This thesis investigates the relationship between the cognitive style of visualization, composed of an Object and a Spatial component, and its effects on numeracy and numerical decision-making contexts. Extant research points to spatial visualization skills aiding numerical performance. However, the findings are not conclusive and only refer to spatial visualization as a skill, not as a cognitive style. The role of object visualization on numerical skills and numerical decision-making contexts has been ignored altogether by previous research. This work aims to fill these gaps in the literature. Firstly, the relationship between Object and Spatial visualization as parts of a cognitive style was investigated, with all performed studies consistently supporting the idea that these are two independent mental constructs. The study of the relationship between numeracy and visualization revealed that, while higher Object visualization predicts lower scores in a numeracy test (Abbreviated Numeracy Scale, ANS), higher Spatial visualization predicts greater numerical ability in the same test. This result proved to be consistent across all the experiments in this study. Having established the relationship between the ANS and visualization, this study extended the investigation to other numerical and graphical scenarios which resemble tasks that could be found in natural scenarios. The results showed that spatial visualization predicts better performance in numerical and graphical tasks beyond the ANS. This thesis then extended the investigation to see whether the biases Peter et al. (2006) and Weller et al. (2012), which were found to be affected by Numeracy, were also similarly affected by visualization, therefore widening the potential impact of visualization on the field of Decision-Making. The results indicated that in a task with a normatively correct answer, spatial visualization predicted better performance, whereas numeracy or object visualization did not have this effect. In the tasks where only judgments of preference or attractiveness were elicited, neither numeracy nor visualization predicted preferences or attractiveness. Finally, this study investigated whether the cognitive style of visualization had an effect on individuals’ weighing information consistent with their cognitive style more heavily. In a task where participants saw information in the form of tables or graphs, accompanied by a human figure, it was found that neither spatial or object visualization preference seemed to influence the weighing of object or spatial information. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the relationship between numeracy and visualization style, and is the first investigation demonstrating how visualization cognitive style is related to numeracy and how a person’s visualization cognitive style affects Decision-Making tasks. The close relationship found between Spatial visualization and Numeracy, with Spatial visualization in some cases predicting results where Numeracy failed to show a differential effect, also opens the door to further consideration of the use and creation of Spatial visualization measures to be used instead of Numeracy scales in the numerical decision-making contexts.

