Search results

The purpose of this paper is to study the price decisions and profits of two firms in a competitive market in which one platform firm considers whether to adopt a consumer customization strategy.

This study develops the consumer’s utility function, which captures consumers’ behavioural and emotional factors in the self-customizing process, and it adopts a game theory approach to analyze the equilibrium price and equilibrium profit for each firm.

The results show that increased sensitivity in consumer customization might not benefit the platform, especially when the size of the consumer group deriving positive additional utility from the self-customizing process is small. Interestingly, if the consumer customization sensitivity is high, increasing sensitivity can benefit both firms by relaxing competition between them, while it can hurt consumer surplus. The study also further identifies the conditions under which platforms can adopt a consumer customization strategy.

Two major limitations of the study are that the model does not involve price discrimination or explore the value of adopting a consumer customization strategy in a vertically differentiated market.

This study offers managerial insights for the platforms that intend to invest in a consumer customization strategy, including providing a more simple, more efficient self-customizing process for consumers; empowering consumers to broadcast their creations to a large network by social media technologies; addressing how to determine what consumers really need and want; and so on.

Little research has been performed to analyze the impacts of adopting a consumer customization strategy on pricing decisions in a duopoly market by capturing consumers’ behavioural and emotional factors. While this study explores the above research issue, it also illustrates the effect of the adoption of a consumer customization strategy from a consumer surplus perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of the current status, major concerns and trends faced by Chinese HRM professionals in relation to Wayne Chen and Hay Group China's engagement in its client organizations, also to identify the relationship between HRM research and practices in China.

The paper reports an interview with an established HRM consulting practitioner, Wayne Chen, Managing Director of Hay Group Northeast Asia.

The gap in HRM professionals' skill set between China and Western countries may take years to close. The impact of Chinese culture in the workplace also indicates HRM practice is different to that in the West. The focal area of China HRM practices is to help organizations achieve their strategic goals by effectively managing and developing talents additionally, research informed HRM practice proves to be effective in enhancing the contributions of HRM practices to organizations.

The practical implication is obvious as the interviewee is with a leading consultant currently engaged in real world Chinese HRM practice. This paper also informs future research on Chinese HRM.

The interviewee, Wayne Chen, offers valuable insights for both HRM practitioners and researchers about current status and future trends in Chinese HRM practices.

The article offers an empirical investigation of the incidence and scale of household marriage overspending around the world, and the governments' reaction once the problem emerges.

This study relies on regression analysis of open source data from legislation, mass media, and judiciary hearings for 141 countries. In the Phase 1 logistic regression of cross-country large-N data is used to identify country-incidence of marriage cost escalation. In the Phase 2 ordered logistic regression is used to uncover statistically significant factors that predict the probability of alternative government reactions in 87 countries which experience marriage cost escalation.

In a strong collectivist sociocultural environment, driven by informality, the rise of middle classes, combined with the decline of traditional hierarchies, and limited opportunities for economic mobility motivates households to enter emulative wedding spending, thus leading to overspending. Governments' reaction depends on available policy resources, and the economic scale of the problem.

The research findings suggest that rising living standards in the developing countries are more likely to escalate wedding costs, and consequently reinforce traditional values.

Academic literature links marriage-related overspending to armed insurgency, child marriage and decreasing state efficiency. Despite the problem's scope, existing research has not comprehensively addressed both its causes, and cross-country differences in government reactions to it. The article addresses both of the mentioned gaps, by offering a conceptual model of marriage cost escalation.

The following paper is a “Q & A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market.

The interviewee is Dr Yulun Wang, an inventor, self-taught entrepreneur, business leader and world-renowned authority on robotics and health care. Dr Wang shares his successful three-decade journey that began with researching the market needs and aligning himself with medical experts, followed by pioneering robotic solutions specifically for the health care industry. In the process, Dr Wang founded and spearheaded both a public and private robotics company.

Dr Yulun Wang received a BSc and an MSc in Computer Science, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering, from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). After teaching at UCSB for a few years, with a grant he won from NASA, Dr Wang founded Computer Motion, Inc. in 1989 and conducted research on endoscopic robots. Computer Motion went public in 1997 and later merged with its competitor, Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:IRSG) in 2003 to forge the multi-billion dollar surgical robotics industry. Dr Wang founded InTouch Technologies (d.b.a. InTouch Health), in 2002, named one of the fastest-growing biomedical companies in the USA by INC Magazine.

Dr Wang launched his career at the intersection of health care and technology with his invention of the voice-controlled robotic arm AESOP, the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared surgical robot. His next generation ZEUS robotic surgical system (ZRSS), was cleared by the FDA in 2001. Also in 2001, ZRSS was used in the world’s first telesurgery, as surgeons in New York controlled the arms of the Zeus to perform a cholecystectomy on a patient in Strasbourg, France, via a high-speed fiber optic supplied by France Telecom. This led Dr Wang to found InTouch Health, a company that pioneers remote presence robot systems that enable health care professionals to provide more effective and efficient health care. Dr Wang has received multiple other entrepreneurship and leadership awards, including being elected to the prestigious ranks of the National Academy of Engineering in 2011. He is the author of over 50 scientific publications, and holds over 100 patents registered in his name. Dr Wang serves on several boards, including the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Board of Directors, where he also serves as an officer.

Gives an in depth view of the strategies pursued by the world’s leading chief executive officers in an attempt to provide guidance to new chief executives of today. Considers the marketing strategies employed, together with the organizational structures used and looks at the universal concepts that can be applied to any product. Uses anecdotal evidence to formulate a number of theories which can be used to compare your company with the best in the world. Presents initial survival strategies and then looks at ways companies can broaden their boundaries through manipulation and choice. Covers a huge variety of case studies and examples together with a substantial question and answer section.

