1,720,970 research outputs found
Web 2.0 customer intelligence: improving actual and perceived student experience by listening to web-based conversations
No full textNo abstract availabl
A call for cross-campus collaboration in executive education: reflections on the certificate in innovation management program at the University of Maryland
No full textNo abstract availabl
What makes it green? The role of centrality of green attributes in evaluations of the greenness of products
No full textAn increasing body of research addresses consumers' green product purchasing behavior, and yet little work has examined how consumers form perceptions of the greenness of products in the first place. Drawing on theories of attribute centrality (the degree to which an attribute is integral in defining an object), the authors argue that products with identical environmental benefits will be judged more or less green depending on whether the benefit stems from a central versus a peripheral attribute. They present four studies that support the hypotheses and explore factors that influence the effect of central attributes, including product category membership and integration of the green attribute with other elements of the product. They include controls for firm motivations and importance of the attribute to the individual consumer. The authors conclude the article with managerial and public policy implications, such as advice for firms on where to make green investments for maximum consumer impact and insight for public policy makers on the need for consumer assistance in objectively evaluating products with identical environmental benefits that achieve those benefits in different ways
Predicting the effects of alternative pricing strategies in an artificial society undergoing technology adoption
No full textArtificial societies are computer models in which the collective behavior of a population of simulated human decision makers is observed over time. Here we describe an artificial society of “soft computing agents” (model consumers) making probabilistic purchasing decisions about new technological products that are introduced by competing firms. The model is studied under varying conditions to determine the relative success of these firms as they pursue different pricing strategies designed to increase their market share. We find that a critical factor in determining the success of different pricing strategies is the utility that an individual consumer gains from other consumers adopting the same technology. Further, financial success is uncoupled from market share under some conditions, so (for example) while an inferior technology may gain substantial market share by aggressive price-cutting, it is unlikely to gain financial rewards. These results add to growing evidence that artificial society models may prove useful in improving our understanding of collective decision making in complex sociological, economic and business management situation
Beyond Green Regulations: Achieving True Sustainability through Engagement in a Forced Adoption Context
No full textThe article discusses a study which looked at the key elements related to sustainability, behavior and forced adoption of technology. These elements include the consumers' engagement ranging from desired behavior change on the positive side to active disengagement due to psychological reactance on the negative side, and the role of marketing in encouraging engagement when adoption is forced. The study enrolled a total of 50 participants between September and November 201
Corporate Environmentalism in Advanced and Emerging Markets : Stakeholders, Environmental Orientation and Environmental Strategy across Multinational Corporations in India and France
No full textQu'est-ce qui poussent les entreprises multinationales à adopter une orientation et une stratégie environnementales ? Ces facteurs diffèrent-ils selon les marchés émergents ou avancés et selon les secteurs industriels ? Cette recherche utilise la théorie des parties prenantes et étend le concept de responsabilité environnementale d’entreprise pour analyser le processus par lequel les multinationales intègrent les préoccupations environnementales dans leur orientation et leur stratégie. Cinq antécédents pilotent la responsabilité environnementale d'entreprise : intérêt du public, forces de régulation, avantage concurrentiel, intérêt des actionnaires et engagement de la direction. Deux modérateurs sont proposés : le type de marché, avancé ou émergent, et le type d’industrie. Une analyse exploratoire a été menée pour développer et valider des hypothèses. Une enquête auprès de 409 managers indiens et français a confirmé l'effet modérateur du type de marché sur la relation entre d’une part les cinq antécédents et d’autre part l'orientation et la stratégie environnementale d'une entreprise. Dans le marché français, l'effet de l’avantage concurrentiel sur l'orientation environnementale interne des entreprises est médié par le degré d'engagement de la direction d’entreprise. Cet effet médiateur est inexistant dans le marché indien. L'effet modérateur du type d'industrie révèle le rôle significatif de l’intérêt des personnes dans l'orientation environnementale des industries à impact environnemental modéré et élevé. Les contributions théoriques et méthodologiques de cette recherche débouchent sur des recommandations stratégiques pour les managers et les décideurs politiques.What drives multinational corporations