Christina Sichtmann

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre

This research investigates perceived brand globalness, brand origin image, and brand origin–extension fit as drivers of brand extension success that are mediated through parent brand quality and brand–extension fit. The authors present two complementary studies based on consumer samples from a mature and an emerging market respectively. In both stu...

This research replicates the study of Steenkamp, Batra and Alden (2003) on perceived brand globalness (PBG) and provides a stringent test of their documented effects through (a) considering the impact of PBG on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP), and (b) experimentally manipulating brand globalness. Across four studies, the results suggest that co...

Using the facilities—transformation—usage framework of service provision and drawing from control theory, the authors develop a theoretical model that examines the influence of different quality control initiatives on relative service quality in a business-to-business setting and, consequently, on export performance. They explicitly consider qualit...

The increase of immigrant employees in services has made intercultural service encounters a commonplace phenomenon. In these encounters, customers frequently use service employees' accent to infer their ethnic background, often eliciting cultural stereotypes. However, it is still unknown how accent-based stereotyping impacts customer participation...

Accelerating anti-globalization challenges previously undisputed assumptions about the importance of a product’s globalness/localness in purchase decisions. Putting these assumptions to test, we conceptualize globalness/localness as a distinct product attribute and decompose its utility into weight and preference components. Subsequently, we offer...

Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) has enjoyed increased popularity as an analytical method among Industrial Marketing Management (IMM) authors over the last years. Despite such popularity, many authors fail to understand the basic principles of the method and reviewers are frequently confronted with manuscripts suffering from erroneous applicatio...

Trading communities provide non-commercial members with an online platform on which to exchange goods. Its success depends on member participation; however, little is known about its drivers. Based on literature we identify five drivers. To capture their impact over time,we test a latent growth curve model with longitudinal data, comparing the effe...

Despite the well-documented importance of consumer-brand relationships, international branding research has not yet investigated whether a brand's perceived globalness and localness influence consumers' identification with the brand. Drawing on brand relationship theory and global/local branding literature, the present research theorizes on how per...

Considering the increasing international division of labor, as well as stakeholders' growing awareness of sustainability, assuring that business practices are sustainable is a major challenge. Companies have to account for the fact that any misconduct at a supplier's premises may have spillover effects that reach the manufacturer or retailer. There...

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether and how strongly cultural (mis)matches influence immigrant customers’ satisfaction, as well as if this relationship is mediated by cultural or service employee performance attributions. In addition, the authors test whether attributions differ depending on the service delivery outcome (success vs failu...

This research explores the topics of perceived brand globalness (PBG) and perceived brand localness (PBL) in the B2B context—specifically in terms of how brand localness and globalness factor into B2B buyers' decision making. It does so by examining co-branding relationships that involve alliances between well-known global and local B2B brands with...

Purpose This paper aims to provide an empirical investigation into extension category effects on service brand extensions, both to other services (service–service extensions) and to products (service–product extensions), and the extension category’s influence on brand/consumer-level success drivers, as well as the perceived quality of the extension...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize platforms for members to exchange information by information-based online communities (IBOCs, like LinkedIn or Facebook). Because member participation is vital for IBOCs, this research aims to identify and validate factors that drive member participation. Design/methodology/approach – With refer...

Interacting with immigrant customers poses a challenge for many service providers. This study focuses on the key issues, challenges and opportunities service providers face in service encounters with immigrant customers. The study is based on 13 qualitative, exploratory interviews with frontline and marketing em-ployees of a large Austrian financia...

The identification of drivers of brand extension success has drawn considerable interest over the years from both academicians and practitioners (e.g. Hou 2003; Völckner and Sattler 2006). With few exceptions however (e.g. de Ruyter and Wet-zels 2000; Hem et al. 2003; Lei et al. 2004; Martínez and Pina 2005; van Riel et al. 2001), the investigation...

In this paper we compare different alternatives for the estimation of utility functions necessary to elicit willingness to pay with conjoint analysis: Linear interpolation vs. regression on individual and on cluster level. An empirical application shows that the selected alternative has significant effects on the estimated WTPs. No superior method...

Increasingly, industrial sellers offer supplementary services to their core product. Generally, the problem occurs of choosing the right services, setting prices and making the decision whether to bundle the product with the services. We present a conjoint approach to support the managerial decision process by measuring the WTP for respectively the...

The objective of this chapter is to explain the decision-making process underlying organizational-buying behavior. Three main questions are addressed: Who is the buyer? What is the meaning of organizational-buying behavior? What are the main factors affecting organizational-buying behavior? In addition, diffent theories of buying behavior are descr...

Practitioners in B2B markets often view relationships as the decisive variable when asking them about drivers of the international performance of product-related services. However, evidence regarding the positive impact of relationships and relationship marketing remains mainly anecdotal. Most studies analyzing drivers of international performance...

