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Executives use market labels to position their firms within market categories. Yet this activity has been given scarce attention in the extant literature that widely assumes that market labels are simple, prescribed classification brackets that accurately represent firms' characteristics. By examining how and why executives use the nanotechnology label, we uncover three strategies: claiming, disassociating, and hedging. Comparing these strategies to firms' technological capabilities, we find that capabilities alone do not explain executives' label use. Instead, the data show that these strategies are driven by executives' aspiration to symbolically influence their firms' market categorization. In particular, executives' perception of the label's ambiguity, their avoidance of perceived credibility gaps, and their assessment of the label's signaling value shape their labeling strategies. In contrast to extant research, which suggests that executives should aim for coherence, we find that many executives hedge their affiliation with a nascent market label. Thus, our study shows that in ambiguous contexts, noncommitment to a market category may be a particularly prevalent strategy.

This research explores the impact of merely altering the name of a food on dieters’ and nondieters’ evaluations of the food’s healthfulness and taste, as well as consumption. Four studies demonstrate that when a food is identified by a relatively unhealthy name (e.g., pasta), dieters perceive the item to be less healthful and less tasty than do nondieters. When the identical food is assigned a relatively healthy name (e.g., salad), however, dieting tendency has no effect on product evaluations. This effect, which results in differences in actual food consumption, is explained by nondieters’ insensitivity to food cues as well as dieters’ reliance on cues indicating a lack of healthfulness and tendency to employ heuristic information processing when evaluating foods. These findings contribute to the body of literature that explores both individual and contextual factors that influence food evaluation and consumption.

Development of new methods of male contraception would address an unmet need for men to control their fertility and could increase contraceptive options for women. Pharmaceutical research and development for male contraception was active in the 1990s but has been virtually abandoned. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) has supported a contraceptive development program since 1969 and supports the majority of hormonal male contraceptive development. Nonhormonal methods are also in development but are at earlier stages. Several hormonal male contraceptive agents have entered clinical trials. Single-agent products being evaluated include dimethandrolone undecanoate, 11β-methyl-nortestosterone dodecyl carbonate, and 7α-methyl-19-nortestosterone. A contraceptive efficacy trial of Nestorone gel and testosterone gel in a single application will begin in 2018. Potential nonhormonal methods are at preclinical stages of development. Many nonhormonal male contraceptive targets that affect either sperm production or sperm function have been identified. Targeted pathways include the retinoic acid pathway, bromodomain and extraterminal proteins, and pathways for Sertoli cell-germ cell adhesion or sperm motility. Druggable targets include CatSper, the sperm Na+/K+-exchanger, TSSK, HIPK4, EPPIN, and ADAMs family proteins. Development of a procedure to reversibly block the vas deferens (initially developed in India in the 1980s) is undergoing early stage research in the US under the trade name Vasalgel™. NICHD has supported the development of reversible male contraceptive agents. Other organizations such as the World Health Organization and the Population Council are pursuing male contraceptive development, but industry involvement remains dormant.

A company's product-harm crises often lead to negative publicity which substantially affects purchase intention. This study attempts to examine the purchase intention and its antecedents (e.g., perceived negative publicity) during product-harm crises by simultaneously including perceived corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) as moderators. In the study's proposed model, purchase intention is indirectly affected by perceived CA, negative publicity, and CSR via the mediation of trust and affective identification. At the same time, the influences of perceived negative publicity on trust and affective identification are moderated by perceived CA and CSR, respectively. Empirical testing using a survey of car users from 477 working professionals confirms most of our hypothesized effects except the insignificant moderating effects of perceived CA. Finally, managerial implications and limitations of our findings are discussed.

This paper describes a new data set available to academic researchers (at the following website: http://mktsci.pubs.informs.org ). These data are comprised of store sales and consumer panel data for 30 product categories. The store sales data contain 5 years of product sales, pricing, and promotion data for all items sold in 47 U.S. markets. In two U.S. markets, the store level data are supplemented with panel-level purchase data and cover the entire population of stores. Further information is available regarding store characteristics in these markets. We address several potential applications of these data, as well as the access protocol. The data set described in this paper is maintained by IRI. Any fees charged by IRI for the distribution of the data set will be used for the continual maintenance and updating of the data. Scholarships to cover IRI's fees (for those who need it) are available through the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS). Please see the website above for further details.

