Alexander Reppel’s research while affiliated with Royal Holloway, University of London and other places

Marketing classes are often focused on the micro level, failing to account for wider societal issues. In this article, we argue for the inclusion of a wider macro-sustainability focus, one that “hacks” marketing education. With that objective in mind, we developed and delivered an introductory marketing course that integrated both the micro and the macro, thus infusing the course with macro-sustainability. This was done through an “expanded voice” perspective that included alternate complementary micro and macro class sessions while using a traditional managerial marketing textbook supplemented by macro-sustainability materials. We also integrated a controversies approach to support discussion and learning. We taught this course to 150 undergraduate students and conducted both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the course, including comparing results with an “unhacked” marketing course. Findings indicated increased awareness of macro-sustainability topics and movement on appreciation of sustainability and the role marketing can have in achieving this awareness. Finally, we offer a model of how marketing classes at all levels can be “hacked” with a macro-sustainability approach.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising the way customers interact with brands. There is a lack of empirical research into AI-enabled customer experiences. Hence, this study aims to analyse how the integration of AI in shopping can lead to an improved AI-enabled customer experience. We propose a theoretical model drawing on the trust-commitment theory and service quality model. An online survey was distributed to customers who have used an AI- enabled service offered by a beauty brand. A total of 434 responses were analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling. The findings indicate the significant role of trust and perceived sacrifice as factors mediating the effects of perceived convenience, personalisation and AI-enabled service quality. The findings also reveal the significant effect of relationship commitment on AI-enabled customer experience. This study contributes to the existing literature by revealing the mediating effects of trust and perceived sacrifice and the direct effect of relationship commitment on AI-enabled customer experience. In addition, the study has practical implications for retailers deploying AI in services offered to their customers.

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are challenging the world to work towards a more sustainable future. Its 17 goals are ambitious, requiring concerted and system-based efforts driven by critical and socially aware thinking. However, marketing education is largely falling short of teaching students to think that way. Given macromarketing’s unique perspective on the interactions among markets, marketing, and society, macromarketers are poised to contribute to marketing pedagogy and to commit students to realizing the SDGs. This article first looks back at the previous 40 years of macromarketing pedagogy, before offering contemporary approaches to teaching macromarketing through four illustrative case studies found in an online repository called Pedagogy Place. It then looks forward, setting an aspiring vision for macro-oriented classrooms in the coming years.

Recently, Woodruff and Flint (2006) have backed Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) service-dominant (S-D) logic model stressing the role of value as a customer experiential phenomenon. According to the model, value is not embedded in products or services but always “value-in-use”, which means that customers experience value during interactions with service or product bundles in use situations. Companies, therefore, can only make value propositions as customers eventually decide what they regard as being of value to them. The following paper focuses on what complaining customers value in personal complaint handling service encounters. In particular, the aim of the paper is to investigate whether male and female complainants value the same or different aspects in these encounters. Complaint satisfaction can prevent customers from switching to other providers, reduce negative word-of-mouth communication and even generate positive communication about the company (Stauss 1999). Customer complaints are still most likely to be made in person to a contact employee (Brown 2000), and so such employees play a crucial role in creating complaint satisfaction. This study suggests that in such face-to-face situations, the perception of the complaint handling encounter and the overall evaluation of the company’s complaint resolution process will be largely influenced by the employee’s response. Direct contact employees may try to categorize their customers in order to better organize, interpret, and evaluate their interaction (Sharma and Levy 1995; Szymanski 1988). Such categorization can help contact employees to reduce complexity and to structure the customer complaint interaction more effectively. They could adjust the complaint handling process to customers’ expectations and needs based on their observable characteristics such as gender, which is a category that is frequently used to segment target groups and to explain consumer behavior. Although several research studies have already demonstrated that male and female customers have different preferences, information processing and decision-making styles (e.g. Iacobucci and Ostrom 1993), only a few (e.g. Keng et al. 1995) have investigated whether male and female customers differ in their complaining behavior.

