication patterns were analysed using VOSviewer 1.6.19. The study comprised 287 papers, with the United States having the highest percentage of research publications, followed by Germany, China, and the United Kingdom. The institutional study shows that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard University, and the University of London are all leading institutions in this field of study and have more than 100 links. The co-occurrence of keywords revealed "automation", "employment", "growth", and "jobs" as the most discussed terms. The paper concludes by identifying gaps in the literature and proposing possibilities for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurement of economic contribution of tourism in a given geographical area needs, besides non-monetary measures such frequentation ones, a monetary one namely tourism expenditure. In addition to these macroeconomic related purposes, the whole statistical tourism measures shed light on tourist behavior, which are of great interest for marketing analysis. This study proposes to model the joint distribution of tourism expenditure disaggregated by category simultaneously with a set of covariates associated with the tourist's trip (including destination, days of stay, season of the year, among others). The dependence structure, among all variables, is established by a family of pairwise copulas (regular vines), which allows fitting a high-dimensional multivariate statistical model. As an application, the model is calibrated with a database for the Fribourg region (Switzerland). The good fit of the model to the data is observed both in the marginal distributions and in the dependence structure. The parameters representing dependence of the vine copula show strong relationship between the different categories of spending, both for tourists and excursionists. The empirical results show that the key variables to understand the associations between them are the destination in the region and the place of origin of the visitor. In general terms, the empirical results show that a visitor that expends more on one item is likely to expend more on a complementary items of spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMarket validation is essential for assessing the feasibility of a business idea, product, or service but can involve extensive and costly primary and secondary research. Business librarians are well-positioned to support entrepreneurs and researchers but may be constrained by pricey subscriptions for business resources. While most often associated with search engine marketing, keyword research proves to be beneficial for market validation. This paper proposes integrating keyword analysis into market validation practices. It outlines the process of conducting keyword analysis and opportunities for business librarians to incorporate these strategies in their resource guides and programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractSocial network monitoring aims to detect any significant change in the structure of communications from the normal condition. The normal condition can be a set of networks considered as a reference set. This set is represented in dynamic cases by a probability model. Statistical process control methods can be applied to signal changes in the reference set. These signals can be useful for decision-makers in various applications, from marketing analysis to criminal investigations. In most of the developed models, the networks are assumed independent over time. However, this assumption may be questioned in real-world applications. Accordingly, this article formulates the social network as an auto-correlated labeled Poisson model and monitors it using a control method based on likelihood statistics. A simulation study is performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods in terms of the average run length criterion. The obtained results revealed that the proposed methods can reliably detect significant changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the practice of hand colouring illustrated Luther Bibles in the sixteenth century. It is based on analysis from over 120 copies of various editions of Luther's translation of the Bible. The most well‐known examples are Hans Lufft's editions printed on parchment in 1541 and 1560, illuminated by Lucas Cranach the Younger. However, these copies represent only the very top of the market; the research presented in this article demonstrates that hand colouring was a widespread practice that began with the very first edition of Luther's New Testament in 1522, and continued throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, across the German‐speaking lands, in all formats, and for all levels of the market. This article argues that the hand colouring served an aesthetic purpose, making the complex illustrations more vivacious and legible for the viewer. The colouring also transformed a mass‐produced object into a unique work of art that reflected its spiritual significance, an understudied feature of Lutheran material culture, and one which transcended confessional divides in sixteenth‐century Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investment potential for biochar production from low‐value forest biomass in the western USA is over USD 20 billion at current carbon prices. This investment could generate approximately 70 million carbon credits annual – roughly the same number currently generated globally by all forestry and agricultural carbon projects. Biochar production that utilizes woody biomass specifically from wildfire fuel thinning projects as a feedstock can contribute financially to much‐needed fuel thinning projects. Each coupled biochar and carbon credit production system has positive returns in certain scenarios. Light upgrades to existing biopower facilities have the highest returns, with internal rates of return generally between 10–30%. Mobile biochar production often had the lowest returns. However, land managers can subsidize mobile biochar production up to USD 150–300 per tonne of biochar and still save money in comparison with pile‐burning low‐value biomass while also generating approximately one carbon credit for every two bone‐dry tonnes of low‐value biomass turned to biochar. The critical barrier to industry growth is the lack of transparent biomass supply chains that enable long‐term contracting for feedstock, production schedules, and investment. Moving forward, there are three potential pathways for the biochar industry to scale and utilize biomass from forest management and fuel thinning projects. Either (1) the carbon market will need to sustain high carbon prices, (2) a subsidy or other mechanism will need to decrease the cost of feedstock biomass, or (3) production will need to take advantage of economies of scale to bring down biochar prices while increasing production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popularized with the term "news desert," the decline of the number of newspapers has cast a gloom over the future of American democracy. However, there has been little research on what factors are related to such phenomena. To fill this gap, we construct a theoretical framework based on previous research relating market conditions to news deserts, and study how news deserts relate to social capital. Our analyses find population, and education have strong negative associations with news deserts and potential journalism divides, where newspapers decrease disproportionately according to the community's African American composition. Age has a weak negative association with news deserts. