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1 – 10 of 569Jie Gu, Xiaolun Wang and Tian Lu
The purpose of this paper is to explain the “good-to-good” app switching phenomenon that has not been specifically addressed in the prior switching literature. Drawing on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explain the “good-to-good” app switching phenomenon that has not been specifically addressed in the prior switching literature. Drawing on the consumer learning theory, this study explores how external social word of mouth (WOM) and internal satisfaction influence app users’ switching intention through social learning route and analogical learning route. This study also examines the moderating effect of app heterogeneity.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was used to collect data. Two categories of mobile apps with different levels of within-category heterogeneity were targeted in survey questions. A total of 525 valid survey responses were collected.
Findings
Social WOM about a competing app increases users’ switching intention through both social norm influence and social information influence, resulting in a direct effect on switching intention and an indirect effect through the perceived attractiveness of a competing app. Users’ satisfaction with an adopted app positively influences the perceived attractiveness of an unadopted competing app, offering evidence for analogical learning in user switching. Meanwhile, users’ satisfaction imposes a direct negative effect on switching intention. A higher level of within-category heterogeneity strengthens (weakens) the positive effect of social WOM (satisfaction) on users’ perceived attractiveness of a competing app.
Originality/value
This study complements the existing switching literature by disentangling the “good-to-good” switching phenomenon in the mobile app market from the consumer learning perspective. This study extends the understanding of cross-category user switching by considering different levels of product heterogeneity.
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Elizabeth Chapman, Edward W. Miles and Todd Maurer
Previous research on negotiation skills has focused mostly on the negotiation itself and tactics used when bargaining, while little research has examined the process by which…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research on negotiation skills has focused mostly on the negotiation itself and tactics used when bargaining, while little research has examined the process by which people become effective negotiators. The purpose of this paper is to develop an initial model from an intra-organizational perspective to outline the factors that contribute to the development of negotiation skills and behaviors by employees.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper relies on prior research and existing theory to focus on the types of developmental and learning experiences and processes that lead to the acquisition of three specific types of key negotiation skills and behaviors.
Findings
Distributive, integrative, and adaptable negotiation skills are developed most effectively via different learning and development activities, respectively. Additionally, unique individual difference and situational variables could contribute to particular negotiation behaviors, either directly or via an interaction with developmental experiences.
Practical implications
The paper proposes a model for future testing in which results can provide support for tailored/customized training and development of employee negotiation skills. Providing the correct people with the correct tools in the correct manner is always desirable by practitioners.
Originality/value
This proposed holistic model provides new insights, structure, and suggestions for more research on factors that lead to negotiation skill development and exhibition of effective negotiation behaviors. This paper goes beyond description of negotiation tactics and addresses the various negotiation contexts and the unique skills needed for each. Most importantly, the paper addresses how those skills are uniquely and most effectively developed.
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Bel G. Raggad and Michael L. Gargano
Unlike other computer‐based information systems, expert systems (ES) are characterized by the satisficing and conservative behavior of their users. Shows that the learning curve…
Abstract
Unlike other computer‐based information systems, expert systems (ES) are characterized by the satisficing and conservative behavior of their users. Shows that the learning curve may be used to model user dependency on ES technology. Even though user dependency relates to ES quality control parameters (for example, Raggad’s 13 ES quality attributes) only dynamic or late binding features really affect ES dependency: ES learning capability and ES recommendation anticipation. There is hence a learning race between the system and the user. If user learning prevails, then there will be user defection. If system learning prevails, then there will be system perfection. Proposes failure analysis based on user defection due to the absence or underutilization of machine learning. ES owners can adopt this model to design a subsystem capable of transforming user defection analysis into a strategic plan for ES management.
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This study adopts an action research approach with the aim of improving the process of career decision making among undergraduates in a business school at a “new” university in…
Abstract
Purpose
This study adopts an action research approach with the aim of improving the process of career decision making among undergraduates in a business school at a “new” university in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The study utilised unfreezing techniques, multiple case studies in conjunction with the principle of analogical encoding, and lecture input to influence the values underpinning the way students intend to engage in the process of career decision making. The paper draws on evidence collected over three cycles of an action research project and from different data sources, i.e. questionnaires, interviews and observations.
