Ming-Hui Huang and Roland T. Rust
The purpose of the paper is to note that customers are not necessarily human and to figure out how best to serve artificial intelligence (AI) customers. The authors also propose…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to note that customers are not necessarily human and to figure out how best to serve artificial intelligence (AI) customers. The authors also propose several major research streams, as examples, to help launch research on AI customers and how to serve them.
Design/methodology/approach
The current paper is a conceptual one that draws upon research from many areas to support the ideas proposed.
Findings
AI customer are proliferating. AI as customers can augment or replace human customers and can be the customer itself. Service providers may also be AI, which means that both humans serving AI customers and AI serving AI customers are relevant here. The authors show that even truly autonomous AI customers are likely to be more common in the future. The authors conclude that reverse engineering will probably not be successful in understanding AI customers and that an approach similar to how we research human consumer behavior is likely to be more useful.
Originality/value
Virtually, the entire literature on customers and how to serve them assumes that customers are human. With the rapid advancement of AI, purchase decisions are increasingly made by AI, suggesting that it is now important and necessary to consider the possibility of AI customers and how best to serve them. This paper opens the door for such research.
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Michael Giebelhausen and T. Andrew Poehlman
This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with a consumer-focused alternative for considering the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into services.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with a consumer-focused alternative for considering the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into services.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews and critiques the most popular frameworks for addressing AI in service. It offers an alternative approach, one grounded in social psychology and leveraging influential concepts from management and human–computer interaction.
Findings
The frameworks that dominate discourse on this topic (e.g. Huang and Rust, 2018) are fixated on assessing technology-determined feasibility rather than consumer-granted permissibility (CGP). Proposed is an alternative framework consisting of three barriers to CGP (experiential, motivational and definitional) and three responses (communicate, motivate and recreate).
Research limitations/implications
The implication of this research is that consistent with most modern marketing thought, researchers and practitioners should approach service design from the perspective of customer experience, and that the exercise of classifying service occupation tasks in terms of questionably conceived AI intelligences should be avoided.
Originality/value
Indicative of originality, this paper offers an approach to considering AI in services that is nearly the polar opposite of that widely advocated by e.g., Huang et al., (2019); Huang and Rust (2018, 2021a, 2021b, 2022b). Indicative of value is that their highly cited paradigm is optimized for predicting the rate at which AI will take over service tasks/occupations, a niche topic compared to the mainstream challenge of integrating AI into service offerings.
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Ming‐Hui Huang, Jyun‐Cheng Wang, Shihti Yu and Chui‐Chen Chiu
E‐businesses using enterprise resource planning systems as the information infrastructure generate a tremendous amount of information, including information about customers…
Abstract
E‐businesses using enterprise resource planning systems as the information infrastructure generate a tremendous amount of information, including information about customers, suppliers, markets, transaction costs, the prices at which products are bought and sold, and order‐fulfillment rates, etc. To turn the information contained in these systems into marketable information goods would be a key to gaining a competitive advantage and optimizing market exchange efficiencies. Treating involved organizations as an end‐to‐end network and applying an economic analysis, five propositions are developed to capture this value‐added process. Conditions for market equilibriums are specified.
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Bart Larivière, Herm Joosten, Edward C. Malthouse, Marcel van Birgelen, Pelin Aksoy, Werner H. Kunz and Ming‐Hui Huang
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of Value Fusion to describe how value can emerge from the use of mobile, networked technology by consumers, firms, and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of Value Fusion to describe how value can emerge from the use of mobile, networked technology by consumers, firms, and entities such as non‐consumers, a firm's competitors, and others simultaneously.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses the combination of characteristics of mobile devices that enable Value Fusion and discusses specific value and benefits to consumers and firms of being mobile and networked. Value Fusion is introduced and defined and set apart from related, other conceptualizations of value. Examples are provided of Value Fusion and the necessary conditions for Value Fusion to occur are discussed. Also discussed are the conditions under which the use of mobile, networked technology by consumers and firms may lead to Value Confusion instead of Value Fusion. Several research questions are proposed to further enhance the understanding and management of Value Fusion.
