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The paper aims to examine ways to reduce privacy risk and its effects so that adoption of e‐services can be enhanced.

Consumers that form a viable target market for an e‐service are presented with the task of experiencing the e‐service and expressing their attitudes and intentions toward it. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the responses.

The paper finds that consumer beliefs that the e‐service will be easy to use and that the e‐service provider is credible and capable reduce privacy risk and its effects, thus enhancing adoption likelihood.

The focus on a financial services product (online bill paying) suggests that similar research should be conducted with other high‐risk e‐services (such as those dealing with healthcare) and lower‐risk e‐services (such as subscription services and social networks).

In addition to addressing consumers' privacy risk directly, e‐service providers can also reduce privacy risk and its effects by enhancing corporate credibility and perceived ease of use of the service. Increased assessments of privacy risk perceptions and efforts to reduce those perceptions will likely yield higher usage rates for e‐services.

The use of the technology acceptance model from information systems research, combined with a multi‐faceted conceptualization of privacy risk, moves the examination of privacy risk to a higher level, particularly in light of the examination of the additional factors of perceived ease of use and corporate credibility.

This paper aims to examine motivations for young consumers' internet use, how these motivations relate to children's privacy concerns and, subsequently, children's willingness to disclose personally identifiable information.

The strengths of three common internet usage motives (information seeking, entertainment, and socializing) in predicting disclosure behavior are examined via survey research with a sample of children aged 10‐12.

Two of the motives – information seeking and socializing – are found to influence privacy concerns, which in turn, are shown to affect willingness to disclose information. Information‐seeking motivations were positively related to privacy concerns, while socializing motivations were negatively related to privacy concerns. Direct incentives are also found to increase disclosure.

The findings suggest that the uses and gratifications theory is useful for understanding children's privacy behaviors relating to information seeking and socializing motivations. Combining this with the varying levels of interactivity of websites that might satisfy various motives helps researchers begin to understand how particular motives may lead to increases or decreases in risky behavior; in this case, preteen disclosure of personal information.

Although internet growth has allowed producers to shift control of service transactions to the customer, little research has examined the effects of this shift. The purpose of this paper is to focus on how the performance of different task types differentially affects consumer responses.

The paper is a field study using online data collection to examine the US Hispanic market, the fastest‐growing consumer group in the US as well as one of the fastest growing online user groups.

The paper finds that Hispanic consumers were less affected by the type of task than non‐Hispanic consumers, in terms of perceived quality, satisfaction, and intended patronage. Using constructs from the communications literature, task effects on three communication perceptions were shown to explain the differences.

The results provide support for the notion that more complex (transaction) tasks can lead to lower evaluations than less complex (information) tasks, while also providing some limiting conditions to this result.

The results in this paper suggest that services firms should consider, not only the environment in which the service encounter will be performed, but the type of service task, the type of consumer, and the potential interaction between them. As service organizations move from face‐to‐face to online service provision, they must consider how, online service provision is evaluated by consumers’, and how this affects patronage intentions.

The paper shows the usefulness of communications medium perceptions in explaining the interactive effects of service task and consumer type. It is pertinent to service providers, academic researchers, and consumer groups.

While numerous firms have successfully segmented customers using various segment‐based pricing models and tactics, the advent of the Internet has introduced a new element of opportunity with respect to such pricing. This paper identifies the various areas of opportunity for segmenting World Wide Web consumers. Several known pricing tactics are assessed for their application to the World Wide Web consumer markets.

Uses benefit needs to segment the online marketing market. Employs focus groups and a random sampling survey to search for consumer benefit needs and then segments the market by these benefits sought by customers. Shows that the various segments display significant differences in the benefits sought, lifestyles and demographics etc. Suggests that this work can assist marketing managers to focus on one or more segments that show salient consumer preferences for the benefits provided by their products or services.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the existence and strength of the relationship between proactive environmental policies and brand equity for the winery. Results of this study suggest that consumer perceptions about product quality, consumer trust, consumer perceptions about pricing, and positive expectations for the consequences of the winery's actions undertaking the pro‐environmental policies, all have strong, positive relationships with the winery's brand equity. Trust in the winery and brand equity for the winery increased significantly when the winery in this study adopted proactive environmental business policies.

