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The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Facebook usage is positively related to envy and narcissism, which in turn increase users’ desire for self-promotion and propensity to engage in conspicuous consumption.

Data were collected via an online survey, with 674 usable responses collected from Facebook users of all ages.

The results support the hypotheses that increased Facebook usage is positively related to envy and narcissism. These two psychological constructs lead to stronger desires for self-promotion, spurring the behavioral response of conspicuous online consumption.

The findings are limited to the self-reported behaviors of a limited sample. Despite the limitations, the findings identify a process by which increased Facebook usage results in an increased desire to promote oneself through conspicuous consumption.

An understanding of the psychology linking social media use to conspicuous consumption can aid managers in developing marketing strategies to encourage the purchase and usage of positional goods. Specifically, more frequent users may be targeted by advertisers wishing to encourage the purchase and display of their products.

Facebook usage appears to elicit emotions – such as narcissism and envy – that most researchers would consider socially undesirable.

An emerging stream of research suggests that social media usage elicits both positive self-comparisons with others (i.e. narcissism) and negative (i.e. envy). This study is among the first to empirically test this effect on the purchase and consumption of positional goods.

Obesity imposes myriad negative consequences upon society, the economy and personal well-being. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using political correctness (PC) in social marketing messages to persuade consumers to change their unhealthy behavior. It also explores various underlying mechanisms that drive this effect. Specifically, this research studies that messaging approach – politically correct vs politically incorrect and gain vs loss message framing – generates higher consumer intentions to change their behavior.

Four experiments were conducted with nationally representative samples to examine the effect of PC and gain vs loss message framing on consumers’ behavior changing intentions.

Politically correct prosocial marketing messages displayed higher persuasiveness than politically incorrect messages. Each relationship was mediated by the perceived manipulative capacity of the message and consumers’ attitudes toward the message. Message framing performed as a boundary condition for these effects.

This paper sought to contribute to the literature that investigates the effectiveness of social marketing efforts. Three specific contributions related to the effects of message frames on politically correct and incorrect social marketing messages were developed.

The strategies presented in this paper benefit firms wishing to create a more prosocial approach to their business. A firm can present a prosocial message to their target market in a frame focusing on what will be gained instead of lost. Likewise, firms should welcome this type of messaging that embraces politically correct terminology instead of shying away from it.

This paper generates actionable insights for marketers and policymakers regarding how best to communicate with targeted segments about culturally- and personally sensitive topics related to obesity and weight loss. This paper also contributes to the literature that explores the effectiveness of social marketing initiatives. The findings suggest policymakers and social marketers should be cautious and, regardless of today’s sociopolitical environment, avoid falling into the temptation of developing politically incorrect and loss-framed messages.

The past is important for various known and unknown reasons. This paper aims to reveal and justify unacknowledged reasons why, when and how managers should consider leveraging the pasts of previously successful but currently declining brands to restore their more desirable historical market positions.

This conceptual paper combines marketing and branding theory with historical branding examples, anecdotes and inductive inferences to develop and justify brand-pastness as a theoretically-grounded and managerially-actionable repositioning concept that could be applied to resurrect declining brands.

The emergent historically-grounded brand-pastness framework generates innovative insights that could be applied in the future. These insights explain when, why and how brand managers could apply brand-pastness to resurrect declining brands. The framework also facilitates the development of a brand-pastness-based research agenda. The agenda is driven by questions structured to address the nature, scope and potential applications of brand-pastness as a new concept and useful repositioning tool.

This paper’s recommendations are limited by their conceptual and inductive origins. However, a research agenda is developed to guide and structure future empirical investigations of the branding antecedents to and consequences of a prospective brand-pastness construct.

This paper introduces, conceptualizes and justifies the potential value of a historically-grounded concept called brand-pastness. The concept may prove beneficial when marketing managers use brand-pastness to reposition and resurrect declining brands by re-instilling targeted consumers’ historical perceptions of brands’ past superiority.

Organizational climate is an essential dynamic to leverage in salesforce performance. This study aims to develop a model that explores the determinants of independent manufacturers’ representatives’ (i.e. IMRs’) intentions to comply with their principals’ requests for additional tasking. Using agency theory, the authors explore the application of behavior and outcome-based controls upon dyadic manufacturer-IMR relationships for these additional performance/task requests.

