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Both journal self-citations and exchanged citations have the effect of increasing a journal’s impact factor, which may be deceptive. The purpose of this paper is to analyse academic journal quality and research impact using quality-weighted citations vs total citations, based on the widely used Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (ISI). A new Index of Citations Quality (ICQ) is presented, based on quality-weighted citations.

The new index is used to analyse the leading 500 journals in both the sciences and social sciences, as well as finance and accounting, using quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs) that are based on alternative transformations of citations.

It is shown that ICQ is a useful additional measure to 2-year impact factor (2YIF) and other well-known RAMs for the purpose of evaluating the impact and quality, as well as ranking, of journals as it contains information that has very low correlations with the information contained in the well-known RAMs for both the sciences and social sciences, and finance and accounting.

Journals can, and do, inflate the number of citations through self-citation practices, which may be coercive. Another method for distorting journal impact is through a set of journals agreeing to cite each other, that is, by exchanging citations. This may be less coercive than self-citations, but is nonetheless unprofessional and distortionary.

The premise underlying the use of citations data is that higher quality journals generally have a higher number of citations. The impact of citations can be distorted in a number of ways, both consciously and unconsciously.

Regardless of whether self-citations arise through collusive practices, the increase in citations will affect both 2YIF and 5-year impact factor (5YIF), though not Eigenfactor and Article Influence. This leads to an ICQ, where a higher ICQ would generally be preferred to lower. Unlike 5YIF, which is increased by journal self-citations and exchanged citations, and Eigenfactor and Article Influence, both of which are affected by quality-weighted exchanged citations, ICQ will be less affected by exchanged citations. In the absence of any empirical evidence to the contrary, 5YIF and AI are assumed to be affected similarly by exchanged citations.

The Basel II Accord requires that banks and other authorized deposit‐taking institutions (ADIs) communicate their daily risk forecasts to the appropriate monetary authorities at the beginning of each trading day, using one or more risk models to measure value‐at‐risk (VaR). The risk estimates of these models are used to determine capital requirements and associated capital costs of ADIs, depending in part on the number of previous violations, whereby realized losses exceed the estimated VaR. The purpose of this paper is to address the question of risk management of risk, namely VaR of VIX futures prices.

The authors examine how different risk management strategies performed before, during and after the 2008‐2009 global financial crisis (GFC).

The authors find that an aggressive strategy of choosing the supremum of the univariate model forecasts is preferred to the other alternatives, and is robust during the GFC.

The paper examines how different risk management strategies performed before, during and after the 2008‐2009 GFC, and finds that an aggressive strategy of choosing the supremum of the univariate model forecasts is preferred to the other alternatives, and is robust during the GFC.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors that affect users’ adoption of e-books using an extension of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) that includes the following factors: environmental concerns, perceived benefits, and benevolence trust.

The authors analyzed survey responses from 343 participants using structural equation modeling to examine the hypothesized relationships in this research model.

The results show that users’ adoption of e-books is determined by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, environmental concern, perceived benefit, and benevolence trust.

The authors restricted this study to consumers’ adoption of e-books. Further studies could examine consumer’s adoption of other mediums, such as cutting-edge information technologies.

The results suggest that marketers should consider altering their methods of promoting e-books to attract consumers and further affect their usage intention.

This study proposes and tests an extended UTAUT model that includes the additional factors of environmental concern, perceived benefit, and benevolence trust in order to examine the influence of these factors on e-book adoption. The findings are particularly useful for assisting managers to increase e-book adoption.

To obtain a competitive advantage in the logistics market, international express companies should design services to stimulate customers’ usage intention by understanding customers’ affective perceptions (or in Japanese, Kansei) of the service offerings. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationships among the service elements of international express, customer Kansei perceptions, and intentions to use the service, to provide new ideas for the design of international express services (IESs).

By using Kansei engineering approach, customers’ Kansei perceptions related to elements of IES are first determined, and the logistic regression technique is then used to analyze three constructed models based on the relationships among the service elements of international express, customers’ Kansei perceptions, and usage intention.

Accordingly, five critical service elements that correspond to four vital Kansei words related to usage intention were obtained based on cross-comparisons of the results of three models. The findings have important implications for international express managers, in that the priorities in designing services should be those service elements that favorably elicit certain Kansei perceptions among customers and effectively lead to customers’ usage intention in the pre-purchase phase. Moreover, some important missing Kansei perceptions further derived from customers’ real service experiences in the post-purchase stage should be incorporated into future design considerations.

This study incorporated customers’ Kansei perceptions into the procedure of IES design. By understanding the service elements and feelings that customers deem important, international express companies can improve the content of existing services and strengthen the design of new services to increase customers’ behavioral intentions.

Unique product design is a highlight of sustainable branding. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether product design affects customers’ psychological responses (i.e. cognitive and affective responses) to smartphones, and, in turn, affects their brand loyalty (i.e. attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty), further advancing the knowledge of product design and brand management.

