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This study investigates how perceived political corruption, a generally overlooked corruption type, relates to firms' new product development (NPD) through perceived regulatory obstacles. It also examines firms' perceptions of business association support in this relationship, considering these associations' potential support for NPD.

This study conducted an empirical analysis of 1,663 firms in Turkey, a country noted for a history of legislative corruption, and in which there are strong business associations. Drawing the data from the World Bank's 2019 Enterprise Surveys Dataset, this study tested the hypotheses via the two-stage factor score regression method.

This study finds that perceived political corruption significantly relates to NPD negatively through perceived regulatory obstacles. It also finds that the perceived support of business associations to NPD is significantly greater when firms perceive regulatory obstacles but only slight political corruption.

As far as political corruption is concerned, this study reveals that corruption can also be the cause of regulatory obstacles, expanding the common view of corruption as a means of overcoming regulatory obstacles to NPD. In addition, it introduces the role of business associations in this relationship by revealing their support to NPD for different levels of perceived political corruption and regulatory obstacles.

Given the popularity of online health communities (OHCs) and medical question-and-answer (Q&A) services, it is increasingly important to understand what constitutes useful answers and user-adopted standards in healthcare domain. However, few studies provide insights into how health information characteristics, provider characteristics and recipient characteristics jointly influence user information adoption decisions. To fill this research gap, this study examines the combined effects of physicians' certainty tone as information characteristics, seniority as provider characteristics and disease severity as recipient characteristics on patients' health information adoption.

Drawing on dual-process theory and information adoption model, an extended information adoption model is established in this study to examine the effect of attitude certainty on patients' health information adoption, and the moderating effects of online seniority and offline seniority, as well as patient motivation level—disease severity. Utilizing logit regression models, the authors empirically tested the hypotheses based on 4,224 Q&A records from a popular Chinese OHC.

The results show that (1) attitude certainty has a significant positive impact on patients' health information adoption, (2) the relationship between attitude certainty and information adoption is negatively moderated by physicians' online seniority, but is positively moderated by offline seniority; (3) there is a negative three-way interaction effect of attitude certainty, online seniority and disease severity on patients' health information adoption.

This study extends the information adoption model to examine the two-way interaction between argument quality and source reliability, as well as the three-way interaction with user motivation level, especially for health information adoption in the healthcare field. These findings also provide direct practical applications for knowledge contributors and OHCs.

This paper attempts to develop a simple, static model of tax administration that is capable of explaining the widespread collusive petty tax administration corruption observed in developing countries.

This paper utilizes a positivist research framework and adopts a theoretical method of analysis, although secondary data will also be mentioned to support theoretical arguments whenever it is appropriate to do so.

A high rate of collusive tax corruption is inevitable in developing countries.

The model is static and needs to be extended into a dynamic model.

Traditional enforcement tools such as higher audits or a higher penalty regime against tax evasion do not work. Tax simplification can lessen the incidence of tax corruption.

Fighting tax corruption requires significant changes in the attitudes of taxpayers and tax auditors.

This paper combines the literature on Kantian economics and tax compliance in an innovative fashion.

Green demarketing, which promotes anti-consumption as a more extreme sustainability tactic, could help consumers and societies move toward healthier consumption patterns while building strong, long-lasting relationships with consumers. As even the most committed brands find the need to oscillate between demarketing and conventional marketing for survival, this research tests how the congruency of the campaign shown on a brand's home page (owned media) and a following retargeting ad (paid media) could impact perceived congruency and further downstream effects. In doing so, this research proposes that the media context (i.e. news or shopping browsing context) in which the retargeting ad is embedded could determine how much congruency of the demarketing campaign across owned and paid media matters.

An experiment with a 2 (home page content: green vs. demarketing) × 2 (retargeting ad content: product vs. demarketing) × 2 (browsing context: shopping vs. news) between-subjects factorial design was employed with an online panel of 430 participants. The participants first saw the brand's home page content, then were assigned to a website browsing context where the retargeting ad of the brand was embedded.

In a news browsing context, users perceived higher congruency when product retargeting ads (vs. demarketing) were shown after a green home page exposure and when demarketing retargeting ads (vs. products) were delivered after a demarketing home page. The elevated perceived congruency successfully led to higher ad argument and ad attitude. These differences were not present in a shopping browsing context. These results showed that the congruency between the home page and the retargeting ad for demarketing campaigns mattered more in certain media contexts (i.e. news browsing context).