Data from over 1,000 US-based IMRs were used to test two constructs; inter-organizational climate and perceptions of mutual satisfaction within the agency-principal dyad. Compliance behaviors tested were IMRs’ intentions to engage in non-selling-related tasks and intentions to allocate additional selling time to principals’ products. The following four exogenous controls were tested: perceived goal congruence between IMRs and principals; IMRs’ perceptions of principals’ expertise; mutual communications between IMRs and principals in the supply chain dyad; resources and sales support programs provided by principals to IMRs; and IMRs’ perceptions of the adequacy and fairness of the principals’ compensation plans.

Two constructs – inter-organizational climate and perceptions of mutual satisfaction with the agency-principal dyad – mediated the effects of exogenous sales controls on two compliance behaviors. The model’s data were analyzed using Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). A marker variable was deployed to check for common method variance also supported using the Partial least squares (PLS) factor solution. Most variables demonstrated significant direct and mediated effects on each compliance behavior. Variables that emphasized behavioral-based controls dominated intentions for IMRs to engage in non-selling tasks. The principal commission structure, the only sales outcome-based control in the study, most influenced IMRs’ intentions to commit additional sales time to their principals’ products.

This study only examined the intentions of IMRs to engage in additional selling activities and their intention to engage in non-selling tasks. Principals may desire longer-term commitments from IMRs. The model developed here can be modified to capture additional behavioral and attitudinal outcomes including, for example, the exit intentions of IMRs.

Principals are well-advised to foster a positive inter-organizational climate that fuels perceptions of mutually satisfying working relationships with their IMRs. These mutually satisfying working relationships can, by themselves, positively influence IMRs to acquiesce to reasonable requests made by principals. This advice appears to be particularly crucial when asking IMRs to engage in additional non-selling tasks. The total pattern of path estimates points to the conclusion that capable sales control plays an important role in fostering positive inter-organizational climates. The inter-organizational climate – mutual satisfaction link proved crucial as a mediator of the impact of sales controls on IMRs’ behavioral compliance intentions.

Knowing the impact of sales controls on IMR’s affords businesses the ability to use these controls for behavioral compliance intentions on non-selling tasks.

Political marketing is unable to reach out or influence voters as it once did. This study aims to identify means for political marketers to effectively reach to voters. Specifically, this study examines the role of different WOM/e-WOM political messages (shallow vs deep) delivered through various communication channels on voters’ message evaluation, believability, attitude towards the message and communication, message involvement, voting intentions and WOM/e-WOM intentions.

Two experimental design studies were conducted to test the research hypotheses. Data were collected from age-based voting cohorts through snowball sampling and online consumer panels.

The results suggest that political WOM/e-WOM messages received via different communication modes are perceived differently by age-based voting cohorts in terms of message evaluation, believability and attitudinal dispositions. The perceived credibility of the communication source makes a difference in such evaluations and dispositions. Also, the complexity of message impacts behavioral intentions of age-based voting cohorts differently. Older (younger) voter cohorts are more receptive to complex and detailed (short and brief) messages. Political message involvement mediates the relationship between message believability and voting intentions, as well as WOM/e-WOM intentions.

The results are limited in terms of generalizability due to the experimental nature of the studies. Future research may seek to use actual candidates and examine the effects of moderators such as the cognition-based needs of respondents to engage in central or peripheral processing.

Political marketers can achieve greater credibility and effectiveness and partially restore political marketing’s reputation by honoring three guidelines: construct shallower (or deeper) political marketing messages when targeting younger (or older) voting cohorts through internet-connected (or traditional) delivery modes.

This paper explores an important but under-researched area in political marketing (i.e. the use of WOM/e-WOM messages in political marketing) and identifies important differences in attitudinal and behavioral dispositions of age-based voting cohorts impacted by the choice of communication mode and message complexity. Moreover, the perceived credibility of the communication source (sender) can sway communication mode preferences for age-based voting cohorts.

The purpose of this study was to investigate assortative mating processes inside Internet-dating-service settings. Unattached consumers traditionally sought to satisfy their need for love through conventional search processes, including old-fashioned match-making. That was then, this is now; dozens of internet-mediated dating websites promising romantic-love-matches currently operate internationally. These dating services cultivate dating-exchanges by offering new-fashioned match-making processes. Despite these trends, theoretical and practical questions related to how and why dating services marketers might induce superior romantic exchanges between customers by managing assortative mating processes remain unanswered until now.

A survey-based approach was used to test hypotheses. Pretests were conducted to develop reliable measures of assortative mating propensity. Seven subconstructs of assortative mating were identified by analyzing data from a representative sample. The measurement model was validated before hypotheses testing. The focal assortative mating construct was measured formatively; assortative mating subdimensions functioned as indicators. The model was tested by structural equation modeling.

