The advancement of a service-dominant logic with the marketing literature, and its focus on co-creation brings into question the continued relevance of existing measures of service quality and value. The three essays presented here begin to reexamine the existing measures found in the literature and proposes new conceptualizations and measures for service quality and value that are theoretically consistent with the co-creation proposed within the service-logic. An empirical test of the newly proposed measures is also provided to determine the role of co-creation in predicting customer satisfaction and key behavioral outcomes. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2016. / May 24, 2016. / Co-creation, Service-Dominant Logic, Service Quality, Value / Includes bibliographical references. / J. Joseph Cronin, Jr., Professor Directing Dissertation; Jay Rayburn, University Representative; Larry Giunipero, Committee Member; Pui Wan Lee, Committee Member.

Although a large body of research demonstrates a positive relationship between a focal firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and its performance, some research suggests otherwise. This dissertation attempts to extend the literature by investigating the role of CSR engagement in a strategic alliance setting. Specifically, the current research suggests that the partner(s) CSR engagement has a positive impact on the focal firm financial performance. This positive impact is likely a result of reputation spillover, positive signaling, and knowledge transfer the focal firm enjoys from its alliance partners. The current research utilizes two different studies to investigate the proposed relationship at the single alliance level as well as at the portfolio level. The results of the two studies support the proposed relationship and suggest that partnering firms CSR engagement has a positive effect on focal firms short-term and long-term financial performance. Furthermore, the results show some evidence that the positive impact of the partners' CSR engagement on the focal firm financial performance has a diminishing rate of returns as the focal firm's CSR engagement increases. Moreover, the results show that the average partners size positively moderates the relationship between the partner(s) CSR engagement and the focal firm financial performance. Finally, the results show conflicting roles for two types of centrality (i.e., betweenness and degree) in which betweenness increases the impact of the partners' CSR engagement on the focal firm's financial performance, while degree centrality decreases that impact. This dissertation contributes to the literature by integrating the CSR and the alliances streams of research to resolve some of the current inconsistent findings in the CSR literature. In doing so, the current research goes beyond a focal firm's CSR to include the focal firm's alliances' CSR to provide a possible explanation for those mixed findings. By investigating the impact of focal firm and partners CSR engagement simultaneously, the current research uncovers the nature of the relationship between a focal firm's CSR and its alliances partners' CSR engagement In addition, it suggests that managers should evaluate potential alliance partners not only on their tangible and core-business resources, but on their social performance as well. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Marketing in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 3, 2017. / Corporate Social Responsibility, Event Study, Interorganizational Networks, Network Analysis, Strategic Alliances / Includes bibliographical references. / Ruby P. Lee, Professor Directing Dissertation; Xinlin Tang, University Representative; Charles Hofacker, Committee Member; Colleen Harmeling, Committee Member.

Consumers often desire to eat healthy foods, yet a food’s healthiness is an unobservable attribute. Consumers, therefore, often rely on external cues to draw conclusions about healthiness. In this research, I find that the number of ingredients in a product branded as healthy can bias these conclusions. In contrast to the frequency heuristic, which has consistently found that “more is better,” I find that consumers perceive foods containing more ingredients to be less natural and thus less healthy than foods with few ingredients, even when all ingredients are believed to be natural on their own. This is because consumers infer products with more ingredients are more likely to originate from a complex production process that requires more human intervention. I then found that consumers prefer products with fewer ingredients when pursuing a health-related goal in contrast to when the goal is maximizing the pleasure of consumption. Given that the ingredient quantity in a product is difficult to alter, I show that grouping a large number of ingredients into a small number of categories attenuates negative inferences that are based on ingredient quantity. Thus, the current research uncovers a new factor that shapes product naturalness and healthiness judgments, advances existing understanding of how perceived process complexity contributes to naturalness judgments, and suggests interventions for marketers to promote naturalness and healthiness perceptions.

Mental budgeting occurs when consumers allocate money to mental accounts to appropriate it for specific expenses or expense categories. Mental budgeting creates anomalies in consumer spending. Once money is budgeted, consumers spend that money as if it is no longer perfectly fungible, or substitutable, with other money. I propose a loss booking theory of the psychological mechanisms involved in mental budgeting. It explains the way mental budgeting changes how spending is perceived, experienced, and initiated. I suggest that the loss of money is psychologically “booked” or realized when it is budgeted into mental accounts. This shifts the reference point from which expenditures of budgeted money are evaluated. Expenditures of budgeted money are less likely to be coded as losses and elicit less pain of paying than expenditures of unbudgeted money or money budgeted toward other expense categories. This theory provides an empirically supported integrative account of mental budgeting and its anomalous effects on consumer spending. Furthermore, it makes the prediction that mental budgeting increases consumer spending. The results of thirteen experiments provide evidentiary support for the predictions of my theory across a variety of expense categories, from clothing to consumer electronics to real holiday shopping. These findings yield valuable insights into the psychological mechanisms of mental budgeting, mental accounting processes, and a variety of anomalies in consumer financial decision-making. / 2025-05-31T00:00:00Z