The study closes the empirical gap in demarketing brand activism campaigns by demonstrating when and how congruency between multiple owned and paid channels for demarketing campaigns impacts consumer responses. This study provides evidence of how the match of the demarketing campaign shown on a brand's home page and a following retargeting ad could impact perceived congruency and further downstream effects of ad argument and ad attitude while considering different browsing context effects.

This study investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots persuade customers to accept their recommendations in the online shopping context.

Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, this study establishes a research model to reveal the antecedents and internal mechanisms of customers' adoption of AI chatbot recommendations. The authors tested the model with survey data from 530 AI chatbot users.

The results show that in the AI chatbot recommendation adoption process, central and peripheral cues significantly affected a customer's intention to adopt an AI chatbot's recommendation, and a customer's cognitive and emotional trust in the AI chatbot mediated the relationships. Moreover, a customer's mind perception of the AI chatbot, including perceived agency and perceived experience, moderated the central and peripheral paths, respectively.

This study has theoretical and practical implications for AI chatbot designers and provides management insights for practitioners to enhance a customer's intention to adopt an AI chatbot's recommendation.

1. The study investigates customers' adoption of AI chatbots' recommendation.

2. The authors develop research model based on ELM theory to reveal central and peripheral cues and paths.

3. The central and peripheral cues are generalized according to cooperative principle theory.

4. Central cues include recommendation reliability and accuracy, and peripheral cues include human-like empathy and recommendation choice.

5. Central and peripheral cues affect customers' adoption to recommendation through trust in AI.

6. Customers' mind perception positively moderates the central and peripheral paths.

The study investigates customers' adoption of AI chatbots' recommendation.

The authors develop research model based on ELM theory to reveal central and peripheral cues and paths.

The central and peripheral cues are generalized according to cooperative principle theory.

Central cues include recommendation reliability and accuracy, and peripheral cues include human-like empathy and recommendation choice.

Central and peripheral cues affect customers' adoption to recommendation through trust in AI.

Customers' mind perception positively moderates the central and peripheral paths.

Many brands claim they were born by coincidence, yet the effects and contingencies of this communication strategy are little understood by extant marketing research on unexpected events. This study aims to investigate how consumers react to brand communications portraying a coincidental vs planned origin.

This research presents five experimental studies embedding coincidental brand origins into different types of marketing communications (i.e. crowdfunding campaigns, visual ads and brand biographies).

This research finds that coincidental brand origins increase persuasion (measured as money pledged to a crowdfunding campaign, overall brand equity and purchase intention) but only for consumers high in need for cognition (NFC). This effect is mediated by processing enjoyment, as the intrinsic need for thinking that characterizes high NFC consumers is satisfied by the opportunity to process the coincidence. Further to process, the authors show that explicitly providing an explanation for the coincidence makes the effect disappear, as this deprives high-NFC consumers of the opportunity to autonomously engage in and enjoy the cognitive process.

Brand managers able to leverage coincidences in their storytelling efforts should target high-NFC consumers and should not provide an explanation for the coincidences.

This research advances the limited literature on how consumers react to coincidences in a marketing context, the understanding of how brand communication strategies persuade consumers through information processing and the NFC literature.

Product presentation plays a critical role in influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions in online shopping. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of text-image information on online product presentation pages on sales. This study also specifically explores the moderating role of celebrity endorsements in the relationship between text-image presentation information and sales.

This study is based on regression analysis using data sets from the largest online book retailer in China, Dangdang.com.

The results of this study show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between word count and book sales. Conversely, image quantity has a positive linear effect on book sales. Furthermore, celebrity endorsements moderate the relationship between word count and sales in two distinct ways. First, the positive effect of increasing word count from low to medium is enlarged by increasing the number of celebrity endorsers. Second, the turning point of the inverse-U relationship between word count and sales rank moves to the right as the number of endorsers increases.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the effects of text-image quantity on sales across the full continuum. This study adds understanding on how information load might have distinct consequences on the processing performance of text and images. Furthermore, this study investigates how sales are impacted by the quantity of celebrity endorsers in relation to textual and pictorial information in online shopping contexts, extending our knowledge of the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements.

This study examined the differential effects of printed advertisements with luxury and nonluxury brands on consumer brand attitude persuasion using a qualitative experimental approach.

The authors adopted a qualitative experimental approach and the authors conducted two experiments over six months. In the first experiment, participants were asked to view five print advertisements related to five different luxury brands. In the second experiment, the same participants were asked to view another five print advertisements on non-luxury brands. The qualitative thematic differences for each brand were analyzed using NVivo software, employing the theoretical assumptions of Petty and Cacioppo's (1981) elaboration likelihood model (ELM).

