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Online food delivery has been prevalent in recent years worldwide, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and people's consumption behaviors have changed significantly. This study aims to investigate the consumption behavior of young adults using online food delivery platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the dominant factors influencing their decision to use online food delivery platforms.

Semi-structured interviews including 14 young adults aged 18–25 living in Hong Kong were conducted to collect data about their perspectives on online food delivery platforms in five areas. This research adopted the stimulus-organism-response model (S-O-R model) to analyze how the factors influence young adult users' loyalty and satisfaction with online food delivery platforms.

Thematic analyses revealed that young adults were attracted to online food delivery platforms for their numerous benefits. They had a high frequency of usage and significant spending. Usability, usefulness, satisfaction and loyalty influenced young adults' behaviors on online food delivery platforms. Participants were overall satisfied with their experiences, but platforms still had room for improvement.

Few prior studies investigated the factors affecting the consumer experience and behavioral intention of online food delivery for young adults in Asia. This study contributes to understanding young adults' experiences and problems with online food delivery platforms. It provides practical insights for system engineers and designers to improve the current services and for the governments to enhance the existing regulatory loopholes.

This study examines whether common directors are guilty of contagion of corporate frauds from the customer side and, if so, how contagion occurs. Moreover, it explores a way to mitigate it, which is the increased digital orientation of firms.

Secondary data analysis is applied in this paper. We extract supply chain relations from the China Stock Market and Account Research (CSMAR) database as well as corporate fraud data from the same database and the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Digital orientations are estimated through text analysis. Poisson regression is conducted to examine the moderating effect of common directors and the moderated moderating effect of the firms’ digital orientations.

By analysing the 2,096 downstream relations from 2000 to 2021 in China, the study reveals that corporate frauds are contagious through supply chains, while only customers’ misconduct can contagion to upstream firms. The presence of common directors strengthens such supply chain contagion. Additionally, the digital orientation can mitigate the positive moderating effect of common directors on supply chain contagion.

This study highlights the importance of understanding supply chain contagion through corporate fraud by (1) emphasising the existence of the contagion effects of corporate frauds; (2) understanding the potential channel in the process of contagion; (3) considering how digital orientation can mitigate this contagion and (4) recognising that the effect of contagion comes only from the downstream, not from the upstream.

Building on the social capital theory of career success (SCT), this paper aims to explore how and when newcomers’ overqualifications can grant them positions as informal leaders within the workgroup over time.

The model was tested using a social relations modeling analysis conducted using a three-wave survey with 242 newcomers in Macau.

The results support the view that relatively qualified newcomers can enjoy social capital advantages in workgroup networks. Newcomers’ desired qualifications can grant them positions as informal leaders through leader–member exchange and advice network centrality. These relationships are moderated by relational dissimilarity, such that the benefits of being relatively overqualified will be weakened when relational dissimilarity is high (vs. low).

When assisting overqualified newcomers in integrating into their teams, practitioners shall be aware of the time and resources that new hires require for adjustment, especially when significant newcomer–veteran relational dissimilarity exists.

The present paper challenges the overtly detrimental outcomes of overqualification by highlighting the positive relational implications of being relatively overqualified.

This study aims to measure and compare consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) of several US and global wine tourism destinations from an American market point of view.

An online randomized experimental design was used to assign respondents to different wine tourism destination contexts and measure their perceptions and intentions. A structured survey was designed with CBBE scale items related to the most commonly studied components of CBBE, namely, familiarity, perceived quality, image, consumer value, brand value and brand loyalty.

The study revealed that respondents were unfamiliar with multi-regional and global wine-growing destinations and their wines, implying that wine tourists belong to different market segments that seek different experiences. Among the US wine tourism destinations, Napa Valley is the destination with the strongest CBBE, with the highest overall ratings in all five CBBE components, on average. In terms of country-level wine tourism destinations, the US has the strongest CBBE, with the highest overall ratings in familiarity and brand loyalty.

Wine tourism destination CBBE is shown to include components that may not relate exclusively to wine and variations in perceptions concerning global wine-growing regions may be associated with consumer familiarity. Future studies may include respondents from different countries to determine the generalizability of the current findings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to assess consumer-based brand equity of wine tourism destinations in the US and globally from a US resident perspective.

In the present era, digital technology can be used responsibly to provide developed and developing countries with high-quality health-care services to nations. This study aims to explore Saudi Arabia’s intentions to adopt digital health-care practices.