Findings
The study found that students from working class and middle class backgrounds exhibited similar types of career decision making behaviour. The students tended not to have a future orientation; they relied on informally absorbed information and their intuition rather than rational approaches to decision making; and they demonstrated an unwillingness to be instrumental and operate as “players”. The series of interventions (i.e. the unfreezing exercise, the case studies and the lecture input) resulted in shifts in attitude to career decision making and preparation, particularly for those students who engaged in all three stages of the intervention The unfreezing exercise was seen as particularly important in encouraging students to critically reflect on their career decision making.
Originality/value
This research provides new insights into the factors influencing the way undergraduates approach career decision making. It also provides suggestions for encouraging students to critically reflect on how they make career decisions and prepare for the transition to the graduate labour market.
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Hsuan-Hsuan Ku and Mei-Ju Chen
As an alternative to straight rhetorical questions, questions using analogies that invite the reader to think about the frame of reference to answer the target have been used in…
Abstract
Purpose
As an alternative to straight rhetorical questions, questions using analogies that invite the reader to think about the frame of reference to answer the target have been used in advertising to persuade. This paper aims to investigate consumer responses to the use of analogical questions in ads for incrementally new products and the important variables moderating those responses.
Design/methodology/approach
Four between-subjects experiments examined how product evaluations in response to analogical questions differ from non-analogical variants as a function of consumers’ persuasion awareness (Studies 1 and 2) and also tested if the effectiveness of an analogical question among potential consumers who are more aware of persuasion attempts might be enhanced only when it is proposed with a strong rather than a weak frame of reference (Study 3), and when the frame of reference and the target share underlying similarities (Study 4).
Findings
Analogical questions are more persuasive than non-analogical variants for participants who are more aware of persuasion attempts. Inferential fluency mediates the results. Furthermore, the positive impact of analogical questions for participants high in persuasion awareness is diminished when the frame of reference is weak or from a dissimilar domain. The same patterns are not evident for participants who are less aware of persuasion attempts.
Research limitations/implications
Drawing on the concepts of inferential fluency, this study offers an empirically-based view of how the analogical questions in advertising may bias the responses exhibited by individuals who demonstrate either a high or low level of persuasion awareness.
Practical implications
The inclusion of an analogy can lower consumers’ tendency to behave in a defensive manner by facilitating inferences about intended claims that are implicitly stated in a rhetorical question and achieve higher levels of persuasion.
Originality/value
This study contributes to prior study on rhetorical questions within a persuasion communication by adopting inferential fluency as an underlying mechanism for analyzing the impact of analogical questions and individual’s awareness of persuasion.
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Mu‐Jung Huang, Heien‐Kun Chiang, Pei‐Fen Wu and Yu‐Jung Hsieh
This study aims to propose a blackboard approach using multistrategy machine learning student modeling techniques to learn the properties of students' inconsistent behaviors…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to propose a blackboard approach using multistrategy machine learning student modeling techniques to learn the properties of students' inconsistent behaviors during their learning process.
Design/methodology/approach
These multistrategy machine learning student modeling techniques include inductive reasoning (similarity‐based learning), deductive reasoning (explanation‐based learning), and analogical reasoning (case‐based reasoning).
Findings
According to the properties of students' inconsistent behaviors, the ITS (intelligent tutoring system) may then adopt appropriate methods, such as intensifying teaching and practicing, to prevent their inconsistent behaviors from reoccurring.
Originality/value
This research sets the learning object on a single student. After the inferences are accumulated from a group of students, what kinds of students tend to have inconsistent behaviors or under what conditions the behaviors happened for most students can be learned.
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Simona D'Antone and Dwight Merunka
The purpose of this paper is to explore how brand origin (BO) cues affect the consumer’s association of a new brand with BO learning and the subsequent effects on brand image (BO…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how brand origin (BO) cues affect the consumer’s association of a new brand with BO learning and the subsequent effects on brand image (BO semiotics). An integrative theoretical framework is proposed that includes both processes.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed model is based on analogical learning theory and triadic semiotic theory.
Findings
Two types of BO knowledge form BO meanings in consumer minds: country-related categories and exemplar brands, which have a classification and/or inferential role. The brand cues (indexes or icons) used by consumers to identify BO generate one or the other type of BO knowledge. Indexes trigger the classification function of country-related categories while icons trigger the inferential role of country-related categories and exemplar brands. BO knowledge informs the meaning transfer when consumers interpret the meaning of a new brand, leading to either a transfer of relations or a transfer of attributes to the new brand.
Practical implications
Marketers should monitor BO exemplar brands that consumers use as meaning sources and carefully select the signs used in their communications to evoke BO.
