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The purpose of this paper is to investigate international franchise performance. It focuses on how franchisors conceive their international performance, the drivers of their international performance, and how age-at-entry moderates the impact of their resources and capabilities (R&C) on international performance.

Using the lens of the resource-based view of the firm, the authors build on franchisor voice from a qualitative study (n=28) to propose a research model of international franchise performance. A second, quantitative study (n=89) tests the model with PLS structural equation modeling.

Franchisors view international performance in terms of relationship satisfaction with foreign franchisees and performance in comparison to competitors. The empirical results show that relationship satisfaction significantly improves comparative performance. Both franchisor-owned resources, the brand and knowhow, enhance only comparative performance, while all three international relational capabilities, related to knowhow transfer, monitoring, and contract design, and both reconfigurational capabilities, related to organizational responsiveness and innovativeness, improve relationship satisfaction. Only contract design and innovativeness increase comparative performance. Finally, late internationalization reinforces franchisor ability to leverage relational and reconfigurational capabilities for better relationship satisfaction.

This paper contributes to research on international franchise performance. It uses a mixed-method design and offers the first quantitative investigation of the drivers of international franchise performance. This research also integrates the role of franchisor R&C with franchisor strategic choices, through the moderating effect of internationalization timing.

Previous literature has reported inconsistent findings regarding the impact of uncertainty avoidance (UA) on intercultural experiences. This includes positive, negative and insignificant associations between UA on the one hand and cosmopolitanism or comfort with intercultural service encounters (ICSE) on the other hand. The purpose of this paper is to participate in addressing these contradictions. More specifically, this study examines how UA affects expatriate cosmopolitanism as well as approach of service environments patronized by local customers by introducing two moderators: national identification and perceived discrimination.

The authors propose a conceptual model based on the results of a literature review. The authors test it with survey data collected from Indian expatriates (n=341) living in Qatar, using structural equation modeling.

The results corroborate the moderating role of national identification. Under low identification, expatriate consumers engage in a prospective form of uncertainty management, leading them to adopt a more cosmopolitan stance. Under high identification, their uncertainty plays an inhibitory role, reducing their cosmopolitanism and negatively affecting their approach of service places patronized by local consumers. Perceived discrimination did not moderate the impact of UA as expected on either cosmopolitanism or approach.

This paper extends the prior research on UA by testing how two moderators could activate either a prospective or an inhibitory form of uncertainty. It also contributes to research on ICSE, by focusing on customer-to-customer interactions in a multicultural marketplace.

Limited knowledge exists on the difference in the antecedents and outcomes of relationship quality's cognitive and emotional aspects for e-retailers. This research tests how utilitarian and hedonic shopping values differentially affect “cognitive and emotional” relationship quality components and how the latter differentially affects word-of-mouth and brand evangelism.

Online survey data were collected from 450 Jordanian online shoppers. Structural equation modeling (AMOS 24.0) was employed to analyze the data.

First, e-retailer's informativeness and transaction convenience (i.e. utilitarian values), drive more strongly cognitive than emotional relationship quality, whereas e-retailer's escapism and social presence (i.e. hedonic values) drive more strongly emotional than cognitive relationship quality. Second, emotional relationship quality has a strong significant effect on brand evangelism, whereas cognitive relationship quality's effect is insignificant. Third, there are no statistically significant differences concerning the effect of cognitive and emotional relationship quality on word-of-mouth.

The findings of our research are expected to enhance our understanding of e-retailer relationship quality, its emergence and consequences. They would also provide e-retailers with guidance on how to execute growth strategies by focusing on specific types of brand relationship quality, on the other hand.

Vietnamese banks have relied in the past on short‐term promotional techniques and attractive interest rates instead of developing strong brands. This research investigates how customers’ perceptions of bank brands drive their trust and loyalty. It also addresses how customers’ experience and their social compliance moderate the impact of their brand perceptions on their trust and loyalty.

Customers’ perceptions are measured through brand associations based on the bank's functional elements, its personnel and its overall image. A structural equation model linking brand associations to customers’ trust and loyalty is tested using data from a sample of 557 Vietnamese bank customers.

The results indicate that the personnel‐based brand associations are the strongest driver of trust and have a negative direct impact on loyalty, while functional and corporate‐based associations have a stronger impact on loyalty. Trust strongly mediates brand associations’ impact on loyalty. In addition, corporate‐based associations have a stronger impact on trust and loyalty for customers with little direct experience with the bank and personnel‐based associations have a stronger impact for socially compliant customers.

The findings indicate how different brand associations can be leveraged to trigger customers’ trust and loyalty in the Vietnamese banking sector. Moderating effects of the extent of customers’ experience imply that bank brand managers should integrate the customer relationship lifecycle in their segmentation/targeting and in their customer‐brand relationship management.

This study highlights the potential of branding in the Vietnamese banking industry as a strategy to build strong customer relationships. It also strongly points out the need for brand managers to take into consideration the Vietnamese context and more precisely customers’ lack of banking experience and their tendency to social compliance.

This research seeks to explore the nature and the structure of brands' masculine dimensions; to develop a reliable and a valid scale to measure brand masculinity and to explore the different brand masculine patterns.

A series of four studies developed and validated a two-factor, five-item measurement scale for brand masculinity using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Content and face validities; reliability and internal validity; convergent and discriminant validities were established. Generalisability of the two dimensions across the gendering of product categories was assessed. A cluster analysis was used to explore brand masculine patterns.

The results indicate that brand masculinity is a bi-dimensional construct (i.e. “Male chauvinism” and “Heroic” dimensions). A cluster analysis performed on 45 brands revealed four brand masculine patterns: hegemonic, emerging, chivalrous and subaltern.

French student subjects constitute the sample. Future studies might investigate the transferability of the results to other cultures. The classification scheme broadens the existing brand personality and brand gender literature and its derived brand taxonomies.

The results provide brand managers with a marketing tool to measure their brands' masculinity and allow them to adapt specific, previously developed gendered marketing strategies.

This research contributes to the brand personality and brand gender literature with new insights about the nature and structure of brands' masculine dimensions. The study moves the conceptualisation of this construct forward rejecting thus previous monolithic approaches to brand masculinity.