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The purpose of this paper is to discuss four main research questions which are as follows: how does a consumer turn into a devoted fan? How does a devoted fan react to the expansion of a human brand? What kind of strategies does a devoted fan take when facing challenges encountered by a human brand? And are devoted fans homogeneous, or can they be further divided into different subgroups?

The basis of grounded theory process is intensive depth interviews with 14 devoted fans of a famous Taiwanese pop singer in a qualitative manner along with content analysis of messages from online fan clubs.

Using the metaphor of kingdom to parallel the phenomenon of fandom, the research also explicates the importance of initial brand position, and the construction and expansion from the core castle – the core positioning of the human brand – to become a kingdom where devoted fans swear to be loyal to the human brand and cross-buy the derivative products of the latter. Five fan’s subgroup and a theoretical framework are obtained.

The theoretical framework derived in this study explicates how consumers’ initial perceptions of the human brand are formed and reinforced and how they become different kinds of fans which in turn influence the strategies they take in the face of the expansion or withdraw of the human brand.

Many service firms have adopted creativity reinforcement mechanisms to manage employee-based service creativity so as to pursue their performance growth. However, its impact on firm performance has rarely been investigated in the extant research. The purpose of this paper is to satisfy this knowledge gap through an examination of how service creativity reinforcement (SCR) affects a firm’s performance.

Two samples were used to test the hypotheses. The first sample included a total of 4,381 service firms and was analyzed by using a traditional moderated regression method in relation to sales growth as the outcome variable. Due to a number of missing values, the second sample was reduced to 1,481 service firms. This sample was analyzed by using a moderated fractional regression method and the outcome variable was innovation performance. Furthermore, a multi-valued treatment approach with the augmented inverse-propensity weighted estimator was adopted to assess the performance effect that was associated with each of the SCR mechanisms.

Statistical analyses suggested that SCR positively affected both the firm’s performance and its innovation performance. Specifically, the stronger performance effects of SCR were associated with firms that had high innovation intensity, were small service firms and were part of the knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sector. The results also found that brainstorming sessions, a multi-disciplinary team approach, task rotation and non-financial incentives had greater performance effects than other mechanisms, especially for firms in the KIBS sector that had high innovation intensity. In addition, the results indicated that team-level mechanisms were more effective in developing highly innovative services than were individual-level mechanisms.

This study has contributed to the service literature by developing a contingency framework for SCR. This study has also advanced service research through the presentation of contextual effects associated with each mechanism of SCR.

The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in the behavioural intentions of consumers in different countries, i.e. Japan, UK and Taiwan by employing a customer-based value model.

A total of 305 consumers of one of Japan's brand and chain stores, Muji, were interviewed. The moderating effects of cultural and economic distances from the home country of the firm were also tested.

The results showed that cultural distance moderates the impact of symbolic, experiential and aesthetic value on purchase intention; however, economic distance was found to only influence monetary value.

Cross-cultural studies on customer value in the retailing industry are limited. The findings from this study offer several implications for those firms that adopt a globalization strategy using another perspective, while to some degree glocalization could be a better strategy.

Collectivism in service research is so bound with Asian cultures as to risk being overly deterministic. Contesting this stereotype, this paper surfaces the individualistic consumption facets of consumers within a collectivist cultural setting, describing the compensating role servicescapes may play and the service marketing opportunities they present.

Within a Chinese cultural research frame, a qualitative grounded approach is adopted that surfaces subconscious metaphors of private consumption through photo elicitation, deep psychological metaphor elicitation and triangulated with field observation.

Individuals within a collectivist culture do actively seek private psychic space to regenerate the self and prepare for social obligations heavily influenced by Confucian norms. Servicescapes play an important role in private consumption as they provide both a physical and mental oasis of privacy not easily obtainable in regular life and work.

Service providers could offer East Asian consumers a package that includes the individual aspect of their value system, whenever and however they see suitable. More specifically, servicescapes can be designed to provide services that facilitate consumer restoration by implementing the mental metaphors consumers of have this process.

