This study aimed to address consumers' stereotypical categorizations in the form of essentialist views about foreign cultures and their effect on individual consumers, including their negative or aroused emotions and subsequent retail patronage behaviors. The research mission was to empirically assess the salient dimensions of consumers' states of mind (positive and negative affect, psychological essentialism, epistemic curiosity), states of being (store atmospherics), and states of action (retail patronage behaviors) in a cultural context based on Mehrabian-Russell theory of environmental psychology. Specifically, the retail patronage setting was selected as foreign-based fast-food franchises because it represents both a relevant and timely situational context for consumer behavior. This dissertation makes several contributions to international retail patronage literature. First, it frames curiosity as an aroused emotional state and finds support for the relationship between consumer epistemic curiosity and retail patronage. Second, it provides support for the linkage between consumer affect and retail patronage in an international retail setting. Third, it reveals that affect has a greater impact on retail patronage than epistemic curiosity. The overarching finding of this study is an inability to tie the cultural elements in retail atmospherics, including signs, symbols, and artifacts, to consumer emotions. In addition, we were unable to …

The field of Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM) suggests that transactions, collaboration, and value are important in the supply and delivery of products and services to meet the need of impoverished end-consumers. In many cases, the application of LSCM is paramount in most strategic decision-making efforts. Therefore, this research explores the applications of LSCM processes and activities within the community-based context. The methodology used to address the research questions consisted of a hybrid of mixed methods. This mixed methodology provides three essays that investigate the application and development of LSCM in the community-based context. The essays address the flow of charitable products and services through supply chains. The dissertation does not pay close attention to the first-tier suppliers’ suppliers, which is looking at the originating flow of goods and services (raw materials, manufacturing, etc.). However, the dissertation puts a focus on products and services supplied to focal organizations and how these products are then passed on to end-consumers. Essay I looks at the transaction (costs) that ensue from the supply of charitable products. Essay II analyzes a social service ecosystem and investigates how the network of organizations enable the distribution of charitable products and services. Lastly, Essay III examines …

Supply chain resilience refers to the capability of a supply chain to both withstand and adapt to unexpected disturbances. In today's turbulent business environment, firms are continually seeking to create more resilience within their supply chain through increased information communication technology use and enhanced business-to-business relationships. The focus of this dissertation is the investigation of how information communication technology creates resilience at the differing process levels of supply chain operations. Past research into information communication technology use within supply chains has often been conducted at the macro-level of supply chain phenomena. As such, there is still much to understand about how decision-makers interact with information communication technology at the micro-level of supply chain decision-making. A more in-depth, broad coverage of this interaction will provide both practitioners and academics a better understanding of how to leverage information communication technology in achieving supply chain resilience. To meet this aim, this dissertation contains three essays that re-orient conceptual thinking about supply chain phenomenon, explore how advances in information communication technology influence business-to-business relationships, and identify how information communication technology effects the decision-making of supply chain managers.

When games were first developed for in-home use, they were primarily targeted almost exclusively at children and males. However, today’s marketplace manifests a more diverse population plays Internet-enabled games that can be played virtually anywhere. The average gamer is now 30 years old. Many gamers, obviously, are much older. Yet more strikingly, and more germane to this study’s purpose, 47% of the U.S. gamer population is female, as compared to 40% in 2010. Despite these trends the gaming industry remains a male-dominated culture. The marketer’s job is to facilitate game engagement and to motivate gamers to play. The notion of “engagement” is not new in business. The term was developed in the last decade. Many studies were devoted to understand, explain, and define the term. It suggests that within interactive, dynamic business environments, consumer engagement (CE) represents a strategic position that companies can use to enhance their sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability. Moreover, there are three levels of engagement in any experiential consumption (i.e., playing video game): presence, flow, and psychological absorption. The findings of this study affirm that consumer engagement, including presence, flow and psychological absorption are explanatory factors that impact gamer’s purchase intentions. Our results show that …

Existing co-branding and brand extension research generally coalesces around two important constructs: perceptual fit and attitude toward the brand. Studies in co-branding and brand extension to date have generally emphasized the transference of affective elements of attitude from parent brand to the extension. Researchers and practitioners clearly need to learn more about the transfer of belief, the cognitive elements of attitude. Too little is currently known about whether and how beliefs are actually transferred in co-branding and brand extension applications, particularly in terms of perceptual fit. This dissertation investigates belief transfer and the effect of perceptual fit on belief transfer in co-branding and brand extension scenarios and develops answers to the following research questions: 1.Are different categories of beliefs transferable from parent brand to theextension? 2.How do various sub-dimensions of perceptual fit affect belief transfers fromparent brands to the extension? 3.How do different categories of beliefs affect consumers’ intentions to purchasethe extension products? Categorization Theory was used as the fundamental theory to build the hypotheses. This dissertation involved qualitative studies, belief scale development, and experimental design studies. The results revealed that aesthetic and functional beliefs are positively transferred from parent brand to the extension. The transfer of aesthetic beliefs is …

Efficient public transportation provides economic and social opportunities that increase accessibility to markets and employment as well as providing investment benefits. Key challenges to the U.S. public transportation industry include developing modes and increasing the availability of public transportation in a manner that meets the needs of individual users in a cost effective manner. A problem facing public transportation officials is the need to understand the factors that influence consumer decision-making and consumer attitudes toward public transportation. Feedback regarding experiences as well as expectations from commuters provides information for developing and improving public transportation. Thus, decision-making factors of end-users are keys to improving supply, growth, and understanding utilization of public transportation. Public transportation officials seek to improve the public transportation experience for commuters by increasing modes and benefits of the systems. The decision-making factors of the end-users require identification and examination in order to provide a high quality and efficient experience for commuters. The research questions of interest in the current dissertation are: (1) What are the decision-making factors affecting commuters’ attitudes toward public transportation? and (2) How do the end-user decision-making factors affect the supply of public transportation? The purpose of this research is to extend the current body …

Brand equity is perhaps the most important marketing concept in both academia and practice. The term came into use during the late 1980s; and the importance of conceptualizing, measuring, and managing brand equity has grown rapidly in the eyes of practitioners and academics alike. This has resulted in several often-divergent view-points on the dimensions of brand equity, the factors that influence it, the perspectives from which it should be studied, and the ways to measure it. Many different definitions and ways to measure brand equity have been proposed, and most of them are based upon the definition: the added value with which a given brand endows a product. The two most influential conceptualizations of brand equity are Aaker and Keller. Aaker defines brand equity as a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers. Keller defines consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Currently, all research on brand equity has used the same conceptualization of the construct based on …

This dissertation uses service-dominant logic to understand customer value creation in service innovation context. Although co-creation became an interesting phenomenon among marketing scholars, the underlying mechanisms of co-creation process are still vague. To fill the gaps in the literature, we draw from S-D logic to understand antecedents and outcome of co-creation to service innovation context. The results of this study show that most of the hypotheses are supported, thus finding support for the overall model of value co-creation.