Charitable organizations play a vital role in our society, as is evidenced by their enormous economic and social impact. Yet, for many of them, soliciting adequate resources to carry out their mandates is a continuing struggle. Confronted with a growing need for their services, fierce competition from other charities, and shrinking support from government agencies, charities may turn to marketers for help in developing effective promotional strategies. Unfortunately, marketing literature is unable to provide meaningful guidance because scant research attention has hampered a fuller understanding of why people help. The authors integrate relevant research in marketing, economics, sociology, and social psychology to advance theoretical understanding of helping behavior. They develop research propositions regarding specific promotional strategies that charitable organizations can employ to elicit help.

Prior research has indicated that consumers’ decisions are significantly influenced by online reviews. However, existing research has focused mainly on attributes (e.g., average ratings) that are not fully controlled by firms; only limited research has investigated how controllable attributes (e.g., review display formats) affect consumers. Drawing on visual perception research, the authors examine the effectiveness of two prominent graphical display formats used by major e-commerce platforms: one that displays rating distributions in a proportional format (e.g., Amazon) and one that does so in a simple format (e.g., Google). The results indicate that due to the changes in graphs’ reference points caused by the shrunken x-axis in simple bar graphs, consumers respond more positively to an item when its rating distribution is displayed in a graphically simple (vs. proportional) format. This effect is moderated by the distribution's peak value (i.e., the share of the most frequent rating) and imbalance score (i.e., the difference between the share of positive and negative ratings). Furthermore, even an item's future ratings are influenced by the graphical format in which its prior ratings are displayed. The contributions to the marketing literature are discussed, and insights that can aid managers in making more informed decisions are provided.

Employees’ positive affective displays have been widely used as a strategic tool to enhance service experience and strengthen customer relationships. Companies have primarily focused their employee training programs on two dimensions of display: intensity and authenticity. Yet there is limited research on when, how, and why these two dimensions affect customer reactions. Drawing on the emotions as social information (EASI) framework (Van Kleef, 2009), we develop a conceptual model in which display intensity and display authenticity differentially influence customer loyalty by changing customers’ affective reactions and cognitive appraisals. Further, we propose that the relative impact of either dimension depends on customers’ motivation to understand the environment deeply and accurately (i.e., their epistemic motivation). We tested our model in one field study and one laboratory study. Results across these two studies provide consistent support for the proposed model and advance our understanding about how different dimensions of employees’ positive affective displays enhance customer reactions. Thus, findings of this research contribute to knowledge on the interpersonal effects of emotions in customer–employee interactions.