Brand attachment refers to the cognitive and affective bonding between consumers and ‘their’ brands. Building consumer brand relationships is becoming increasingly important for academics and practitioners. Academics argue that comprehending the consumer brand relationship provides insight to consumers’ choice of brands related to their identity. The value of consumer brand relationships has been well documented in the marketing literature, in the context of increasing consumers’ defensive acts against the effect of negative information and minimizing the number of consumer desertions. Building consumer brand relationships underpins the long-term prosperity of brands. Extant research reveals several constructs of consumer brand relationships, including brand attachment. Recently, brand attachment has received much attention because it is a salient concept in explaining favourable consumer behaviours. By understanding brand attachment, firms are able to capture consumers’ minds and hearts. Thus, brand attachment is the focus of this thesis. Research on brand attachment is relatively new. Although a limited number of researchers have documented the drivers and outcomes of brand attachment, theyusually focus on a single category examination (e.g. retailing). Moreover, these studiesused measurement of brand attachment that only reflects emotional bonding. Hence, this study investigates the drivers and outcomes of brand attachment to reflect both cognitive and emotional bonding across categories. In addition, this research examinesthe role of attachment style. Attachment style refers to a systematic pattern of expectations, emotions and behaviours within relationships, from a particular history of attachment experiences. Attachment style and brand attachment aretwo distinct constructs. This study used a mixed method design to answer the research question. First, an exploratory study, using semistructured interviews and a projective technique (sentence completion), was designed to validate the research model. Afterwards, a questionnaire was designed to test the hypotheses within the research model. 432 questionnaires were analysed, using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This study offers several key contributions. First, this study goes beyond a single category examination to look across categories. Second, unlike previous studies, which only used emotional brand attachment, this study also measures cognitive brand attachment. Third, this study offers four important drivers of brand attachment: ideal selfcongruence, sensory brand experience brand responsiveness and CSR beliefs. The results also indicate a significant relationship between brand attachment with brand loyalty and resilience to negative information. Fourth, this study demonstrates empirical support to the positive link between sensory brand experience and brand attachment. This empirical support confirms the argument of researchers who proposed brand experience as one of the key determinants of brand attachment. Published research to date has yet to empirically test the link between brand attachment and resilience to negative information. Fifth, this study is the first to show that stronger brand attachment leads to higher resilience towards negative information. It is evident that when a strong bond between the consumer and brand has been established, they are more likely to forgive the brand when it is guilty of mistakes and violations. Sixth, the results also provide better understanding to the nomological network in which ideal selfcongruence operates. Previous studies show that ideal selfcongruence has a direct positive effect toward brand loyalty. However, this study reveals that ideal selfcongruence is fully mediated by brand attachment. This means increasing ideal selfcongruence does not directly increase brand loyalty; higher ideal selfcongruence leads to stronger brand attachment, which in the end lead to brand loyalty. In addition to that, this study also displays that brand attachment fully mediates and partially mediates the relationships between the four independent variables on brand loyalty and resilience to negative information. Finally, this study believes that not all consumers are the same. Insecure consumers are hard to manage and handle. It can be seen that the links between brand attachment with its antecedents and consequences are moderated by attachment style especially consumers that exhibit insecurities. Practitioners could use this study as guidelines to understand how to maximize brand attachment and leverage consumers’ loyalty and forgiveness. For instance, marketers could start developing marketing activities that support their consumers’ ideal self. It should be noted that brand responsiveness is the strongest factor that influences the degree of attachment. A firm should create a strategy that continuously attempts to understand consumers’ interest, perspectives and preferences (autonomy). Limitations and directions for further research are also discussed.

This essay will look at the Spanish retail property markets, concentrating specifically on Shopping centres in Madrid. This particular market has developed rapidly over the past 30 years and has gained maturity, depth, breadth and complexity. In an attempt to account for its path of development, this essay will focus on various institutional approaches. It will also attempt to describe and analyse this pathway. The following questions are to be asked: Can institutional approaches to explaining property development be applied to the Madrid shopping centre sector And if so, how can the development of the sector be explained There are a number of key characteristics of the Madrid Shopping Centre property market which this project will attempt to explain and analyse. The table below summarises these main characteristics of the shopping centre Market in Madrid that will be analysed over the course of this essay.

For many manufacturers of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), Middle Eastern markets are viewed as emergent economies with high growth potential. Some countries of the Middle East are witnessing a rise of modern trade channels such as hypermarket and supermarket formats, others are still dominated by traditional retailers such as wholesale and grocery store formats. Within this context, the decision to outsource the sales and distribution activities of a firm results in significant benefits but it also entails many dyadic risks between suppliers and their distributors. The purpose of this research is to understand how FMCG suppliers/manufacturers and distributors perceive relevant dyadic risks and how these risks are mitigated. The research examines the dyadic risk mitigation strategies adopted by both suppliers and distributors using relevant propositions based on transaction cost economics and agency theories. The propositions are explored by analysing 15 multiple dyadic cases which focus on the FMCG industry in three representative markets of the Middle East: Iraq, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Semi structured interviews have been conducted with 30 experts from the FMCG industry in the Middle East, split between suppliers and distributors. The research shows that FMCG suppliers in the Middle East are affected by dyadic risks that hinder their ability to control their performance. Distributors also face dyadic risks that are due to their dependency on suppliers, which affects their future sustainability. Dyadic Risk Mitigation strategies include deploying a control system and reviewing the formal contracting structure, as suggested by agency theory, while another strategic approach relates to a partial or vertical integration of assets of high specificity, as proposed by transaction cost economics theory. The research shows that trust plays a pivotal role in the relationship between suppliers and distributors. From a practical perspective, the research contributes to proposing a transformation road map that encapsulates guidelines and tools that managers can use to diagnose their dyadic risks and map their optimal dyadic risk mitigation strategy.

