Search results

On the basis of the approach-avoidance motivation theory, this study aims to examine the role of information confusion in influencing consumer switching intention among social commerce platforms, with the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of social overload.

This study applied a multi-method quantitative approach including a survey and two experiments. Data were obtained from consumers on popular social commerce platforms in China. The survey's sample size was 327 respondents, whereas a total of 1,621 consumers participated in the two experiments.

Findings from the survey reveal that information confusion affects switching intention directly and indirectly via emotional exhaustion. Moreover, social overload moderates the emotional exhaustion–switching intention relationship and the indirect impact of information confusion on switching intention. Results of the two experiments further confirm the relationships found in the survey.

This study develops and validates a mediation and moderation model which expectedly serves as a framework to better explain consumer switching intention on social commerce platforms. The study also offers fresh insights into consumer switching intention in the unique context of social commerce in an emerging market (i.e. China), which has been largely ignored in the prior literature.

Extant research shows mixed results on the impact of expressed negative emotions on donations in online charitable crowdfunding. This study solves the puzzle by examining how different types of negative emotions (i.e. sadness, anxiety and fear) expressed in crowdfunding project descriptions affect donations.

Data on 15,653 projects across four categories (medical assistance, education assistance, disaster assistance and poverty assistance) from September 2013 to May 2019 come from a leading online crowdfunding platform in China. Text analysis and regression models serve to test the hypotheses.

In the medical assistance category, the expression of sadness has an inverted U-shaped effect on donations, while the expression of anxiety has a negative effect. An appropriate number of sadness words is helpful but should not exceed five times. In the education assistance and disaster assistance categories, the expression of sadness has a positive effect on donations, but disclosure of anxiety and fear has no influence on donations. Expressions of sadness, anxiety and fear have no impact on donations in the poverty assistance category.

This work has important implications for fundraisers on how to regulate the fundraisers' expressions of negative emotions in a project's description to attract donations. These insights are also relevant for online crowdfunding platforms.

Online crowdfunding research often studies negative emotions as a whole and does not differentiate project types. The current work contributes by empirically testing the impact of three types of negative emotions on donations across four major online crowdfunding categories.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response model and relationship marketing theory, the effect of different dimensions of Servicescape (Ambience, Cleanliness, Functionality, Spatial Layout, Employee Service Quality) on Customer Satisfaction and Behavioral Intention in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic are considered.

The study takes a quantitative approach, applying structural equation model using partial least square structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. A total of 360 responses were collected using questionnaires distributed to different individuals who visited private hospitals in the past two months in India.

Contradicting previous research, this study found that among servicescape dimensions, employee service quality had the maximum influence on customer satisfaction and cleanliness does not have any significant impact on customer satisfaction as hypothesized. Mediation results show that customer satisfaction has a partial mediation effect for all servicescape dimensions except ambience, as both direct and indirect effects are significant. Importance-performance map analysis was performed on the responses collected, and it was found that employee service quality is the most important dimension affecting servicescape, followed by functionality and spatial layout. Thus, health-care institutions should focus on these factors to keep their customers satisfied.

Past studies have focused on the roles of servicescape and customer satisfaction separately. The authors have extended the literature by examining the combined effects of both servicescape and customer satisfaction. The findings from the study, therefore, help in developing a deeper understanding of the literature on the behavior intention relationship in the context of health care, as well as in service marketing.

The study aims to examine fast fashion consumers' negative in-store experiences focusing on the effect of the two store environment factors, product overload and store ambiance, on their confusion and consequent shopping avoidance behavior.

A research model of fast fashion consumers' confusion and store avoidance behavior is proposed using the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework. A pretest and the main online survey with 281 samples are analyzed, and the structural equation modeling (SEM) is conducted to test the proposed model.

The SEM results support the proposed paths statistically. Consumers' confusion, measured with the two dimensions, inefficiency and helplessness, is significantly influenced by their perceived product overload and negative perception of store ambiance in the fast fashion shopping environment. Subsequently, fast fashion consumers' confusion results in less time spent in the store.

The study sheds light on utilitarian shopping value in the fast fashion shopping environment by focusing on the fast fashion consumers' confusion in association with overloaded information caused by too many products and store ambiance.

The study implies that improving fast fashion stores' inherent issues with too many products and store ambiance might help consumers mitigate their confusion and prevent customer attrition. However, the study includes only two factors. Future studies may include other various fast fashion store factors. Additionally, one of the dimensions of confusion, irritation, did not emerge in this study. More work is needed to investigate fast fashion consumers' confusion, such as using a multigroup analysis by age.

Integrating appraisal theories of discrete emotions with the emotion regulation literature, this study aims to explore the relationships between exploitative leadership and certain types of counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB). Besides, this study seeks to examine the mediating roles of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and fear) and the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal within the proposed relationships.

Based on time-lagged survey data from 440 Chinese employees, this study conducted hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping approach to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that exploitative leadership was positively related to approach-oriented CWB and avoidance-oriented CWB. In addition, this study found that anger mediated the relationship between exploitative leadership and approach-oriented CWB, whereas fear mediated the relationship between exploitative leadership and avoidance-oriented CWB. Further, cognitive reappraisal buffered the positive effects of exploitative leadership on anger and fear and the indirect effects of exploitative leadership on approach-oriented CWB (via anger) and avoidance-oriented CWB (via fear).

Managers should reduce leaders' exploitation and enhance employees' skills on emotional management and cognitive reappraisal.

