Search results

The growth of self-service technologies (SST) in the retail sector has led to an increased prevalence of SST failures, and spurred academic debate on customer self-recovery of the failed services. This study sets out to explore why customers prefer or decline to engage in self-recovery. A framework integrating elements from self-determination theory and theory of planned behavior is developed to explore the impact of motivational factors, attitudes and self-efficacy on self-recovery intention.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the sample consisting of 297 users of retail kiosks in convenience stores.

The results revealed that intrinsic motivation and identified regulation directly affect customers' attitude and intention to engage in self-recovery. Despite an insignificant direct relationship, external regulation impacted self-recovery intention through attitude. Further, the association between intrinsic motivation and self-recovery intention is moderated by self-efficacy.

Much of the extant SST recovery literature has focused on company-rendered service recovery, providing little guidance to firms on how to promote self-recovery among customers. The integrated motivational-cognitive theoretical base in this study allows for a more differentiated inquiry into the factors shaping self-recovery intention, resulting in a deeper understanding of this topic. The novel insights will help retailers develop effective strategies for promoting self-recovery among users of retail kiosks.

Gaining and maintaining trust in e-commerce is crucial for online purchases. Specifically, understanding trust formation and its consequences in a cross-market online shopping context is important, as cross-market studies are scarce. Therefore, this study examines antecedents and consequences of consumer trust in online shopping (TOS) by comparing advanced and emerging markets.

To test the formulated hypotheses, data including 397 responses from Austria and 205 from Moldova are analysed. Using partial least squares (PLS) path modelling, implications for theory and practice in cross-market e-commerce are obtained.

Empirical findings show that company reputation, perceived security and website quality positively influence consumer TOS. TOS corresponds directly positively with purchase intentions (PI). Our research confirms the negative relationship between trust and perceived risk (PR) as well as that between PR and PI. Furthermore, a significant difference between Austria and Moldova regarding the influence of experience and perceived website quality (PWQ) on TOS is observed.

Our study fills research gaps concerning TOS within the context of cross-market e-commerce. It contributes theoretically and practically and reveals the importance of customer trust and risk reduction for online retailers within advanced and emerging markets in order to provoke online PI.

As developed countries experience a decline of manufacturing industries, national governments increasingly turn to innovation‐based cluster initiatives to secure the long‐term prosperity of a region. However, the mechanisms that help translate cluster membership into higher innovativeness are not well understood. This paper seeks to propose a framework which sees a firm's network competence and network location as being key to superior innovation performance.

The deductive quantitative study applies a combination of statistical tools and tools for social network analysis to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results show that none of the cluster companies has so far been able to operate at the expected level of innovation performance. Findings further support the hypothesis that network competence and central network positions are positively related to innovation performance. Therefore, while innovation performance proves to be unsatisfactory for all cluster companies, those with a higher level of network competence and central network positions perform significantly better in terms of innovation than companies low in network competence and network centrality.

In order to succeed in a cluster, companies must focus on enhancing their network competence and strive for more central network positions.

The study focuses on the social construction of innovation performance. Cluster firms, their embeddedness in exchange relationships with other firms, as well as their network managerial competence are seen as key factors influencing firm innovation performance. In conclusion, the study offers an alternative view on innovation performance, complementing the traditional explanation approaches in the innovation literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate market-contextual variations in consumers’ self-service technology (SST) usage intentions.

Applications of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology support the exploration of antecedents of usage intention for SSTs in two market contexts, through a survey among Taiwanese and Austrian college students. The cross-cultural nature of the study suggested the need for factor analyses to evaluate measurement equivalence. A Chow-Test confirmed structural stability, followed by regression analysis and independent samples t-tests to confirm the hypotheses.

Substantial differences arise across market contexts that shape usage intentions. In a collectivistic, emerging market context (Taiwan), performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and personal innovativeness significantly influence usage intention. In an individualistic, advanced market context (Austria), only performance expectancy and social influence have significant impacts on usage intention. Personal innovativeness moderates only the relationship between performance expectancy and usage intention.

The findings suggest that usage intention is subject to the market environment in which the technology is introduced. Consumers are influenced by the local and institutional-cultural environment.

Globalization has accelerated the launch of retail services innovations. It is imperative to understand consumers’ usage intentions from a global perspective. This study advances SST research by analyzing and comparing adoption behavior in an advanced vs emerging market setting.

The success of retail service innovations is contingent upon a thorough understanding of the antecedent factors that drive adoption intention. Using the example of a novel kiosk technology, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the antecedents of kiosk use intention and to find out how perceptions of antecedent factors vary among potential and early adopters.