Advancements in online payment mechanics has revolutionised the monetisation of online games. One such method known as In-App Purchases (IAPs) - small purchases of virtual goods for real world currencies, has become a popular method of increasing the profitability of online games. In-App Purchases are made only by small percentages of players in a game and the reasons influencing players to make In-App Purchases vary. Exploring the influencers of players online purchase intent in online games may assist game developers in increasing players’ willingness to make In-App Purchases. The monetisation mechanics of games and consumers’ willingness to make online purchases are an important focus in the online gaming industry when determining the profitability of a game. Thus, coming to understand the monetisation mechanics of a game and the way it influences consumers online purchase intent can be useful to game developers and marketers when developing new games. The purpose of this study was, thus, to assist both game developers and marketers in understanding the influencers of online purchase intent in online games, in order to better create and market more profitable online games. The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model was used to better understand InApp purchasing behavior, where Stimulus refers to game characteristics, Organism refers to gameplay experience that could lead to the Response resulting in Online Purchase Intent. The factors identified that contributed to this response include: Active Control, Reciprocal Communication, Social Identity, Skill and Challenge which constitute the Stimulus constructs of the S-O-R model; the factors which constitute Response include: Flow, Cognitive Involvement and Affective Involvement. The model was tested using an online survey and tested through the use of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling software. The results of the study provide support for the conceptual framework and indicate that Online Purchase Intent may be most influenced by the way players personally identify with a game, and how much of a challenge the game presents. The results also indicate that emotional involvement with a game has a significant positive influence on Online Purchase Intent and that online purchases may be impulse purchases. The findings of this study imply that game developers may be able to influence Online Purchase Intent by increasing the level challenge found in games. Additionally, marketers may be able to influence online purchases through the use of emotional appeals in game advertisements and by offering limited edition sales of InApp Purchases. Future research related to this study should explore which emotions are the greatest influencers of Online Purchase Intention, and how these emotions influence the willingness to make In-App Purchases.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Betrayed customers are increasingly seeking ways to restore fairness. One way to do this is through customer revenge. Customer revenge behaviour has become an increasingly important topic in marketing research, especially with the far reaching impact that online complaining (a form of indirect revenge) has. Revenge behaviour usually takes place after a service failure and a failed attempt at service recovery, and is an attempt to redress an interpersonal offence by committing an aggressive action against a perceived offender. This is done to 1) get even with the company, 2) restore a moral balance, or 3) is sometimes justified by customers as a moral obligation to restore the balance between the customer and the firm. There are two forms of revenge behaviour: direct and indirect revenge. Direct revenge consists of marketplace aggression and vindictive complaining, and indirect revenge consists of negative word-of-mouth and online complaints. This study expands and tests a comprehensive model of customer revenge behaviour (adapted from Gregoire, Laufer & Tripp, 2010) within a service environment. Revenge behaviour is usually an attempt to redress an interpersonal offence by committing an aggressive action against a perceived offender (Bechwati & Morrin, 2003; McCullough et al., 2001; Zourrig et al., 2009). Previous models of customer revenge behaviour assumes that all customers go through certain phases towards a desire for revenge and then, possibly, actual revenge behaviour. This study attempts to show that some customers are more likely to enact revenge than others. First, the key role that customers’ personality type plays in the development of a desire for revenge is investigated. Personality type can be described as a combination of characteristics that makes up an individuals’ character (McCullough et al., 2001). Two personality types (derived from the Big Five personality types) that are hypothesised as being more inclined to developing a desire for revenge: agreeableness and conscientiousness, where customers who have low levels of agreeableness and low levels of conscientiousness are more inclined to develop a desire for revenge.