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that having more newspapers has a positive effect on community social capital in its economic connectedness, cohesiveness, and civic engagement. Consequently, economic connectedness and cohesiveness positively impact the number of newspapers next year, showing evidence of a virtuous circle. This study advances the discussions around the "news desert" a step forward by empirically investigating its social impact on our communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of student engagement on satisfaction with an undergraduate marketing research course. Student engagement consisted of three dimensions in this study, namely physical engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement. Flow theory was used to examine the potential impact of the disruption of student learning flow on student engagement and student learning outcomes (i.e. student class satisfaction) using longitudinal data from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were collected over 10 semesters at an American public university. The data analysis results indicated that physical engagement was negatively associated with student class satisfaction, while emotional engagement and cognitive engagement exhibited a positive association. In addition, physical engagement had a stronger influence on student class satisfaction during the pandemic than before the pandemic, while there was no significant difference in the impact of emotional and cognitive engagement between the periods. Results imply that instructors need to engage students emotionally and intellectually in activities that do not make them work too hard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: There has been a significant rise in usage of neuromarketing for conducting marketing research, but a large number of businesses are still skeptical about integrating such methods into their marketing research toolkit. The reason for such skepticism may be certain misconceptions. One such misconception is that neuromarketing is a difficult and expensive marketing research tool. Another misconception is whether neuromarketing is a mere gimmick or an insightful marketing research method. Hence, this study explores the present stance of neuromarketing and its pertinent misconceptions. Methodology: The study conducts qualitative, in-depth interviews with neuromarketing experts from eleven countries. The study then subjects interview transcripts to thematic analysis. Through this analysis, the study divulges three themes and eight subthemes related to the present stance of neuromarketing and its pertinent misconceptions. Findings: The study divulges three notable findings. First, the present stance of neuromarketing highlights the growth and importance of neuromarketing methods in the marketing research industry. It also demonstrates the application of neuromarketing in making strategic marketing decisions. Second, the study clarifies that factors such as the elongated learning curve, complexities, adaptation, and economic considerations hinder neuromarketing adoption. Third, the study clarifies that neuromarketing is not a gimmick and expounds on the value and efficacy of neuromarketing methods in conducting marketing research studies. It also outlines the importance of combating bogus neuromarketing consultants who negatively impact the perception of neuromarketing among businesses, consumers, and regulatory bodies. Research implications: This study undertook the initiative to procure primary qualitative data through in-depth interviews to provide first-hand perspectives into what experts in the marketing research industry think about the present stance of neuromarketing and its pertinent misconceptions. It builds upon existing literature on the present stance of neuromarketing, which largely relies on secondary data. The study also extends prior literature on neuromarketing by highlighting the need for specialized expertise, the necessity for considering ethical considerations, and the need for cost-effective solutions. Besides this, the contribution of this study also aligns with the prior discussions on evolving methodologies in consumer behavior research. Practical implications: This study implies that neuromarketing enables businesses to make informed strategic marketing decisions, anticipate marketing trends, and foster sustainable growth. Businesses must allocate substantial resources to hire marketing research companies or third-party neuromarketing consultants. However, before making such investments, businesses should thoroughly evaluate the reliability and validity of claims made by neuromarketing consultants and marketing research companies. Due to the complexities and stringent ethical regulations, it is essential to collaborate exclusively with reputable marketing research firms or independent neuromarketing consultants with a proven track record of success. Originality/Value: Contrary to the prior studies based on secondary data, this study leverages primary qualitative data to explore the present stance of neuromarketing and its pertinent misconceptions. The study emphasizes misconceptions hindering the adoption of neuromarketing, which was primarily left unexplored in the extant literature. In this way, the study creates unprecedented value for businesses, marketing research companies, regulatory bodies, and independent neuromarketers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for research contribution and demands for original theories have become visibly and audibly louder in review processes over the last two decades. In interpretivist marketing and consumer research, such calls have been accompanied by an emphasis on the importance of theory and on drawing on context when crafting impactful research contributions. By investigating the rhetorical claims made by authors in 45 highly cited articles, published between 2005 and 2019 in three representative marketing journals, this paper provides a kaleidoscopic, three-dimensional framework that maps out and explores the rhetorical devices employed in interpretivist scholarship. Based on the framework, the paper suggests different pathways that researchers can follow to navigate through the complex process of shaping and developing relevant and impactful research contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]