Brand information is ubiquitous online and offline; consumers exhibit brand avoidance tendencies towards brand stimuli when there is a discrepancy between a brand image/personality and one’s self-concept. Given the multifaceted culturally constituted self-domains and self-importance, this research investigates how cultural variation affects reactions to self-brand discrepancy, considering two types of narcissist orientations.

Using national culture as proxy for cultural orientation, sample data were collected through surveys administered to 410 participants (210 in China and 200 in the USA). A multi-group structural equation model was adopted to examine the conceptual model and proposed hypotheses. The follow-up qualitative study was conducted to allow further discussion of the quantitative results.

The results show that self-brand discrepancy can only be converted into brand avoidance tendency through the activation of cognitive dissonance for both Americans and Chinese. Specifically, for Chinese consumers only (ideal) social identity self-brand discrepancies can activate avoidance behaviour. In addition, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism orientations co-exist for both Chinese and Americans, these negatively moderate the relationship between social self-brand discrepancies and cognitive dissonance. For US consumers, idealised identity discrepancies mitigate dissonance; only those with a vulnerable narcissistic orientation would act on avoidance when experiencing dissonance.

By incorporating cultural variations in the investigations of self-brand discrepancy, this paper advances existing knowledge on dissonance and coping mechanisms. In addition, by bringing narcissistic orientations to the fore, it allows for a deeper understanding of how these cultural variations operate. In addition, our research provides important guidelines for brand practitioners to better leverage their marketing campaigns in offline and online contexts and to reduce brand avoidance tendencies across the international marketplace.

Management scholars and researchers have long been concerned about the impact and relevance of their work. Here we chronicle the teaching, research, management, and personal leadership development lessons that have arisen from a collaborative, decade-long relationship between three management faculty members and the senior management team of a major Norwegian-based global shipping and logistics company. This relationship grew from the creation of a teaching case in 1997 to many years of productive and meaningful work together, including the development and delivery of the all-conference Plenary Session at the 2006 Eastern Academy of Management Meeting, held concurrently with the annual CASE Association Conference. At the 2006 Plenary Session, each of the authors expressed powerful personal and professional development through their collaboration over the years, which is summarized in this article. Reflections, lessons and future research directions are provided.

This paper aims to understand what kind of fashion product picture can arouse greater embodied mental simulation at two distinct steps of consumers' shopping journey (choice between options and purchase intention).

Two experimental studies were developed. Study 1 (n = 169) investigated consumers' purchase intention, and Study 2 (n = 156) investigated consumers' choice for a T-shirt displayed in an e-commerce store. The authors manipulated the product picture by considering pictures with the presence or absence of a human model wearing the product (flat vs. mannequin vs. human model without a face vs. human model with a face).

Consumers demonstrated greater choice and purchase intention for the picture that aroused greater embodied mental simulation. Different pictures aroused greater embodied mental simulation depending on the consumer journey step (choice between two options or purchase intention). Perceived product attractiveness influenced this finding.

The data on men and women were analyzed together due to the low number of male participants in both studies.

The results suggest that mannequin pictures should be used in situations involving product evaluation (e-commerce categories' pages) and that pictures with human models should be used in situations entailing further analysis of the product (e-commerce product page) to encourage purchase decisions. E-commerce managers also need to use pictures of human models when the product is viewed as less attractive.

This research investigated embodied mental simulation around product pictures at two distinct steps of consumers' shopping journey.

Customers' co-design behavior is an important source of knowledge for product innovation. Firms can regulate the focus of information interaction with customers to set goals and motivate their co-design behavior. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and construal level theory, the authors build a research model to study whether the fit between the regulatory focus of firms' task invitations (promotion focus vs prevention focus) and their feedback focus (self-focused vs other-focused) can enhance co-design behavior by improving customers' experiences (perceived meaning, active discovery and perceived empowerment).

The authors conducted two online between-subjects experiments to validate the proposed research model.

The two online experiments reveal that customers' experiences are enhanced when the feedback focus is congruent with the regulatory focus of the firm's task invitations. Specifically, self-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the prevention focus context. Other-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the promotion focus context. Moreover, customers' experience significantly and positively affects co-design behavior (i.e. co-design effort and knowledge contribution).

This work provides theoretical and practical implications for firms to improve the effectiveness of information interaction with their customers and eventually ensure the sustainability of co-design.

In line with the knowledge-based view of organizations, this paper aims to analyze how supply chain (SC) employees contribute to the creation of competitive advantage through knowledge acquisition and utilization activities. The authors consider SC employees' skills and competencies, their external network of relationships, their job satisfaction and company investments in training and test how they relate to SC-level outcomes (i.e. SC growth).

The authors design a research model including the aforementioned variables, and the authors apply structural equation modeling (SEM) to survey data collected from 246 SC professionals in Latin America. The authors also use multi-group analysis to evaluate how the relationships between these variables change with different levels of company investment in training.

The results show that a broad professional network of relationships contributes to increasing the skills and competencies of SC professionals, which, in turn, impact job satisfaction and SC performance. This reinforces the value of investing in skilled human talent, who can contribute to knowledge acquisition, utilization, and, ultimately, to SC competitiveness. Companies that invest more in training to develop their SC employees benefit from stronger SC outcomes.

This study contributes to broadening the understanding of the impact of human resource management (HRM) on supply chain management (SCM). One of the added original foci of this research is the emphasis on developing countries where these HRM-to-SCM performance relationships have not been studied before.