Given the unmistakable trend toward a more integrated global economy and the tremendous impact of consumer vanity on demand for countless goods and services, there exists a need for more cross-cultural research on the important psychological construct known as consumer vanity (Netemeyer, Burton, & Lichtenstein, 1995). This article examines four components of the vanity construct: appearance concern, appearance perception, achievement concern, and achievement perception. To test the vanity construct cross-culturally, a survey was undertaken in the United States and China. This article illustrates the use of the comprehensive analytical framework proposed by Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1998) to assess measurement invariance in cross-cultural consumer research. The results provided a rigorous cross-cultural validation test of the vanity scale that has implications for both academics and practitioners in cross-cultural consumer research and marketing.

This article examines how the simultaneous use of customer-centric marketing (CCM) and revenue management (RM) affects travelers' perceptions of fairness and ultimately their purchasing choices. To address this issue, we propose and empirically test a choice model that incorporates reference-dependent fairness adjustments for both price and nonprice attributes within a random utility framework. The findings from two empirical studies using stated-preference choice experiments show that travelers engage in fairness-related reference point comparisons for price and other product attributes induced by RM and CCM. They offer additional evidence concerning the need to account comprehensively for attributes associated with both RM and CCM when predicting customer demand in travel and tourism firms. Accordingly, firms need to account not only for the effects of RM and CCM attributes but also for the corresponding reference-dependent fairness adjustments relating to those attributes.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine two alternative consumer behavioural intention models that have been developed from the marketing and information systems disciplines in a service environment. Specifically, it reports an empirical assessment of the two non-nested structural models in the context of Australian restaurant industry. Design/methodology/approach This study used a web-based survey by an online research organization and structural equation modelling with AMOS was used to compare the two non-nested behavioural intention models. Findings This study found that the second model that incorporates expectation-confirmation theory outperformed the first model in terms of model fit with the empirical data. Practical implications The findings of this study provide service managers with important insights into the appropriate design of service delivery systems to increase consumer satisfaction which, in turn, leads to more positive behavioural intentions. Moreover, the restaurant research setting means that marketing managers in the growing tourism and hospitality industry should benefit from the study findings. Originality/value This study synthesized two consumer behavioural intention models from different disciplines and provided an approach to the empirical comparison of the non-nested structural models.

The evaluation and selection of advertisements with desired levels of attributes such as ethicality, likeability, humour, or information content, can be undertaken using a variety of methods. These include researchers' personal judgments, focus groups, expert panels, and ratings scale approaches. However, there is still no generally accepted systematic evaluation or selection procedure. This paper details a simple but powerful method known as 'best -worst scaling' (BWS) to evaluate and select advertisements on criteria of interest. BWS represents an important new tool for advertising researchers, advertising agencies and their clients, communications scholars, and policy makers to evaluate and select advertisements. This paper achieves three ends. First, it critiques existing methods of advertisement evaluation. Second, it demonstrates that BWS has greater validity than existing methods. Third, this is the first paper to present a worked example of how to use BWS, and demonstrate its use in an advertisement evaluation context. Importantly, BWS is not restricted to evaluating advertisements -it can be used to evaluate any items on criteria of interest.