Purpose – the purpose of this research is to explore respondents’ knowledge of regional foods including the pre-product stage i.e. in the landscape. Herdwick lamb and Cumbrian salt marsh lamb are both highly visible in the landscape and form part of the ‘lifescape’ of local residents. Design/method/approach – taking a phenomenological stance the research examines the experiential claims of respondents; means-end chain analysis was selected to gather customer values relating to this broader product concept. Ladder maps were drawn up for each of two sets of twenty respondents residing in the production region of either lamb. Hierarchical value maps are produced to reveal salient connections. Findings – show that respondents hold a very wide range of perceptions, experiences and associations with the ‘pre-products’, which influences their judgement about the freshness, flavour, quality of the meat. The ability to fulfil other functions by buying regional meat became apparent, in particular the need to make a contribution to the local economy, to support the ecology, and to know the place through community interaction. Respondents were found to interact with the landscape on two levels, perception and inner reflection. Practical implications – effective regional food brands may be characterised by branding actions which do not have the food product details at their core. The development of relationships, events and brand communities in a shared place may sustain producers who have their volume output limited by what the land will bear. Originality and value – the limitations of some marketing structures are considered for adaptation including: Boatwright et al.’s (2009) value opportunity analysis and Keller’s (2008) consumer based brand equity model. An opportunity for creation of a new category of attribute, relating to experience of ‘pre-products’ in the landscape is discussed.

This study focuses on investigating some of the factors that influence the choice of stock to purchase (invest) by retail individual investors within the same industry. Specifically, understanding how brand affinity and stock choice of investors correlate and the effect on the price of the stock. Brand affinity, in this context, refers to the level of affect of favour that an individual has towards a certain corporate brand. The research also aims at developing a model for predicting the relationship between financial performance metrics of a company, brand affinity, and investor stock choice, which can be used in developing a simulator for predicting pricing and stock choice behaviours by simulating market choices. This research makes a relevant contribution to the fields of behavioural economics/finance, business strategy and investment management. Collection of primary data is done using a controlled experiment that involves an online simulation of a quantitative study using the choice-based conjoint analysis approach, which is a conjoint analysis variant. The data is collected and analysed using Sawtooth Software, an application for conjoint analysis, because of the complex mathematical operations involved. Investor stock choice is taken as the dependent variable while independent variables comprise of brand affinity and five financial performance metrics, which are dividend yield, price-to-earnings ratio, price-to-book ratio, return on equity and earnings per share. This study finds that brand affinity has a major impact, and is the most important factor affecting investor decision making in purchasing stocks. It is established that brand affinity and investor stock have a direct positive relationship, which is also the same for higher brand affinity levels and stock price. It is also established that when selecting stocks, investors do not exclusively rely on the rationality and expected utility in the same industry with same risk profiles. A market simulator is also successfully developed to examine the cross-elasticity effects between different stock attributes and levels of those attributes, albeit with a few limitations, which are to be improved through further research.

Built upon the literature on investor limited attention, the next two chapters of this thesis explore the effects of product market advertising in the stock market where we use advertising expenditure as a proxy for investor attention. Next, we study the incentives of sell-side financial analysts, who play an important role in collecting costly private information and reducing the degree of information asymmetries in financial markets.

The overarching purpose of this thesis is to build theory about customer satisfaction outcome-based control of frontline service employees (FLEs). This thesis consists of two parts. In the first part I develop a behavioural construct termed as multi-goal approaching-avoiding service encounter behaviour (MGSEB), which refers to FLEs goal-directed behaviours during the service encounter in which dual expectations (i.e., organization-related and customer-related) simultaneously operate. In the second part, I develop grounded theory of authenticity transition which is based on 30 in-depth interviews of FLEs from a range of service sectors. I find evidence of individuals' coping responses and adaptation to the imposed outcome-based control under the strategic implementation. Contrary to the prediction of goal alignment of individual as an organizational member, the grounded model process suggests that strategic customer outcome-based control processes leads individuals to transform into agents who think and behave for themselves.

