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The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the novel approach in treating multiply connected problems in magnetostatic.

The new double layer approach (DLA) to be proposed is based on the use of the exciting double layer on the cut-surface. Applying Ampere’s circuital law to the circuital path along a toroidal core of M–C model, this paper derives unified exciting potential (UEP) from the common exciting potential. The UEP is applicable to the simply or M–C analysis. To check the effectiveness of the UEP, this paper analyze typical M–C problems and compares the results with those of other benchmark problems and also those obtained by surface charge method (SCM). Because the SCM encounters a cancellation error, this paper overcomes this problem by using the concept of direct boundary element method (BEM).

Using the improved DLA, this paper analyzed a typical multiply connected model and compared the results with those of the SCM, which has been improved to overcome cancellation errors. This paper has confirmed that the results obtained by the improved DLA are the same as those obtained by the improved SCM and Steklov–Poincaré operator formulation, tested at the well-known benchmark problems given in Andjelic et al. (2010). From these results, this paper concluded that the Improved DLA works well and that the improved SCM becomes available for analyzing both the simply and multiply connected problems.

Expanding a concept of the exciting double layer on the cut-surface, this paper improve the DLA to analyze the M–C problems. Applying Ampere’s circuital law to the full circuital path along the toroidal core of M–C problem, this paper derive UEP from the original exciting potential to get the governing BIE. The BIE is applicable to either simply or multiply connected analysis.

This review identifies low self-concept clarity (SCC) as a source of consumer vulnerabilities and explains how the uncertainty associated with low SCC leads to processes that result in materialistic behaviors and overspending, product dissatisfaction, and potential self-harm. Processes include uncertainty reduction efforts through symbolic self-completion and social comparison, responses to everyday self-concept threats that result in feelings of deficiency and reduced consumption constraints, and susceptibility to interpersonal and marketer influences. In addition, the negative association between SCC and materialism is explained, risk factors for low SCC are described, and the need for research to help low SCC consumers deal with their vulnerabilities is explored.

This study aims to develop and validate a measure for conspicuous compensatory consumption. Compensatory consumption phenomenon is gaining increased significance in consumer behavior literature. In a symbolic-rich culture, the use of possessions creates a perfect venue for self-construction and self-repairing to make up for one’s psychological deficiencies and inadequacies.

A mixed research design of qualitative and quantitative methodologies is adopted by using elicitation techniques, interviews and survey data. Extensive development and validation procedures are used. A series of studies, encompassing a total sample of 1,782, are reported.

The current study offers a valid and reliable measure for conspicuous compensatory consumption by chronologically following the stages of the scale development process. Compensatory consumption had a negative influence on subjective happiness and a positive influence on negative affect and satisfaction with life. Respondents with high materialism scores had significantly higher compensatory tendencies than the low materialism group. The low self-compassionate group had significantly higher compensatory tendencies than the high self-compassionate group.

The current study provides theoretical contributions to consumer behavior research by providing a valid and reliable measure for conspicuous compensatory consumption. Contrary to past scales that followed a mood-alleviation perspective where therapeutic shopping is used to regulate negative emotions, this scale is novel in adopting a self-completion approach where products are pursued for a tactical effort to offset threatened self-concepts.

We investigate the joint impacts of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of reviews and attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

We performed three studies to test our research model, presenting participants with scenarios involving product reviews and prior users' helpful and unhelpful votes across experimental settings.

A high helpfulness ratio boosts users’ trust and influences behaviors in both positive and negative reviews. This effect is more pronounced in attribute-based reviews than emotion-based ones. Unlike the ratio effect, helpfulness magnitude significantly impacts only negative attribute-based reviews.

Future research should investigate voting systems in various online contexts, such as Facebook post likes, Twitter microblog thumb-ups and up-votes for article comments on platforms like The New York Times.

Our findings have significant implications for voting system-providers implementing information techniques on third-party review platforms, participatory sites emphasizing user-generated content and online retailers prioritizing product awareness and reputation.

This study addresses an identified need; that is, the helpfulness votes as an additional trust cue and the joint effects of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of customers in reviews and their consequential attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

Because of an increase in consumer awareness and the ease of information dissemination on the Internet, brands have increasingly become the target of online criticism. Several factors affect consumers’ reactions to public criticism against brands that they support. The present study investigated the interactive effects of psychological ownership, agency–communion orientation, and internal attribution on self-threat in the context of such criticism.

Three studies were conducted to test several research hypotheses. The psychological ownership, agency–communion orientation, and internal attribution of the participants in this study were manipulated using an experimental scenario. Subsequently, they completed a questionnaire with items used to assess purchase intention, self-threat, and demographic variables and for performing manipulation checks.

When a brand is criticized, (1) consumers with high psychological ownership of the brand are likely to buy more of that brand’s products, (2) communion-oriented consumers with high psychological ownership of the brand experience greater self-threat relative to those with low psychological ownership, and (3) agency-oriented consumers experience a consistent level of self-threat regardless of their level of psychological ownership.

Brands should endeavor to enhance consumers’ psychological ownership of the brand to increase their support in times of crisis.

This study investigated how psychological ownership of a brand among consumers affected their reactions when a brand was criticized. The effect of self-threat as a mediating mechanism was also considered. Furthermore, agency and communion orientation were proposed as crucial moderators that should be considered in research on consumer–brand relationships.

This study aims to explore the extent to which customer orientation and creative benefits offered by a firm may weaken rather than strengthen customer engagement. In doing so, it sheds new light on how customer orientation and creative benefits may facilitate rather than hinder engagement by customers.

A field study provides a test of the proposed effects in a hedonic consumption setting with 1,703 customers of an online dating service. Furthermore, an experimental study with 277 executives in a functional consumption setting (new mobile app) helps affirm the robustness of the field study findings.

