FIRMS' INVOLVEMENT IN THE RESTORATION OF TOURIST ATTRACTIONS: THE ROLE OF PERCEIVED ALTRUISM AND AUTHENTICITY ON VISITING INTENTIONS

Alessandro Biraglia,Maximilian H. E. E. Gerrath,Bryan Usrey 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

Support from the private sector, for example by firms, has been solicited to ease tourist attraction financial constraints and to help their restoration and maintenance out of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities (United Nations, 2010; Europanostra, 2013). When engaging in these partnerships, firms may display different level of altruistic motivation. For example, the Italian fashion company Tod’s demonstrated high altruism by agreeing to restore the Colosseum without any economic or financial return. American Express, however, sought promotional rights when the firm agreed to contribute to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Finally, the ticketing agency Eventim renamed the Hammersmith Apollo (now Eventim Apollo) in London following their involvement in the restoration, thus pursuing more strategic, rather than altruistic goals. Non-altruistic goals and the fear that the involvement of a company may generate scepticism in visitors, as they could perceive the authentic image of a tourist attraction to be jeopardized. Managers of tourist attractions are faced with a dilemma: should they seek financial support from third parties (e.g. firms), or would this compromise the appeal of the site, leading to a drop in the number of visitors? In order to address this problem, we conducted two experiments to examine how firms' involvement in restorations affects tourist attractions. We found that firms' altruistic motivations (that denotes the support of a cause without demanding anything in return) are positively associated with tourists' intentions to visit the attraction (Study 1). Moreover, we found that this relationship is mediated by visitors’ perceived authenticity, in other words the belief that the real aspect of the site has not been irreversibly altered. We confirm the robustness of our findings in Study 2, additionally showing how this effect is stronger in the case of heritage sites compared to non-heritage sites. To the best of our knowledge, our results are among the first to show how a lack of altruism in CSR activities can negatively affect the target of the campaign (in this particular case a tourist attraction). Results also suggest managers of tourist attractions with high heritage value to assess the altruistic motives of the firm carefully before engaging in a financial partnership.

THE ROLE OF IMPLICIT THEORIES AND EFFORT IN THE EVALUATION OF PRODUCTS MADE OF RECYCLED MATERIALS

Alessandro Biraglia,J. Jo?ko Brakus,Ambra Brizi,Lucia Mannetti 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2018 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2018 No.07

In the past, scholars and policy makers have tried to educate as well as incentivize practices like recycling to avoid reduce landfill stocks and create new objects from past used materials. Such products have been commercialized more and more by big brands (i.e. Adidas and Levi’s) and by famous fashion designers (i.e. Stella McCartney). While more academic literature has focused on drivers for consumers’ motivations to engage in recycling activities, there has been little research investigating consumers’ underlying psychological factors to favour recycled products over standard ones. In this study we address this issue by experimentally testing consumer evaluation and intention to adopt recycled products through an implicit theory – or mind-sets-framework on. In a set of three studies we demonstrate how consumers holding and incremental mind-set – who believe that trait like intelligence, morality or personality are malleable and transformable over time – are more keen top adopt products made of recycled materials. In contrasts, individuals with an entity mind-set – who instead believe human traits are fixed and non-mutable- are more sceptical to embrace such products. In Experiment 1 we demonstrated that the chronic incremental mind set of individuals influences their intention to acquire a recycled – over a non-recycled – coffee mug. In Experiment 2, we demonstrate through a laboratory experiment that this preference for products made out of recycled materials is stable in individual with an incremental min-set – over their entity min-set counterpart – even below the liminal attention threshold. Finally, in Experiment 3 we demonstrate that by attributing the merit of the transformation in a different object to qualities that are embedded in the materials used (rather than to the process to transform them) can make recycled products more appealing also to individuals with an entity mind-set. The results of these studies contribute to the literature on implicit theory by investigating another area in consumer psychology (intention to adopt recycled products) so far unexplored. On a managerial point of view, this study suggests how highlighting the effort spent by a company in creating the product can attract consumer (especially incremental theorists) to intend to buy the product, while highlighting the qualities of the material used can attract more entity theorists.

‘FERMENTING A BUSINESS’: INVESTIGATING ENVIRONMENTAL ANTECEDENTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ALERTNESS AMONG AMERICAN HOMEBREWERS USING FUZZY SET ANALYSIS

Vita Kadile,Alessandro Biraglia 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

The present study focuses on the construct of entrepreneurial alertness, investigating the external antecedents of the construct, responding to the call for more research pledged by Tang, Kacmar, and Busenitz (2012). Namely, we examine how receiving feedback, awards and collaboration offers in relation to an individual’s hobby activity influences the development of entrepreneurial alertness dimensions. Additionally, we make a contribution by testing the effect of these external factors in a non-entrepreneurial context of homebrewing communities, that is individuals producing beer at home as a hobby. In line with other form of craft activities, this context has demonstrated a high potential for business start-up development due to the increasing number of new small brewing businesses in North America run by entrepreneurs that were previously homebrewers (Carroll & Swaminathan, 2000). We test our tenets within the complexity theory, where configurations of antecedents are examined in order to gain deeper understanding of the possible outcome (Woodside, 2014), using 213 completed questionnaires. We apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA, Ragin 2000; 2008) to achieve a holistic overview of the examined interrelationships (Ordanini, Parasuraman & Rubera, 2015). We find that high feedback is a sufficient condition for high scanning and search, association and connection, as well as evaluation and judgement activities of entrepreneurial alertness. Without feedback, people at the hobby stage engage in their leisure activities solely because they like it. However, receiving feedback in relation to their hobby outcomes provides an opportunity for individuals to develop and experience additional motivations beyond enjoyment, where they understand that the hobby could be commercialized and bring monetary rewards. Moreover, we find that an individual receiving low amount of awards but high amount of collaboration offers may also have high entrepreneurial alertness. Since individuals receive rewards related to the excellent performance in their leisure activity, it may not provide any cue for a potential transformation into a business. However, the more collaboration offers people receive, the more likely they get involved in scanning and search, association and connection, and evaluation and judgement activities of entrepreneurial alertness. Therefore, they are likely to conduct additional search, connect bits of available information and evaluate this business opportunity (Gaglio & Winter, 2009). The findings of this study could help entrepreneurs reflect on their decisions and behaviours during the business start-up planning process, and measure their entrepreneurial alertness and the extent of readiness to engage in business venturing.