In experiments 1 and 2, it was identified that brand experience, personalized brand experience, product quality, product quantity, personal image-conscious, nonpersonal image-conscious, affordability and unaffordability as the main thematic findings leading to consumer attitude persuasion.

The two main contributions are as follows: theoretically, applying a social psychology theory to the advertising industry offers an understanding of the social cognition stages of a human mindset. As a practical implication, this study's findings guide advertising agencies, marketers and salespeople regarding how to design effective print advertisements in a way that persuades consumer attitudes.

Through the theoretical assumptions of Petty and Cacioppo's (1981) ELM, this paper can be considered one of the first studies to combine social psychology and advertising to investigate the differential effects on consumer brand attitude persuasion for luxury and nonluxury brands.

This study aims at building a framework for the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) response under the social media environment. The elaboration likelihood model was adopted to explain how message source credibility and message appeal jointly influence the eWOM response process, while source credibility provides a central route and message appeal plays a peripheral route for information processing.

This study used a scenario design to test the decision behavior in the Facebook environment through message content manipulation. A convenience sampling method was adopted in this study. We collected 203 valid questionnaires and tested this research model with LISREL 8.8. This study used a two-stage structural equation modeling data analysis method with LISREL 8.8, by which the measurement model was assessed through confirmatory factor analysis for the reliability and validity of the research model, and the causal relationship among factors was assessed through exploratory factor analysis .

The results showed that 53% variance of eWOM responses could be explained by message source credibility and emotional message appeal from the elaboration likelihood model perspective. Message source credibility plays a central role in the social media environment. The model was further tested with a demographic profile analysis for both gender and age. It is found that a female user is influenced by both source credibility and emotional appeal, but a male user is only influenced by message source credibility. The mature age group is more responsive to eWOM messages.

The sample might not represent all social networking sites (SNS) users. The participants represent a small segment of the Facebook population around the globe. Secondly, this research design could be improved by using more recreational messages to test the effects of message appeal and message source credibility. Thirdly, the mobile phone is a type of physical product rather than an experiential product. Future studies could try to identify the same eWOM determinants with different SNS functions, for example, the inbox message function. Similarly, Facebook users are allowed to use both text and pictures to disseminate promotional messages.

This study provides an insight for SNS administrators regarding the determinants of driving more customer responses toward a message. Message source credibility and message appeal are identified as the antecedents for eWOM responses in SNS. Companies could make use of this finding to improve their marketing communication strategy in SNS. The finding can inform administrators of the importance of focusing on both customers’ psychological state and message attributes during the dissemination of promotional messages to improve the efficiency of the promotional effort. Companies aimed at receiving different types of eWOM responses in SNS may need to consider other factors for creating their promotional messages.

Previous studies have mainly identified factors influencing eWOM responses from the people-centered variables such as personal traits and social relationships. This study proposes that the eWOM response is a dual information processing process that can be explained by the ELM. When a user processes information in SNS, he follows both the central route and the peripheral route (i.e. source credibility and message appeal) which can influence the eWOM response. It is the first time that the source credibility is investigated as the central route in ELM model.

Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), the authors examine the influence of perceived professor teaching qualities, as central cues, on online professor ratings. Also, our study investigates how the volume and period of reviews, as peripheral cues, affect online professor ratings.

Leveraging stratified random sampling, the authors collect reviews of 892 Information Systems professors from 250 American universities. The authors employ regression models while conducting robustness tests through multi-level logistic regression and causal inference methods.

Our results suggest that the central route from perceived professor qualities to online professor ratings is significant, including most qualitative pedagogical factors except positive assessment. In addition to course difficulty, the effect of the peripheral route is limited due to deficient diagnosticity.

Our primary concern about the data validity is a lack of a competing and complementary dataset. However, an institutional evaluation survey or an experimental study can corroborate our findings in future research.

Online professor review sites can enhance their perceived diagnosticity and credibility by increasing review vividness and promoting site interactivity. In addition to traditional institutional evaluations, professors can obtain insightful feedback from review sites to improve their teaching effectiveness.

To our best knowledge, this study is the first attempt to employ the ELM and accessibility-diagnosticity theory in explicating the information processing of online professor reviews. It also sheds light on various determinants and routes to persuasion, thus providing a novel theoretical perspective on online professor reviews.