First, by verifying the effects of exploitative leadership on both approach-oriented and avoidance-oriented CWB, this study adds to the literature on exploitive leadership and provides a more complete understating of the relationship between exploitative leadership and workplace deviance. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the process through which exploitative leadership affects employees by demonstrating the novel mediating roles of discrete emotions (i.e. anger and fear) through the lens of appraisal theories of discrete emotions. Third, by verifying the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal, this study provides insights into the boundary conditions of the influences of exploitive leadership.

The purpose of this meta-analysis is to encapsulate the outcomes and generate meaningful conclusions by examining the factors that influence consumers' purchase and non-purchase behaviour intention in a virtual reality retailing context.

This study integrates the outcomes from 52 studies, including 403 relationships involving 19,188 samples. The analysis was conducted using R-metafor and AMOS software.

The findings indicate that key factors that influence purchase and non-purchase behavioural intentions are virtual reality (VR)characteristics, virtual reality experience and consumer attitudes. VR experience is the strongest predictor for purchase decisions in virtual environment ,while consumer attitude towards VR most strongly influences the non-purchase behaviour of the consumers. Furthermore, the age of the respondents, cultural backgrounds (high vs low power distance) and gender moderate the relationship between consumers' attitudes and purchase and behaviour intentions.

Marketers can positively influence consumer attitudes and behavioural intentions by prioritizing the design of the virtual environment and facilitating unique experiences (by manipulating different sensory stimuli) in virtual retailing.

The current meta-analysis reconciles and reinforces the findings in the extant literature and provides a robust empirical generalization of the critical factors that influence consumers' purchase or behavioural intentions in a virtual retailing context.

Via the lens of the ego-depletion phenomenon (Baumeister et al., 1998) and Higgins' (1998) regulatory focus theory, this paper seeks to explain why current controlled communications are failing to achieve coherence between people's free will and their actions pursuing sustainable goals in a society. This paper explains how ego-depletion triggered by controlled communications can lead to confusion and decision fatigue in a society, thus potentially sabotaging people's participation in sustainable behaviour.

The authors applied Jaakkola's (2020) theory synthesis approach to integrate concepts from previously unconnected disciplines in order to generate novel insights in the area of controlled communication management.

The authors develop a theoretical framework and present research propositions that can help advance research and the discourse at the intersection of controlled communication and self-regulation theories.

This paper possesses the limitations associated with conceptual papers, e.g. the lack of empirical support of the study’s conceptual arguments.

This paper generates novel insights to assist communication practitioners and policymakers to improve vehicles and mechanisms of controlled communication with the public regarding sustainable goals pursuit.

To the best of authors' knowledge, this is one of the first papers that has merged the domains of self-regulation, ego-depletion, and controlled communication in an integrative framework in order to explain the mechanisms of how to enhance the effectiveness of controlled communication associated with sustainable goals pursuit.

This study aims to assess both internal and external factors that impact consumer attitudes and intentions with regard to the purchase of non-deceptive counterfeits. More specifically, this study examines the impact of integrity, brand consciousness, performance risk and social risk on the attitude and in turn on the purchase intention of consumers towards non-deceptive counterfeits.

A total of 679 valid responses from the university students in two different Gulf countries, namely, Oman (264) and Qatar (415) were gathered through a self-administered structured questionnaire and analysed through partial least square‐structural equation modeling.

All the predictors of consumer attitude appeared significant in both country samples except integrity. However, brand consciousness appeared insignificant in the sample of Oman. In addition, Purchase intention towards the non-deceptive counterfeits was significantly predicted by attitude and subjective norm in both samples.

In the domain of non-deceptive counterfeit literature, the findings of the study will substantially add value. Particularly, in the Gulf country context, the impact of internal psychological and external risk factors on the attitude and purchase intention of non-deceptive counterfeits will enhance the insights of existing literature and extend and proof the robustness of the theory of reasoned action.

The purpose of this study was to propose and examine a conceptual model delineating how two different types of appearance-related self-discrepancies (i.e. the ideal appearance self-discrepancy vs. the ought appearance self-discrepancy) influence retail therapy shopping behavior through motivational route (i.e. approach motivation vs. avoidance motivation).

This study utilized the online survey for data collection. Using a national sample of 532 US consumers who had retail therapy shopping experience, the conceptual model was tested through various statistical techniques, including confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Results revealed that the ought appearance self-discrepancy positively influenced retail therapy shopping behavior through avoidance motivation and emotion-focused coping strategy, whereas the ideal appearance self-discrepancy did not influence retail therapy shopping behavior. The results also suggested that the effect of two different types of appearance-related self-discrepancies on motivations in retail therapy shopping context varied depending on the gender (i.e. male vs. female).

Results suggest implications regarding potential target market strategies to retailers and provide a better understanding of retail therapy shoppers' characteristics and psychological mechanisms for consumer researchers.

Contractual services are characterized by features such as termination fees, long-term commitment, and complex terms. When customers find better deals from other providers, they may want to switch, but contractual obligations prevent them from doing so. Thus, this study aims to draw upon the stimulus-organism-response paradigm and theories of emotion regulation to examine how punitive switching costs (PSCs) can evoke negative emotions (NEs) from customers and, consequently, lead to negative behavioral responses in contractual service settings.

This study collected data from 395 customers of telecommunications companies, fitness centers, tutoring firms/centers, and house leasing companies in Taiwan. We tested the hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling via SmartPLS 3.0.

The results show that NEs partially mediate the relationship between PSC and customers’ switching intention and negative word-of-mouth. This study also finds alternative attractiveness (AA) and service recovery (SR) do not moderate the PSCs–NEs relationship, but AA does directly influence NEs.

First, this study contributes to the literature on switching costs by exploring how PSC exerts a detrimental impact on behavioral responses. Second, this study adds to the literature on service failures by identifying the mediating role of NEs in such a relationship.