South Africa is home to a bourgeoning wedding industry valued at $3.25 billion. Much of the profit generated in this industry is from the sales of wedding dresses, with 57.1% of South African brides having purchased a new wedding dress from a bridal boutique in 2013. Previous research has looked at the effect of social media, in the form of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), on purchase intention. However, few studies have analysed this effect for high-risk, "once-in-a-lifetime" products such as wedding dresses. In South Africa alone, social media users increased by 20% in 2014, with 29% of the population using social media applications. However, it is uncertain whether this widespread adoption of social media influences the purchase of high-risk, "once-in-alifetime" products like wedding dresses. The "eWOM in SNS's model" is applied to this context, where the influence of eWOM, trust and value co-creation, on the purchase intention of a wedding dress, is compared using an experimental design. One hundred and fifty-two (n=152) engaged South African females, between the age of 18 and 29 years, partook in an experiment. The experiment involved a control group and an experimental group, who viewed eWOM on the Facebook fan page of a wedding dress vendor. The study showed that while the "eWOM in SNS's model" was both valid and reliable in this context, the influence of eWOM on purchase intention was much diminished and fully mediated through value co-creation. The managerial implications of this study's findings, aimed at wedding dress vendors with Facebook fan pages, were all geared towards stimulating value co-creation, given its effect on the relationship between eWOM and purchase intention. The implications involved maximising visual content, appropriately responding to negative comments, publishing posts at suitable times and frequencies, observing the available Facebook reports and posting customer testimonials.

Includes bibliographies.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Using the Internet to share content online is not only a daily activity for many people, yet a means to share their experiences and emotion with others. This study aims to answer why Internet users in South Africa share content online and to better understand the role of emotion in viral marketing. There are three main objectives of this study: to determine what encourages people to share content online, to investigate the role of emotion in sharing content online and to determine whether there is a difference between sharing content that elicits positive emotion versus sharing content that elicits negative emotion. The findings assist marketers in conducting viral marketing campaigns that appeal to consumers. Using a two-stage research design, qualitative and exploratory research was conducted. The first-stage is netnography, which is a derivation of ethnography, and was based on YouTube. The second-stage consisted of semi-structured interviews that included two viral video marketing campaigns. This study found that people share content online when content that appeals to people is relevant. Whether people find content relevant or not can depend on their age and/ or gender. People share content online to be altruistic, for self-benefit and social capital. An additional reason for sharing content online is when the content is emotionally appealing. Particularly, it was found that content that elicits positive emotion is more likely to be shared than content that elicits negative emotion. This study addresses gaps in literature in the following ways. Firstly, viral marketing is a growing concept that requires updated research about to provide an understanding of viral marketing that is consistent with its changes in its practice. Secondly, the model provided in this study defines what sharing means in terms of viral marketing, which no other study has done. Thirdly, where previous authors disagree about the difference between sharing content that elicits positive emotion versus sharing content that elicits negative emotion, this study contains updated findings which show that content which elicits positive emotion is more likely to be shared. Additionally, this study shows how the Social Sharing of Emotion theory can be applied to a viral-marketing and online context. The contribution that this study makes is that literature can benefit by understanding that content is king and relevance is important in encouraging people to share content online. Additionally, marketers should focus on creating content that is useful or makes the sender look good socially. Most importantly, to encourage people to share content online, the content should be emotionally appealing and focus should be placed on ensuring the content elicits positive emotion.

Religion and commerce are two concepts which give rise to divergent views when associated with each other. Nevertheless, churches are increasingly making use of commercial methods such as marketing and retailing for a vast array of purposes including fundraising, connecting with their congregation and keeping abreast of social, technological and economical changes. As such, the Christian retail industry is a booming industry which cannot be ignored. It is common practice for businesses to investigate various aspects of their target consumers in order to align their efforts to meet the consumers' needs. Likewise, it is necessary that churches that engage in retailing conduct a thorough analysis of their target market. Furthermore, church retailers should consider the peculiar nature of their consumers, which may be influenced not only by their short-term, product-based needs but by their long-term, spiritual needs as well. This research is important as individuals who view the retailing of certain products by churches negatively are unlikely to purchase from church retailers, and may even be unlikely to consider attending the churches that retail those products. In addition, this research will provide church retailers with insight into their consumers, enabling them to structure their retailing efforts more effectively. This study investigates the attitudes of church members toward church retailing, as well as attitudes towards various types of church retail products. A series of 26 in-depth interviews were conducted for this study, resulting in each individual expressing antithetical attitudes towards the broad concept of church retailing, with more distinct positive and negative attitudes emerging following further enquiry about particular product types. Generally, attitudes were more positive towards products perceived to be more authentic with regards to the religious mission of the church, and more negative toward products they perceive to stray from it. Furthermore, attitudes towards church retailing were influenced by what individuals perceive to be the churches' reasons for retailing, as well as the individuals or communities benefiting from the proceeds thereof. The principle inference emerging from this study is that the attitudes of church retail consumers are essential as they largely influence their likelihood to purchase and, in turn, the success of church retailers.