Research Translations
Bartikowski, Boris & Cleveland, Mark (2017) “‘Seeing is Being’: Consumer Culture and the Positioning of Luxury Cars in China,” Journal of Business Research, Vol. 77 (August), 195-202. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.12.008
- China is now the world’s largest market for luxury goods and automobiles.
- Using experiments, we focus on the roles played by social identity and personality, regarding how consumer preferences are formed for luxury foreign automobile brands
- We also contrast Chinese consumers respond to ads using a local brand communication strategy (that is, emphasizing Chinese culture in the spokespersons, message appeals, and visuals) versus ads using a global brand communication strategy (that is, emphasizing globalization and ethnic diversity in the spokespersons, message appeals, and visuals).
- We found that consumers with high levels of Chinese identity preferred local brand communication strategies, and this finding was equally true for Chinese consumers with high and low levels of need for uniqueness (that is, the importance of standing out from the crowd). However, for those Chinese consumers that scored high on cosmopolitanism (i.e., interest in different cultural groups), need for uniqueness played a strong role, with cosmopolitan Chinese scoring high on need for uniqueness preferring the local brand strategy, whereas cosmopolitan Chinese low on need for uniqueness preferring the global brand strategy.
- These findings undermine the conventional wisdom underpinning contemporary advertising campaigns.
Dimitrina Dimitrova, Diana Mok and Barry Wellman. 2015. Changing Ties in a Far-Flung, Multidisciplinary Research Network: The Case of GRAND. American Behavioral Scientist 59(5), 599-628.
- We study a multidisciplinary, geographically dispersed, and multi-institutional research network that shows the complex relationships in collaborative research.
- Although collaborative work ties declined, the number of friendship and advice ties stayed stable and acquaintanceship ties grew.
- Most researchers seem satisfied with the network and relish the opportunities for cross-disciplinary exchanges.
- The benefits of the network do not lie in the traditional academic output of publications and artifacts, but in intellectual exchanges, knowledge transfer, fostering long-term ties within and across disciplines and universities, and the development of a collaborative culture.
Tian, Q., & Robertson, J.L. (in press). How and when does perceived CSR affect employees' engagement in voluntary pro-environmental behavior? The Journal of Business Ethics. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3497-3
- How and when employees’ perceptions of their firms’ social and environmentally responsible activities influence them to engage in pro-environmental behaviour was investigated
- Employees who perceived their firm as socially and environmentally responsible were more likely to identify with their organization
- Employees high in empathy more strongly identified with their organization as a result of perceiving their firm as socially and environmentally responsible
- When employees identified with their organization as a result of viewing their firm as socially and environmentally responsible, they were more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviour, but this effect was only present among empathetic employees
Schermer, J. A., Martin, R. A., Vernon, P. A., Martin, N. G., Conde, L. C., Statham, D., & Lynskey, M. T. (2017). Lonely people tend to make fun of themselves: A behavior genetic analysis of Humor Styles and Loneliness. Personality and Individual Differences, 117, 71-73.
- People who can cheer themselves up with humor report being less lonely
- Aggressive humor (making fun of others) is not related to loneliness
- Based on an analysis of Australian twins, both humor styles and loneliness were found to be heritable
- The significant relationships between the two domains (humor and loneliness) were also found to have genetic and environmental correlations
