Nizar Souiden

Purpose: This study investigates the roles of consumption motives and ethical perspectives in explaining individuals’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the context of the recreational marijuana industry, often characterized as morally contentious.Design/methodology/approach: The research was conducted in Canada, a country where recreational marijuana is legally permitted. Through an online survey, 411 participants were recruited, and the data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and SmartPLS4, employing ANOVA and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques.Findings: ANOVA analyses reveal significant differences across four ethical perspectives: absolutism, subjectivism, situationism and exceptionism. Conformity motives are most prominent in the exceptionism group, while expansion motives are more common in the subjectivism group. CSR perceptions vary among these groups, with situationism showing the most favorable views. In the absolutism group, expansion and social motives positively influence CSR perception, whereas conformity motives negatively impact it. Conversely, in the exceptionism and situationism groups, only expansion motives positively affect CSR perception. Unexpectedly, within the subjectivism group, only conformity motives have a significant negative effect on CSR perception.Originality/value: This study examines a controversial industry and contributes to research on recreational marijuana by comparing consumer motives from ethical perspectives. Unlike previous research focused on consumption behaviors (e.g. use frequency), this study investigates how CSR perceptions are shaped by consumption motives and vary with ethical viewpoints.

Drawing from the Ethics Position theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study was conducted with a comprehensive four‐part goal. It seeks to explore the moderating influences of the consumption status and ethical positions in elucidating (i) individuals' attitude toward recreational marijuana consumption, (ii) individuals' perceived ethical stance regarding recreational marijuana legalization, (iii) individuals' CSR perception of firms operating within the marijuana industry often deemed as morally contentious, and (iv) the interrelationships among the aforementioned variables. Based on a sample of 411 Canadians and two grouping variables, ANOVA tests and a structural Equation Modeling were used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that individuals' attitudes toward the consumption of marijuana, perceived ethicalness of legalizing it, and perceived CSR significantly vary across the three groups of consumption status (i.e., non‐consumer, occasional, and regular) and the four groups of ethical positions (i.e., absolutism, exceptionism, situationism, and subjectivism). The SEM results, however, show that, except for a few cases, there were no notable variations in the model's path coefficients among the identified groups. This study has intriguing implications for academicians, practitioners, politicians, managers, social welfare activists, and other stakeholders.

This study is the first that uses quadratic effects to explore when design aesthetics can generate the opposite effect. It complements the “what is beautiful is good” effect by introducing the “Ulysses” effect (newly introduced effect). Mobile banking and mobile gaming are selected as predominantly-utilitarian and predominantly-hedonic services, respectively. Using online questionnaires, data are collected in France. SmartPLS is used. The results show that, in a predominantly-utilitarian service, the relationship between design aesthetics and intention is an inverted U-shaped curve. However, in a predominantly-hedonic service context, the relationship between design aesthetics and intention is rather linear ascending.

This study uses the sequential updating mechanism and draws on several theories, such as the attribution theory, the self‐perception theory and the shame theory, to explain the interplay between consumers' perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate credibility. It contends that both CSR and corporate credibility undergo the sequential updating mechanism. A two‐stage model (before and after a corporate public relation [PR] crisis) is used to investigate how individuals' perceptions of CSR and credibility are determined by their blame attribution to the firm, their self‐culpability, as well as their prior perceptions of CSR and credibility. To test the research hypotheses, four samples were collected from Spain (224 and 244) and the United Kingdom (307 and 236). Respondents had to state their opinions in relation to a Spanish and a British company operating in the fashion industry. For the model estimation, the SmartPLS 3 was used. The results show that consumers' perception of a firm's liability has a significant impact on their feeling of culpability, which in turn strongly and negatively affects their perceptions of the firm's CSR and credibility. In addition, consumers' prior perceptions of CSR and credibility play a relevant role in regulating and offsetting the final effect of a corporate PR crisis.

This paper investigates the role of customer orientation (CO), technology orientation (TO), and internal orientation (IO) in explaining firms’ service recovery performances. Multilevel analysis is used for data collected from 500 complaining customers nested in 100 firms to test the study’s hypotheses. Findings show that while the three knowledge-based resources (CO, IO, and TO) increase customers’ recovery satisfaction, only the human knowledge resources provide a buffer effect against the detrimental effects of service failures through the activation of their confirmatory biases. The result indicates the viability of TO as a recovery reactive resource rather than as a preventive resource.

Despite the fact that personality is thought to be one of the main factors that may explain unhappy consumers’ behavior, very little is known about how it affects their attitudes and complaining strategies. This is particularly true in the case of Japanese consumers where scant research has been conducted on their complaining behaviors. Hence, the main objective of this study is to investigate the roles of three personality traits (i.e., self‐confidence, aggressiveness, and altruism) of Japanese consumers in explaining their attitudes toward complaining, perceived likelihood of successful complaints (PLSCs), and complaining behaviors. On a sample of 263 respondents, a univariate general linear model (GLM) analysis is performed to assess the moderating roles of personality traits on complaint‐related variables. The results show that, on the one hand, in contrast to self‐confidence, the levels (i.e., high vs. low) of aggressiveness and altruism have significant impacts on attitudes toward complaining and PLSCs. However, the level of self‐confidence appears to have the most significant impacts on public complaining behaviors. On the other hand, altruism is found to be the only personality trait that may explain consumers’ private complaining behaviors. Additional analyses reveal interactive effects of the personality traits on complaining attitude and behaviors.

The study investigates the effect of individuals’ ethics (i.e., idealism and relativism), religiosity (i.e., fear of divine punishment, interest in religion and practices, and beliefs in religion), and attitudes toward counterfeits (i.e., economic benefits and hedonic benefits) on purchase intentions of counterfeit products. Data were collected in Tunisia, a Muslim country showing a mixture of modern and conservative values. The analysis of variance on the data, collected among 217 participants, shows that religiosity, ethics, and attitudes, all influence the intent to buy counterfeits. The analysis further supports the stronger effect of perceived economic benefits on intentions of buying counterfeits. The study contributes to the development of knowledge about the effect of religiosity and ethics on consumption behavior.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the service literature by investigating post-consumption evaluation in the context of unwanted services. In particular, it intends to delineate the main characteristics of funeral services.Design/methodology/approach: Given the lack of substantive literature on funeral services, a qualitative exploratory design was used from in-depth interviews with ten managers of funeral services companies in Quebec (Canada).Findings: The study shows that compared to other traditional services, funeral services are characterized by their strong emotiveness, non-recurrence, irreversibility, uncommonness, high level of symbolism and personalization and emotion control of the service provider. The study also argues that funeral services quality is strongly dependent on funeral houses’ integrated logistics, proximity and integrity.Practical implications: Because of consumers’ lack of competency, funeral companies need to guide and educate consumers about the criteria they should use to evaluate the service quality. Because funeral consumers are strongly emotion-driven at the purchase time, funeral services providers should find the right balance of emotions to express. Thus, more staff training is needed.Originality/value: Because funeral services are emotionally challenging and deal with grief and distressed clients, the present study contributes in shedding light on service quality assessment in the funeral industry. Although they have some characteristics of traditional services (intangibility, perishability and variability), funeral services are also different in many ways.