Prior knowledge has been shown to impact information search and processing in traditional product and service contexts. We examine the impact of two types of prior knowledge, subjective knowledge and self-rated knowledge, on information receptivity in a critical social marketing realm--AIDS. We find that subjective knowledge accuracy is positively related to topic receptivity, and self-rated knowledge is inversely related to message receptivity. The two types of knowledge exhibit a low correlation, indicating that some subjects may think they know more than they actually do regarding HIV transmission. Involvement with the AIDS issue was positively related to both types of information receptivity. Social marketers and policy makers must consider the factors that influence message receptivity if they hope to create messages that will ultimately influence and demarket high-risk behaviors. A two-tiered approach, first improving public receptivity to the AIDS topic, then communicating specific HIV prevention information, may be necessary to reduce negative outcomes associated with public misinformation about HIV/AIDS.

As demand increases for expatriates to manage far-flung operations in a global economy, scholars and practitioners are focusing their attention on the factors that contribute to expatriate success. One such factor is the support that expatriates receive from host country nationals (HCNs) with whom they work. Researchers interested in understanding expatriate success have not closely examined the phenomenon from an HCN perspective, however. At the same time, although we have gained a significant understanding of the roles of psychological, organizational, and contextual variables in the international assignment, there is still much to be understood about how expatriates' demographic characteristics affect their experiences in international assignments. Current findings regarding the effects of demographic characteristics often are inconsistent, highlighting the need for more complex theorizing. This article reviews recent research on the effects of expatriate demographic characteristics and proposes a social identity approach to understanding how these characteristics affect HCN support for the expatriate. It also seeks to develop a theory that addresses discrepancies in extant empirical findings, provides propositions to guide future research in the study of expatriates, and discusses implications for both researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across four studies, including one involving an actual monetary decision, the authors demonstrate that forming a product consideration set by excluding versus including alternatives induces consumers to place more weight on ethical attributes, such as company labor practices and animal testing. This nonnormative difference reflects a compatibility between exclusion and ethics, and it holds regardless of attribute framing or consumer emotion. The authors also find that consumers judge others' behavior more negatively for excluding ethical products than for including ethical products. These results have implications for the marketing of ethical products, both specifically (e.g., it is important to encourage exclusion modes) and generally (e.g., the failure to consider ethical products may reflect seemingly minor contextual issues guiding the decision process and not consumer disinterest in ethical issues). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a model of a firm whose production process requires it to initiate and nurture a relationship with its stakeholders. Because there are spillover benefits of being associated with a “winner,” the perceptions of stakeholders and potential stakeholders can affect firm value. Our analysis indicates that while transparency (i.e., generating information about a firm's quality) may improve the allocation of resources, a firm may have a higher ex ante value if information about its quality is not prematurely generated. Transparency costs arise because of asymmetric information regarding the extent to which stakeholders benefit from having a relationship with a high-quality firm. These costs are higher when firms can undertake noncontractible innovative investments that enhance the value of their stakeholder relationships. Stakeholder effects of transparency are especially important for younger firms with less established track records.

Implicit employment contracts are a common way to motivate firm productivity but also require that employees trust management to be fair when allocating postproduction firm resources between employees and owners. We use an experiment to study the problem of motivating firm productivity, which depends on levels of owner investment and employee productive effort, when managers have an incentive to favor the owner's interests over those of the employee. Drawing on research in psychology and behavioral economics, we argue that reputation concerns can more effectively promote firm productivity when manager compensation is relatively insensitive to how much the owner is allocated after production occurs. Consistent with our predictions, we find that reputation concerns lead to greater firm productivity and higher payoffs for all firm members, but only when manager pay is relatively insensitive to the owner's ex post allocation. In addition to offering testable empirical implications, our theory and results are important because they can help explain why executive compensation is, in practice, surprisingly insensitive to owner returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how performance in intercultural workplace interactions can be compromised even in die absence of overt prejudice. The authors show that individuals respond differently to nonverbal behavioral mirroring cues exhibited in workplace interactions, depending on their cultural group membership. In a field study with experienced managers, U.S. Anglos and U.S. Latinos interacted with a confederate who. unbeknownst to die participant, engaged (or not) in behavioral mirroring. Results show that the level of the confederate's mirroring differentially affected Latinos' state anxiety, but not Anglos' state anxiety, as well as actual performance in die interaction. Two additional laboratory experiments provide further evidence of die interactive relationship of behavioral mirroring and cultural group membership on evaluations of workplace interactions. Implications for intercultural interactions and research are discussed.

Embedded premium (EP) promotions promise purchase-contingent donations to a social cause and are typically studied within a single category. However, EP programs spanning multiple product categories and brands are widespread. This research investigates fundamental questions regarding where and to what extent an EP promotion should be used in multicategory contexts. Using experimental choice data from more than 3500 people in two studies, the authors examine multicategory EP programs in two distinct branding environments: spanning a diverse house-of-brands portfolio or covering a multicategory product line that shares a common corporate brand name. For the corporate brand context, the results show that EP effects in one category carry over to adjacent categories that do not have an EP association. Greater multicategory EP prevalence does not enhance brand attractiveness beyond the effect of a single EP exposure. For the house-of-brands context, there is an inverse relationship between brand strength and incremental gain from EP. From a return-on-investment standpoint, EP promotions are more efficient than price promotions because they enhance brand preference and are relatively cheaper to deploy. The results make a strong case for a more discriminating implementation of EP programs across brands and categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today''s future business leaders are confronted early in their academic careers with history-making events which have a profound impact on the global economic system. These students of business are being exposed to behaviors as they unfold and, as such, are possibly living in an age of the “cheating culture” whereby everybody cheats because everyone else does it. Business students from around the world completed a cheating culture scale as part of a much larger investigation examining college students’ attitudes toward capitalism and business ethics. Findings suggest that the cheating culture is not just a capitalistic phenomenon and that attitudinal differences are driven by gender, country corruption, and socioeconomic environment. Future business leaders worldwide, who are being shaped by news reports of scandal, are also being taught the fundamentals of operating in the business world. Unfortunately, they may be learning to inextricably combine the cheating culture with best business practices.

Manufacturers are increasingly producing and promoting sustainable products (i.e., products that have a positive social and/or environmental impact). However, relatively little is known about how product sustainability affects consumers' preferences. The authors propose that sustainability may not always be an asset, even if most consumers care about social and environmental issues. The degree to which sustainability enhances preference depends on the type of benefit consumers most value for the product category in question. In this research, the authors demonstrate that consumers associate higher product ethicality with gentleness-related attributes and lower product ethicality with strength-related attributes. As a consequence of these associations, the positive effect of product sustainability on consumer preferences is reduced when strength-related attributes are valued, sometimes even resulting in preferences for less sustainable product alternatives (i.e., the “sustainability liability”). Conversely, when gentleness-related attributes are valued, sustainability enhances preference. In addition, the authors show that the potential negative impact of sustainability on product preferences can be attenuated using explicit cues about product strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]