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The aim of this paper is to identify the importance of property sector investment in regional economic growth in Greece.

The paper uses regional accounts data, including investment and employment for all Greek industries. The standard Cobb‐Douglas specification is used. The authors apply random effects and GMM estimators for dynamic panel data and employ two model specifications (aggregate and disaggregate).

The results indicate a positive relationship between investment in real estate services and hotels and restaurants and regional growth. Also, investment in the energy sector, which is closely linked to construction and consequently to housing activity, appears to have a positive and significant growth effect.

The authors believe that these results are useful, make a contribution to the existing knowledge, and provide firm justification that the property sector has a considerable effect on regional economic growth in Greece.

One of the distinctive features of the paper is that it discusses critically the extent to which the Greek property sector, as part of a broader nexus of domestic and global dynamics, affects regional economic growth – either directly or indirectly. To the best of the authors' knowledge, none of the existing studies in this area provides a systematic treatment of the property sector as a contributory factor in explaining the growth performance of Greek regions. The authors believe that this is an important empirical issue, especially given the spatial disparities that characterise Greek economic growth.

This paper aims to examine a core member-customer threat in co-operatives (co-ops) by drawing from ostracism research, assessing co-op ostracism’s impact on critical membership and relational exchange outcomes and discussing why relationship marketing research needs to pay more attention to the overlooked role of implicit mistreatment forms in customer harm-doing.

Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, ostracism in co-ops was explored, and a measurement scale for co-op ostracism was developed. In Study 2, the core conceptual model was empirically tested with data from members of three different co-ops. In Study 3, a coping strategy was integrated into an extended model and empirically tested with a new sample of co-op members.

Ostracism is present in co-ops and “poisons” crucial relational (and membership) outcomes, despite the presence of other relationship-building or relationship-destroying accounts. Coupling entitativity with cognitive capital attenuates ostracism’s impact.

Inspired by co-ops’ membership model and inherent relational advantage, this research is the first to adopt a co-op member-customer perspective and shed light on an implicit relationship-destroying factor.

Co-op decision makers might use the diagnostic tool developed in the paper to detect ostracism and fight it. Moreover, a novel coping strategy for how co-ops (or other firms) might fend off ostracism threats is offered in the article.

The present study illuminates a dark side of a relationally profuse customer context, painting a more complete picture of relationship marketing determinants. Little attention has been given to ostracism as a distinct and important social behaviour in marketing research and to co-ops as a research context.