Using comprehensive data from the global advertising industry from 1995 to 2003, we examined the effects of indirect ties (common clients) on acquirers' choices of partners for mergers and acquisitions and on the performance of the combined organizations. We found that the probability of being acquired rose but the performance of merged entities declined—both by losing clients and by selling less to the clients retained—with the number of common clients connecting the target to the acquirer. Two potential mechanisms could account for this pattern of results: either managers hold positively biased beliefs about those connected to them through common clients, or they restrict their searches for potential acquisition partners to those they already know, despite the disadvantages of doing so, ignoring targets that may have more potential but with whom they have no indirect ties.

This paper examines the persuasiveness of assertive language (as in Nike’s slogan “Just do it”) as compared to nonassertive language (as in Microsoft’s slogan “Where do you want to go today?”). Previous research implies that assertive language should reduce consumer compliance. Two experiments show that assertiveness is more effective in communications involving hedonic products, as well as hedonically advertised utilitarian products. This prediction builds on sociolinguistic research addressing relationships between mood, communication expectations, and compliance to requests. A third experiment reaffirms the role of linguistic expectations by showing that an unknown product advertised using assertive language is more likely to be perceived as hedonic.

Evidence from four studies shows that signing one’s name influences consumption-related behavior in a predictable manner. Signing acts as a general self-identity prime that facilitates the activation of the particular aspect of a consumer’s self-identity that is afforded by the situation, resulting in behavior congruent with that aspect. Our findings demonstrate that signing causes consumers to become more (less) engaged when shopping in a product domain they (do not) closely identify with (studies 1 and 2), to identify more (less) closely with in(out)-groups (study 3), and to conform more with (diverge more from) in(out)-groups when making consumption choices in preference domains that are relevant to signaling one’s identity (study 4). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The pet trade in freshwater crustaceans, including crayfish, has grown rapidly in recent decades and become an important pathway for introducing new non-indigenous species into Europe. This paper provides the first overview of non-indigenous crayfish species (NICS) traded as ornamental and their potential impact in the Czech Republic, which is the second leading importer into Europe. The paper presents a full list of traded crayfish species, their market availability, and trade names or misnomers used in the country. In total, 27 crayfish species from all three families are advertised and marketed, of which Astacus astacus is the only indigenous species. Only three NICS were recognized as very common on the market. The invasiveness and risk associated with ornamental crayfish trade were assessed using the Freshwater Invertebrate Invasiveness Scoring Kit. Five NICS were classified into the high-risk category, the highest score being for Procambarus fallax f. virginalis. The invasiveness of crayfish indigenous to North America is significantly greater than that of crayfish from the rest of the world, and therefore regulation in this regard is recommended.

Heat treatment is a method of wood modification with increasing market acceptance in Europe. The major patented European commercial heat treatment processes have trade names ThermoWood, Platowood, Retiwood, Le Bois Perdure, and Oil-Heat-Treated Wood (OHT). To what extent modification of wood affects the resistance of wood to weathering is also an important aspect for wood applications, especially where appearance is important. Unfortunately, heat-treated wood has poor resistance to weathering, and surface treatment with coatings is required for both protection and aesthetic reasons. As a substrate for coating, heat-treated wood has altered characteristics such as lower hygroscopicity and liquid water uptake and changed acidity, wettability, surface free energy, and anatomical microstructure. Various wood species, heat treatment method, treatment intensity, and treatment conditions exhibited a different extent of changes in wood properties. These altered properties could affect coating performance on heat-treated wood. The reported changes in acidity and in surface energy due to heat treatments are inconsistent with one another depending on wood species and temperature of the treatments. This paper gives an overview of the research results with regards to properties of heat-treated wood that can affect coating performance and weathering of uncoated and coated heat-treated wood.