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This research builds on the complementary corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures in strategy and marketing to provide insight into the efficacy of CSR as a challenger's competitive weapon against a market leader. Through an investigation of a real world CSR initiative, we show that the challenger can reap superior business returns among consumers who had participated in its CSR initiative, relative to those who were merely aware of the initiative. Specifically, participant consumers demonstrate the desired attitudinal and behavioral changes in favor of the challenger, regardless of their affective trust in the leader, whereas aware consumers' reactions become less favorable as their affective trust in the leader increases. Furthermore, participation, unlike mere awareness, transforms the nature of the consumer-challenger relationship from a transactional one to a communal, trust-based one.

© 2011 INFORMS

We model self-control conflict as a stochastic struggle of an agent against a visceral influence, which impels the agent to act sub-optimally. The agent holds costly pre-commitment technology to avoid the conflict altogether and may decide whether to procure pre-commitment or to confront the visceral influence. We examine naïve expectations for the strength of the visceral influence; underestimating the visceral influence may lead the agent to exaggerate the expected utility of resisting temptation, and so mistakenly forego pre-commitment. Our analysis reveals conditions under which higher willpower – and lower visceral influence – reduces welfare. We further demonstrate that lowering risk aversion could reduce welfare. The aforementioned results call into question certain policy measures aimed at helping people improve their own behavior.

Die Finanzmarktkrise hat das Geschäftsmodell vieler Banken in Frage gestellt. Welche Lehren müssen die Banken daraus ziehen? Welche Konsequenzen ergeben sich daraus im Umgang mit den Kunden? Diese Fragen stehen im Mittelpunkt dieses Buches, dessen Beiträge von namhaften Fachleuten sowohl aus der Praxis als auch der Theorie stammen. Das Buch beleuchtet die theoretischen Aspekte des Client Commitment und die Facetten der bislang erfolgten Umsetzung in die Praxis.