Based on the “Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” and the technology readiness (TR) concept, the proposed framework identifies several factors underlying adoption intention. The framework is tested on potential and early adopters of a kiosk system recently launched by Taiwan's largest convenience retailer.

Results show that while performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions and social influence impact overall use intention, the perceptions of these antecedents vary significantly between potential versus early users. Further, individual TR does not intervene with technology perceptions.

Retail practitioners can use the findings to more effectively target these two important adopter segments and to prioritize their technology investments.

Most of extant technology adoption researches assume that factors driving adoption behaviour remain constant as diffusion progresses. This work joins a limited number of studies, which propose a dynamic nature of antecedent factors. The paper shows how perceptions of antecedent factors differ among potential and early users of a novel kiosk system. Overall, this paper emphasizes the need for a more segmented‐oriented approach in the promoting of innovative retail technologies.

Purpose – We study the investment behavior of foreign institutional investors operating in China. A detailed analysis of foreign institutional investors is examined, along with a comparison of domestic Chinese investors.

Methodology/approach – We adopt annual Chinese stock market data for the period 2003–2009 for both foreign and domestic funds to analyze the industrial preference of foreign funds and compare the different preferences between foreign funds and domestic Chinese funds in relation to financial characteristic and corporate governance indicators.

Findings – The analysis reveals that foreign funds have a preference for a range of sectors such as transportation, metals and nonmetals, and machinery, as opposed to industries with a requirement for local knowledge. The portfolios of domestic Chinese funds are distributed more evenly across sectors, compared to foreign funds. The comparative analysis reveals that the companies foreign funds invest in are significantly different from those firms favored by domestic funds in terms of size, profit, and management compensation.

Social implications – These empirical findings highlight the differences between foreign and domestic funds investment preferences and has implications for policy makers aiming to attract foreign investors to emerging markets.

Originality/value of chapter – Our chapter not only provides an introduction on the QFII scheme in China, but also examines the impact of a comprehensive range of firm-level characteristics, financial and corporate governance indicators, on the investment decisions of foreign and domestic funds in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the mechanical properties of photopolymer/CB (carbon black) nanocomposite when applied in a visible-light rapid prototyping (RP) machine.

The mechanical properties of the samples such as hardness and tensile strength along with thermal stability were analyzed. The curing time behavior of the photopolymer/CB nanocomposites was tested by using a rigid-body pendulum rheometer. The shrinkage property and dimensional stability were also analyzed using the technique according to ASTM D2566 and ASTM D1204, respectively.

The results showed that the prototype fabricated from pristine photopolymer tended to exhibit poor mechanical properties and low thermal stability. However, after adding the photopolymer with various concentrations of nano-CB and dispersant in appropriate composition, the photopolymer/CB nanocomposite prototype not only reduced its curing time but also enhanced its mechanical properties, thermal stability and dimensional stability.

The presented results can be used in a visible-light RP machine.

The mechanical and thermal properties of photopolymer are improved with nano-CB additives for a RP system.

The purpose of this paper is to apply social network analysis (SNA) to study faculty research productivity, to identify key leaders, to study publication keywords and research areas and to visualize international collaboration patterns and analyze collaboration research fields from all Management Information System (MIS) departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015.

The authors first retrieved results encompassing about 1,766 MIS professors and their publication records between 1982 and 2015 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST) website. Next, the authors merged these publication records with the records obtained from the Web of Science, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Airiti Library and Springer Link databases. The authors further applied six network centrality equations, leadership index, exponential weighted moving average (EWMA), contribution value and k-means clustering algorithms to analyze the collaboration patterns, research productivity and publication patterns. Finally, the authors applied D3.js to visualize the faculty members' international collaborations from all MIS departments in Taiwan.

The authors have first identified important scholars or leaders in the network. The authors also see that most MIS scholars in Taiwan tend to publish their papers in the journals such as Decision Support Systems and Information and Management. The authors have further figured out the significant scholars who have actively collaborated with academics in other countries. Furthermore, the authors have recognized the universities that have frequent collaboration with other international universities. The United States, China, Canada and the United Kingdom are the countries that have the highest numbers of collaborations with Taiwanese academics. Lastly, the keywords model, system and algorithm were the most common terms used in recent years.

This study applied SNA to visualize international research collaboration patterns and has revealed some salient characteristics of international cooperation trends and patterns, leadership networks and influences and research productivity for faculty in Information Management departments in Taiwan from 1982 to 2015. In addition, the authors have discovered the most common keywords used in recent years.