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The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been one of the most influential theories in the information technology literature, but it has not been used in the marketing literature to understand consumer acceptance of international web sites. Thus, the purpose of this study is to use TAM to study international consumers' acceptance and use of MNEs web sites designed specifically for their country.

This study applies and extends the TAM to study the B2C international web sites of American and Japanese MNEs for Brazilian, German, and Taiwanese consumers. In total, there were 2,243 usable questionnaires and the structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the data.

This study provides strong support for the applicability of TAM in explaining international web site usage in Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan and shows that cultural adaptation is an important explanatory variable that should be included in the TAM when exploring cross‐cultural issues.

The value of this paper is that it not only extends the use of TAM to study user acceptance of international e‐commerce web sites, but also sees how the cultural adaptation of international web sites impacts the attitude and the purchase intention of consumers.

Dark (Netflix, 2017–2020) is a German-produced science fiction television series, created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. Set in the geographically ambiguous small town of Winden, Dark is an intricate time-travel saga primarily across different epochs. With its emphasis on uncanny natural settings and fairy tale tropes (such as lost children, mysterious travelers, magical devices, etc.), Dark can easily be interpreted as fairy tale. Central is young Jonas Kahnwald who loses his father and witnesses the mysterious disappearance of a local boy. These traumas lead to shocking truths about his heritage. Jonas is the hero (both victim and seeker, after Propp's definition) though his twisting quest brings him face-to-face with two older versions of himself: The middle-aged Jonas fulfils a mentor/donor role for the younger but is conflicted in his desires to both perpetuate and unpick ‘the knot’. Later, Jonas encounters cataclysmic extremist ‘Adam’, a mature version of himself who acts as antagonist. Thusly, Dark centres White male trauma, agency, and ego to reflect responses to historic cultural trauma (such as the notion of the ‘anti-Heimat’) whilst also critiquing traditional conceptions of masculinity through young Jonas's actions. This chapter maps the interplay and representation of ego and trauma. Through textual analysis and with reference to relevant cultural, psychological, and philosophical scholarship, my exploration follows the threads of what Dark communicates about contemporary German masculinity in the face of trauma and how it reflects Western, White cultural thinking about the self.

Both Bolivia and Uruguay broke ranks with the global drug prohibition regime by introducing novel drug policies. State control of the production and supply of coca and cannabis represents a clear departure from both the spirit and the letter of the international drug conventions. Although, the rationale, processes and outcomes of policy change were distinctive in many regards, this chapter posits that there are conceptual resemblances. In both countries, the leadership of a charismatic and idiosyncratic president has to be considered. Furthermore, in both countries, mobilisation and activism were also decisive. Lastly, in both countries novel drug policy responded to specific problems that decision-makers faced. Approaching drug policy reforms in Bolivia and Uruguay in terms of personal leadership, mobilisation and policy problems provides a useful analytical first-cut to assess the continuity and change in drug policy observable elsewhere. Additionally, scrutinising the reasons and motivations for undertaking drug policy reform also allows to better understand each country’s behaviour on the international stage.

Research disputes whether family businesses are more or less innovative than their nonfamily counterparts. So far, no consistent results have been achieved. The recently introduced willingness and ability framework suggest that idiosyncratic behavior is only to be expected if both sufficiency conditions – willingness and ability – are fulfilled. The purpose of this paper is to test this hypothesis empirically.

A large cross-sectional sample of German small- and medium-sized enterprises is used. The sample offers – alongside numerous moderators commonly used in innovation research – several family firm definitions. Given the censored nature of the endogenous variable chosen, a Tobit model is used.

Drawing upon agency theory and the ability and willingness paradox in family firm innovation, it finds family firms to be less innovative only if both willingness and ability conditions are fulfilled.

To the best of the knowledge, the study provides the first attempt to test the willingness and ability theorem. Therefore, the commonly used family firm-specific measures (self-assessment-, ownership-, and management criterion) are operationalized to better understand what drives innovativeness in family firms. The findings thus add to the ongoing discussion on what really drives family impact on firm-level decisions.

SME funding gaps in developing economies are substantial. Crowdfunding is an innovative way to raise funds that may be part of the solution for closing such gaps. The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of crowdfunding contribution intentions in the context of a developing country –Bangladesh.

The authors collect data by using a structured questionnaire distributed through Facebook. The analysis is based on data collected from 252 valid responses and uses the ordered probit regression for estimation. For robustness, the authors also estimate the hypothesized model using ordered logistic regression and OLS regression finding identical results.

The authors find that liking the campaign idea and positive media coverage of a crowdfunding campaign have a positive association with crowdfunding contribution intention. Surprisingly, personal relations, others' recommendation and the location of the campaign's owner were not significantly associated with crowdfunding contribution intention in our study. Moreover, respondents' location in Bangladesh (vs. abroad) and their age are positively associated with contribution intention, while education is negatively associated with intention.

Earlier studies focused on the determinants of ex post crowdfunding intentions in developed and more mature crowdfunding markets. The authors contribute by examining ex ante crowdfunding contribution intentions in the developing economy of Bangladesh, which is at the market's inception stage.