Findings
The combination of portable, personal, networked, textual/visual and converged characteristics of mobile devices enables firms and consumers to interact and communicate, produce and consume benefits, and create value in new ways that have not been captured by popular conceptualizations of value. These traditional conceptualizations include customer value, experiential value, customer lifetime value, and customer engagement value. Value Fusion is defined as value that can be achieved for the entire network of consumers and firms simultaneously, just by being on the mobile network. Value Fusion results from producers and consumers: individually or collectively; actively and passively; concurrently; interactively or in aggregation contributing to a mobile network; in real time; and just‐in‐time.
Originality/value
This paper synthesizes insights from the extant value literature that by and large has focused on either the customer's or the firm's perspective, but rarely blended the two.
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Haiyan Kong, Kangping Wang, Xuejie Qiu, Catherine Cheung and Naipeng Bu
This study aims to review the progress of research on artificial intelligence (AI) relating to the hospitality and tourism industry, focusing on the content, focal points, key…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to review the progress of research on artificial intelligence (AI) relating to the hospitality and tourism industry, focusing on the content, focal points, key terms and trends of AI research.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 491 referred papers are selected from the Web of Science core collection database. These papers, published in the past 30 years (1991–2021), are analyzed by using Gephi and VOSviewer software.
Findings
AI research shows a growing trend since 1991, and the number of publications and citations increased significantly since 2018, indicating that AI became a focus for researchers. AI studies are grouped into four clusters, namely, AI technology, technology acceptance, customers’ perception and future trends. The research focus changed from AI technology in the early stage to customers’ attitudes toward and willingness to accept AI.
Research limitations/implications
The findings contribute to advance knowledge development, identify research gaps and shed light on future research. The results offer practical enlightenment for governments, tourism destinations and hospitality organization.
Practical implications
The results offer practical enlightenment for governments, tourism destinations and hospitality organization.
Originality/value
This study is the initial attempt to provide a systematic review of AI research relating to the tourism and hospitality fields.
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The world economy is likely to worsen because of the consumer's fears created by a cascade of financial and business catastrophes. To adapt their marketing approach, executives…
Abstract
Purpose
The world economy is likely to worsen because of the consumer's fears created by a cascade of financial and business catastrophes. To adapt their marketing approach, executives need guidance on how to respond to the sea change in the attitudes of individual customers during this current Great Recession. this paper aims to investigate this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Given that experts believe that we have entered a period of austerity marketing, which is defined as marketing to consumers who do not want to spend, the paper shows how companies can reconcile consumers' fear, their aspirations for comfort, and their new reluctance to flaunt extravagance. His research indicates that marketers will have to include reassurance as part of their appeal.
Findings
Some businesses think that the fail‐safe approach is to emphasize great value, but this will require them to understand their evolving customers' value system better than ever in order to sell to them successfully; in particular their need for self‐respect, status and self‐fulfillment.
Research limitations/implications
The author, a professor of marketing at Waseda University in Tokyo has also been a senior marketing executive for major global businesses. Much of his research is based on first‐hand observation.
Practical implications
In the consumer markets of the USA, Japan and Europe, one new marketing approach that addresses consumers' higher needs is that of indulgent parsimony, or frugal indulgence. The theory is that recession‐shocked consumers are shopping for less costly goods and services but nonetheless want their purchases to provide comfort and relief from stress.
Originality/value
For the next few years, marketers should encourage guilt‐free (and altruistic) gratification by customers. A potentially successful marketing approach could articulate this customer mindset: “I'm worth it … because I've examined all the alternatives and this one gives me the best value for something I really do need”. Indulgent parsimony – offering reassurance, value and self‐esteem at bargain – may prove most effective.
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Ming-Hui Wang, Mei-Chu Ke, Feng-Yu Lin and Yen-Sheng Huang
The purpose of this paper is to examine the dividend policy for firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The results are consistent with the prediction of the catering theory in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the dividend policy for firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The results are consistent with the prediction of the catering theory in that managers choose a dividend policy to cater to the demand of investors.
Design/methodology/approach
Logistic regressions are used to test the catering theory hypothesis.
Findings
The results find that the firms distribute more stock dividends than other types of dividends when the dividend premium (DP) for stock dividends is positive. In contrast, firms shift from stock dividends to other types of dividends such as mixed dividends and cash dividends when the DP for stock dividends is negative.
Originality/value
The marginal contribution of this paper is that the firms change their dividend policy via DP to cater to the demand of investors.
