Knowledge that Transforms

© 2014, American Marketing Association ISSN: 0022-2429 (print), 1547-7185 (electronic) Journal of Marketing Vol. 78 (July 2014), 1–3 1 Ifeel deeply honored and privileged to have been selected as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Marketing (JM). I am grateful for the confidence placed in me and will fulfill the responsibility to the best of my ability. This editorship assumes greater significance for me given the excellent trajectory that JM has traversed under the stewardship of a remarkable group of scholars. I thank the prior Editors in Chief, the AEs, the editorial review board (ERB) members, the ad hoc reviewers, and the authors for making JM the premier marketing journal worldwide.

Interpersonal exchanges between customers and frontline service employees increasingly involve the use of technology, such as point-of-sale terminals, tablets, and kiosks. The present research draws on role and script theories to demonstrate that customer reactions to technology-infused service exchanges depend on the presence of employee rapport. When rapport is present during the exchange, the use of technology functions as an interpersonal barrier preventing the customer from responding in kind to employee rapport-building efforts, thereby decreasing service encounter evaluations. However, during service encounters in which employees are not engaging in rapport building, technology functions as an interpersonal barrier, enabling customers to retreat from the relatively unpleasant service interaction, thereby increasing service encounter evaluations. Two analyses using J.D. Power Guest Satisfaction Index data support the barrier and beneficial effects of technology use during service encounters with and without rapport, respectively. A follow-up experiment replicates this data pattern and identifies psychological discomfort as a key process that governs the effect. For managers, the results demonstrate the inherent incompatibility of initiatives designed to encourage employee–customer rapport with those that introduce technology into frontline service exchanges.

Previous research has typically treated collection as a top-down process and focused on its later stages. However, collections may start by accident and are often triggered by incidental, bottom-up factors. The authors propose that a small number of possessions (i.e., a few more than one) represent an unjustified and, thus, unstable possession level that prompts a status change. They examine the collection tipping point at which obtaining items belonging to a series (e.g., a couple of collectible Coke cans) often gives rise to a decision to start a collection. Consumers then seek additional items to fulfill their emerging goal. In six lab studies and one field study, the authors investigate the tipping point at which a collection “project” begins and explore the psychological processes underlying that tipping point. In addition, they discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of this research.

Manufacturers or resellers introducing a new product often must decide whether and for how long to be its exclusive seller. Standard models of competition and conventional wisdom suggest that exclusivity boosts profits. However, using both agent-based simulations and game-theoretic modeling, the authors find that positive word of mouth (WOM) from customers of rival firms can make exclusivity unprofitable. This reversal of conventional wisdom occurs because WOM creates a positive externality, and a firm holding exclusivity cannot benefit from the WOM spillover generated by customers of other firms. The benefits of forgoing exclusivity are magnified by (1) the presence of locked-in customers who consider buying from only a single firm, (2) the extent to which opinion leaders are among a firm's own locked-in customers rather than those of competitors, and (3) customers’ low price sensitivity. In addition, firms sometimes benefit from forgoing exclusivity even without WOM from rivals’ customers, but only when the combination of large-scale lock-in, high price sensitivity, and strong WOM among the firm's customers exists.

Although it is well-known that the U.S. population is increasingly culturally diverse, cultural diversity within U.S. households is less recognized. This study investigates the effects of cultural dynamics on decision roles and influence within the binational household. In particular, the authors study households in which one spouse is from the United States and the other is an immigrant. The analysis uses survey data and in-depth interviews. Cultural competence (i.e., knowledge of country of residence) as a source of expert power and as a form of cultural capital in family decision making emerge as overarching themes. The authors also find that one family member may engage in cultural compensatory mechanisms in consumption in response to the immigrant family member's sacrifices (i.e., moving to the United States). The authors close with a discussion of the implications for family decision-making theory, marketers, and society.

Increased internal pressure to make marketing accountable, combined with market pressure from the proliferation of new service delivery channels, requires retailers to better understand the differential impacts of marketing efforts across channels now more than ever. In this article, the authors (1) develop and test a theoretically grounded framework for the interplay of objective service performance and direct marketing in shaping retail revenue over time through two distinct service delivery channels (on-site and remote) and (2) conceptualize service delivery channel–specific servicescapes as facilitative mechanisms for the effectiveness of objective service performance and direct marketing. The authors test the conceptual framework with multisource data from a major national pizza retailer comprising a field study based on a time series of 223 weeks across five stores of objective marketing and performance data (delivery time) and a cross-sectional survey of the retailer's customers. They find that objective service performance and direct marketing interact by exhibiting a trade-off effect contingent on specific aspects of the servicescape. When both objective service performance and direct marketing levels are high, servicescape quality design perceptions alleviate the trade-off effect in on-site delivery channels, and servicescape time/effort cost perceptions do so in remote delivery channels. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for research and practice.

Industrial component suppliers (CSs) work to enhance profitability by building brand differentiation with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and indirect industrial buyers (IIBs) through their marketing investments to each member. However, as a CS increases its marketing investments to its IIB, the OEM's profit position is threatened, motivating the OEM to respond with aligning or opposing behavior. The results from a three-study, multimethod design indicate that a CS's strategy of allocating its marketing investments between its OEM and IIB increases its brand differentiation, which allows it to capture increased profits subject to conditions of uncertainty. However, the results also demonstrate that the OEM does not sit idly by as its CS invests in building brand differentiation with the IIB; rather, it reacts with both aligning and opposing behaviors to benefit from the CS's investments as well as offset the CS's gains.

Although retailers invest millions of dollars in redesigning, refreshing, and remodeling their stores, it is unclear that such large investments are worthwhile. Prior research has indicated that remodeling has only a short-term effect. However, a previously unexplored area is its effect on those who visit the store for the first time after it is remodeled (new customers) versus those who had visited before the remodeling (existing customers). This study contrasts the effect of store remodeling on new and existing customers in two field experiments with stores that underwent a major remodeling. Treatment and control stores are used in both experiments. The authors measure sales before and after the remodeling for new and existing customers; in one store, they also measure customers’ psychological responses. In both cases, sales increased after the remodeling effort. However, sales for new customers are significantly higher than sales for existing customers after the remodel, and this difference persists for a year. Higher sales to new customers are primarily due to more new customers being drawn to the remodeled store, their higher spend per visit, and their subsequent increased visit frequency.

Why do some firms not change their strategic orientation despite economic incentives to do so? Most current literature on changing strategic orientations has focused on an antecedents and outcomes approach to business orientations. Intimated, but rarely addressed, are the notions that (1) strategic orientations may be thought of as ideologies and (2) such ideologies are likely to contend with each other. Taking such a perspective may be helpful in discussing why it is challenging to transition to more sustainable strategic orientations even in the presence of financial incentives to do so. In assessing the transition to organic production and marketing in a commodity agriculture context, the authors find that contending ideologies restrict its adoption. In addition, they suggest that strategic orientations are not adopted or contested solely within firms but also among them. The authors find that ideological contestation among firms in this context takes the form of a marketplace drama between a chemical, productionist orientation and an organic orientation in which protagonists mobilize several forms of legitimacy.