Assortative mating processes facilitated superior preference-selection outcomes for individuals seeking consumer-to-consumer romantic relationships inside internet-mediated service settings. Insights were generated about how and why assortative mating processes exercised positive effects on consumers’ attitudes toward online dating and about how dating services marketers might leverage assortative mating tendencies to benefit consumers.

A novel concept was introduced to the services marketing literature, as were several theoretical implications. The study simultaneously measured consumers’ propensities to engage in assortative mating and captured the effects of various physical/behavioral consumer characteristics. This study develops new and practical insights about how dating service marketers could manage the effects of assortative mating processes.

This purpose of this study is to develop actionable marketing insights regarding why consumers might elect to purchase vintage products. A concept called consumer pastness is introduced, developed and defined to achieve this end. Consumer pastness demonstrably affected consumers’ perceptions of vintage products’ scarcity and consumers’ propensity to purchase vintage items. When applied inside marketing contexts, consumer pastness may also explain how and why consumers distinguish vintage products that are “of the past” from new and second-hand products. The data suggest that when consumers perceive products are characterized by higher consumer pastness the products will be perceived as scarcer, more desirable and more valuable than new or second-hand versions of the same item.

A scale was developed to capture three dimensions that comprise consumer pastness and then a pilot study and two experiments were conducted to test the research propositions.

Study propositions were confirmed. Consumers perceive vintage products as scarcer and more desirable than other types of products.

A novel and useful concept is introduced to the marketing literature inside this study. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate and develop theoretical insights regarding how and why consumers perceive vintage products differently from new and second-hand products. The investigations reported below are also the first to develop practical insights regarding how management might respond to these insights about the role consumer pastness plays.

Consumers are increasingly connected to each other through electronic devices. Consequently, the potential for online retailer (hereafter, e‐tailer) initiated communications delivered through electronic media to inspire viral‐like e‐WOM processes among consumers is also expanding. Microblog postings and e‐mails may impact consumers' perceptions of retail web sites (e‐servicescape). These perceptions may trigger other outcomes (i.e. greater trust, patronage, or e‐WOM) that redound to e‐tailers' interests. The first purpose of this paper is to expand online e‐tailers' (e‐tailers') understanding of how and whether microblog postings affect consumers' e‐servicescape perceptions. The second purpose is to investigate how and whether e‐servicescape perceptions influence consumers' trust in e‐tailers' web sites, patronage of e‐tailers, and propensity to engage in e‐WOM about e‐tailers' messages.

By integrating the e‐servicescape construct with the Network Coproduction Model of WOM theory, a model is developed. This model examines how e‐communication efforts affect consumers' perceptions of e‐servicescape, trust, e‐tail patronage and e‐WOM. Each relationship is investigated through a consumer survey.

Findings suggest: microblog postings may have a negative impact on consumers' e‐servicescape perceptions; retail web site's usability, financial security, customization, and entertainment value positively affect consumers' trust; and consumers' trust positively impacts retail patronage and e‐WOM intentions.

Prescriptive insights for managing microblogging in ways that more favorably influence consumers' perceptions of e‐tailers' e‐servicescapes – and subsequently consumer trust in, patronage of, and e‐WOM about the retailer and its web site – are developed.

The paper is the first to integrate word‐of‐mouth theory with e‐servicescape to test a model examining how microblog postings affect e‐servicescape perceptions, consumer trust, consumer retail patronage, and e‐WOM intentions.

The purpose of this article is to develop three approaches that managers should use to channel formerly negative stressors and anxieties into productively motivated behaviors. When managers deal more deftly with naturally arising and anxiety-inducing stress, they and their subordinates should perform more effectively simply because their levels of motivation will increase.

The conceptual discussion is grounded in ideas and principals adopted and/or adapted from ancient and contemporary Western and social scientific bodies of thought.

This deductive essay demonstrates how the conscious choice to manage through paradox as bad stressors arrive offers managers actual tools through which they could convert the threatening stresses into challenging – and motivating – anxieties.

Managers often seek to eliminate – or choose to consciously ignore – anxiety. Either behavior, of course, is unreasonable. The sense of realism that emerges from the paradoxical middle path introduced above should decrease the onset of such unreasonable responses to stress. Meanwhile, managing through this middle path approach also elevates the likelihood that motivated managers establish proper goals, break problems and challenges into manageable chunks and address them. In the bargain, managers should become better able to convert bad stress into good.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Now that shopping online is normal rather than being a minority activity, and that users include people of disparate ages, incomes and technical experience, the focus should be on the customer rather than the technology. As websites become better and better, easier to use and offer believable assurances that your payment details are safe in their hands, so the necessity for differentiation increases.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.