This study explores the complaint management expectations of 72 British and 74 German organizational buyers using automated online means-end laddering and a Hierarchical Value Map presentation. It conceptualizes the links between expected complaint resolution attributes by the buyer (i.e., means) and the buyer’s value perceptions (i.e., ends). Unlike previous research, we highlight similarities and differences in the drivers behind and attributes of complaint management expectations across two countries (Germany and the United Kingdom). Even in countries appearing to be similar economically and culturally, we find differences in the desired attributes. British buyers, for example, emphasize softer complaint resolution attributes compared to Germans. Our study is the first to present a model of complaint management expectations incorporating the role of culture, and it provides managerial directions on standardization and adaption of complaint resolution attributes. Furthermore, it evaluates justice dimensions (especially interactional justice) and their impact on perceptions of complaint management.

The market for green and ethical clothing represents a less researched but challenging area, as this green product category is driven by multiple personal end-goals. A review of ethical and eco clothing literature reveals a blur of terms and concepts (Thomas 2008) and confusion about what consumers truly value in ethical clothing (Niinimäki 2010) and how values link back to product preferences (e.g. Dickson 2000). This study explores consumers’ product preferences, desired consumption outcomes, underlying personal values driving ethical/eco clothing purchase, and segmentation based on preferences related to ethical and eco clothing. The theoretical foundation is value theory (Rokeach 1973, Schwartz 1992) and means-end chain theory (Gutman 1982), recommended as a valuable research technique for sustainable consumption by Jackson (2005).

The research reported in this paper outlined examples of how complex harm networks operate within and across the jewellery industry, and demonstrates the inter-relationships that exist across the different stages of the ‘harm chain’. Findings suggest that institutional forces are coalescing towards a more responsible agenda for marketing in the jewellery industry. These efforts need to support SMEs to be less short term profit oriented, and instead focus the attention of jewellery marketers on more responsible considerations. To date such multi-stakeholder solutions remain under-developed, and if they are to help small businesses engage with CSR, a more inclusive process is needed that gives SMEs a voice in the debate.

Recently, Gruber, Abosag, Reppel, and Szmigin’s [(2011). Analysing the preferred characteristics of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints – a crossnational Kano study. The TQM Journal (Kano Special Issue), 23(2), 128–144]. Kano study revealed that complaining customers in Saudi Arabia are less difficult to delight than UK customers. The present study investigates whether these differences are caused by different service-sector development stages, as suggested in their study, or by cultural differences instead. Data were collected using Kano questionnaires from 151 respondents with complaining experience in Singapore. This country was chosen as it has a highly developed service economy (like the UK) but also a collectivistic culture (like Saudi Arabia). The analysis reveals that Singaporean customers show the same preferences as those in the UK. We consider this as a strong indicator for the suggested impact of the stage of service-sector development rather than cultural differences on complaining customers’ preferences of frontline employee attributes. Our results support the findings by Gruber et al. (2011). By doing so, they surprisingly refute previous research which concluded that national culture plays a significant role in shaping customer expectations during complaint-handling encounters. Our study especially corroborates the notion of a life cycle of quality attributes that had been found for goods and services and the preferred attributes of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints.

The purpose of this commentary is to stimulate debate on the topic of macromarketing education. Mark Peterson’s textbook Sustainable Enterprise: A Macromarketing Approach, which advocates a market-based approach to sustainability, is discussed in the context of a new marketing program exploring the intersection between marketing, markets, and society. As part of the discussion, the developmental and critical perspectives of macromarketing thought are contrasted with each other and also with the managerial perspective that dominates much of today’s marketing education. The commentary concludes with a call for critical reflexivity in macromarketing education and cautions that market-based approaches to sustainability can only work toward a sustainable future, but not solve the problem of an unsustainable lifestyle.

This research uses the Kano model of satisfaction to investigate professor characteristics that create student satisfaction as well as those attributes that can cause their dissatisfaction. Kano questionnaires were handed out to 104 undergraduate students at a university in the Southwest and to 147 undergraduate students at a university in the Midwest of the USA. The two resulting Kano maps show the same delighting attributes while other satisfaction attributes are also similar. The findings reveal the importance of the personality of professors and the characteristics of professors which: a) are desired by students, b) are not desired by students, c) impact student satisfaction the most, d) impact satisfaction the least. The results also demonstrate how professors and universities can focus attention on those attributes most likely to influence satisfaction. No attributes of professors are classified as basic or taken for granted factors by students, while three attributes are excitement factors that have the potential to delight students. The findings illustrate that there is a set of multiple attributes that professors need to possess for satisfying studentprofessor classroom service encounters. Student populations appear to show strong similarities in their preferences for characteristics of professors that lead to satisfaction and dissatisfaction outcomes.