Editorial: Issue 4 (Volume 12)

Citation

Son Dinh, V. and Nguyen, N. (2024), "Editorial: Issue 4 (Volume 12)", Journal of Trade Science, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 245-246. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTS-12-2024-039

Welcome to Issue 4 (Volume 12) of the Journal of Trade Science. In this final issue of 2024, we present four papers that cover a range of business and trade topics: product reviews and ratings in e-commerce, consumer willingness to pay for organic food, training and adjustment diversity in multinational enterprises, and the impact of a trade war on a developing country’s export.

Opening this issue, Ghandour investigates how different modalities for presenting product reviews and ratings affect user performance and experience in e-commerce. Adopting an experimental method, the results reveal that facially expressive avatars and emojis are more efficient and effective than animation clips. Specifically, users perform better in avatar and emoji presentation contexts, with lower completion time and higher success rates. The findings also indicate that users’ levels of enjoyment and satisfaction vary across multimodal presentations. These findings add to the growing body of literature on multimodal communication in the digital environment and offer guidance for e-commerce platforms to effectively present and communicate product reviews and ratings.

The second article, written by Ho, Vo and Rowley, evaluates consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for organic oranges and its influencing factors using contingent valuation and choice experiment. Using data from 413 households, the contingent valuation results emphasize the impact of demographic factors (e.g. income, education levels and number of dependents) and food safety and environmental awareness on WTP. The choice experiment model shows that product-related factors (e.g. country of origin, quality grade, labels and organic content) are important determinants of WTP. Moreover, consumers are willing to pay different premiums for organic oranges with various labels, with the highest WTP for oranges labeled with USDA organic certification. Notably, both estimation methods reveal price is the main barrier to organic food consumption. This article highlights the applicability of contingent valuation and choice experiment approaches to explain WTP for organic oranges, and its findings provide some practical and social implications.

In the third article, Mandrinos, Liew Sat Lin and Ilma binti Salleh discuss the significance of literal and figurative interpretation in explaining training and adjustment diversity in multinational enterprises. Data were obtained from expatriates working in Malaysian subsidiaries of MNEs using a questionnaire. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling show that literal interpretation focuses on direct relationships (e.g. standards and expectations), whereas a figurative interpretation of the data highlights the complexity inherent in compliance and commitment. The findings also suggest the importance of pre-departure and post-departure training in facilitating expatriate adjustment. This article encourages a novel holistic approach incorporating both literal and figurative interpretations to better understand the diversity in international business contexts.

The final article, contributed by Dang, Yawei and Abdullah, provides empirical evidence about the effect of the US–China trade war on Vietnamese exports to the US. They employ the differences (DiD) method to analyze secondary data obtained from UN Comtrade. The results show a positive effect of the trade war on Vietnamese exports to the US, with a 14% increase in total. Besides, some industries (e.g. plastics, iron or steel articles, textile and arments, and machinery and mechanical appliances) experience more significant benefits than others. This article makes an important contribution by examining the causal effects of the trade war on a developing country’s exports and considering the heterogeneous effects on different export sectors. Its findings also provide implications for policymakers and exporting firms targeting the US market.

We hope the articles in this issue will be stimulating and interesting for readers. As we draw 2024 to a close, we would like to thank the authors who have chosen the Journal of Trade Science as an outlet for publishing their high-quality research. We would also like to acknowledge the unwavering support and exceptional service of our reviewers and editorial board.