Companies planning an internationalization venture face a great variety of options regarding the entry mode, namely export (direct and indirect), cooperative arrangements (licensing, franchising, minority holding, contract manufacturing and management contracting) and direct investments (joint ventures and subsidiaries) (Root 1994). These alternati...

To maximize their profits, firms must know the demand function, which can be derived only when the firm knows consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP). Thus, firms must first measure WTP to arrive at an optimal pricing decision (Kohli and Mahajan 1991). Although more and more studies deal with WTP measurement, existing literature disagrees regarding the...

Ethnic diversity of both their labor forces and customer bases presents a challenge for companies and fuels debate on the business case for diversity: the view that diversity positively impacts firm performance. This study enriches the business case debate by focusing on a particular organizational activity, customer contact. It combines theory fro...

Abstract: Driven by the upsurge in global (out-)sourcing and the changing expectations of organizations'' stakeholders, companies are increasingly being held responsible for the actions of their suppliers. Subsequently, Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has emerged as an important factor in safeguarding organizations from being accused of irre...

Today, customers increasingly engage in optional co-production by taking over additional tasks in the service process that traditionally have been performed by service employees. Thereby, customers become “partial employees” of the service provider. Service providers benefit from this co-production as they can substitute employees’ for customers’ l...

Transaction-based online communities like ebay, amazon marketplace or myhammer facilitate transactions by bringing together buyers and sellers of specific products and/or services. The economic success of transaction-based online communities is directly linked to the members’ co-production because the business model of these communities depends on...

This paper focuses on drivers of brand extension success of servicedominant parent brands. More specifically, it analyzes a model of determinants of brand extension success that includes additional drivers of service brand extension success beyond fit between the extension and parent brand and the perceived quality of the parent brand that have not...

Knowing consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) is crucial for making effective pricing decisions. We assess the accuracy of choice‐based conjoint analysis (CBCA), a method strongly supported by behavioural theory, in the context of WTP measurement at the individual level. Furthermore, we analyse whether variations in the accuracy of WTP estimates deri...

Transaktionsbasierte Online Communities wie z. B. Auktionsplattformen oder Tauschbörsen verzeichnen ein signifikantes Wachstum. Ihr Fortbestand hängt jedoch im hohen Maße von der aktiven Beteiligung ihrer Mitglieder ab. Dieser Beitrag untersucht mitgliederspezifische, soziale und anbieterspezifische Determinanten der Kundenbeteiligung in transaktio...

Purpose Business‐to‐business (B2B) manufacturing firms increasingly integrate services into their product portfolios under the same brand umbrella. This article aims to develop a conceptual model of the drivers of success for such B2B product‐to‐service brand extensions. Design/methodology/approach The research considers the drivers of product‐to‐...

An abstract of the article "Turning Lurkers Into Value Creators: An Investigation of Transaction-Based Online Communities," by Jens Hogreve, Nicola Bilstein, Sabine Moeller and Christina Sichtmann is presented.

Anmerkung: Ich bedanke mich bei den beiden Gutachtern sowie Ada-mantios Diamantopoulos, Klaus Schöfer und Marko Sarstedt für die konstruktiven Hinweise zu dem Manuskript. Mein besonderer Dank gilt Martin Lucas Schinzel für seine Hilfe und sein unermüdliches Engagement bei der Datenerhebung.

This research is among the first to present a study of the drivers of service export performance. The authors develop and empirically test a theoretical framework of the antecedent and performance implications of cross-border customer relationships (CCRs) in the context of service exports. Survey data from 142 business-to-business service providers...

Die deutsche Wirtschaft verzeichnet seit Jahren deutliche Exportüberschüsse und zählt damit zu den führenden Nationen im Außenhandel. Mit einem Anteil von 9,5 Prozent am weltweiten Warenexport nimmt Deutschland noch vor China (8,8 Prozent) den ersten Platz ein (WTO 2008). Der Anteil der deutschen Dienstleistungen am Gesamtexport ist mit 15 Prozent...

Immer mehr Industrieunternehmen möchten ihre produktbegleitenden Dienstleistungen auch international anbieten. Was müssen sie beachten, damit die Vermarktung im Ausland gelingt? Eine empirische Studie analysiert die Erfolgsfaktoren und gibt Handlungsempfehlungen, wie Unternehmen die Internationalisierung von produktbegleitenden Dienstleistungen vor...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

Although the effectiveness of segmentation efforts is critical for a firm's performance in export markets, there is a lack of a psychometrically sound measuring instrument that can be used to assess a firm's export market segmentation efforts. In this study, we apply the conceptual framework recently proposed by Foedermayr and Diamantopoulos (20083...

In jüngster Zeit werden Dienstleistungsgarantien in Management und Wissenschaft als ein innovatives Marketinginstrument angesehen, mit dessen Hilfe Dienstleistungsanbieter Wettbewerbsvorteile sichern und ausbauen können (Wirtz/Kum 2004). So bieten beispielsweise die Münchner Stadtwerke ihren Kunden eine Garantie an, in der sie die Bearbeitung aller...

