Identification is defined as the “perceived oneness with or belongingness to an organization” of which the person is a member. The authors propose that customers, in their role as members, identify with organizations. They use social identity theory to propose and test a model that relates members’ identification with the focal organization to (1) organizational and product characteristics, (2) members’ affiliation characteristics, and (3) members’ activity characteristics. Their empirical setting consists of the members of an art museum. Their survey findings show that members’ identification is positively related to perceived organizational prestige, donating activity, tenure of membership, visiting frequency, and confirmation of member expectations with the organization's services. However, members’ participation in similar organizations is negatively related to identification with the focal organization. The authors discuss how this study can be extended to other marketing contexts and how managers can use the notion of identification in implementing marketing strategies.

Many firms capitalize on their customers’ social networks to improve the success rate of their new products. In this article, the authors analyze the dynamic effects of social influence and direct marketing on the adoption of a new high-technology product. Social influence is likely to play a role because the decision to adopt a high-involvement product requires extensive information gathering from various sources. The authors use call detail records to construct ego networks for a large sample of customers of a Dutch mobile telecommunications operator. Using a fractional polynomial hazard approach to model adoption timing and multiple social influence variables, they provide a fine-grained analysis of social influence. They show that the effect of social influence from cumulative adoptions in a customer's network decreases from the product introduction onward, whereas the influence of recent adoptions remains constant. The effect of direct marketing is also positive and decreases from the product introduction onward. This study provides new insights into the adoption of high-technology products by analyzing dynamic effects of social influence and direct marketing simultaneously.

In response to a top ten global consumer trend, firms are increasingly introducing environmentally sustainable (“green”) new products. Firms allocate significant resources to this area; thus, the authors consider the brand-level implications by investigating how the introduction of green new products changes attitude toward the brand. In examining this relationship, they draw from social identity and framing theories to investigate drivers of green new product introductions as well as the moderating effects of message framing, source credibility, and product type. Estimating a three-stage least squares model based on new product introductions from 75 brands across a four-year time period (2009–2012), the authors find that green new product introductions can indeed improve brand attitude and that both the brand and category's positioning influence the introduction of green new products. They also find that the quantity of green messages, the product type, and their source credibility influence the extent to which green new products change brand attitude. The authors use these findings to provide guidance for managers as they attempt to effectively link their green innovation efforts to improve consumer attitudes toward their brands.

Radical innovation is an important driver of the growth, success, and wealth of firms and nations. Because of its importance, authors across various disciplines have proposed many theories about the drivers of such innovation, including government policy and labor, capital, and culture at the national level. The authors contrast these theories with one based on the corporate culture of the firm. They test their theory using survey and archival data from 759 firms across 17 major economies of the world. The results suggest the following: First, among the factors studied, corporate culture is the strongest driver of radical innovation across nations; culture consists of three attitudes and three practices. Second, the commercialization of radical innovations translates into a firm's financial performance; it is a stronger predictor of financial performance than other popular measures, such as patents. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.

The current literature presents a mixed view of top managers, often characterizing them as an impediment to innovation, irrelevant for innovation, or, at best, having an indirect effect on innovation. In contrast, the authors use an attentional perspective to argue that chief executive officers (CEOs) have a positive, direct, and long-term impact on how firms detect, develop, and deploy new technologies over time. The authors test their arguments on longitudinal data from the U.S. retail banking industry. They show that CEO attention is a critical driver of innovation even (1) when the target of attention is not innovation per se but simply future events and external events in a generic sense; (2) when the innovation outcomes occur far in the future (sometimes several years in the future); (3) when the innovation outcomes are conceptually, empirically, and temporally distinct; and (4) in an empirical context (i.e., banking) that is not traditionally viewed as “high tech” and, thus, innovation centric.

Although consumers like to touch products while shopping, the authors propose a theory of consumer contamination, positing that consumers evaluate products previously touched by other shoppers less favorably. The authors test the theory by manipulating cues that increase the salience that consumer contact has occurred. Furthermore, the authors investigate the role of disgust as the underlying mechanism of the theory.

Radical innovations are engines of economic growth and the focus of much academic and practitioner interest, yet some fundamental questions remain unanswered. The authors use theoretical arguments on the risk associated with radical innovations, and the resources needed for them, to answer the following questions on the sources and financial consequences of radical innovation: (1) Who introduces a greater number of radical innovations: dominant or nondominant firms? (2) How great are the financial rewards to radical innovations, and how do these rewards vary across dominant and nondominant firms? (3) Is it only a firm's resources in the aggregate or also its focus and leverage of resources that make its innovations more financially valuable? and (4) Which are more valuable: innovations that incorporate a breakthrough technology or innovations that provide a substantial increase in customer benefits? The authors pool information from a disparate set of sources in the pharmaceutical industry to study these questions. Results indicate that a large majority of radical innovations come from a minority of firms. The financial rewards of innovation vary dramatically across firms and are tied closely to firms’ resource base. Firms that provide higher per-product levels of marketing and technology support obtain much greater financial rewards from their radical innovations than do other firms. Firms that have greater depth and breadth in their product portfolio also gain more from their radical innovations.

Conveying a brand image to a target market is a fundamental marketing activity. The authors present a normative framework, termed brand concept management (BCM), for selecting, implementing, and controlling a brand image over time. The framework consists of a sequential process of selecting, introducing, elaborating, and fortifying a brand concept. The concept guides positioning strategies, and hence the brand image, at each of these stages. The method for maintaining this concept-image linkage depends on whether the brand concept is functional, symbolic, or experiential. Maintaining this linkage should significantly enhance the brand's market performance.

This research demonstrates that the physical properties of shopping carts influence purchasing and spending. Prior research on ergonomics indicates that standard shopping carts, which are pushed via a horizontal handlebar, are likely to activate arm extensor muscles. Prior research on arm muscle activation, in turn, suggests that arm extensor activation may elicit less purchasing than arm flexor activation. The authors thus deduce that standard shopping carts may be suboptimal for stimulating purchases. The authors predicted that shopping carts with parallel handles (such as on a wheelbarrow or “walker”) would instead activate the flexor muscles and thus increase purchasing. An electromyography study revealed that both horizontal and vertical handles more strongly activate the extensor muscles of the upper arm (triceps), whereas parallel handles more strongly activate the flexor muscles (biceps). In a field experiment, parallel-handle shopping carts significantly and substantially increased sales across a broad range of categories, including both vice and virtue products. Finally, in a simulated shopping experiment, parallel handles increased purchasing and spending beyond both horizontal and vertical handles. These results were not attributable to the novelty of the shopping cart itself, participants’ mood, or purely ergonomic factors.

The increased penetration of mobile devices has a significant impact on customers’ online shopping behavior, with customers frequently switching between mobile and fixed devices on the path to purchase. By accounting for the attributes of the devices and the perceived risks related to each product category, the authors develop hypotheses regarding the relationship between device switching and conversion rates. They test the hypotheses by analyzing clickstream data from a large online retailer and apply propensity score matching to account for self-selection in device switching. They find that when customers switch from a more mobile device, such as a smartphone, to a less mobile device, such as a desktop, their conversion rate is significantly higher. This effect is larger when product category–related perceived risk is higher, when the product price is higher, and when the customer's experience with the product category and the online retailer is lower. The findings illustrate the importance of focusing on conversions across the combination of devices used by customers on their path to purchase. Focusing on the conversions on a single device in isolation, as is usually done in practice, significantly overestimates conversions attributed to fixed devices at the expense of those attributed to mobile devices.