This research theorizes and examines how communal relationship norms between customers and a firm, along with customers’ psychological empowerment, mediate the effect of customer orientation and creative benefits on customer engagement. A provocative finding of the study is that communal relationship norms help boost, whereas psychological empowerment reduces, the effects of both customer orientation and creative benefits on customer engagement.

The research examines different relationship norms and how they can become integral to customer–company relationships; this perspective helps reveal the underlying dynamics. It contributes to the literature on customer engagement by theorizing and demonstrating the link between customer orientation and customer engagement, two central constructs in the marketing literature. It theorizes and demonstrates that providing creative benefits brings about a direct competitive advantage for the product itself, and acts as a significant variable that explains the company−customer relationship.

The findings highlight the advantages and challenges associated with encouraging customer engagement. First, they suggest that companies emphasize their customer orientation and creative benefits. Second, managers should try to minimize the possible process of raising customers’ psychological empowerment while maximizing the impact of communal relationship norms.

This study identifies psychological empowerment as a key reason customer-oriented companies that provide creative benefits still struggle to engage their customers. It also suggests viable tactics to overcome barriers to enhanced customer engagement, such as by minimizing the effects of customers’ psychological empowerment while maximizing the impact of their perceived communal relationship norms.

Prior research finds that firms disclosing a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) experience less negative reactions following a corporate misstep. We predict that this “insurance effect” is limited to cases of ordinary failures (i.e., failures not directly related to the social or environmental impacts of the firm) and may provide no protection when a failure is directly related to CSR. Further, we hypothesize a potential “backfire effect,” where investors react more negatively to a CSR-focused firm in the case of a CSR-related failure than to a traditional firm experiencing the same failure. In-keeping with attribution theory and expectancy violations theory, our results support the predicted limitation of the insurance effect. In addition, we find that the limited insurance effect is mediated by reputational assessments. Although directionally consistent, the proposed backfire effect is not statistically significant. Overall, our results suggest that CSR is not a panacea for dampening the penalties associated with business missteps, and managers seeking to benefit from CSR engagement should be diligent in monitoring their firms' future CSR performance.

Digital technologies promise efficiency gains and untapped opportunity. Adoptions of digital technology lead firms to rethink their organizational setup and existing practices. This paper aims to present a management innovation-based framework that describes new processes and practices for digital transformation.

This study uses a structural equation modeling approach to test the framework with survey responses from a sample of 901 Taiwanese organizations – both local firms and multinational subsidiaries – to explore the linkages between adoption of digital technologies and digital maturity.

The results reveal that management innovation mediates the relationship between digital technology adoption and digital maturity. Moreover, fast-paced environments have a greater impact of management innovation toward digital maturity than slow-paced environments.

This study adds to emerging research that considers the role of organizational learning in digital transformation efforts. The extent to which organizations link the lessons from direct experience to digital routines through which management innovation is implemented determines to a large extent whether this strategic initiative is optimized by the firm. More generally, the findings point to the mutual importance of digital maturity and experiential learning efforts, and suggest a specific means by which learning processes are mobilized by innovating organizations. This study contributes to digital transformation research by providing insight into how a firm can restart failed transformation initiatives of this kind.

This study develops a measure of anticipated chilly climate for women and provides initial evidence of its validity.

We draw on three studies. Study 1 consisted of three focus groups to gain deeper insights into the meaning of the concept for prospective female jobseekers and generate scale items. In Study 2, we pre-tested job post vignettes (N = 203), refined the scale items and explored the factor structure (N = 136). Study 3 aimed to determine the convergent and discriminant validity of the new scale (N = 224) by testing its relationships with organisational attractiveness, person-organisation fit perceptions and gendered language.

The results show that the anticipated chilly climate is an important concept with implications for applicants’ career decision-making and career growth in the technology industry, where women tend to be underrepresented. Perceptions of anticipated chilly climate comprise expectations of devaluation, marginalisation and exclusion from the prospective employment. The masculine stereotypes embedded in the language of the job posts signalled a chilly climate for both genders, negatively affecting perceptions of fit and organisational attractiveness.

Most previous studies have focussed on the actual experiences of chilly climates in organisations. We extend this body of literature to anticipatory climates and draw on social identity threat theory and signalling theory to highlight that job applicants make inferences about the climate they expect to find based on job ads. Specifically, they may anticipate a chilly climate based on cues from job ads signalling masculine stereotypes. Whilst the literature has emphasised women’s perceptions of chilly climates within organisations, our results show that both genders anticipate chilly climates with detrimental consequences for both organisations and prospective job applications.

This research was motivated by the recognition that the use of mobile-based agricultural extension services (AES) applications has become increasingly popular among the bottom of the pyramid segment in recent years. However, users’ adoption is determined not only by their perception of the technology but also by its perceived wealth. In other words, even though a technology may be perceived as advanced, if it does not fit users’ wealth perception benefits, they may not adopt it. Using an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) perspective, this study aims to explore potential predictors of behavioral intention toward AES such as effort expectancy, performance expectancy, customer wealth (CW), social influence and perceived characteristics of innovation.

Potential causal connections between key UTAUT factors and users’ intentions to use the services are hypothesized. An integrated theoretical model was developed and tested against the empirical data collected from 336 AES users. A measurement model and structural equation model were tested using AMOS 22.0 and confirmed all 14 hypothesized relationships.

The results were consistent with the recent literature on mobile technology acceptance, confirming an unmoderated relationship between CW and the adoption of mobile-based AES. This research proposes a mobile AES user adoption model by integrating CW with the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT).

This study establishes CW as an outcome of various relationships.