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Ming-Hui Liu, Jianbin Xiong, Chun-Lin Li, Weijun Sun, Qinghua Zhang and Yuyu Zhang
The diagnosis and prediction methods used for estimating the health conditions of the bearing are of great significance in modern petrochemical industries. This paper aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
The diagnosis and prediction methods used for estimating the health conditions of the bearing are of great significance in modern petrochemical industries. This paper aims to discuss the accuracy and stability of improved empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm in bearing fault diagnosis.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts the improved adaptive complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (ICEEMD) to process the nonlinear and nonstationary signals. Two data sets including a multistage centrifugal fan data set from the laboratory and a motor bearing data set from the Case Western Reserve University are used to perform experiments. Furthermore, the proposed fault diagnosis method, combined with intelligent methods, is evaluated by using two data sets. The proposed method achieved accuracies of 99.62% and 99.17%. Through the experiment of two data, it can be seen that the proposed algorithm has excellent performance in the accuracy and stability of diagnosis.
Findings
According to the review papers, as one of the effective decomposition methods to deal with nonlinear nonstationary signals, the method based on EMD has been widely used in bearing fault diagnosis. However, EMD is often used to figure out the nonlinear nonstationarity of fault data, but the traditional EMD is prone to modal confusion, and the white noise in signal reconstruction is difficult to eliminate.
Research limitations/implications
In this paper only the top three optimal intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) are selected, but IMFs with less correlation cannot completely deny their value. Considering the actual working conditions of petrochemical units, the feasibility of this method in compound fault diagnosis needs to be studied.
Originality/value
Different from traditional methods, ICEEMD not only does not need human intervention and setting but also improves the extraction efficiency of feature information. Then, it is combined with a data-driven approach to complete the data preprocessing, and further carries out the fault identification and classification with the optimized convolutional neural network.
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Tin Nok Leung, Yin Ming Hui, Canon K.L. Luk, Dickson K.W. Chiu and Kevin K.W. Ho
This study analyses the advantages and weaknesses of using Facebook to aid the learning of Japanese as a foreign language.
Abstract
Purpose
This study analyses the advantages and weaknesses of using Facebook to aid the learning of Japanese as a foreign language.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 100 Hong Kong Japanese language learners (who are generally fluent in Chinese and English), ranging from total amateur to advanced learners (Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) qualified at different levels).
Findings
The authors' results suggest that the advantages of using Facebook to help learn Japanese include: (1) serving as a free-of-charge, casual, and convenient learning platform; (2) enriching learners' knowledge beyond the language learning and (3) encouraging interactive and collaborative learning with other users for practicing the language. However, the low credibility and unstructured educational materials posted on Facebook and being easily distracted by other Facebook feeds are the major weaknesses of learning a language through Facebook. Furthermore, the authors' result shows that Facebook is especially effective for Japanese learning when learners fall into either one of the following groups: young, female, or intermediate (N2/3) learners.
Originality/value
Scant studies focus on the aid of learning Japanese via Facebook, especially Hong Kong learners' perceptions, or generally in the East. Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap. The authors' findings will facilitate the students, teachers, and language institutions from Hong Kong and other countries to improve the students' effectiveness in learning and teaching Japanese.
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Yang Tian, Tak Jie Chan, Tze Wei Liew, Ming Hui Chen and Huan Na Liu
Electronic wallets (e-wallet) systems have revolutionized transactional activities, prompting individuals to adopt digital payment methods. This study investigates the…
Abstract
Purpose
Electronic wallets (e-wallet) systems have revolutionized transactional activities, prompting individuals to adopt digital payment methods. This study investigates the determinants of the continuance intention of the e-wallet system Touch 'n Go in Malaysia. We propose a framework integrating the diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) and mental accounting theory, thereby assessing the impacts of product-related factors (convenience, compatibility, perceived risk and perceived compatibility) and the moderating role of personal-related factors [personal innovativeness (PI) and personal anxiety].
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected involving 381 Malaysian Touch 'n Go users. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied as a data analysis technique.
Findings
As demonstrated by the results, convenience serves as a facilitator, while perceived risk acts as an inhibitor, influencing the continuance intention of the application. Compatibility and perceived complexity are found to be insignificant antecedents. However, neither PI nor personal anxiety was found as moderators.
Originality/value
This research brings contributions to the electronic commerce literature by extending the understanding of the predictors and moderators of the continuance intention of Touch 'n Go users in Malaysia. We discuss how these findings implicate the two theories and offer insights for service providers and policymakers to promote the post-adoption intentions of Touch 'n Go.