Management practitioners often assume that raises in the contractual absolute maximum bandwidth of Internet connections increase the attitudinal bonds of customers with their access provider. The present study challenges this perspective: In a sample of up to 752 German-speaking Internet users with a wireline Internet access at home, it explores two relative speed characteristics of broadband connections (customer quality experiences in terms of delivered transmission speeds (1) relative to the maximum down- and upload bandwidths as per customer contract, and (2) relative to speeds emphasized in advertisements of a consumer’s access provider) as potential determinants of customer affinity with an access provider. Furthermore, correlations are analyzed between the frequency with which customers use speed tests to check the quality of their wireline Internet connection and their attitudinal bonds with their access provider. Multivariate regression analysis reveals that the impression that advertised wireline access bandwidths are exaggerated compared to the speeds actually delivered and – to a lesser extent – the perception that the contractual maximum speed is reached only in a low share of a customer’s Internet sessions significantly decrease customer satis-faction and significantly increase customer inclination to churn. The effects of the two speed assessments are not independent of one another: Perceived speed exaggerations in a provider’s ads impair customer bonds less (more) strongly if the experienced share of Internet sessions with speeds below the contractual maximum bandwidth is high (low). More frequent speed testing reduces customer bonding, especially in case that advertised speeds of a customer’s provider are experienced as overblown.

In a Pay What You Want (PWYW) setting companies empower their customers to fix the prices buyers voluntarily pay for a delivered product or service. The seller agrees to any price (includ-ing zero) customers are paying. For about ten years researchers empirically investigate customer reactions to and economic outcomes of this pricing method. The present paper distinguishes PWYW from other voluntary payment mechanisms and reviews 72 English- or German-speaking PWYW publications, which appeared between January 2006 and September 2016 and contain 97 independent empirical data sets. Prior PWYW research is structured with the help of a conceptual framework which incorporates payment procedure design, buyer, seller, focal sales object and market context characteristics as factors potentially influencing customer perceptions of the PWYW scheme and their behavioral reactions to PWYW offers. The review discusses both consistent key findings as well as contradictory results and derives recommendations for future empirical PWYW research efforts.

Due to more than three million people in Germany with a Turkish migration background country-of-origin (COO)-sensitive, designs of offers directed at this customer segment have been implemented by various corporations and discussed in the management literature for quite a while. Unfortunately, to date most publications have a weak empirical foundation and refrain from simultaneously investigating preference effects of several country-of-origin-sensitive and -neutral offer characteristics among Turkish migrants living in Germany. Therefore, the present paper explores the relative impacts of three COO-sensitive offer characteristics and one COO-neutral attribute of bundled mobile communication offers on preference statements derived from a conjoint-analysis of questionnaire responses of 249 consumers in Germany with Turkish roots. The results suggest that for the offering category in question a COO-neutral feature (cell phone type/brand) shapes the preferences of Turkish migrants almost to the same extent as the three remaining price- and communication-related characteristics investigated. Furthermore, we found that Turkish consumers in Germany encompass four subsegments with distinct preferences with respect to the design of mobile communication offerings. The members of these subsegments in turn differ primarily in terms of their age and gender structures as well as their level of accommodation to the German culture.