Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition)

For sellers, the efficacy of humor to create trusty relationships and achieve performance with buyers remains unknown. Specifically, the question of if – and when – sellers should use humor still deserves examination. To answer this question, this research builds on the four phases that characterize long-term relationships (exploration, buildup, maturity, and decline) to argue that humor might be inefficient when used in the exploration phase. Two studies conducted among buyers (n = 322) then reveal that although constructive humor has overall positive effects on the performance of the sellers through a mediating effect of trust, this effect is not observed during the exploration phase. The other type of humor – offensive humor – has a negative effect regardless of the phase in which it is used. Taken together, these results first indicate that sellers may gain from using humor only if the relationship with their buyers is not at the exploration phase since this particular phase is the only one when a negative effect of humor on trust and subsequent performance is observed. Furthermore, these results indicate that offensive should be avoided in all the relationship phases.

The aim of this article is to understand to what extent imaginaries can play a role in the construction of an innovative market. We conducted a market-oriented ethnography of the nanotechnology market construction process, analysing the strategies of three categories of stakeholders: consumers, opponents and promoters. The results reveal a new form of market construction: symbolic construction. In the case of nanotechnologies, this is based on two primary mechanisms: (1) the promotional mechanics of imaginaries, which favour the market through the simultaneous use of familiar and futuristic imaginaries; and (2) ‘meaning activism’, which challenges the market using dystopian imaginaries. This research advocates an interpretive approach to innovation, enriching the marketing literature on innovation and the social construction of markets; it also highlights certain managerial insights generated by this approach.

Fairness is widely considered a key driver of human behavior. Organizational behavior (OB) research focuses on fairness as an employee attitude driver. Marketing research highlights fairness perceptions as a key determinant of both purchase intentions and purchase behavior. Yet, to our best knowledge, no explicit attempt has been made to bridge the two phenomena. Using deductive reasoning and delineation methods, we posit that, through the diffusion of customer experience, value perception, attitudes, and behaviors, a symbiosis of OB and marketing research ultimately influences organizational performance. Our corresponding conceptual framework determines fairness perceptions’ influence on employee attitudes and service productivity by means of proposition development. In turn, this leads to an increase in customer satisfaction, consumer purchasing, and re-purchasing behavior, and – ultimately – profitability.

This article considers the cultural and social aspects of disability through a critical review of marketing research. Two main issues are explored. First, how do these works portray consumers with disabilities? Two profiles become apparent: the passive consumers who are targeted by the construction of offers that are adapted to their needs and the more active consumers who wish to play an active role within the marketplace. Second, does this academic research process have a participatory approach that includes the involvement of consumers with disabilities? After defining participatory research, we show that a minority of works applied this approach and discuss the methodological problems involved in its use. Possible future research avenues are then raised to improve this approach and thus attain a better understanding of the consumer with disabilities.

The concept of intergenerational transmission has given rise to a heterogenous body of research in consumer behaviour. It has been mobilised in domains as varied as consumer socialisation and heritage disposition. This article proposes an integrative conceptual framework for the intergenerational transmission of consumer behaviour. This framework has emerged from an interpretation of Erikson’s theory of human personality development. Its first contribution is that it links the developmental concerns of the younger and older generations (learning, differentiating, taking care and preserving) around the notion of intergenerational capital. Its second contribution is that it puts forward the concepts of sociocultural, economic, psychological and genetic capital, which serve to enrich and clarify the nature of intergenerational capital. Finally, it opens up new research directions, including a much-needed focus on the central role of the ‘pivot’ generation (the 30–65 age group) and on taking into account the concept of attachment in the study of the effect of inherited psychological resources on the adoption of consumer practices.