Easwar S. Iyer’s research while affiliated with University of Massachusetts Amherst and other places

Climate change is a critical issue right now. Despite substantial work in academia examining this issue, more solutions are needed to encourage consumers to engage in more pro‐environmental behavior. In the current research, we explore the ability of awe, a unique and powerful self‐transcendent emotion, to motivate pro‐environmental behavior and green consumption. Using different methods to induce awe and assess the effect of awe on consumers' pro‐environmental behavior, we conducted three experimental studies. Across our studies, our results show that when consumers feel awe, they are more likely to engage in pro‐environmental behavior and consumption. Further, we distinguish among three kinds of awe (awe of nature, awe of God, and awe from man‐made wonders) and show that awe arising from nature and from God increases pro‐environmental behavior more than awe from man‐made wonders. In addition, a series of mediation analyses show that the effects distinguishing different sources of awe are best accounted for by different mediators rather than one common mediator; specifically these relationships are mediated by consumers' feelings of small self (i.e., diminished self‐concept) and their level of spirituality, respectively. Implications for how marketers and practitioners can best utilize the power of awe for encouraging pro‐environmental behavior are discussed.

Interest in sustainability is increasing as a result of the stress placed by a growing global population on resources. Marketers are well positioned to understand the adoption of sustainable consumption. The influence of religiosity on sustainability has been studied although the findings are mixed. Our research aims to address that discrepancy and provide a better understanding of the role of religiosity in sustainable behaviors. Religiosity is influenced by cultural factors espoused by society at large. To gain insight into the relationship between religiosity and sustainability we utilized a mixed‐method approach to examine the dynamics of these relationships in three national contexts: The United States, Turkey, and Greece. We found that religiosity has a significant influence on sustainable behavior in cultures that are collectivist with a long‐term orientation. We also found that this effect is mediated by individuals’ long‐term orientation. Our findings provide important theoretical contributions and help inform public policy.

In this introduction to the special section on sustainability, the authors propose two primary factors that can help characterize past research in marketing on sustainability. The first of these factors, the research objective, has two dimensions: mitigate versus create and short-term versus long-term focus. To mitigate (vs. create) implies that the objective of the research is to understand factors whose reduction (enhancement) would have a positive impact on sustainability. Short-versus long-term focus describes the fact that the research objective can be to impact an immediate behavior related to sustainability or can be focused on longer-term drivers or consequences of such behaviors. The second factor, research context, can have multiple dimensions, although much of the past and current research on sustainability has been conducted in four contexts: environmental, nonenvironmental, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business. The authors first review past literature in light of this framework and then discuss the articles in the special section. They close with a discussion of where researchers interested in studying the intersection of sustainability, marketing, and public policy can go from here.

We explore how advertising managers of financial services organizations have responded to the repercussions of the great recession in their advertising strategies. To this end, we compare print ads for financial services that appeared in six magazines at two periods in time: 2005, prior to the great recession and 2010, after the end of the great recession. We content analyzed 755 prints ads and found major differences in the advertising strategies from pre- to post-recession, particularly in the type of appeals. We further examined these strategic shifts by audience focus (business-to-business and business-to-consumer) and gender focus (male, female or both).

Technological advances have enabled consumers to take greater control over how and when they view television programming, with many consumers choosing to time-shift consumption. Yet, preferences for live viewing vs. time-shifting viewing vary across program types, with news, special event, and sports programming showing higher real-time viewing than other program types. While indeterminacy is one factor that has been shown to predict consumer preferences for real-time broadcasts, drawing on literature related to the uncertainty of outcome and suspense, we argue that there is more to this preference than indeterminacy alone. More specifically, we propose that entertainment experiences contain two types of suspense (outcome and process suspense) and we show how process suspense impacts consumer preferences for time-shifting in TV entertainment consumption. Our research enriches our understanding of the nature of suspense and the relationship between outcome knowledge and the ability to experience suspense while also providing practical insights into why consumers choose to time-shift some programs, but not others.

Wikipedia defines sustainability as “the capacity to endure.” In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to provide a basis for a theory of firm sustainability. Our framework is premised on three fundamental assumptions: 1) Firm sustainability is a function of value creation (+), value capture (+), and value erosion (−) in served markets, 2) Value creation, value capture, and value erosion are dynamic, related, and interdependent processes 3) a theory of firm sustainability is interdisciplinary. Value is the cornerstone of modern market analysis. Hence our framework is rooted in three interrelated, yet distinct processes that comprise the foundation of all business activity: value creation, value capture, and value erosion. A firm’s capacity to sustain is determined by its ability to create value, capture value, and counter value erosion in its served markets. In this paper, we meld research streams from marketing, organizational theory, and strategic management to forge an understanding of value and initiate a broader discussion and research on firm sustainability.

The literature on sex-role identification is reviewed and the same framework is applied to classify products/services into gender categories.Subjects tended to perceive products along a continuum of masculinity and feminity with few products being perceived and classified as androgynous and undifferentiated.The differences in the perception of male and female subjects is discussed.It is suggested that the product user, purchaser, and promoter characteristics may be important determinants of the gender of a product/service.

The distinction between services and goods marketing as also the differences between B2B and B2C marketing are well accepted by scholars and practitioners. Turley and Kelley (1997) content analyzed print ads for services in the B2B and B2C domains, but there has been no update in the intervening fifteen years in spite of a spurt in the advertising volume as also the birth of social media. Our research intends to fill that void and provide an update. Specifically we focused on financial services ads because they are targeted to both B2B buyers and B2C consumers. We analyzed 755 ads that appeared in 6 magazines in 2005 and 2010. We found that financial service ads used different appeals in the two sectors. We also found that websites promoted active involvement more in the B2B sectors. We saw that there was a slight bias towards females in the B2B sector. Lastly the ads were tangibalized differently in the two markets.

A study was undertaken to identify the bases on which a product’s gender image is contingent. The study concluded that the gender of the perceived user, purchaser, and promoter of a product were critical factors in that process. Results also suggest that a three category classification scheme is optimal in identifying a product’s gender. The implication is that a bi-polar scale, rather than two independent scales, would suffice when measuring a product’s gender image.

Recycling is a well-researched topic in various disciplines such as waste management, environment, psychology, consumer behavior and marketing. Past studies seem to suggest that demographic characteristics, gender in particular, influence recycling behaviors. Others cite the role of work environment in promoting favorable attitudes toward recycling and encouraging recycling behaviors. School and college students represent a critical population that can be influenced to adopt recycling behaviors. In this study we report a field experiment conducted in a large university. We found the origin of individual recycling behavior and the amount of accumulated experience to significantly impact current attitudes and behaviors. We cautiously conclude that early intervention is likely to have a lasting impact on future attitudes and behaviors.