Thomas Foscht, Yuting Lin and Andreas B. Eisingerich
This paper aims to explore how and when a business’ transparency leads to greater willingness to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption by consumers.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how and when a business’ transparency leads to greater willingness to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption by consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected in two studies. Study 1 collected data from 219 consumers in a large shopping mall. Study 2 followed an experimental approach and used data from 327 participants.
Findings
The current research contributes to theory by hypothesizing and demonstrating when transparency is associated with higher willingness for sustainable and responsible consumption. Critically, the positive benefits of transparency vary according to a business’ future orientation, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and levels of customer involvement.
Practical implications
An important societal and practical implication of the current research is that business should not be expected to only focus on transparency in isolation but rather also needs to consider levels of perceived future orientation, CSR and levels of customer involvement to strengthen sustainable and responsible behavior effectively.
Originality/value
This research builds on and extends current knowledge by exploring the key role of business’ transparency in influencing sustainable and responsible customer behavior and examines critical boundary conditions for the observed effects.
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Yu-Ting Lin, Thomas Foscht and Andreas Benedikt Eisingerich
Prior work underscores the important role of customer advocacy for brands. The purpose of this study is to explore the critical role customers can play as brand heroes. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Prior work underscores the important role of customer advocacy for brands. The purpose of this study is to explore the critical role customers can play as brand heroes. The authors developed and validated a measurement scale composed of properties that are derived from distinct brand hero motivational mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted one exploratory pilot, using semi-structured interviews, with industry and academic experts, and employed three main studies across varying brands and market settings.
Findings
This study explores and empirically demonstrates how the brand hero scale (BHS) is related to, yet distinct from, existing scales of opinion leaders, market mavens, attachment and customer advocacy. The six-item BHS demonstrates convergent, discriminant, nomological and predictive validity across several different brand contexts.
Research limitations/implications
This research extends the extant body of work by identifying and defining brand heroes, developing and validating a parsimonious BHS, and demonstrating how its predictive validity extends both to a range of key advocacy and loyalty customer behaviors.
Practical implications
The study provides provocative insights for marketing researchers and brand managers and ascertains the important role heroes may play for brands in terms of strong customer advocacy and loyalty behaviors.
Originality/value
Building on the theory of meaning, this study shows that identifying and working with brand heroes is of great managerial importance and offers critical avenues for future research.
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Zhanbo Zhao, Xiaomeng Du, Fan Liang and Xiaoming Zhu
Impulse buying has been the focus of attention in the marketing. With the rise of online shopping, online impulse buying phenomenon becomes increasingly serious. Whereas, the…
Abstract
Purpose
Impulse buying has been the focus of attention in the marketing. With the rise of online shopping, online impulse buying phenomenon becomes increasingly serious. Whereas, the impulse buying behavior in an online environment is rarely discussed in relevant literature. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the type of product and time pressure on consumer online impulse buying intention; this is a relatively new issue of marketing academia in China.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the experimental methodology was adopted to explore the impact of consumer online impulse buying tendencies, the departure from the type of product and the time pressure.
Findings
Results show that low-involvement feeling products stimulate consumer online impulse buying tendencies. Simultaneously, there is an interaction effect between time pressure and product type, which is, under the influence of time pressure, the enhancement of low-involvement feeling products on consumer online impulse buying tendency is more significant.
Originality/value
This study discusses the interaction between time pressure and product type on consumers’ online impulse buying tendency, which has not been studied before. While discussing the impact of product types on consumers’ impulse buying tendency on the internet, this paper considers the impact of time pressure on consumers’ impulsive buying tendency, and applies the term of time pressure, a psychological research term, to the field of marketing research, so as to make the cross-links between disciplines closer.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkage between perceived overqualification and task i-deals via the mediating effect of prove goal orientation and the moderating…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkage between perceived overqualification and task i-deals via the mediating effect of prove goal orientation and the moderating effect of a climate for inclusion.