Originality/value
The proposed framework contrasts with dominant categorisation perspectives, re-establishing the dual role of categories and emphasising the relevance of brand cues in BO identification and BO exemplar brands in the BO meaning transfer process. A meaning-centred perspective is adopted to integrate BO identification and the related transfer mechanisms.
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Jana Bowden and David Corkindale
To assist marketing management in the identification and targeting of consumer innovators for novel products by selectively reviewing and integrating three separate streams of…
Abstract
Purpose
To assist marketing management in the identification and targeting of consumer innovators for novel products by selectively reviewing and integrating three separate streams of research, namely, trait theory, utility‐awareness theory and contemporary cognitive theory.
Design/methodology/approach
A range of traditional and contemporary research concerned with the identification of consumer innovators is selectively reviewed and critiqued to enhance marketing management's ability to identify and target the consumer innovator segment. This research, which is addressed under three main sections: personal characteristics, utility‐awareness and cognitive structures, is then integrated to provide management with a more comprehensive approach by which to identify and target consumer innovators. Particular emphasis is placed on the contribution of recent cognitive theories.
Findings
The trait dependent approaches in particular, are found to be of limited usefulness in that they identify consumer innovators only retrospectively after initial adoption, as opposed to operating in a predictive manner. It is argued that an approach based upon consumer utility‐awareness, and the more cognitively orientated analogical learning and embedded knowledge structure approaches can provide management with increased control over the process of new product adoption within a target population.
Originality/value
This paper provides management with a new insight into the identification of the consumer innovator by integrating three existing, but somewhat disparate theoretical approaches, and suggests amore comprehensive model for this task.
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Organizational scholars continue to study “knowledge” as an important organizational resource, and there is a good understanding that knowledge transfer can boost organizational…
Abstract
Purpose
Organizational scholars continue to study “knowledge” as an important organizational resource, and there is a good understanding that knowledge transfer can boost organizational performance significantly. The power of individuals in the knowledge transfer is well established, as they can transfer tacit as well as explicit knowledge. However, recent studies have shown that organizations fail to transfer knowledge adequately. The purpose of this paper is to look at alternative modes of knowledge transfer that are still underexplored in organizations. The author focuses on two modes of knowledge transfer from an individual perspective – analogy and narratives, though often neglected, but can be most powerful for managers in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This viewpoint is prepared by an independent writer who has amalgamated several other voices from different researchers/scholars and, finally, adds his own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
The significant progress that we have made in understanding the various nuances of knowledge transfer now translates to need for focus on areas that still have scope for further inquiry. Based on current literature review, it was found that the two modes of knowledge transfer – analogy and narratives – require greater attention by managers during communicating tacit knowledge, conflict resolution, problem-solving, and organizational change.
Research limitations/implications
Storytelling and analogy allow researchers to translate charts, facts and figures into an engaging narrative that enhances its reach beyond the specialists.
Practical implications
Narratives can be used for indirectly stating uncomfortable truths and rules of the game in a society, and thereby avoid possible conflicts.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.
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By using two cognitive tools, metaphors and analogies, structural concepts can be made more observable and touchable for architects. These tools can help architects and designers…
Abstract
By using two cognitive tools, metaphors and analogies, structural concepts can be made more observable and touchable for architects. These tools can help architects and designers to physically demonstrate structural concepts for better understanding. Since familiarity with the structural concepts is imperative for architects, it is important to determine the extent in which architects sharpen and solidify their understanding of structural concept using two very valuable cognitive tools, metaphors and analogies. Although in recent years, the number of studies focusing on the usage of metaphor and analogy was on the rise, very few works have included views and opinions of correspondent users in the architectural domain. Furthermore, having both metaphor and analogy under one investigation could help the researcher to see which one, metaphor or analogy, professional architects prefer to use more and which one of them architects use in various stages in their design process. In this regard, purposive sampling was applied to collect the data from ten professional Iranian architects who had the experience of working in this domain for more than 10 years. The participants of this study went through a semi-structured interview and their reports were analysed qualitatively. The findings reveal that while designing, Iranian professional architects do not have any preferences because they can equally apply both metaphors and analogies, but when dealing with their students in academic setting, using metaphor as a cognitive tool can lead to better results. Furthermore, Iranian architects use metaphor more in the initial stages of the architectural design process because according to them this physiognomic perception enhance understanding of a design situation and stimulate creative solutions to the problem at hand. Conversely, analogy is mainly used in the concept generation phase.
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