Corporate social responsibility, customer orientation, and the job performance of frontline employees ESMT Working Paper,

Data collected through multi-item Likert scales that contain reversed items often exhibit problems, such as unexpected factor structures and diminished scale reliabilities. These problems arise when respondents select responses on the same side of the scale neutral point for both reversed and nonreversed items, a phenomenon the authors call "misresponse." Across four experiments and an exploratory study using published data, the authors find that misresponse to reversed Likert items averaged approximately 20%, twice the level identified as problematic in previous simulation studies. Counter to prevailing thought, the patterns of misresponse and response latency across manipulated items could not be attributed to respondent inattention or acquiescence. Instead, the pattern supports an item verification difficulty explanation, which holds that task complexity, and thus misresponse and response latency, increases with the number of cognitive operations required for a respondent to compare a scale item with his or her belief. The observed results are well explained by the constituent comparison model.

Psychological ownership, or the feeling that something is mine, has garnered growing attention in marketing. While previous work focuses on the positive aspects of psychological ownership, this research draws attention to the darker side of psychological ownership—territorial behavior. Results of five experimental studies demonstrate that when consumers feel psychological ownership of a target, they are prone to perceptions of infringement and subsequent territorial responses when they infer that another individual feels ownership of the same target. Potential infringers are held less accountable when they acknowledge ownership prior to engaging in otherwise threatening behaviors, and when they could not be expected to know that a target is owned, as it was not clearly marked. In addition, high narcissists are subject to a psychological ownership metaperception bias, and are thus more apt than low narcissists to perceive infringement. A multitude of territorial responses are documented for both tangible (coffee, sweater, chair, pizza) and intangible (a design) targets of ownership. Further, consumers infer the psychological ownership of others from signals of the antecedents of psychological ownership: control, investment of self, and intimate knowledge. Theoretical implications for territoriality and psychological ownership are discussed, along with managerial implications and areas for future research.

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Within the behavioral literature, two basic explanations of the pioneering advantage have been offered. Early work focused on order-based explanations. More recently, schema-based explanations have also been suggested. The authors propose a mediated-effects model of the pioneering advantage and test the model in two separate longitudinal studies. Both experiments support the proposed model. The authors find that experience order and pioneerstatus have additive effects on brand preference such that perceptions of first-in-market and first-experienced brands are more favorable, suggesting that both explanations are operative. The authors also provide evidence that the effects of pioneer status on brand preference are mediated by attitude toward the brand and company credibility, while the effects of experience order on brand preference are mediated by attitude toward the brand and attribute recall. These data support the notion that the effect of pioneer status on brand preference is the result of both brandlevel and company-level associations.

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