Design/methodology/approach
This study proposes and tests the mechanism of perceived overqualification in affecting task i-deals. Matched data were collected from a two-wave survey among 457 employees who work in two Chinese enterprises. The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical linear modeling and bootstrapping
Findings
The findings reveal that perceived overqualification has a significant positive impact on task i-deals. Prove goal orientation has a mediating role between perceived overqualification and task i-deals. Climate for inclusion moderates the relationship between prove goal orientation and task i-deals and the mediation effect of prove goal orientation, which has a moderated mediating effect.
Originality/value
This study reveals the influence mechanism of perceived overqualification on task i-deals from the perspective of self-verification, which not only enriches the results of being overqualified but also expands the antecedents of task i-deals. Moreover, the findings emphasize that contextual factors may strengthen the positive mediation effect of prove goal orientation.
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Yuting Xiao, Xi Zhang and Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos
This study aims to explore the complex relationship between leadership and organizational knowledge sharing by investigating the moderating role of exchange ideology on the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the complex relationship between leadership and organizational knowledge sharing by investigating the moderating role of exchange ideology on the relation between transformational leadership in attributed charisma and knowledge sharing and the influence of attributed charisma and knowledge sharing on task performance. The influence of leadership in organizational knowledge sharing process has been gradually highlighted.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the review of relevant literature and survey, a structural equation model considering four factors in the model together is now constructed and provides four hypotheses which can be verified. Self-completed questionnaires were collected from 163 students in the context of a graduate class in China.
Findings
The findings illustrate the relationship between leadership theory and knowledge sharing from a perspective of social exchange theory. In particular, results show that both transformational leadership and knowledge sharing have positive impacts to task performance and for individuals with low exchange ideology the positive influence from attributed charisma to knowledge sharing is stronger.
Originality/value
This research introduces exchange ideology as a moderator and explains the complex relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge sharing with sufficient proof. Transformational leadership in attributed charisma is more effective to those individuals with low exchange ideology in facilitating their knowledge effort. This paper can be theoretically and practically helpful to researchers and enterprise leaders in organizational knowledge management.
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Yuting Rong, Shan Liu, Shuo Yan, Wei Wayne Huang and Yanxia Chen
Lenders in online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms are always non-experts and face severe information asymmetry. This paper aims to achieve the goals of gaining high returns…
Abstract
Purpose
Lenders in online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms are always non-experts and face severe information asymmetry. This paper aims to achieve the goals of gaining high returns with risk limitations or lowering risks with expected returns for P2P lenders.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper used data from a leading online P2P lending platform in America. First, the authors constructed a logistic regression-based credit scoring model and a linear regression-based profit scoring model to predict the default probabilities and profitability of loans. Second, based on the predictions of loan risk and loan return, the authors constructed linear programming model to form the optimal loan portfolio for lenders.
Findings
The research results show that compared to a logistic regression-based credit scoring method, the proposed new framework could make more returns for lenders with risks unchanged. Furthermore, compared to a linear regression-based profit scoring method, the proposed new framework could lower risks for lenders without lowering returns. In addition, comparisons with advanced machine learning techniques further validate its superiority.
Originality/value
Unlike previous studies that focus solely on predicting the default probability or profitability of loans, this study considers loan allocation in online P2P lending as an optimization research problem using a new framework based upon modern portfolio theory (MPT). This study may contribute theoretically to the extension of MPT in the specific context of online P2P lending and benefit lenders and platforms to develop more efficient investment tools.
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Ing Grace Phang and Yuting Zylvia Kong
Adopting the unified theory of the acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) and the theory of substitutability, this study examines both the technical and sensory factors…
Abstract
Purpose
Adopting the unified theory of the acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) and the theory of substitutability, this study examines both the technical and sensory factors influencing Malaysians' intention to adopt virtual tours (IA) and subsequent intention to visit an actual heritage site (IV) in the heritage traveling decision-making process.
Design/methodology/approach
This study collected a total of 278 valid survey responses via purposive sampling. The data were analyzed using SPSS26 and SmartPLS4 software.
Findings
The findings support the significant positive effect of IA on IV, which supplements evidence to subdue misapprehensions that virtual tours (VTs) are competitors or substitutes for in-person visitations. Perceived substitutability was found to have an indirect impact on IV through IA, further proving the mediating role of IA in influencing IV. Technical and sensory factors, namely performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, habit and perceived substitutability of IA, were shown to be critical in influencing IA; however, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions were not.