In modern societies, consumer well-being is dependent on choices regarding complex services, such as investments, health care, insurance and lending. However, evaluating costs of such services is often difficult for consumers due to a combination of limited cognitive resources and complexity of the service. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine to what extent three specific consequences of complexity influence consumer tendencies to make mistakes when evaluating the costs (or price) of complex services.

Three studies were conducted (survey: n = 153, experiment: n = 332 and conjoint analysis: n = 225), all focusing on how consumers evaluate costs in the complex mutual fund setting.

The authors find that consumers struggle with estimating and using cost information in decision-making in the complex services setting. Consumers of complex services frequently underestimate the costs over the long-term, may see costs as a signal of service quality and are susceptible to influence from presentation formats when evaluating costs.

The study investigates mutual funds, which is one example of a complex service. In order to get a full picture of how consumers deal with costs in complex setting, future research needs to expand this focus to other types of complex services.

The results have implications for both marketers of complex services and policymakers. For marketers, this paper highlights that competing with a low-cost strategy may be difficult in the complex services setting as consumers may lack the ability to actually evaluate what they pay over the long term. For policymakers, increased simplification of prices may be an attractive option. However, it is important that this simplification is done in a way that increases the possibility to compare prices.

As complexity influences several aspects of decision-making, an understanding of how consumers evaluate costs in complex settings is dependent on taking a multidimensional research approach. This paper makes a novel contribution to the literature on pricing by showing that consumers struggle with multiple aspects when evaluating costs in complex contexts. Understanding these effects is important to policy, as well as to research on the cognitive value of simplicity that is currently gaining traction in marketing research.

Valuation accuracy usually conjures up images of empirical studies of comparisons between sales and valuations and different valuations of the same properties, and a number of references to these studies are included in the paper. However, this paper concentrates on the institutional influences which impact on valuations and their accuracy. The overall aim of this paper is to examine the legal interpretation of valuation inaccuracy in the UK. This might seem a bit parochial in the context of a World Valuation Congress. However, cases in many countries in the Commonwealth form precedents for each other and therefore decisions in, for example, the UK and Australasia, are drawn on by others in reaching decisions. The paper also reaches conclusions which have wider implications for all jurisdictions which have valuation disputes settled in courts, tribunals and any other quasi‐judicial body.

Choosing how to invest one’s assets is one of the more important decisions consumers are faced with. However, determining the objective financial quality of complex investment products such as mutual funds is not an easy task for consumers. Against this background, this study aims to clarify the potential impact of one, not necessarily rational, cue on consumer perceptions of financial quality in the investment context: the country-of-origin (COO) of the mutual fund or stock.

Two Web-based experiments are used to test the study’s hypotheses.

COO is found to impact investors’ evaluation of the financial metrics of mutual funds, both in terms of perceived risk and potential return. Moreover, the results of Experiment 2 show that although a strong financial brand can partially overcome the COO effect, the extent of this effect is moderated by whether the fund utilizes an active or passive management style.

Although mutual fund providers with a strong financial country image (CI) may leverage that image and build on their home country’s brand, providers from countries with a poor financial CI may do well focusing on passive management to minimize negative COO influence.

The results highlight that COO can be an important source of sub-optimal investment decisions. These insights are of high importance for efforts to improve consumer decision-making and for individual service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on concepts from the creative economy literature to present a proposal for conceptualizing the creative industries from the perspective of the ideas underlying the concepts of industrial districts and the triple helix. The analysis lays out the foundations with a review of the literature on the creative economy and builds upon them with the terminology of creative industries and industrial districts.

The analysis lays out the foundations with a review of the literature on the creative economy and builds upon them with the terminology of creative industries and industrial districts. A three-dimensional representation is developed, from a perspective in which the three dimensions comprise university, creative industries and government, combined with seven underlying factors that define the archetypal framework from the perspective of the creative economy of the region's handcrafts.

Working from the principal of an analysis of underlying factors, the paper presents an ethnographic study of the potentials and obstacles present in the handcrafts sector and delineates the work that remains to be done to enable construction of a creative economy.

A prominent possibility based on the ethnographic study of the potentials listed, the creative economy of the handicraft sector is underexplored in the Amazon. Based on the Amazon heritage of the people in the Alto Solimões region, future prospects such as establishment of guilds, clusters and internationalization of production in a tourism association represent sui generis potentials for the economic development of the Alto Solimões region of the Brazilian Amazon.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how health consciousness and skepticism toward health claims are related to perceived healthiness and willingness to buy functional food (i.e. functional yogurt) compared to conventional and organic (bio) food.

A survey of 295 consumers was conducted in Lithuania. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Research findings indicate that health conscious consumers tend to discount messages about the health value of functional food and show preferences for organic food. In contrast, skepticism toward health claims has a higher negative homogenous impact on the perceived healthiness of functional, organic and conventional products compared to health consciousness. On the other hand, skepticism toward health claims does not directly reduce consumers’ willingness to buy functional, organic and conventional products.

Testing other settings, product categories, additional constructs and understanding underlying processes using an experimental design may help to gain more insights into how health conscious and skeptical consumers make food choices.

An examination of health consciousness and skepticism toward health claims can provide at least a partial explanation as to why many functional food products fail to gain consumer confidence.

Based on the reactance theory, the study sheds some light on the understanding of how different psychosocial factors are related to consumer attitudes toward functional, organic and conventional food.