To be consistent with previous studies, this study used a quantitative methodology to collect the data from health-care professionals working in Saudi Arabia’s public and private health institutes. Consequently, this study’s findings are based on 306 valid samples.

On the one hand, the path analysis reveals that health-care professionals believe in perceptions relating to the use of e-health and technology (PEHT) and experiences regarding internet use (ERIU) and that these have positive and significant effects on attitudes toward the use of e-health and technology (ATEHT) and intentions to use e-health services (ITUES). On the other hand, barriers to using e-health (BUEH) negatively impact ATEHT and ITUES. Finally, ATEHT also has a positive and significant effect on ITUES.

This study’s findings will help Saudi Arabia’s policymakers and the country’s health ministry to develop policies to provide e-services that health-care professionals can use to improve the quality of the country’s health care, patients’ human rights and social care. Furthermore, this study’s findings are helpful in developing attitudes and intentions toward either e-health or digital health to provide better health facilities to serve Saudi Arabia’s citizens.

This study empirically confirms among Saudi Arabia’s health-care professionals the PEHT, ERIU and BUEH toward ATEHT and ITUES.

This study aims to investigate how two different types of brand-to-brand dialogues – “roasting” versus “toasting” – impact consumers’ brand perceptions, particularly perceived entertainment, and influence brand attitudes.

The research design comprises four studies. The preliminary study involves Web scraping to gauge consumer perception about the two communication approaches followed by two well-known brands. Study 1 involves an online experiment to compare these communication types within each brand tested in the pilot study and examines the mediation effect of perceived entertainment. Study 2, also an online experiment, investigates the role of message neutralization, demonstrating that “roasting” can be acceptable when the humor is neutralized. Study 3 further tests the effects of neutralized “roasting” at different levels of brand familiarity and personality.

Roasting can lead to more favorable consumer perceptions than toasting. The effect can be explained by roasting’s higher level of perceived entertainment. However, this positive outcome is contingent on the successful neutralization of the aggressive humor in the “roasting” messages. When it comes to brand familiarity and personality, familiar brands benefit more from neutralized “roasting,” whereas brand personality does not have a strong influence.

The findings suggest that “roasting” can be effective when messages are neutralized, and “toasting” works best when spontaneous and genuine. It highlights how brand familiarity and personality influence consumer reactions, thus, offering strategic insights for both established and lesser-known brands. The study also prompts further research to examine other brand traits, cultural factors and behavioral dimensions in brand-to-brand dialogue, signifying the complexity and richness of this growing research area.

This study advises lesser-known brands to adopt “toasting” strategies to build a positive image, while established brands can try “roasting,” ensuring message neutrality to avoid negativity. The research emphasizes the role of brand familiarity and personality in shaping brand dialogues. Marketers must consider these to make humor strategies effective and bolster positive brand image.

This research uniquely examines message neutralization through contextual cues as a strategy brands can use to aid their sensitive dialogues with others on social media. The findings provide new insights into how brands can use different types of messages in digital communications to attract consumers and ensure positive reception, offering valuable guidance for academics and practitioners in brand-to-brand dialogue.

The growth of last-mile delivery presents challenges like environmental impact, operational inefficiencies and risks of theft or damage. This study explores parcel locker adoption as a potential solution, focusing on the roles of information framing and consumer characteristics in influencing consumer adoption. It offers insights into prioritizing benefits (environmental, security, convenience) in information framing and which consumer traits, such as regulatory focus and gender, to consider in designing and promoting parcel locker networks.

We test our hypotheses with three scenario-based experiments. The first focuses on the key parcel locker benefit of environmental sustainability framing, the second on security framing and the third on convenience framing.

Our results show that consumers are more likely to use parcel locker delivery when exposed to loss-framed environmental or security information, particularly when they are male. Additionally, promotion-focused individuals, particularly males, are the most likely users when presented with loss-framed messages emphasizing the inconvenience and insecurity of home delivery.

Our findings produce a middle range theory of gender and regulatory focus in the context of consumer participation in parcel locker delivery. Specifically, we find that gender and regulatory focus influence consumer reactions to information disclosure, with loss-framed information more strongly influencing consumer intent for promotion-focused individuals.