Practical implications
This study offers sustainable and practical implications to the tourism industry as well as potential visitors, who can utilize VTs to determine whether targeted tourism destinations are worthy of investing their resources. The findings suggest that the virtual tour experience contributes to tourists' IV by successfully piquing tourists' interest to physically visit heritage sites in the future. The virtual tour could be utilized to generate demand in times of temporary replacement or closure. Destination marketing organizations and destination management companies should consider the technical and sensory aspects of VTs, specifically prioritizing the hedonic motivation factor.
Originality/value
This study integrates the UTAUT2 and theory of substitutability to shed light on the adoption of technological alternatives in the heritage tourism context. Importantly, this study serves as the pioneer effort in examining the interplay of perceived substitutability in the relationship between IA and IV.
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Wei Wang, Yuting Xu, Yenchun Jim Wu and Mark Goh
Information distortion affects the perception of quality, which, in turn, influences investment decisions and determines the pledge results of fundraising. This study combines…
Abstract
Purpose
Information distortion affects the perception of quality, which, in turn, influences investment decisions and determines the pledge results of fundraising. This study combines signalling theory with persuasion theory to empirically study the effects of linguistic information distortion from fraudulent cues on a crowdfunding campaign's fundraising outcomes using text analytics, with implications for entrepreneurs, platforms and investors.
Design/methodology/approach
This study empirically analyzes 328,974 crowdfunding projects from the Kickstarter platform. Information distortion is detected using four indicators, based on text mining analytics. An econometric model is built to estimate the impact of information distortion, while the predictive power of the information distortion is detected through machine learning.
Findings
The results inform that distortion in the blurb, detailed description and reward statement dampen a campaign's success, but embellishing the entrepreneur's biography enhances the success of financing. Furthermore, information distortion exhibits a significant inverted U-shaped influence. The effect of the interaction terms suggests that campaigns with high pledge goals are more sensitive to information distortion, and that native-speaking entrepreneurs are adept at applying linguistic skills to promote the campaign.
Originality/value
This study provides a linguistic method to detect the influence of information distortion on crowdfunding campaigns. Further, the study offers some practical suggestions for entrepreneurs on how to generate attractive narratives, and contributes to the investor's decision-making and informs the platform's promotion strategy.
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Yong Qiu, Yuting Gao, Jianting Liu, Wenzhou Wang, Yalin Tian and Xiaoran Sun
The continuous upgrading of new technologies and rapid changes in their external environment have made organizations more dependent than ever on the ability of their employees to…
Abstract
Purpose
The continuous upgrading of new technologies and rapid changes in their external environment have made organizations more dependent than ever on the ability of their employees to quickly identify problems and make timely course corrections. This dependency is not limited to individual employee voice but extends to the collective voice of the team. In the Chinese context, collective silence prevails. Following social identity theory, this study aims to explore the mechanisms and conditional processes underlying the relationship between team faultlines and team voice behavior and examine whether there are differences between the effects of objective and perceived faultlines.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed model was tested through questionnaires with 377 team members from 71 teams, which were conducted through team leader–member pairing survey. The correlation and hierarchical stepwise regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses rigorously, and the questionnaire data was analyzed using SPSS 26.0, AMOS 25.0 and R 3.6.1.
Findings
The results show that both objective and perceived faultlines have a negative impact on team voice behavior and that the latter has a stronger negative effect. Team psychological safety mediates the relationship between team faultlines and team voice behavior. In addition, benevolent leadership, moral leadership and Zhongyong thinking positively moderate the negative effect of objective faultlines on team voice behavior; Zhongyong thinking also moderates the mediating effect of team psychological safety on the relationship between objective faultlines and team voice behavior.
Originality/value
The results of this study provide a deeper understanding of team faultlines and team voice behavior, and practical implications are provided for managers and future researchers to improve voice behavior in organizations.
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Jang-Won Moon, Yuting An and William Norman
The purpose of this paper is to adopt the uses and gratifications theory to tourism.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to adopt the uses and gratifications theory to tourism.