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A three‐dimensional model for the fluid convection and heat flow in arc welding is proposed. It extends the previous two‐dimensional model by accounting also for the fluid flow and heat transfer in a travelling rather than a stationary mode. The model can be applied to analyse the heat‐ and fluid‐flow phenomena in welding processes. It is found that the fluid velocity in the pool front is higher than that in the pool rear. The fluid velocity field and the temperature distributions are directly proportional to the welding amperage and inversely to the welding speed. The comparison of the calculated and measured results show that the model is much more accurate than Rosenthal's theory and the pure conduction numerical method. Theoretical predictions based on the model are found to be in good agreement with experimental measurements.

Language styles of online reviews are becoming increasingly important in consumers’ purchase decisions. However, there are inconsistencies in research on the effects of literal and figurative language styles in online reviews on service consumption. Drawing upon construal level theory, this research explores the effects of literal and figurative online reviews on consumers’ word-of-mouth recommendations and their internal mechanisms in the context of service consumption. In addition, this research identifies service types (experience vs credence services) as boundary conditions under which online review language styles play a role.

Three studies are designed to verify the effect of language style in online reviews on consumer word-of-mouth recommendations. Study 1 (N = 195) tests the interaction between construal level and (literal vs figurative) language style on consumers’ word-of-mouth recommendations. Study 2 (N = 191) identifies the depth of information processing as an underlying mechanism. Study 3 (N = 466) examines the boundary condition due to service type. The main methods used are independent sample t-test, ANOVA and bootstrapping.

The results illustrate that (1) consumers at different construal levels prefer online reviews with different language styles, and this can influence their word-of-mouth recommendations: consumers with a low construal level prefer online reviews with a literal language style, while those with a high construal level prefer online reviews with a figurative language style; (2) the depth of information processing plays a mediating role in the above interaction effect and (3) service type serves as a boundary condition such that the preference for literal (vs figurative) language style among low- (vs high-) construal-level consumers holds only for experience services; for credence services, online reviews with a literal language style enhance word-of-mouth recommendations, regardless of consumers’ construal level. The findings shed light on the drivers of word-of-mouth recommendations and provide insights to promote more effective word-of-mouth recommendations.

Drawing upon the construal level theory, this research explores the factors that influence online review language styles on consumer word-of-mouth recommendations and their underlying mechanisms and discusses the moderating effects of different service types (i.e. experience services and trust services). It not only sheds light on the contradictions in the previous literature but also provides new insights for academics and business managers to deepen their understanding of facilitating word-of-mouth recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of online service failure on online customer satisfaction and offline customer loyalty, and the moderating role of brand strength is also examined. While extant research on brick and click service mode recognizes the positive spillover effect from offline stores to online stores, this study analyzes the negative spillover effect from online stores to offline stores.

This paper tests the hypotheses by two studies. Study 1 is based on a 2 (failure severity: mild vs severe) × 2 (brand strength: strong vs weak) between-subjects experimental design using scenarios in a brick and click retailer context, while study 2 is based on data collected from a scenario-based questionnaire survey and analyzed through the structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that participants exposed to severe online service failure show lower online satisfaction as compared to their counterparts exposed to mild online service failure, but they show the similar level of offline loyalty in both degrees of online service failure. Nevertheless, these results are not moderated by brand strength significantly.

An experimental design and a scenario-based questionnaire survey are used to test the framework. However, the generalizability of the research findings is still limited to a specific study setting. Future research in a different setting is needed to further validate the presented findings.

The findings suggest that physical service providers should adopt aggressive online expansion strategy to seize the market and pay more attention to online service quality rather than online marketing only.

This is one of few studies to explore the risk of brick and click service mode, and provide a clear understanding of the likely occurrence of online service failure and its impact on online customer satisfaction and offline customer loyalty. It extends prior research by exploring non-existence of negative perceptual effect from online service failure to offline customer loyalty in the short run and weakening brand effect, which contributes to cross-channel spillover effect in the integrated multi-channel context and brand building in the internet era.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of other customer's opinion on a service firm and its alliance on the evaluation of the airline by the focal customer by integrating qualitative and quantitative user-generated content. The study also explores the relative importance of core and peripheral attributes in consumer evaluations.

A text mining and natural language processing-based approach was followed to extract insights from the qualitative part of 18,457 consumer reviews, which were later analyzed along with the quantitative information obtained from the reviews using linear regression and logistic regression methods.

The authors found that customer satisfaction and recommendation behavior is formed by own and others' opinion about the airline and alliance. The relative importance of the core and peripheral attributes depends on the psychological distance from the evaluation of the attribute.

The theoretical contribution and managerial implications have been discussed in detail.

It helps in review management strategy, service design strategy and the alliance and partnership strategies of the airlines.

This is the first paper that explores the impact attribute-level evaluations found in prior reviews on the future reviews of customers. It also explores the effect of prior reviews in the context of a service business and its alliances.

As service robots increasingly interact with customers at the service encounter, they will inevitably become an integral part of employee's work environment. This research investigates frontline employee's perceptions of collaborative service robots (CSR) and introduces a new framework, willingness to collaborate (WTC), to better understand employee–robot interactions in the workplace.

Drawing on appraisal theory, this study employed an exploratory research approach to investigate frontline employees' cognitive appraisal of service robots and their WTC with their nonhuman counterparts in service contexts. Data collection consisted of 36 qualitative problem-centered interviews. Following an iterative thematic analysis, the authors introduce a research framework of frontline employees' WTC with service robots.

First, this study demonstrates that the interaction between frontline employees and service robots is a multistage appraisal process based on adoption-related perceptions. Second, it identifies important attributes across three categories (employee, robot and job attributes) that provide a foundation to understand the appraisal of CSRs. Third, it presents four employee personas (supporter, embracer, resister and saboteur) that provide a differentiated perspective of how service employee–robot collaboration may differ.

The article identifies important factors that enable and restrict frontline service employees' (FSEs’) WTC with robots.

This is the first paper that investigates the appraisal of CSRs from the perspective of frontline employees. The research contributes to the limited research on human–robot collaboration and expands existing technology acceptance models that fall short to explain post-adoptive coping behavior of service employees in response to service robots in the workplace.