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Corporate real estate executives and their departments can benefit themselves and enhance the value added to their companies by taking applying a merger perspective to their departmental organisation and activities. The dynamics and expectations experienced in actual merger situations can provide a foundation from which to improve one’s departmental organisation, data collection/retention and management techniques, regardless of whether a corporate merger is in one’s future. This paper outlines the components of the merger experience and investigates the benefits of adopting a merger perspective.

Sport has evolved into one of the largest industries in Australia and there is a corresponding increased interest in the factors influencing fan loyalty. This paper presents a theoretically developed conceptual model which empirically tests the relationships between fan identification, sports involvement, following sport and fan loyalty. Survey results indicate that fan identification, following sport and involvement positively influence fan loyalty, while following sport was found to mediate the involvement-fan identification relationship.

Product enthusiasts, increasingly prevalent in American society, represent significant marketplace forces because of their high levels of information seeking, opinion leadership, and innovativeness. For marketers to best serve these consumers, many commonly used marketing strategies must be altered or adapted. In this article, marketing mix elements serve as a framework to discuss strategic issues relevant to this category of consumer.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumers’ willingness to buy is influenced by two essential design elements: form and functional design. Form design refers to appearance and can be categorized as typical or non-typical. Function design relates to product features and can be the basis of whether a new product is perceived as a radically new product (RNP) vs an incrementally new product (INP). An interaction between form (typical vs non-typical) and function (RNP vs INP) was hypothesized and examined based on consumers’ knowledge of a product category and level of technological innovativeness.

Two between subject experiments were conducted in which two factors were manipulated (2×2 ANOVA): the degree of technological innovation (RNP vs INP) and form (more typical vs less typical).

Findings reveal that form design has a minimal impact on consumers’ evaluations of INPs, but less typical form design is preferred over typical form design for RNPs. Moreover, form design matters more to consumers who are technologically more innovative (vs less innovative) and more knowledgeable (vs less knowledgeable).

The managerial implications are multiple. Depending on the degree of the technological innovation, new design form can be strategically aligned to the function of a new product to increase perceived value – an effect observed among South Korean consumers that we anticipate will extend upon other cultures high in uncertainty avoidance.

This research will shed some light on an area of marketing that has been previously under-researched: form-based design in global innovation diffusion focusing on Asian countries and provide a more systematic approach to the empirical studies of form design issues in global marketing. This research extends the current design and innovation literature by examining the two dimensional types of design (visceral form and functionality) and potential moderators: degree of product innovation (RNP vs INP), consumer innovativeness, and consumer knowledge.

Two studies investigate how different structural properties of images – symmetry (vertical and horizontal) and image contrast – affect social media marketing outcomes of consumer liking and engagement.

In Study 1’s experiment, 361 participants responded to social media marketing images that varied in vertical or horizontal symmetry and level of image contrast. Study 2 analyzes field data on 610 Instagram posts.

Study 1 demonstrates that vertical or horizontal symmetry and high image contrast increase consumer liking of social media marketing images, and that processing fluency and aesthetic response mediate these relationships. Study 2 reveals that symmetry and high image contrast improve consumer engagement on social media (number of “likes” and comments).

These studies extend theory regarding processing fluency’s and aesthetic response’s roles in consumer outcomes within social media marketing. Image posts’ structural properties affect processing fluency and aesthetic response without altering brand information or advertising content.

Because consumer liking of marketing communications (e.g. social media posts) predicts persuasion and sales, results should help marketers design more effective posts and achieve brand-building and behavioral objectives. Based on the results, marketers are urged to consider the processing fluency and aesthetic response associated with any image developed for social media marketing.

Addressing the lack of empirical investigations in the existing literature, the reported studies demonstrate that effects of symmetry and image contrast in generating liking are driven by processing fluency and aesthetic response. Additionally, these studies establish novel effects of images’ structural properties on consumer engagement with brand-based social media marketing communications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the individual and joint effects of the two design dimensions, form design and functional design, and moderating role of product innovativeness and technological sophistication in consumer’s evaluation of new products. Employing theoretical underpinnings from categorization theory, this paper investigates two major research questions. First, what type of form is more advantageous for a radically new product or an incrementally new product? Second, is there an individual difference in consumer evaluations to innovative products with various form designs?

One pre-test and three between-subject experiments were performed. In Experiments 1 and 2, a two-way between-group ANOVA analysis was performed to examine the effect of form and the degree of technological innovation on attitude toward the product using different product categories (car and camera). In Experiment 3, a three-way between-group ANOVA analysis was performed to explore the impact of form, the degree of technological innovation and consumer technological sophistication on attitude toward the product.

The results from the three experiments conducted demonstrate that, first, whereas the form design for incremental innovations must be closer to the incumbent products for favorable evaluations, less typical form is evaluated as good as a more typical form for radical innovations. Second, form design of an innovative product matters more to the technologically more sophisticated consumers (experts).

This paper extends the previous design literature and fills the gap of under-researched area by demonstrating that individual difference, technological sophistication, moderates the design effect on consumer evaluation of innovation; providing boundary condition of when the atypical form is not penalized in spite of consumer’s perceived learning cost; examining how the form and function interplay in “high-status product”; and demonstrating how to strengthen the reliability and validity by replicating the study. Managerially, this paper demonstrates that innovating firms can influence the perceived value of new products using form and functionality, and marketing managers who launch really new products have strategic freedom of choosing own product design.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if “neo-retro”-product design, which is based on the reinterpretation of forms from the past, can paradoxically convey design newness and looks at how such products are perceived by innovators.

An experiment was conducted with two groups of respondents, with a total sample of 194 respondents. These were, respectively, submitted to two different product designs for highly technical headphones; one with a neo-retro-design and the other with a typical modern design. The approach enabled the testing and validation of different hypotheses regarding retro and innovation.

The results suggest that a neo-retro-product design conveys newness and does not mislead the consumer when it comes to evaluating a product's technological input. Furthermore, they support the idea that consumer innovativeness has a positive effect on the attitude towards neo-retro-product design.

Future research should explore the relationship between neo-retro-design and nostalgia proneness and perceived risk attached to innovative products.

The empirical findings of the paper highlights the creative process hidden behind the neo-retro-product design approach and have implications for design practitioners in the field of innovative products.

Despite the ever-growing importance of the retro-phenomenon, the relationship between neo-retro-product design, perceived innovation and consumer innovativeness has not previously been examined in the literature. The paper contributes to dispelling doubt as regards the compatibility of neo-retro-design and innovativeness.

This chapter draws on developmental intergroup theory, parental ethnic-racial socialization literature, anti-bias curricula, and prejudice intervention studies to address the appropriateness of discussing race and racism in early childhood settings. Existing literature about teacher discussions surrounding race and racism is reviewed, best practices are shared, and the need for more research in this area is highlighted. The construct of parental ethnic-racial socialization is mapped onto early childhood anti-bias classroom practices. The chapter also outlines racial ideologies of teachers, specifically anti-bias and colorblind attitudes, and discusses how these ideologies may manifest in classroom practices surrounding race and racism. Colorblind ideology is problematized and dissected to show that colorblind practices may harm children. Young children’s interpretations of race and racism, in light of children’s cognitive developmental level, are discussed. Additionally, findings from racial prejudice intervention studies are applied to teaching. Early literacy practices surrounding race and racism are outlined with practical suggestions for teachers and teacher educators. Moreover, implications of teacher practices surrounding race and racism for children’s development, professional development, and teacher education are discussed.