Stephan Olk

• Dr.
• Management Consultant at Horn & Company

Volunteers represent an important resource for nonprofit organizations. The competition for volunteers is rising, increasing the pressure to optimize volunteer recruiting. One way to recruit volunteers is the use of volunteering appeals. To help optimize such volunteering appeals, we conducted two conjoint studies to identify the importance of desi...

This study provides new insights into the factors that shape tourists’ sustainable behavioral intention by conducting a meta-analysis based on 95 published studies with 47,425 participants from 38 countries. Building upon the theory of planned behavior and value-belief-norm theory, we propose and show the relevance of distinguishing between charact...

Research has shown that while the authenticity of positive emotional displays plays an important role in service encounters, it has not yet demonstrated a universally positive effect on customers' behavior. This study, which is the first to present customer involvement as a contextual factor that influences customers' processing, provides a deeper...

Nonprofit organizations need loyal donors to accomplish their mission and goals. However, organizations lose up to 60% of their first-time donors. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the determinants of donor loyalty is necessary. This study therefore tests whether actual self-congruence, ideal self-congruence, and functional congruence strengthen...

Endorsers such as social media influencers who aim to match consumers’ personality to strengthen their credibility must consider that actual self‐congruence and ideal self‐congruence have different effects on the main dimensions of credibility: perceived trustworthiness and perceived competence. In our study, we conceptually argue that actual self‐...

Marketing is more than selling people things they do not need; the goal of marketing is to meet stakeholders’ needs through the delivery of suitable products and services. For this purpose, marketing provides a stringent procedure and offers a large toolbox of different techniques. From this perspective, the present article analyzes the applicabili...

Effective communication during public health emergencies is critical to handling a crisis. In uncertain times, those in charge are faced with the challenge of providing citizens with sufficient information on the one hand and avoiding panic reactions on the other hand. Due to the high demand for information, organizations and public administrations...

Emotional labor is a frequently discussed topic in the service literature because of its varying effects on customers’ evaluation processes. Previous research has primarily investigated the effects of emotional labor from an employee-customer perspective. This article considers customer copresence and argues that the observed interaction between an...

As Barrick and colleagues (Barrick et al. 2005) stated, acts of peer support, such as volunteering, can be regarded as a “route to enlightenment and interdependence”. Volunteers are a crucial resource for nonprofit organizations and help them to achieve societal goals. Given the scarcity of resources in nonprofit organizations, it is important for...

In light of the increasing demand for environmentally friendly products and services, companies have expanded their green marketing activities, such as EasyJet in November 2019 with its promise to offset the carbon emissions of all flights. However, green claims entail the risk of being judged by customers as greenwashing. Given that previous resea...

Research has shown that the authenticity of positive emotional displays during traditional service encounters (i.e., human-human interactions) is particularly important. Due to digitization, traditional interpersonal interactions are being replaced in favor of human-machine interactions. This study answers the question regarding the relevance of th...

The shopping experience itself is becoming increasingly important in today's markets. As a result, a growing number of brands are opening pop-up stores. The focus of these time-limited stores is on the hedonic shopping value, which aims to offer consumers a unique experience and strengthen brand-consumer loyalty. In contrast, this study suggests th...