This study empirically explores one of the important channel issues – the relationship between various channel support given to channel partners and the perceived (by managers) goal‐orientation of a firm. Results from an emerging market, India, indicate that perceived orientation towards both profitability and market share is not associated with any of the channel support considered. Growth orientation however is strongly associated with most of the channel support activities – both business (e.g., business advice, pricing and ordering assistance, and personnel training) as well as marketing (advertising support, sales promotional material, and inventory management assistance) oriented activities. In contrast, perceived sales volume orientation is only associated with advertising support and business advice, however, the relationship is negative. These findings have interesting implications for channel management and channel motivation.

Stadium naming rights programs have proliferated over the past decade, yet we have no direct evidence that these types of sponsorship programs help companies develop their long-term brand equity or even provide a short-term boost to corporate value. This paper examines the impact that naming rights programs have had on the stock values of the corporate sponsors. Using event study analysis, it is found that there are mixed responses to these types of programs. A discussion is provided which helps to explain the mixed results and provides communications mangers with some suggestions on creating more effective naming rights programs.

While studies have highlighted the benefits of athlete endorsement as a means of strategic marketing communication and public relations, there are risk factors associated with the practice, especially when a celebrity endorser is involved in immoral incidents or social activism. This study examined the impacts of athlete endorsers’ controversial behavior on sponsors. It scrutinized the change in publicly traded corporations’ shareholder value when their athlete endorsers were implicated in either immoral conduct or social activism.

Using the event study analysis, this study investigated the sponsored corporations’ abnormal returns around athlete endorsers’ involvement in immoral incidents and social activism. Total 34 cases (18 immoral scandals and 16 social activism) were collected from 2009 to 2019.

The data analysis revealed a significant difference in abnormal returns between the two different types of incidents for the four different windows (2, 4, 8 and 15 days) after the date of the focal event. While scandals of immoral conduct did not cause significant loss in shareholder value, cases of social activism showed negative abnormal returns for sponsoring corporations.

This study presented the first comparative analysis of how endorsers’ immoral behavior and social activism impacted on the shareholders’ value of sponsoring firms. Using stock performance data, the findings provided the empirical evidence in stock markets’ different reactions regarding scandals and social activism. The study contributes to the relevant body of literature by comparing the different contexts in celebrity endorsement.

The globalisation of markets combined with the paradoxical rise of nationalism has created an increased concern about the importance of the interaction of global brands with other cues such as the country of origin (COO) of products and services. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the decision‐making processes of experts and novices with respect to international brand names, COO and intrinsic quality differences.

Within subject experimental design, quantitative study analysis of variance.

Results of a series of experiments with personal computers as a product with strong COO effects supported this argument. Experts or highly knowledgeable consumers were found to use COO in a circumspect manner or as a limited summary construct, only when such information was consistent with a linked brand name or a particular level of physical quality. Novices, for both products used COO as a halo regardless of brand name and physical quality.

International brand names are used in a more analytical manner by experts, with respect to quality, whilst novices based their decision‐making on extrinsic cues. This was a controlled experimental design and results could be evaluated further by more realistic design using actual products in a more market setting. Although the use of product description as used as experimental treatments in this study is not an unusual manner in which personal computers are purchased by consumers, especially when they are purchased online.

International marketers must carefully consider the quality, brand and COO information carefully when marketing to consumers of varying product knowledge as it appears different decision‐making styles are used by experts and novices.

This is one of the few studies to experimentally manipulate brand, quality and COO information amongst different groups of consumers with varying product knowledge (experts and novices). The experimental treatments were also carefully chosen so that differences due to the use of a global brand IBM could be evaluated against a lesser known local brand name.