Dispositional resistance to change and emotional exhaustion: moderating effects at the work-unit level

Organizational change, although essential for business success, may negatively impact employees’ well-being. Based on person–environment fit theory, the authors investigate employees’ dispositional resistance to change as it impacts emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, the authors examine boundary conditions that may affect dispositional resistance to change and its influence on emotional exhaustion. They take a trait activation approach and test the moderating roles of two work-unit-level internal contextual factors: perceived organizational support and informational team climate. Using a longitudinal research design of 709 participants in 30 work units, multilevel analyses reveal that dispositional resistance to change (time 1) is positively related to emotional exhaustion (time 2). Moreover, a lack of perceived organizational support and a high informational team climate strengthen these effects. The authors conclude that organizations should offer coaching and training programmes to cope with organizational change for employees who are highly change resistant. Furthermore, personal and organizational development strategies should consider the insights gained from the study regarding internal contextual factors that moderate change management processes.     

Bimodal emotion congruency is critical to preverbal infants’ abstract rule learning

Extracting general rules from specific examples is important, as we must face the same challenge displayed in various formats. Previous studies have found that bimodal presentation of grammar‐like rules (e.g. ABA) enhanced 5‐month‐olds’ capacity to acquire a rule that infants failed to learn when the rule was presented with visual presentation of the shapes alone (circle‐triangle‐circle) or auditory presentation of the syllables (la‐ba‐la) alone. However, the mechanisms and constraints for this bimodal learning facilitation are still unknown. In this study, we used audio‐visual relation congruency between bimodal stimulation to disentangle possible facilitation sources. We exposed 8‐ to 10‐month‐old infants to an AAB sequence consisting of visual faces with affective expressions and/or auditory voices conveying emotions. Our results showed that infants were able to distinguish the learned AAB rule from other novel rules under bimodal stimulation when the affects in audio and visual stimuli were congruently paired (Experiments 1A and 2A). Infants failed to acquire the same rule when audio‐visual stimuli were incongruently matched (Experiment 2B) and when only the visual (Experiment 1B) or the audio (Experiment 1C) stimuli were presented. Our results highlight that bimodal facilitation in infant rule learning is not only dependent on better statistical probability and redundant sensory information, but also the relational congruency of audio‐visual information. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KYTyjH1k9RQ     

The effect of geographic indication in advertising background pictures on product evaluation: The moderating role of familiarity

This study investigates whether geographic indications in the backgrounds of advertising pictures might affect the viewer's evaluation of a product. The findings reveal that participants in the proximal geographic indication evaluated the product more favourably than those in the distal geographic indication when they were exposed to feasibility‐related information. By contrast, participants in the distal geographic indication evaluated the product more favourably than those in the proximal geographic indication when they were exposed to desirability‐related information. However, familiarity with geographic indications eliminated this effect.     

Religion and Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Positive Emotions

Research has consistently shown that endorsing a religion or spirituality is to some extent related to one’s well-being. Common studied explanations tap into the social and cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality. The present research aims at understanding how religiosity and spirituality exert their impact on well-being and investigates the role of a surprisingly neglected mechanism: positive emotions. Two cross-sectional studies using a quantitative approach are presented. In two different contexts (churchgoers in a European country and US university employees interested in meditation), results showed that the relation between religion (Study 1), spirituality (Study 2) and well-being is mediated by positive emotions. Distinguishing between more and less relevant positive emotions in a religious/spiritual context, it was found that the effect was mediated by self-transcendent positive emotions (awe, gratitude, love, and peace) but not by other positive emotions (amusement and pride).     

