Relevance has been applied to various conditions in the marketing literature but no single definition has been developed. A single clear definition will be helpful to researchers investigating relevance in the marketing and consumer behavior fields. Confusion also exists in the literature...

To paraphrase an old bromide, "you are what you consume." Consumers derive their sense of self through products, brands, performances and a host of other meaning-laden materials that they consume. The marketing literature has long recognized possessions as an extension of the self-concept....

The retail sector spends millions of dollars each year advertising to consumers. This is a considerable investment for companies seeking effective ways to inform and persuade the consumer. Consequently, retailers need to develop creative message strategies and tactics that will positively affect...

Which form of exchange governance performs better in a dynamic environment? This remains an unanswered question in the transaction cost analysis (TCA) and relational exchange literatures. Some researchers purport that transactional governance provides superior performance by providing firms the...

Marketing scholars question the ability of the 4Ps to explain higher order phenomena in modern marketing. Scholars contend that marketing's historical framework, based in product centric economic theory, constrains the 4Ps ability to form a foundation for a general theory of marketing. The focus...

While the proliferation of literature on the subject of growing incivility in society demonstrates the increasing importance given to civility by corporate America, there has been little academic investigation of the concept. The limited number of academic studies on civility reveals immense...

Despite a long-standing tradition to view gender as a unitary theoretical construct, there is an increasing approbation afforded to gender identity as a multifarious construct. Over and above physiological characteristics, gender identity is a psychological and a social construct. More than...