Papers by Aric Rindfleisch
International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2021
Journal of Product & Brand Management, 2020
Purpose This paper aims to explore the relationship between brand love and materialism. Design/me... more Purpose This paper aims to explore the relationship between brand love and materialism. Design/methodology/approach This research uses two survey studies that the love of money. In combination, these two studies include over 1,000 participants. Findings Materialism does not just make consumers more likely to love brands, it also alters the way they relate to brands. Specifically, brand love is associated with loving brands that one currently owns rather than wishing for brands that one cannot afford and vice-versa for materialism. Brand love is also more strongly related to the centrality and success dimensions of materialism than to its happiness dimension. Materialism is not just associated with loving brands; it is also strongly associated with loving money. Finally, there has been an active debate over whether brand love is applicable to a wide variety of brands or just a select few. This research finds that an extremely wide variety of brands are loved by consumers. Research li...
Journal of Marketing a Quarterly Publication of the American Marketing Association, 2009
Journal of Operations Management, 2015
An increasing number of firms are outsourcing customer support to external service providers. Thi... more An increasing number of firms are outsourcing customer support to external service providers. This creates a triadic setting in which an outsourcing provider serves end customers on behalf of its clients. While outsourcing presents an opportunity to serve customers, service providers differ in their motivation and ability to fulfill customer needs. Prior research suggests that firms with a strong customer focus have an intrinsic motivation to address customer needs. We suggest that in an outsourcing context, this intrinsic motivation does not suffice. Using a Motivation-Opportunity-Ability framework, we posit that the effect of a provider's customer focus will be moderated by a set of relational, firm, and customer characteristics that affect its ability to serve end customers. We test our conceptualization among 171 outsourcing clients from the Netherlands and then validate these results among 135 Indian outsourcing providers. The findings reveal that customer-focused providers achieve higher levels of customer need fulfillment but this effect is contingent on their ability to serve end customers. In particular, customerfocused providers more effectively fulfill customer needs when clients and providers share close relational ties, when clients also have a high level of customer focus, and when end customer needs exhibit a low degree of turbulence. In addition, we find that, in turbulent markets, equipment-related services offer greater opportunity for effective customer need fulfillment than other outsourced services.
Review of Marketing Research, 2010
Customer Needs and Solutions, 2015
A growing number of firms are using crowdsourcing platforms to actively solicit the skills of ext... more A growing number of firms are using crowdsourcing platforms to actively solicit the skills of external entities to help them solve innovationrelated problems. Despite its increasing popularity, crowdsourcing has produced mixed success, because few external experts provide helpful solutions. The current research examines this issue by exploring why some external solvers are more successful than others. Grounded in dual-processing theory, this study combines survey and archival data to assess the impact of creative versus deliberate problem-solving styles on solving success. The results indicate that both styles can be effective, but their relative success depends on the amount of time a solver invests in a solution and his or her degree of contextual familiarity with the problem. Specifically, creative (deliberate) styles are more effective under conditions of high (low) contextual familiarity and shorter (longer) time investments. When solvers employ both styles, overall problem-solving success declines.
Customer Needs and Solutions, 2015
In this article, we lay out the challenges and research opportunities associated with business-to... more In this article, we lay out the challenges and research opportunities associated with business-to-business (B2B) buying. These challenges and opportunities reflect four aspects of B2B buying that the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM: www.isbm.org) has identified through a Delphi-like process: (1) the changing landscape of B2B buying, (2) the increasing sophistication of sellers, (3) the impact of technological changes, and (4) the increasing importance and growth of emerging markets. For each of these four areas, we identify the relevant background, key issues, and pertinent research agendas.
Handbook of Business-to-Business Marketing
Strategic Management Journal, 2007
Over the last two decades, strategy researchers have sought to understand the ownership structure... more Over the last two decades, strategy researchers have sought to understand the ownership structure of firms' foreign direct investments (FDI) as reflected in entry mode and equity level. However, prior FDI research has ignored the interrelated nature of these key FDI decisions. In addition, prior research does not fully account for the fact that individual ownership structure decisions occur within the context of a firm's broader FDI portfolio, and thus reflect a wide and frequently unobserved range of parent firm and host nation effects. Our research seeks to address both of these limitations. Using a rich dataset of 4,459 subsidiaries established by 858 Japanese firms across 38 countries over a 9-year period, we specify a conditional bivariate, crossclassified multilevel model of FDI ownership structure. Our model enables the joint estimation of entry mode and equity level, accounts for the portfolio nature of FDI, and compares the relative predictive power of transaction cost-and experience-based explanatory variables across both facets of ownership structure. Copyright 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a critical component of a firm's strategic agenda and has been a topic of substantial interest among strategy scholars for over two decades (e.g.
Marketing Letters, 2010
Transaction cost theory (TCT) is one of the most dominant theoretical perspectives in contemporar... more Transaction cost theory (TCT) is one of the most dominant theoretical perspectives in contemporary business-to-business (B2B) research. Our article provides a brief review of this theory and identifies six important contextual considerations for future research. These considerations center on the topics of
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2013
Our research explores the amplifying effect of materialism on the experience of traumatic stress ... more Our research explores the amplifying effect of materialism on the experience of traumatic stress and maladaptive consumption via both an Israeli field study and a U.S. national survey. Our field study assesses the moderating impact of materialism upon both traumatic stress and maladaptive consumption among participants from an Israeli town under terrorist attack vs. participants from an Israeli town not exposed to hostilities. Our survey examines the possible underlying processes behind these effects among a nationally representative sample of Americans. The Israeli study reveals that, when faced with a mortal threat such as a terrorist attack, highly materialistic individuals report higher levels of post-traumatic stress, compulsive consumption, and impulsive buying than their less materialistic counterparts. Our U.S. study suggests that these effects are likely due to the fact that materialistic individuals exhibit lower levels of self-esteem, which reduces their ability to cope with traumatic events. Thus, our results indicate that, in addition to its well-documented harmful direct effect on psychological well-being, materialism also exerts an indirect negative effect by making bad events even worse.