Managers seeking to introduce parcel lockers or expand existing parcel locker networks should incorporate security and convenience into their locker network decisions. Initial locker bays should be located in or near sites that experience high consumer traffic from promotion-focused males. Additionally, information disclosed should highlight these security and convenience benefits compared to the relative inconvenience and risk associated with home delivery.

While information disclosures often emphasize the environmental benefits associated with parcel locker use, likely users find other benefits more convincing. Highlighting these alternative factors and incorporating them into parcel locker network design will still allow for environmental benefits, including carrier CO2 reduction, to emerge from increased parcel locker use. As locker networks become more established, expanding the network to cater to additional consumers may allow service providers to focus information on environmental benefits.

Prior research assumes an existing parcel locker network or consumer base when studying network design and adoption. This study highlights the importance of tailoring information to consumer characteristics, emphasizing network features that best align with potential parcel locker users. Specifically, we found gender and regulatory focus to influence consumer reaction to information disclosure, where loss-framed information is the most influential particularly for promotion-focus individuals.

Intellectual experiences focus on users’ information processing and critical thinking toward stimuli. The deployment of humanoid service robots as novel stimuli in tourism and hospitality has influenced users’ perceptions and may affect their intellectual engagement. This paper aims to connect four contemporary theoretical concepts: the service robot acceptance model, technological fear, the uncanny valley theory and the stereotype content model, to investigate users’ perceptions and intellectual experiences toward humanoid service robots.

Scale development procedures were conducted: literature review, checking face and content validity, factorizing items and dimensions, achieving construct and criterion validity and testing predictive validity.

Through literature review and free-response tasks, 43 measurement items were generated. Next, 1,006 samples from two cross-cultural groups refined the scale. Finally, a reliable and valid scale with four dimensions measuring users’ perceptions of humanoid service robots was determined.

Humanoid service robots should be designed to enhance functionality and innovativeness while minimizing stiffness, inflexibility, unsafety and danger to improve users’ intellectual engagement.

This study provides a novel examination of users’ intellectual experiences toward humanoid service robots by connecting four contemporary theories of users’ perceptions. This study enriches human–robot experience through an integrated perspective and presents a rigorous examination of the scale’s psychometric properties. A reliable and valid scale for measuring users’ perceptions toward humanoid service robots fills the gaps and serves as an effective predictor of intellectual experience in human–robot literature.

This study aims to develop cause-and-effect relationships among the critical success factors (CSFs) of fintech adoption and rank these CSFs based on their importance in the model.

To achieve the objectives of the study, the Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (FDEMATEL) approach was used. The data was collected from 16 experts using a questionnaire.

The findings demonstrated the interrelationships among the CSFs. In total, 16 critical factors were recognized as causal factors, and the remaining eight were considered effect factors. The CSFs were ranked based on their importance in fintech adoption.

This study is novel as it investigates CSFs of fintech adoption using FDEMATEL, and it contributes to understanding the nature of these factors and how they affect fintech adoption. The findings propose a significant basis to deepen fintech adoption and deliver a clue to design a practical framework for fintech adoption.

This study aims to investigate the adoption of mobile wallet payment services among rural Omani millennials, with a focus on social factors, perceived security, trust considerations and the moderating role of technology self-efficacy in shaping attitudes and intentions towards adoption. It also explores the role of mobile wallets in advancing financial inclusion, aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 10 (Reduced inequalities).

A survey method was used with 544 randomly selected participants from rural Oman. The study used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse relationships among the constructs, including subjective norms, perceived security, trust and self-efficacy.

The results support five hypotheses, confirming the influence of subjective norms, perceived security and technology self-efficacy on attitudes and intentions to adopt mobile wallets. Additionally, mobile wallet self-efficacy emerges as a significant moderator, enhancing the relationship between positive attitudes and behavioural intentions.

The study extends the technology acceptance model (TAM) by incorporating moderating variables such as technology self-efficacy and perceived security, offering theoretical contributions to digital payment adoption literature, especially in rural settings.

The findings underscore the need for trust-building efforts by service providers and collaborative strategies involving government incentives and promotions to foster mobile wallet adoption. Strengthening digital literacy and addressing security concerns are critical for promoting financial inclusion in rural communities.

This research contributes to promoting economic empowerment through mobile wallet adoption in rural Oman, offering valuable insights for policymakers and service providers aiming to reduce socio-economic disparities. By addressing the digital divide and supporting financial inclusion, the study supports the advancement of SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities) and fosters inclusive growth in underserved communities.