to adopt environmental orientation and strategy? Do these factors differ between emerging and advanced markets and between industrial sectors? This research uses stakeholder theory and extends the corporate environmentalism concept to answer these questions and to describe and analyze the process by which firms integrate environmental concerns into their orientation and strategy. Five antecedents drive corporate environmentalism: public concern, regulatory forces, competitive advantage, shareholder concern and top management commitment. Two moderators are proposed: market type, advanced or emerging, and industry type. An exploratory analysis was conducted to develop testable hypotheses. A survey of 409 executives in India and France confirmed the moderating effect of market type on the relationship between the five antecedents and the environmental orientation and strategy of the firm. Top management commitment mediates the effect of competitive advantage on internal environmental orientation in French firms, whereas is has no effect in Indian firms. The moderating effect of industry type revealed that people concern has a significant effect on environmental orientation in high and moderate environmental impact industries. Theoretical and methodological contributions presented imply strategic and practical applications for companies and managers and public policy decision makers
The Role of Centrality of Green Attributes in Green Product Evaluation
No full textInternational audienceConcern about the limited natural resources of the planet and an interest in careful stewardship of those resources continue to influence the decisions of both firms and consumers. Firms are building environmentally friendly supply chains, including recycled material in their products, and developing manufacturing methods that avoid polluting their surrounding environments. Consumers' reactions to firms' investments have been mixed. While some consumers espouse enthusiasm for more environmentally-friendly offerings, a recent Gallup poll suggests that many stop short of actually purchasing such products (Dunlap 2010). Customers have been found to suffer from "green fatigue" (Platt and Retallack 2009), to be suspicious of "green washing" (www.greenwashingindex.com), and to be unwilling to pay extra for environmentally-conscious products (Bhattacharya and Sen 2004). However, a more fundamental question underlies these reactions: What makes a consumer perceive a product as green or not green to start with? Before a product's environmental friendliness can have any influence on a consumer's purchase decision, the consumer must see the product as green - or not. Consider a consumer looking at two brands of paper towels in a supermarket. The information provided indicates that the environmental savings achieved by including recycled material in both brands is exactly the same, but one brand includes recycled materials in the packaging of the towels, while one includes recycled materials in the towels themselves. Do consumers perceive these two products as equally green? Or consider two laptop computers, one with an environmentally friendly motherboard and the other with an environmental friendly power cord. The use of recycled materials in the two products saves the same amount of plastic material from entering landfills, but do consumers perceive a green peripheral element (the power cord) as contributing as much "greenness" to a product as a green component that is more essential to the product (the motherboard)? In this research, we look at factors that influence a consumer's perception of the environmental friendliness or greenness of a product. We explore this from the perspective of centrality theory (Sloman, Love, and Ahn 1998) which states that certain features of a product are more central - more essential, more integral - to defining what a product (or natural object) is and to what category it belongs. One facet of centrality involves high- versus low-level construals (Trope, Liberman and Wakslak 2007) and so we examine the role construal plays in the consumer's evaluation process and the consumer's categorization of a product as green or not green. We also look at how different elements of a product are presented to the consumer (holistically or separately) and also examine where in the supply chain the "greenness" of a product occurs. We test the effect of these variables across multiple experiments that span four different product categories - mattresses, paper towels, laptop computers, and washing machines. The results of our four studies suggest that products with identical reductions in their environmental impact may have their environmental friendliness evaluated very differently by consumers depending on the centrality or non-centrality of the product features that are green. We find that differences in green perceptions between products with central or peripheral green attributes are attenuated when a high-level or distant construal is triggered. The implications of this for public policy makers and firms are potentially significant. From a public policy perspective, our results suggest that consumers' evaluation process of green claims may be influenced by factors which are not related to green outcomes. In our study, the green claims were very specific and clearly identical, yet the "peripheralness" or centrality of the green feature had a significant effect on the consumers' assessment of greenness. This suggests that consumers' ability to assess environmental impact is influenced by factors not related to environment outcomes. From the perspective of firms, they may wish to consider carefully their green investments and their communication of these efforts. If the same environmental impact can be achieved through both a central feature and a non-central feature, our findings suggest that for positive consumer evaluations, the investment is best made in the central feature. If that is not possible, then encouraging a more abstract construal may alter the consumer's processing and achieve positive results from an investment in a peripheral feature
