{"title":"A community-based strategy for department stores","authors":"Susan K. Friedman","doi":"10.1108/ajb-05-2018-0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb-05-2018-0025","url":null,"abstract":"Over the years, department stores have dealt with unique challenges, including massive changes in city and then suburban landscapes and shopping patterns, shifts in consumer preferences, and, more recently, electronic commerce. The purpose of this paper is to discuss additional community-oriented marketing approaches for department stores.,The approach looks at the role of traditional department stores in communities and their economic impact and uses ideas from a variety of community-based mobile services, including medical, food and library outreach.,The findings are that the importance of physical retailers such as department stores to a community deserves further consideration by civic and business leaders and that a variety of services and products have been successfully marketed in communities through additional approaches such as mobile units.,The approaches presented could enhance community development.,While department stores have held distinctive places in many cities, these enterprises lack the type of regional fan base that advocates actively for other kinds of industries. A community-oriented marketing approach for department stores is discussed, with ideas for future research that could build on these stores’ special brand attributes and on their contributions to the viability of an area.","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75125555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When is the atypical design not penalized? Moderating role of product innovativeness and technological sophistication in consumer’s evaluation of new products","authors":"Sangwon Lee","doi":"10.1108/ajb-06-2018-0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb-06-2018-0035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000The 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?\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000One 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.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The 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).\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000This 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.\u0000","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79977045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effects of intangible assets on firm performance","authors":"Jannatul Ferdaous, M. M. Rahman","doi":"10.1108/ajb-11-2018-0065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb-11-2018-0065","url":null,"abstract":"Using the resource-based view and knowledge-based view as theoretical backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between intangible assets and firm performance.,The firms’ audited annual reports were collected during the period of 2007–2017 from 49 listed manufacturing firms of four industries in DSE, Bangladesh. This inductive research uses panel data (fixed-effect) estimation technique for balanced panel data to measure, describe, and analyze the firm performance.,After controlling some specific variables, the results reveal mixed behavioral effects of intangible assets on firm performance. Even if intangible assets trigger a significant rise in the firms’ EPS (a measure of financial performance), the firms cannot maximize shareholders’ wealth due to their poor performance in the stock market of Bangladesh.,The proposed models could be important tools for managers to integrate intangible assets in their decision process. The proposed models could also be important tools for investors to select their portfolios that have a track record for continuous investment in intangible assets in an efficient and sustainable way.,Intangible assets are largely absent from the firms’ balance sheet. Consequently, previous empirical research works struggled to measure and quantify the effects of intangible assets on firm performance. The study fills that gap in the understanding of intangible assets’ nature, measurement method, and their effects on firm performance.","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77070748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What does board capital really bring to the table?","authors":"W. D. Fernandez, Yannick Thams, M. Lehrer","doi":"10.1108/ajb-09-2018-0050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb-09-2018-0050","url":null,"abstract":"Although resource dependence theory (RDT) has substantially deepened the understanding of the function and role of boards, no systematic review of this body of work has yet been undertaken. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize prior research on the strategically relevant resources provided by board members to their organization in the light of RDT and indicate avenues for future research.,The review covers 79 research articles from 1978 to 2016 dealing with the resource provision of boards of directors.,Board capital research most often assumes a positive, linear relationship between board capital, resource provision and ultimately firm-level performance outcomes. This tendency tends to exclude from view the possibility of important trade-offs relevant to both theory and practice. Future research will need to incorporate more complex models that take into consideration nonlinear and curvilinear effects. The authors outline opportunities to advance board research by refining the methodological techniques employed.,By recommending investigation of the important trade-offs inherent in board composition, the authors seek to inspire future research that offers practical guidance for improving the effectiveness of corporate boards.","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82663756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"CEO power and corporate social responsibility","authors":"J. Harper, Li Sun","doi":"10.1108/AJB-10-2018-0058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-10-2018-0058","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) power on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000The authors use regression analysis to investigate the research question.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000Using a 23-year panel sample with 1,574 unique US firms and 8,575 firm-year observations, the authors find a significant and negative relation between CEO power and CSR, suggesting that firms with more powerful CEOs engage in less CSR activities.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000The results reveal that more powerful CEOs become less responsive to the needs of stakeholder groups, confirming the validity of the stakeholder theory of CSR.\u0000","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89102459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Firm response, action visibility and consumers’ legitimacy judgment","authors":"Zhimei Yuan, Yi Guo, Xingdong Wang","doi":"10.1108/AJB-07-2018-0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-07-2018-0042","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of action visibility in moderating the relationship between firm response and individual legitimacy judgment. Since a firm may decouple its public commitment from its actual practice to cope with conflicting stakeholder interests, visibility is important for consumers to make judgment because it is difficult for them to observe a firm’s actual fulfillment of its public commitment to quality assurance after a product-harm crisis.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000Scenario-based mixed design experiments were employed and 718 valid responses were collected.