This work used survey data from 456 Taiwanese with experience using smartphone. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the proposed model and hypotheses.

The results indicate that the product design significantly affects both cognitive response and affective response, which, in turn, significantly affect both attitudinal brand loyalty and behavioral brand loyalty. The findings also suggest that the moderating effect of product involvement on the relationship between product design and affective response is statistically significant, although it does not positively and significantly moderate the link between product design and cognitive response.

This study has two main limitations. First, this study was conducted in the context of smartphones, thus potentially constraining the generalization of the results to other industries. Second, the data in this study were obtained from a cross-sectional design.

These findings can permit companies to generate more brand loyalty in their customers and guide their management of assets and marketing activities.

This paper presents new insights into the nature and importance of product design in brand value.

By applying Kano model, this study attempts to investigate the categorization of home delivery quality elements derived from service convenience model and their impact on customer satisfaction.

In this paper, the research framework and hypotheses are constructed through a literature review. Kano model is applied to classify the home delivery service elements into five quality attributes and gender is included to understand the difference of customer perception on the obtained quality elements. Statistical analyses of the collected questionnaires were computed based on the 476 effective responses regarding the home delivery service.

The results confirm that customers' perception of home delivery service elements are classified into one‐dimensional and must‐be attributes by Kano model, while this study contributes to the creation of attractive elements that significantly affect the customer satisfaction and owning an enormous potential to further differentiate competitors. Customer satisfaction is positively correlated with different types of service convenience. It also suggests that the customers with different gender have significantly different views to quality elements of home delivery service.

The major contribution of this study is that it attempts to examine the categorization of home delivery quality elements derived from service convenience model and their impact on customer satisfaction.

This paper attempts to investigate the casual relationships among service convenience, perceived service value, perceived service guarantee strength, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. Although previous studies have addressed the importance of these variables, the understanding of the mediating effect of customer‐perceived service value and the moderating effect of customer‐perceived service guarantee strength on customer post‐purchasing behaviours still remain key issues.

A statistical analysis of the collected questionnaires was computed based on the 498 usable responses from the four branches of the selected Chinese chain restaurant. Structural equation modelling is the essential analysis methodology used to examine the hypothesised relationships among the variables.

Analysis confirms that customer satisfaction is positively influenced by service convenience, whereas customer loyalty is positively influenced by customer satisfaction. Furthermore, customer satisfaction is indirectly influenced by service convenience through perceived service value. Finally, another key finding is the relationship between service convenience and customer satisfaction, which is stronger for customers who perceive high service guarantee strength than for those who perceive low service guarantee strength.

The study contributes to a conceptual model that, reflecting the mediating role of customer‐perceived service value and the moderating role of customer‐perceived service guarantee strength, indicates the effect of service convenience on customers' post‐purchasing behaviours.

Using the concept of loss aversion, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty in the home delivery industry. The second purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of service convenience in the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty. Furthermore, this paper attempts to demonstrate the existence of a moderating effect either on the service quality loss (SQLOSS)‐customer loyalty link, or on the service quality gain (SQGAIN)‐customer loyalty link, or on both.

In this paper, the research model and hypotheses are constructed through a literature review. Data are collected by a questionnaire survey, and the adapted SERVQUAL scale is taken as the measurement instrument. Structural equation modeling is adopted to confirm the above relationships.

From the results come the finding that a loss in service quality has a greater effect on customer loyalty than that of a SQGAIN in the home delivery industry. This paper also proves that the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty is moderated by service convenience.

This paper demonstrates the effect of asymmetric response of service quality on customer loyalty.

As huge environmental impacts caused by the coffee industry are significant and controversial in the course from cultivation to consumption, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not different types of green claims based on the product lifecycle can lead to different extents of green psychological variables including purchase intention.

The green claims of Starbucks were chosen as the research target for this study not only because the coffee chain store is working on the “Starbucks” Shared Planet’ program, which makes a commitment to do business in ways that are good for people and the planet, but also because such a program can be categorized into three major green message elements on the basis of the product lifecycle. A total of 920 valid self-reported questionnaires collected in Taiwan were used for this empirical analysis.

One-way ANOVA results reveal that all of the three green claims of Starbucks can lead to consumers building up the same level of green brand image of this company, with “ethical sourcing” significantly possessing more impacts on the other green psychological variables (i.e. green trust, green satisfaction, green brand equity, and green purchase intention).

The empirical results and findings from this study are helpful to the coffee industry marketers if they, in formulating various promotion campaigns, can communicate with the consumers with an eye to increasing their green brand image and other green psychological variables, including green purchase intention.

This study is among the first to introduce different types of green claims on a basis of the product lifecycle to examine whether or not consumers’ green psychological variables will be different.