A stereotype of a consumption has grown around Chinese consumers that while not totally false, misses a vital aspect of human values and risks missing profitable market niches. Consideration of the whole person's collective-individualistic cycle benefits both the consumer and the business.

Moving beyond a one-dimensional description of East Asian consumer behavior, focused on collective values, we show the key role servicescapes play in private consumption. A psychological renewal of the self, in preparation to re-enter the collective, show the multiple aspects of Asian consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the customer- and firm-focused driving factors, relationship quality (RQ), and identification on customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) on corporate social networking sites (SNS), as well as the impact of service attribute in such relationship.

A survey was conducted among the Facebook members of 7-Eleven (318) and Starbucks (316) in Taiwan to test the proposed framework. A structural equation modeling was used to test the validity of the research model and hypotheses.

The results reveal that SNS RQ and SNS identification are key factors affecting CCB, whereas financial bond (firm-focused) and consumer-company identification (customer-focused) are critical initiators. The findings reveal contingencies across service attributes for such effects. Experienced service firms can better encourage CCB by intimating SNS relationships with followers. Search firms should secure online identification to enable customers to perform CCB. The results also confirm the mediating effects of SNS RQ and SNS identification.

This study contributes to the literature by simultaneously examining the firm (external)- and individual (internal)-level of incentives, and to further reveal the main drivers encouraging CCB on corporate SNS. This study also belongs to the limited studies that discuss consumer voluntary behaviors on the corporate SNS. The results shed light on the existence of a contingency role for service attribute on SNS, and further suggest how firms with distinct attributes can effectively allocate their limited resources when encouraging CCB on SNS.

Consumer travel and multinational service corporations have increased the opportunity for service failures where consumers from one culture experience service problems in another cultural setting. This study extended the Stauss and Mang model, which proposed the possibility that intercultural service failures exhibit lower seriousness ratings due to the customer's attributing errors to cultural distance. Such a possible outcome has important implications for service providers whose customers are from different cultures, such as tourist or visiting businesspeople. A pretest, employing the critical incident technique, established descriptions of common service failures and recovery strategies for the sample frame. Domestic (in Taiwan) and foreign (outside Taiwan) service encounters were then compared in both failure and recovery stages, reported in an online survey employing a modified critical incident technique. Results showed that the apparent reduction in intercultural failure seriousness can be attributed not to the error itself, but to increased acceptance of the recovery strategy. These findings broaden the Stauss and Mang model by including the importance of recovery strategies, and the benefit gained by any recovery attempt within an intercultural service setting.

The purpose of this paper is to answer why wet markets still survive in Taiwan while facing to fierce competition from western-style supermarkets.

The authors adopt the perspectives of retail service to develop a model to address how food quality, relational benefit, and personnel service affect consumers’ satisfaction. A sample of 250 consumers was surveyed in a major wet market at Taiwan.

The results obtained from the partial least square (PLS) method reveal that food quality and relational benefit positively affect consumers’ satisfaction, and the effects of these increase with time; employee service has a positive effect on consumers’ satisfaction, but the effect decreases with time; and the ambience does affect consumer satisfaction, but the store design does not.

This paper provides empirical answers to the question about why wet markets still play a critical role in the food retailing industry in a newly industrial economy where consumer’ tastes are supposed to be more westernized or so-called ‘supermarketized’ four decades after the introduction of supermarkets.

The entry of multinational firms is likely to increase competition and provide better deals to consumers in emerging markets such as India, China and Brazil. In this context, this paper aims to examine the factors determining the consumers’ preferences for shopping at large malls in an emerging market as compared to small outlets (in particular, young consumers’ preferences).

The present study is based on a survey of 200 consumers at large retail malls in India, the second-fastest growing emerging market.

The findings suggest that mostly young consumers prefer to shop in large malls because of the availability of the latest, well-known brands and discounted prices, which implies that service quality is not a primary factor.

The author posits theoretical propositions to stimulate further research. The insights from the study would be useful for strategic marketing for retailers.