The Role of Centrality of Green Attributes in Green Product Evaluation
No full textInternational audienceConcern about the limited natural resources of the planet and an interest in careful stewardship of those resources continue to influence the decisions of both firms and consumers. Firms are building environmentally friendly supply chains, including recycled material in their products, and developing manufacturing methods that avoid polluting their surrounding environments. Consumers' reactions to firms' investments have been mixed. While some consumers espouse enthusiasm for more environmentally-friendly offerings, a recent Gallup poll suggests that many stop short of actually purchasing such products (Dunlap 2010). Customers have been found to suffer from "green fatigue" (Platt and Retallack 2009), to be suspicious of "green washing" (www.greenwashingindex.com), and to be unwilling to pay extra for environmentally-conscious products (Bhattacharya and Sen 2004). However, a more fundamental question underlies these reactions: What makes a consumer perceive a product as green or not green to start with? Before a product's environmental friendliness can have any influence on a consumer's purchase decision, the consumer must see the product as green - or not. Consider a consumer looking at two brands of paper towels in a supermarket. The information provided indicates that the environmental savings achieved by including recycled material in both brands is exactly the same, but one brand includes recycled materials in the packaging of the towels, while one includes recycled materials in the towels themselves. Do consumers perceive these two products as equally green? Or consider two laptop computers, one with an environmentally friendly motherboard and the other with an environmental friendly power cord. The use of recycled materials in the two products saves the same amount of plastic material from entering landfills, but do consumers perceive a green peripheral element (the power cord) as contributing as much "greenness" to a product as a green component that is more essential to the product (the motherboard)? In this research, we look at factors that influence a consumer's perception of the environmental friendliness or greenness of a product. We explore this from the perspective of centrality theory (Sloman, Love, and Ahn 1998) which states that certain features of a product are more central - more essential, more integral - to defining what a product (or natural object) is and to what category it belongs. One facet of centrality involves high- versus low-level construals (Trope, Liberman and Wakslak 2007) and so we examine the role construal plays in the consumer's evaluation process and the consumer's categorization of a product as green or not green. We also look at how different elements of a product are presented to the consumer (holistically or separately) and also examine where in the supply chain the "greenness" of a product occurs. We test the effect of these variables across multiple experiments that span four different product categories - mattresses, paper towels, laptop computers, and washing machines. The results of our four studies suggest that products with identical reductions in their environmental impact may have their environmental friendliness evaluated very differently by consumers depending on the centrality or non-centrality of the product features that are green. We find that differences in green perceptions between products with central or peripheral green attributes are attenuated when a high-level or distant construal is triggered. The implications of this for public policy makers and firms are potentially significant. From a public policy perspective, our results suggest that consumers' evaluation process of green claims may be influenced by factors which are not related to green outcomes. In our study, the green claims were very specific and clearly identical, yet the "peripheralness" or centrality of the green feature had a significant effect on the consumers' assessment of greenness. This suggests that consumers' ability to assess environmental impact is influenced by factors not related to environment outcomes. From the perspective of firms, they may wish to consider carefully their green investments and their communication of these efforts. If the same environmental impact can be achieved through both a central feature and a non-central feature, our findings suggest that for positive consumer evaluations, the investment is best made in the central feature. If that is not possible, then encouraging a more abstract construal may alter the consumer's processing and achieve positive results from an investment in a peripheral feature
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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