Im Nivea-Haus können sich Kunden verwöhnen lassen, in Maggi-Kochstudio lernen sie kochen und in der VW-Autostadt vergnügen sie sich mit ihrer Familie. Immer mehr klassische Produktanbieter folgen diesen Beispielen und bieten Dienstleistungen an. Die Gründe sind dabei vielfältig. Dienstleistungen werden in Zeiten verschärften Wettbewerbs und gesätti...

In der Literatur besteht weitestgehend Einigkeit darüber, dass der Markterfolg von Dienstleistungen nachhaltig von einer gleichbleibend hohen Dienstleistungsqualität beeinflusst wird (z. B. Hart, Heskett und Sasser 1990; Parasuraman, Zeithaml und Berry 1985). Jedoch stehen Unternehmen-insbesondere bei der Internationalisierung von Dienstleistungen-...

Internationalisierung ist schon lange nicht mehr nur ein Schlagwort für Industrieunternehmen. Immer mehr große und auch kleine Dienstleistungsunternehmen dehnen ihren Wirkungskreis über nationale Grenzen hinweg aus. Deutsche Unternehmen verkauften 2005 Dienstleistungen im Wert von über 127 Mrd. Euro ins Ausland und rangieren damit in der internatio...

Purpose Limit conjoint analysis (LCA) and Vickrey auctions (VA) are methods for measuring willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) currently under discussion. However, there are hardly any studies comparing the approaches in terms of their applicability and validity. This paper aims to analyze the differences in WTP elicited by the two methods and their validity i...

Purpose The paper aims to present a comprehensive framework for understanding consumer trust in a corporate brand, incorporating both the antecedents and consequences of trust. The paper also seeks to account explicitly for the differences in antecedents and consequences of trust found among customers and among non‐customers. Design/methodology/ap...

Section IIn this paper, atheoretical framework is developed for the analysis of industrial buyer-seller relationships, using the concepts of search, experience and credence qualities, as known from Economics of Information theory. For this purpose, adynamic perspective on this configuration is offered. By assuming ashift from experience qualities t...

Countless determinants of export success that are supposed to help managers reduce the failure rates of export ventures have been identified. Despite this abundance of studies, however, little is known about the determinants of the internationalization success of services. In this paper, based on prior studies focusing primarily on manufactured goo...

In the literature, several methods to measure willingness to pay (WTP) have been proposed. However, there is still little knowledge about their reliability. We empirically test the appropriateness of two methods--open-ended contingent valuation (CV) and limit conjoint analysis (LCA)--for measuring willingness to pay, by examining their hypothetical...

Vertrauen ist ein Phänomen, das nicht nur im ökonomischen Kontext, sondern in allen Bereichen des täglichen Lebens von herausragender Bedeutung ist. Es wird vielfach als Fundament zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen betrachtet.223 Die besondere gesellschaftliche Bedeutung von Vertrauen kommt etwa in den Ausführungen Luhmanns zum Ausdruck, der Vertraue...

Die besondere Problematik bei der Überprüfung des in den Kapiteln 2 und 3 entwickelten Modellzusammenhangs besteht darin, dass die untersuchten Variablen hypothetische Konstrukte bzw. latente Variablen darstellen. Bagozzi und Formell verstehen darunter „[‥] an abstract entity which represents the ‚true’ nonobservable state or nature of a phenomenon...

Eine Analyse der Vermarktung innovativer Kommunikationsdienste setzt zunächst eine Begriffsspezifikation voraus; denn sowohl „Kommunikationsdienst“ als auch „Innovation“ werden in der Literatur mit unterschiedlichen Definitionen belegt. Eine konkrete Begriffsabgrenzung erscheint unerlässlich, da die Besonderheiten aus der Vermarktung innovativer Ko...

Bei der Einführung innovativer Kommunikationsdienste stehen Anbieter vor der Aufgabe, einen Markt zu schaffen, denn Nachfrager sind erst dann bereit, in die Kommunikationstechnologie zu investieren, wenn eine zufrieden stellende Teilnehmerzahl erreicht wird. Der Aufbau positiver Erwartungen hinsichtlich der zukünftigen Nutzerzahl zählt in diesem Zu...

Transaktionen auf Industriegütermärkten sind aufgrund technischer Komplexität und des häufig hohen Transaktionswerts der Leistungen zumeist durch Unsicherheit auf Seiten der Nachfrager gekennzeichnet. Um das Risiko einer Fehlentscheidung zu verringern, werden Nachfrager die zu beschaffenden Leistungen deshalb tendenziell bei dem Anbieter kaufen, be...

In this paper, a causal model is developed to measure the effectiveness of corporate reputation on two main drivers of innovation diffusion- the purchase intention and the word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviour of potential customers. The results of an empirical study indicate that corporate reputation is in fact an effective way to enhance an innovation's...