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This study aims to examine the moderating effect of culture on the phrase expression type that affects product attitude. Moreover, to identify the mechanism by which these effects occur, the authors investigated the mediating role of processing fluency, and examined how such a mediating effect of processing fluency varies with number of alternatives.

Three experiments were conducted to verify the hypotheses presented in this study. Experiment 1 tested the effects of phrase expression type and culture on product attitude; a two-factor design (phrase expression type: explicit expression vs implicit expression) was applied, and culture was classified according to nationality. Experiment 2 tested the mediating effect of processing fluency on product attitude, using the same approach as Experiment 1. Experiment 3 tested the moderated mediating role of the number of alternatives, a between-group experimental design of 2 (phrase expression: explicit expression vs implicit expression) × 2 (number of alternatives: many vs few) was applied.

Experiment 1's results demonstrate that product attitude is more favorable when implicit expressions are used for Asians, whereas it is more favorable with explicit expressions for Westerners. Experiment 2 verifies that the interaction effect between phrase expression type and culture on product attitude is mediated by processing fluency. Experiment 3's results demonstrate that the number of alternatives moderates the mediating role of processing fluency for Westerners, but has no effect on the processing fluency for Asians.

This study provides novel insights and expands the field of study of phrase expression types by separating the ambiguous boundaries among phrase presentation types. Furthermore, this study provides practical guidelines for establishing effective advertising strategies for companies by suggesting suitable phrase expression types based on culture.

Although graphic-based emoticons in mobile instant messenger (MIM) services became an important revenue source for their service provider, empirical research investigating factors influencing graphic-based emoticon purchase from the consumer's perspective is insufficient. The authors explore how user's achieved belongingness (acceptance or rejection) affects graphic based emoticon usage motivations and its purchase intentions.

A structural model is used to examine the relationship among individual's overall achieved belongingness, motivation factors of graphic-based emoticon usage in MIM such as perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, perceived enjoyment for others, social norm and emoticon purchase intentions. The authors collected and analyzed survey data of 279 Korean KakaoTalk users.

The analysis shows that perceived acceptance/inclusion positively impacts perceived usefulness, enjoyment and enjoyment of others in graphic-based emoticon usage. Meanwhile, perceived rejection/exclusion positively impacts perceived enjoyment and enjoyment of others but negatively influences perceived social norms. Moreover, social norms and perceived enjoyment directly affect graphic-based emoticon purchase intentions. The authors also find that perceived enjoyment of others and perceived social norms in a serial causal order mediate the relationship between perceived acceptance/inclusion (and rejection/exclusion) and emoticon purchase intentions.

Additional research including users from other demographic groups, such as other age groups, is required to generalize our findings and to increase external validity.

Unique implications related to the role of user's achieved belongingness and perceived enjoyment of others in graphic-based emoticon usage in purchase intentions are found.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/ 10.1108/OIR-02-2020-0036

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate and clarify the perceptions of Spanish consumers towards China, its people, and its products, while outlining the overall contemporary Chinese product-country image (PCI) within the Spanish market.

A 52-item construct was adapted from former PCI scales from cross-cultural equivalence, including “country image”, “personal image”, “product image”, “general knowledge about China”, and “personal data”. Overall, 215 valid structured questionnaires were gathered.

The current study provides: a PCI literature review; hypotheses results concerning Spanish citizens’ views of Chinese products’ price, quality, technicality, inventiveness, and known brands concepts; descriptive statistics and results graphs for each of the PCI sections; and correlations of other variables with the five product image variables within the construct.

Implementing standardized, longitudinal consumer studies that facilitate better comprehension of PCI evolution within a specific market emerged as a future research agenda.

The data informed both the Chinese public and private organizations’ managers of the importance of adapting to the market and non-market environments within Spain to avoid the liability of country of origin effect.

As part of a cross-cultural research, the purpose of this paper is to provide further insights into the existing product-country image (PCI) of the Chinese consumers’ perceptions of Spain, its products, and its people, thereby providing an overall contemporary Spanish PCI within the Chinese market.

In total, 215 valid structured questionnaires were gathered throughout China. Following a pre-investigation of 259 usable questionnaires, a 52-item construct was drawn from the existing widely used PCI item scales, designing a structured PCI construct, covering: “country image,” “personal image,” “product image,” “general knowledge about Spain,” and “personal data.”

The study provides: a PCI pre-investigation research results as well as a literature review on PCI topic; research results for the five hypotheses concerning Chinese citizens’ view of Spanish product price, quality, technicality, inventiveness, and known brands view; descriptive statistics as well as result graphs for each of the covered PCI sections; our PCI construct variable correlations with the tested five product image variables; and general implications.

Standardizing PCI longitudinal studies, as well as focusing on how the Spanish Government and private sector should determine the long-term criteria to facilitate a clearer representation of the Spanish PCI evolution within the Chinese market, is advised.

The current study intends to capture insights for Spain and other country’s public and private sector decision makers to better integrate market and non-market strategies. The results would further assist delineating strategies to avoid the liability of foreignness of Spanish organizations within China.

Social media technology use has elicited an increased interest among academicians and researchers worldwide. The present study examines the latent constructs, such as social media technology use (SMTU), innovation capability (IC), entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and innovation performance (IP), which have not been studied by researchers in the past. The purpose of the study is to examine the impact of SMTU and IC on EO and highlight the impact of EO on IP.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 164 entrepreneurs, which included CEO/owners, managers or founders of start-up companies from India. The data were analysed with the structural equation model technique.

The results demonstrate that the model proposed in this study supports all the hypotheses of SMTU, IC, EO and IP. The results of this study provide evidence for the importance of SMTU as a crucial factor that came out from the analysis of Indian entrepreneurs which reiterates the point that the user-generated content could be very important. The results of the research show that entrepreneurs value and are looking forward to using social media for getting individual reviews from consumers about their marketing campaigns, product development and innovation.

At the level of practice there are significant implications for decision-makers in start-up firms to become more attuned to how SMTU can significantly add importance to the customer experience. This study would also help managers and policymakers in understanding the importance of SMTU when seeking to improve the performance of the organizations.

Owing to the increasingly collaborative innovation environment in entrepreneurship, the authors draw the attention of managers to the need of SMTU for innovation actions and provide a logical framework to guide action for organizational analysis.