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2010
Prior research on cue management has dominantly focused on cues consumers use to infer product qu... more Prior research on cue management has dominantly focused on cues consumers use to infer product quality. Only a few studies have dealt with cues that allow consumers to infer category typicality. Connecting these research streams we show how different cues affect both product quality and category typicality assessments, how these perceptions interact, and how they influence purchase intention. Results of this conjoint experiment among 113 restaurant patrons indicate that typicality cues can also serve as inferences for quality, and that cues influence purchase intentions via their effect on perceived typicality rather than on perceived quality. Once a consumer has determined the usage situation and his inherent consumption goals, he is much more inclined to search for the cues such as table setting that signal the subcategory that is expected to satisfy these goals, than finding cues such as guidebook rating that are diagnostic of product quality (only). After carefully addressing typicality cues which are instrumental in stressing points of parity, brand managers can use quality cues to show the product's points of difference in a category.
Journal of Marketing Research, 2007
Journal of Marketing Research, 2013
In this research, the authors develop a theory addressing why people act opportunistically when t... more In this research, the authors develop a theory addressing why people act opportunistically when the stakes (i.e., payoffs) are low. Transaction cost theory suggests that opportunistic behavior is more likely under high-stakes conditions. The authors identify rapport as an important moderator of this relationship. Through a series of three studies, they find that high-stakes opportunism appears to occur only when rapport is low. In contrast, when rapport is high, this relationship reverses, such that opportunism is actually more likely when the stakes are low than when they are high. The authors attribute these findings to differences in reasoning and find that when rapport is high and the stakes are low, people are better able to justify their actions by employing morally malleable reasoning. Thus, this research offers insights into an important form of opportunism that has been largely absent from transaction cost theory.
Journal of Marketing, 2009
Distributor sharing of strategic information with suppliers is an important but underresearched i... more Distributor sharing of strategic information with suppliers is an important but underresearched issue within the marketing discipline. We develop and test a conceptual framework based on exchange theory that focuses on the degree to which distributors share external and internal strategic information with associated suppliers. Relying on survey data collected from 479 distributors across three industries, we find that distributors share strategic information with suppliers based on factors that impact the perceived benefits, costs, and risks of such behavior. The sharing of internal strategic information has distinct determinants compared to those of external strategic information. The interrelationships between environmental uncertainty and the sharing of internal strategic information, involving main and interactive effects, are especially interesting.
Journal of Marketing, 2006
Emotional branding is widely heralded as a key to marketing success. However, little attention ha... more Emotional branding is widely heralded as a key to marketing success. However, little attention has been given to the risks posed by this strategy. This article argues that emotional-branding strategies are conducive to the emergence of a doppelgänger brand image, which is defined as a family of disparaging images and meanings about a brand that circulate throughout popular culture. This article's thesis is that a doppelgänger brand image can undermine the perceived authenticity of an emotional-branding story and, thus, the identity value that the brand provides to consumers. The authors discuss how the tenets of emotional branding paradoxically encourage the formation and propagation of doppelgänger brand imagery. This article develops the counterintuitive proposition that rather than merely being a threat to be managed, a doppelgänger brand image can actually benefit a brand by providing early warning signs that an emotional-branding story is beginning to lose its cultural resonance. This article demonstrates these ideas through an analysis of the doppelgänger brand image that is beginning to haunt a paragon of emotional branding-Starbucks. The authors conclude with a discussion of how marketing managers can proactively use the insights gained by analyzing a doppelgänger brand image.
Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2010
Over the past decade, multichannel, multimedia retailing environments have grown in variety, scop... more Over the past decade, multichannel, multimedia retailing environments have grown in variety, scope, and sophistication. However, research regarding the implications of this trend for consumer behavior is rather scarce. We seek to address this need by providing a comprehensive yet flexible approach for formulating promising consumer behavior-related research questions based in multichannel, multimedia retailing environments. This approach adopts a consumer-centric view of multichannel, multimedia retailing and identifies a number of important dimensions of this environment. We then illustrate how this approach could be applied via specific examples involving consumer memory, product assortment, and information acquisition. We conclude by considering the managerial implications of our proposed approach.
Marketing Letters, 1998
A large and diverse body of marketing literature suggests that well-known brands enjoy several ad... more A large and diverse body of marketing literature suggests that well-known brands enjoy several advantages compared to less familiar brands. Specifically, brands with higher levels of familiarity appear to achieve higher levels of liking or preference among both consumers and retailers. This familiarity-liking relationship has proven to be one of marketing's most robust and reproducible empirical generalizations. However, there remains
Journal of Consumer Research, 2005
Jan Van den Bulck, and Bob Wyer, as well as the editors and reviewers, for their helpful comments... more Jan Van den Bulck, and Bob Wyer, as well as the editors and reviewers, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
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Papers by Aric Rindfleisch