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The results indicated that, while acknowledging responsibility produced more favorable legitimacy judgment than denial, decoupling produced no better judgment than denial. However, higher visibility significantly amplified the effect size. Specifically, under the condition of high visibility, not only did acknowledging responsibility produce much more favorable judgment than denial, but so did decoupling.\u0000\u0000\u0000Research limitations/implications\u0000This study provided empirical evidence that action visibility moderated the relationship between firm response and individual legitimacy judgment, thus complementing the literature on crisis management.\u0000\u0000\u0000Practical implications\u0000This study provided executives or managers with optimal, suboptimal and least optimal response strategies under different levels of action visibility.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000Much of the extant research on response strategy for organizations to deal with product-harm crisis ignored the moderating role of action visibility. Past research on legitimacy judgment focused on organization. This paper combined firm response, action visibility and individual-level legitimacy judgment.\u0000","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82923437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effects of work experience on interpretations of recruitment advertisements and organizational attraction","authors":"Mark Yockey","doi":"10.1108/AJB-09-2017-0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-09-2017-0027","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate potential differences in experienced and inexperienced workers’ interpretations of recruitment ads. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a between subjects design to compare responses to recruitment advertisements. The advertisements varied in terms of compensation information. Findings Work experience did not alter perceptions of organizational culture but it did affect levels of organizational attraction. The implication is that all workers interpret recruitment advertisements in a similar manner but more experienced workers prefer different work environments than less experienced workers. Research limitations/implications The results generally support the use of student populations or inexperienced workers in recruitment research. The study was limited to perceptions of pay statements. Other forms of recruitment information needs to be investigated. Practical implications Companies seeking to recruit experienced workers need to be attentive to how those workers will view the company’s culture based on information in their recruitment advertisements. Originality/value This study is one of a very limited number of organizational attraction studies comparing experienced and inexperienced workers. It is important because it helps clarify the underlying mechanisms impacting organizational attraction based on work experience.","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90719894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Effectiveness of incentivized social media campaigns for a Fortune 500 company’s brand","authors":"M. Razi, J. M. Tarn, A. Mumuni","doi":"10.1108/AJB-07-2017-0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-07-2017-0019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000The purpose of this paper is to determine how best to build online advocates for a food company’s brand based on data available from the brand’s Facebook pages. Specific research objectives are to study examine whether incentivizing actions such as “liking,” sharing or commenting on a brand’s Facebook impacts the brand community’s sentiment and engagement with the brand, and whether such engagement is different for different actions (e.g. liking vs sharing).\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000To achieve the objectives of this research, sentiment analysis is performed on Facebook insight data from a Fortune 500 company, consisting of fans’ comments, shares and “likes” for promotional and fan posts pertaining to one of its brands. Paired samples t-tests are performed to assess differences in sentiment and engagement before and after each promotional post.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The results do not support a strong impact of promotional posts on overall sentiment. However, there is evidence in support of a positive impact of the campaigns on overall wall-level engagement with the brand. Moreover, the levels of engagement are not the same for all promotional posts. Rather, some posts resulted in much higher engagement levels than others, suggesting that not all incentivized campaigns are created equal.\u0000\u0000\u0000Research limitations/implications\u0000The study used the data from only one of company’s many brands. Therefore, similar studies on other brands are warranted.\u0000\u0000\u0000Practical implications\u0000Social networking sites are increasing in numbers, and more and more businesses are embracing social networks and/or blogs as part of their marketing platforms. Many companies offer coupons and incentives on social media to entice customers to engage with their social media platforms as well as buy products. The study results provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of different kinds of social media promotional campaigns, and can help managers decide which campaigns to implement to achieve specific objectives.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000This research adds to the literature in two ways. First, it contributes to the limited literature on the effectiveness of incentivized social media campaign. Second, it contributes to the social media analytics literature by demonstrating how sentiment analysis can be used along with other statistical procedures to make sense of qualitative social media data.\u0000","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73899244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supportive leadership, proactive personality and employee voice behavior","authors":"Mervat Elsaied","doi":"10.1108/AJB-01-2017-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-01-2017-0004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Purpose\u0000The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of psychological safety in the relationships among supportive leadership, proactive personality and employee voice behavior.\u0000\u0000\u0000Design/methodology/approach\u0000The data were collected from 268 employees, and 56 were their immediate supervisors, in three Egyptian companies belonging to footwear and headgear sector. Employees and their immediate supervisors provided data on separate questionnaires and different occasions; an identification number was used to match each employee’s questionnaire with the response of his/her immediate supervisor.\u0000\u0000\u0000Findings\u0000The results indicated that both supportive leadership and proactive personality had a positive and significant effect on voice behavior. In addition, the results showed that psychological safety fully mediated the relationships among supportive leadership, proactive personality and employee voice behavior.\u0000\u0000\u0000Originality/value\u0000This study contributes to the literature by linking supportive leadership, proactive personality and employee voice behavior. It clarifies how and why supportive leadership and proactive personality can stimulate voice behavior.\u0000","PeriodicalId":44116,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Business","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2019-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90909588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}