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Users frequently target rival brands through direct criticism or indirect customer insults, yet the impact of such attacks on brand advocacy remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is to classify online attacks into brand-targeted attacks and consumer-targeted attacks and further investigate their differential impacts on brand advocacy and the underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of those impacts.

Three experimental studies using different types of brands (electronics, universities and sports footwear) are conducted to examine the effects of brand-related attack targets on brand advocacy.

This research shows that consumer-targeted attacks trigger higher brand advocacy through increasing perceived identity threat than brand-targeted attacks. Moreover, the effect of consumer-targeted attacks (versus brand-targeted attacks) on brand advocacy is mediated by perceived identity threat and mitigated when consumers’ identification with the attacked brand is strong.

The study’s findings yield practical applications for marketers and brand managers, assisting them in understanding consumers’ reactions to brand attacks. This study serves as a reference for firms to consider leveraging the association between brand identification and brand-related attack targets and uniting with loyal brand fans to manage online brand conflicts.

The present study extends prior literature on customer-brand relationships in the context of online attacks. Through investigating the impacts of brand-targeted and consumer-targeted attacks on brand advocacy, this research offers theoretical insights into consumers’ responses to online attacks with different targets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a large number of applications at the industry and user levels. However, AI's uniqueness neglect is becoming an obstacle in the further application of AI. Based on the theory of innovation resistance, this paper aims to explore the effect of AI's uniqueness neglect on consumer resistance to AI.

The authors tested four hypothesis across four studies by conducting lab experiments. Study 1 used a questionnaire to verify the hypothesis that AI's uniqueness neglect leads to consumer resistance to AI; Studies 2 focused on the role of human–AI interaction trust as an underlying driver of resistance to medical AI. Study 3–4 provided process evidence by way of a measured moderator, testing whether participants with a greater sense of non-verbal human–AI communication are more reluctant to have consumer resistance to AI.

The authors found that AI's uniqueness neglect increased users' resistance to AI. This occurs because the uniqueness neglect of AI hinders the formation of interaction trust between users and AI. The study also found that increasing the gaze behavior of AI and increasing the physical distance in the interaction can alleviate the effect of AI's uniqueness neglect on consumer resistance to AI.

This paper explored the effect of AI's uniqueness neglect on consumer resistance to AI and uncovered human–AI interaction trust as a mediator for this effect and gaze behavior and physical distance as moderators for this effect.

Users' knowledge sharing provides valuable resources for brand community participants and is, therefore, critical for the viability of virtual brand communities. Drawing from both self-determination theory (SDT) and psychological ownership theory, the paper aims to investigate the impact of fulfillment of three basic psychological needs on brand users' knowledge-sharing behavior and examines psychological ownership as a mediator.

Survey data consisting of 316 valid responses were collected from users of Huawei Pollen Club Community. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the reliability and validity of measures, and hierarchical linear regression and bootstrapping were used to test all hypotheses.

Fulfillment of the need for autonomy, relatedness and competence in a virtual brand community boosts users' psychological ownership and has a positive influence on their knowledge-sharing behavior. Furthermore, psychological ownership partially mediates the relationships between the fulfillment of psychological needs and knowledge-sharing behavior. In addition, the authors found that when users participate in more offline brand activities, the positive impact of the fulfillment of the need for relatedness on psychological ownership is strengthened, while the positive impact of the fulfillment of the need for autonomy on psychological ownership is weakened.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by exploring the relationships between fulfilling users' three basic psychological needs and their knowledge-sharing behavior through the mediating role of psychological ownership. The authors also provide insight into how offline brand activities interact with the fulfillment of psychological needs in virtual brand communities.

Drawing on the resource gain development (RGD) perspective, this study is aimed to examine how servant leadership as an environmental resource and general self-esteem as a personal resource influence employees' family performance through work-to-family facilitation (WFF) and explore the moderating effects of gender and Chinese traditionality on the relationship between servant leadership and WFF.

Two-wave data were collected from 369 employees in China. The structural equation model and path analysis were used to analyze the data.

The results confirm that WFF mediates the effects of servant leadership and employees' general self-esteem on employees' family performance. Gender and Chinese traditionality moderate the relationship between servant leadership and WFF.

This study contributes to existing research by revealing how specific environmental resources (servant leadership) and personal resources (general self-esteem) impact employee family performance through WFF; it also identifies gender and Chinese traditionality as demand characteristics which moderate the effect of environmental resources on WFF.

This paper aims to explore how different service relationships (mentoring relationship versus partnering relationship) in service co-production affect service outcomes. Specifically, it aims to explore whether the effects of service relationships on customers’ intention to purchase the service are contingent upon service appeals’ regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention focus) and when the regulatory fit effects exist.

Three experimental studies were conducted to test hypotheses. ANOVA and bootstrapping were used to analyze the data.

The findings of the three experiments provide convergent evidence for the hypotheses. Specifically, when customers view service employees as mentors (versus partners) in service co-production, promotion-focused (versus prevention focused) service appeals effectively enhance customers’ intention to purchase the service because customers experience a regulatory fit. Moreover, the regulatory fit effects are strengthened or attenuated according to customers’ subjective social status.

Service firms should adopt promotion-focused (versus prevention-focused) service appeals if employees and customers are having mentoring (versus partnering) relationships, especially when customers have higher (lower) social status.

To better manage service co-production, this paper investigates beneficial outcomes of mentoring and partnering relationships from a regulatory fit perspective. It highlights the importance of compatibility between service relationship and service appeals’ regulatory focus and demonstrates a novel regulatory fit effect. It also uncovers engagement as the underlying mechanism for the regulatory-fit effect and identifies social class as a boundary condition.