Capturing the multiple facets of mall experience: Developing and validating a scale

Many constructs have been tied to the customer experience in shopping malls, including hedonic shopping motivations, activities, excitement, and emotional and cognitive reactions. Yet the literature has not addressed the notion of the mall experience as a construct in and of itself. The current research aim is to conceptualize the mall experience through the development and validation of a measurement scale. We present a four‐stage process of scale development and validation, based on three studies with four separate samples of mall shoppers, in which the final stage employs the scale to predict mall equity and loyalty. The suggested scale offers a quantitative measurement of four different mall experiences—seductive, functional, social recreation, and social scene—which differ in their components. This work extends theory in understanding, conceptualizing, and measuring the customer experience in the retail space. On the practical level, the developed scale can serve as a means for planning a mall's marketing mix and launching marketing campaigns in order to attract various groups of customers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The interplay of persuasion inference and flow experience in an entertaining food advergame

Increasingly, unhealthy food is being advertised through online games known as advergames. The advergame is designed for entertaining fun to promote the brand featured in the game. But what happens if the food advertised is healthy or the source of the game is non‐commercial? This study examines how people's entertainment (flow experience) interacts with their inference about the persuasion impact of food brands featured in an advergame, which vary according to their persuasion knowledge about the source (e.g., non‐commercial versus commercial) and the perceived persuasion effect on self (e.g., beneficial versus harmful). Results of an experiment show that flow is positively associated with persuasion effects of the advergame. Brand attitudes and purchase intentions were the most favorable for non‐commercial brands with perceived benefits (healthy food) followed by commercial brands (healthy food) and commercial brands with harmful effects (less healthy food). However, persuasion effects for purchase intention were mitigated when participants were immersed in a flow state. Ramifications for persuasion and health promotions are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nostalgia's fulfillment of agentic and communal needs: How different types of self‐concepts shape consumer attitudes toward nostalgia

This research investigates how consumers' different types of self‐concepts (agentic vs. communal) shape their attitudes toward nostalgia. Experiment 1, using a two (self‐concept: agentic vs. communal) by two (nostalgia: nostalgic vs. non‐nostalgic) between‐subjects design and a series of multivariate analysis of variance and Hayes's PROCESS Model 8, showed that agentic and communal participants' preference was not increased in the non‐nostalgic condition but was increased in the nostalgic condition. Self‐concept indirectly influenced participants' preference for the nostalgic product through different functions of nostalgia; Agentic participants' likelihood of buying a nostalgic product and recommending it to others increased through enhanced self‐positivity, whereas communal participants' likelihood of buying a nostalgic product and recommending it to others increased through enhanced social connectedness. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated in the context of a public education campaign, and participants' chronic self‐concepts were measured. Participants with different chronic self‐concept tendencies were randomly assigned to nostalgic or non‐nostalgic conditions and were asked to indicate their attitudes toward the campaign. As in Experiment 1, a series of regression and Hayes' PROCESS Model 8 revealed that agentic and communal participants' attitudes were not enhanced in the non‐nostalgic condition but were enhanced in the nostalgic condition. Agentic (communal) individuals' favorability toward the nostalgic message about advocacy increased through enhanced self‐positivity (social connectedness). It appears that consumers with different self‐concepts (agentic vs. communal) experience enhanced feelings relevant to their self‐concepts (self‐positivity vs. social connectedness) when presented with nostalgic appeals for an object, and these heightened feelings drive an increased preference for it. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How consumers respond to missing a quantity discount with multiple price breaks

This study investigates how consumers evaluate and respond to different discount schemes (i.e., one versus multiple price breaks) in the wake of a missed quantity discount. Two field experiments are conducted. The results demonstrate that promotions with multiple price breaks (e.g., 2 for 30% off and 3 for 40% off) will result in a higher likelihood of purchasing one item at the regular price than promotions with only a single price break (e.g., 2 for 30% off) when a quantity discount is missed. The results of Experiment 2 reveal that increasing the number of price breaks (i.e., from two to three) can strengthen the assimilation of the advertised regular price into consumers' internal reference price range when there is a greater interval between the two price breaks (e.g., 2 for 30% off, 5 for 40% off, and 8 for 50% off) and that subsequently raises consumers' purchase likelihood if they are not able to take advantage of the promotional price. Finally, the effect of the discount scheme on purchase likelihood is shown to be mediated by the internal reference price. These observations have important implications for retailers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.