Over the last three decades, poor eating habits and their consequences have become an increased area of concern worldwide (Higgs, 2004). This phenomenon is not an isolated issue as it affects various social categories, particularly families (Vogt, 2006). In fact, people’s food choice and eating behaviour have been thoroughly investigated in recent times as food choice and consumption have increasingly shifted towards unhealthy-food products. For example, fast-food consumption is increasing rapidly. Thus, studying family-food choices and consumption is essential, especially from parents’ viewpoints, according to Birch and Davison (2001), since parents provide food environments for their children from the earliest stages of life. The most direct influences on children’s food choices, especially in their early years, are their parents and families. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the family and has targeted UK families, investigating their food choice determinants as the main theme. Moreover, the study tries to find suitable answers to the research question, What are the main factors that affect families’ healthy-food product choices? Thus, healthy-food purchasing and consumption gaps could be addressed by further research in two ways. First, emphasis should be placed on studying the factors that affect patterns of healthy-food choice and consumption in families, so as to create a more effective and healthy community. Second, studying the barriers to healthy eating requires investigating factors influencing food choice both outside and inside the home. The choice of food is influenced by a variety of complex and interrelated factors involved in individual, family and societal levels. Thus, to have a clear understanding of food choice and its determining factors inside and outside the home, this study employed the Behavioural Perspective Model (BPM) as the main theoretical and practical framework to give a clear operant explanation of family-food choices within a real behaviour context. The context of this study is food choice, which is determined by the main BPM elements, namely, consumer behaviour setting, consumer learning history, both utilitarian and informational reinforcements and both utilitarian and informational punishments. Based on the study’s framework, a set of hypotheses was designed and tested using different data collection approaches and analysis instruments. Suitable data was collected from UK families to test the planned hypotheses to achieve the study objectives. Based on the data analysis, the study found that families’ food choice was determined by a set of factors, which were behaviour setting, utilitarian punishment and informational punishment factors, without consideration of learning history, utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement factors. Therefore, this study describes and provides a tested way of how parents might influence their family members to be healthy through buying and consuming healthy-food products in the continuous purchasing setting.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) has become popular in recent years, where corporate giving for a cause is tied to consumers’ purchase of the firm’s products. The prior research has mainly focused on how consumers perceive cause-company relationship e.g. cause fit) and consumers’ pro-social characteristics (e.g. altruism) in influencing CRM effectiveness. Additionally, more studies have been called to focus on emerging market’s cause-related product (CRP) buying. In an attempt to address these research gaps, this thesis examines CRP buying by bring the consumers’ self-cause relation into focus, adopting psychological distance as a theoretical framework in order to offer a deeper understanding of the psychology of buying decisions in CRM. A mixed method approached was applied. Study One conducted in-depth interviews to explore the psychological distance in CRM context. Using a cross-national sample from China (225) and the UK (220), Study Two conducted a scenario-based survey to examine the role of psychological distance in CRP buying in different country contexts. Overall, the findings demonstrate all four dimensions of psychological distance affect CRP buying, among which consumers’ perceived temporal distance and uncertainty toward social causes have the most influential impact. The perceived closeness’ positive influence on CRP buying could be enhanced by consumers’ favourable perceptions towards CRM and their pro-social characteristics. It also shows that products with an accumulative nature and a relatively large donation magnitude should be tied with psychologically closer social cause. Significant differences are found among consumers’ CRP buying in developed and emerging markets: 1. Unlike UK consumers, Chinese consumers are not affected by their perceived social and physical distance towards social causes. 2. Chinese consumers are not in favour of providing extra effort in participating a CRM campaign other than buying a CRP whereas UK consumers may be willing to actively involve in devoting time and effort in CRM campaign. 3. UK consumers tend to buy more CRPs linked with high donation magnitude than Chinese consumers. Theoretical and practical contributions are given.