Whereas in the past ‘free’ and ‘illegal’ were nearly synonymous in the music industry, consumers nowadays face a myriad of music platforms with widely different characteristics in terms of business model (advertising supported, fee based, etc.), delivery mode (streaming, downloading, etc.), and others. The current research examines music consumption preferences in this new context. In order to break with the outmoded free-illegal versus paid-legal dichotomy, the present research studies consumer preferences for a broader range of music platform attributes, including free (...) versus paying business models, (il)legality of use, artist revenues, downloading versus streaming, and audio quality. Based on a literature review and a qualitative study with in-depth interviews (N = 92), an online conjoint survey (N = 764) quantifies online music preferences. Results show that consumers of all ages clearly and consistently prefer legal and ethical options if available, but favor different ways of making this economically viable. Youngsters and young adults are more open to advertising, while middle-aged adults are more often willing to pay for advertising-free platforms. Thus, in real-life choices, youngsters may appear to be less ethical and law abiding, but the driving force behind this is mainly economical. Finally, a market segmentation provides deeper insights into online music consumer preferences and leads to recommendations on how to define viable legal and ethical music offerings. (shrink)

This study attempts to advance knowledge in the area of controversial advertising by examining the antecedents and consequences of controversial advert perceptions in the context of social media, and particularly social networking sites. Specifically, we explore how ethical judgement and religious commitment shape controversial advert perceptions leading to attitudes towards the advert, brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Our results indicate that when a SNS advert is judged to be ethically acceptable, the level of perceived advert controversy is lower. However, the (...) impact of ethical judgement on controversial advert perceptions becomes significant and positive when intrapersonal commitment and interpersonal religious commitment are introduced as moderators. This result implies that the level of religious commitment changes the ethical judgement–controversial advert perceptions relationship. The results also highlight that controversial advert perceptions negatively influence attitude towards the advert. The study contributes to the limited knowledge on controversial advertising on SNS, yielding significant and relevant implications for academics and advertisers alike, in their effort to improve advertising effectiveness without offending or alienating target audiences. (shrink)

Digital piracy as a continuing problem significantly impacts various stakeholders, including consumers, enterprises, and countries. This study develops a three-level mechanism of determinants of consumer digital piracy behavior, with personal risk as an individual factor, susceptibility to interpersonal influence as an inter-personal factor, and moral intensity as a broad societal factor. Further, it explores the role of rationalization and future piracy intent as outcomes of past piracy behaviors. The authors use survey data from four countries in the European Union to (...) test the system of structural relationships. With an exception of the effect of consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influence on piracy behavior, the conceptual model receives remarkably consistent support across the four countries. Specifically, perception of personal risk and moral intensity negatively affected the reported piracy behavior in all four countries. The results further support the negative influence of moral intensity and the positive influence of past digital piracy behavior on consumers’ use of rationalization. Lastly, personal risk, rationalization, and past digital piracy behavior directly influenced consumers’ intention to engage in digital piracy in the future. The study also discusses implications of the findings and identifies areas of future research. (shrink)

Today, digital piracy remains a growing challenge for both legislators and businesses operating in the entertainment industry. This study explores when and why consumers make trade-offs between illegal and legal streaming services. By drawing on protection motivation theory, we find that consumers' threat and coping appraisals increase their adaptive behavior, i.e., lower intention to consume illegal and higher intention to consume legal streaming services. We also show that the strength of consumers' inherent ethical (relativism) and political (economic liberalism) identities conditions (...) adaptive behavior through social identity theory. We find that low relativism strengthens the adaptive behavior through threat appraisal, while economic liberalism strengthens the adaptive behavior through coping appraisal. Our robustness checks show that these results hold when the model accounts for the level of consumers' digital piracy attitudes. We used a scenario-based approach to test our hypotheses and surveyed 244 consumers who use streaming services. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that consumers' adaptive behavior envisioned through protection motivation theory can be weakened or strengthened by their ethical and political identities. (shrink)

Prior research has examined consumer intentions to purchase fakes, branding strategies and anti-counterfeiting actions, but little attention seems to have been paid to the role of consumers’ ability to discern fakes and branding strategies against counterfeiting. This article, thus, based on a study of 128 multinational managers’ experience in China, examines these inter-relationships. As a result, we address how knowledgeable and experienced managers in branding, consumer consumption and anti-counterfeiting effort perceive consumers’ ability to discriminate fakes from originals interacts with branding (...) strategies, and how such relationship influences the effectiveness of anti-counterfeiting effort. Our findings suggest that consumer discrimination itself has no significant effect on anti-counterfeiting success. However, it significantly interacts with branding strategies to predict a means to mitigate brand damage. That is, consumers’ ability to discriminate fakes from originals appears to undermine efforts to mitigate brand damage from counterfeiting, at least in China when branding is based on improving product features or advertising and promotion. However, if branding emphasises after sales service, consumers’ ability to discriminate was found to enhance firms’ ability to limit counterfeiting damage to brands. Such interactions, however, did not help stop counterfeiting, except that branding based on reliability appears to have such a positive effect. (shrink)

Prior research has demonstrated that accountants differ from the general population on many personality traits. Understanding accountants’ personality traits is important when these characteristics may impact professional behavior or ability to work with members of the business community. Our study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical orientation, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias in Canadian accountants. We find that Canadian accountants score much higher on the Machiavellianism scale than U.S. accountants. Additionally, our results show a significant relationship between Machiavellianism and (...) relativism, idealism, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias. Our results indicate that professional Canadian accountants may not share the same personality characteristics as U.S. accountants. We extend previous research investigating Canadian accountants, by explicitly recognizing the impact of social desirability response bias, and by including anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

The current study aims to examine the role of religiosity and gender in affecting consumer ethics among Indonesian youths. A convenience sample of 482 students in a large private university in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, participated in the research. Established scales were adopted to measure the key constructs. Intrinsic religiosity and gender were used as the independent variables, while each dimension of consumer ethics was treated as the dependent variables. The results of seven multiple regression analyses indicated that gender and (...) intrinsic religiosity influence consumer ethics dimensions significantly, except for “downloading.” Individuals who live daily life according to their religion are less receptive toward unethical activities than those who do not. Further, females were found to be more ethical than male counterparts on five dimensions of consumer ethics. Males tended to be more supportive of “doing good” for the seller compared to females. In general, the findings suggest that gender and religiosity do matter in influencing consumer ethics among youths in Indonesia. These findings provide important insights for religious leaders, university lecturers, and policy makers in their efforts to reduce unethical acts among the young generation. (shrink)