Global product-harm crises increased in recent years. After such crises, firms' product-recall policies varied across countries, which might cause consumers in some countries to feel unfairly treated. Drawing on the relative deprivation theory, this study aims to examine how perceived unfairness of local consumers alters their attitudes toward unfairness-enacting foreign brands and competing domestic brands.

This framework was tested by a netnography study on two product recalls from Samsung along with a consumer survey. While this netnography study provided preliminary support to the framework, survey data collected from 501 Samsung consumers after the Galaxy Note 7 crisis validated the theoretical model again.

Perceived unfairness increases local consumers' avoidance of involved foreign brands and their intention to purchase domestic brands through evoking anger toward the foreign brands. Moreover, the detrimental impact of perceived unfairness is found to be stronger when consumers' prior relationship quality is high.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates unfair product recalls across countries and aims to provide important insights into how consumers react to the unfair treatment of foreign brands in a global product-harm context. This study contributes to the product-harm crisis literature and provides important implications for global product-harm crisis management strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between demographic diversity on boards and employer/employee relationship (EER) and to test the moderating effect of contextual factors such as a firm’s financial situation.

This paper analyzes data from over 1,000 publicly listed US firms and uses hierarchical regression.

Demographic diversity on boards of a given firm, such as ethnic diversity and gender diversity, should have positive effects on EER, which can be considered as an important dimension of overall human resource management performance in a given firm. Contextual factors such as a firm’s financial situation should moderate the relationship between demographic diversity on boards and the EER.

First, this research contributes to the current literature by showing that EER can be influenced by demographic diversity on boards, which further helps to highlight the beneficial effect of demographic diversity in top management team. Second, this study uncovers the moderating role of some contextual factors such as a firm’ financial situation. Third, this study also contributes to the corporate governance literature by studying the link between demographic diversity on boards and EER.

Risks resulted from asymmetric information have become crucial barriers for commercial banks to implement supply chain finance (SCF) – mainly the inventory pledge financing (IPF). At the same time, online financial service providers (OFSPs) are emerging as strong competitors in the SCF market. As a result, commercial banks need to update their traditional SCF business models and alleviate their over-dependence on OFSPs.

The authors employ a multi-case-study method to investigate how the Internet of things (IoT) and blockchain technologies can be jointly leveraged to mitigate SCF risks. In-depth interviews were conducted to depict the business models and their novel ecosystem to reinforce traditional banks' ability in SCF services.

From the perspective of information asymmetry, the authors categorize IPF risks into three groups based on the principal-agent theory: collateral, warehousing and liquidity risk. The findings suggest that IoT can primarily improve traditional banks' information acquisition ability, and blockchain can facilitate credible information transformation, enabling banks to acquire knowledge from collaterals. Besides, the e-platform in the new architecture increases banks' involvement in the supply chain and builds a fair network to curtail warehousing risks. The employment of smart contracts and collaborative mechanism ensure process and outcome control in mitigating liquidity risks.

The research contributes to the literature by confirming the role of emerging technologies in reducing information asymmetry risks. Besides, the findings provide valuable insights for practitioners to promote effective practices and approaches in IPF.

This study discusses that the necessary criteria and the solution approach taken to resolve the main spatial infection problems with a burn center design should be evaluated holistically to achieve spatial infection control in a burn center. The burn center design plays an important role in protecting severely burned patients from infection because the microbial flora of the hospital can affect the infection risk. In hospitals, sterilization and disinfection are the basic components of infection prevention; however, the prevention and control of infection for burn patients also requires the design of burn centers that adhere to a specific set of criteria that considers spatial infection control in addition to appropriate burn treatment methods and treatments. In this study, a burn facility converted from a burn unit into a burn center is introduced and the necessary design inputs for the transformation are discussed because there is no holistic study in the literature that delas with all the spaces that should be in a burn center and relations between spaces. This study aims to define the functional relations between each of the units and the spaces that change according to different sterilization demands in the burn center for ensuring spatial infection control. Furthermore, it aims to propose a method for ensuring continuity in the control of spatial infections.

The burn care and health facilities guidelines are examined within the framework of spatial standards, together with a comprehensive literature review. The design method was based on the spread of microorganisms and the effect of human movement on space and spatial transitions in the burn center, according to all relevant literature reviews. To determine the extent to which the differences in treatment protocols of burn care guidelines were reflected in the space, interviews were conducted with burn facility officials. The plan–do–check–act (PDCA) method is also modeled to ensure the continuity of infection control in the burn center.

The burn center design findings are classified under three main headings, namely, location of the burn center in the hospital, spatial organization and physical features of the burn center and the air flowing system. The importance of the interactions among the criteria for spatial infection control has been revealed. Due to the physical space characteristics and air flow characteristics that change according to human movement and the way microorganisms spread, it has been seen that designing the air flow and architectural aspects together has an effective role in providing spatial infection control. Accordingly, a functional relation scheme for the center has been suggested. It is also proposed as a model to ensure the continuity of infection control in the burn center.

This research presents spatial measures for infection control in burn centers for practitioners in health-care settings such as designers, engineers, doctors and nurses. The PDCA method also leads to continuity of infection control for hospital management.

This is the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to focus on developing the criteria for spatial infection control in burn center. Moreover, the aim is to create a function chart that encompasses the relationships between the units within the burn center design so that infection control can be coordinated spatially.