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The purpose of this study is to examine whether the context of ad pictures differs between Chinese ads and US ads and whether it can influence consumers' ad attitudes.

An ad content analysis and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings suggest that contextualized ads appear more frequently in Chinese magazines because East Asians have a context‐dependent mode of thinking while westerners have a context‐independent mode of thinking. However, the effect of culture on advertising is moderated by product class (goods vs service), product category, and magazine category. Moreover, East Asians prefer contextualized ads to non‐contextualized ones, while westerners prefer non‐contextualized ads to contextualized ads. However, the effect of culture on ad attitudes may be moderated by ad involvement.

The limitations of this study stem from its being based on ad samples from China and its use of students to test ad attitudes.

The findings allow managers to better determine whether and under what conditions to use contextualized or non‐contextualized advertisements.

The study's examination of the effect of culture on the context of ad format and effect of context on persuasion in this context constitutes a unique and valuable contribution to the literature. The paper also contributes much to the literature by checking cultural differences across 17 magazine categories, compared to the vast majority of studies analyzing ad content between eastern and western cultures, which have been based on ads from only a few sources.

Current indexing methods used in automated bibliographic and full text information retrieval assume that knowledge can be adequately represented as a semantic network which is manipulable by means of Boolean operators. However, this semantic approach requires the user to state formally what it is that he wants to find. This paper presents an alternative argumentation‐based method. It involves representing a learned article by means of rhetorical structure rather than by a semantic representation of content.

Enterprises often use anthropomorphic images to display products. In this study, by discussing the differences of the anthropomorphic images of juxtaposition and fusion, the authors can distinguish the boundary conditions of the influence of different visual object structures on consumers' attention.

Based on schema theory and information processing theory and using eye movement methods, this study analyzed the attractiveness of anthropomorphic images to consumers under different congruence levels through experiments of 2 (congruence: high and low) *2(visual object structure: juxtaposition and fusion)*2(self-construct: interdependent and independent). This study discusses the difference in the attractiveness of interdependent and independent consumers in the context of high congruence, juxtaposition and fusion of two visual object structures.

The results show that compared with the low congruence anthropomorphic image, the high congruence anthropomorphic image can attract more attention of consumers. In the case of low compatibility of anthropomorphic images, the juxtaposition structure of anthropomorphic images is more attractive to consumers than the fusion structure. In the case of high compatibility of anthropomorphic images, for independent self-consumers, the attraction of fusion structure image is higher than the juxtaposition image, and for interdependent self-consumers, the attraction of juxtaposition image is higher than the fusion image.

The conclusion enriches the anthropomorphic marketing theory. It reveals different degrees of attention paid to anthropomorphic image by consumers of different types of self-construct. Eye movement methods provide a new perspective for the study of anthropomorphic marketing and provide a reference for enterprises to publicize products or services through anthropomorphic image.

In this study of Korean and US negotiators, the authors aim to demonstrate limits on the presumption that inter‐cultural negotiations are doomed to generate low joint gains.

In a laboratory study with 45 bi‐cultural Korean students and 47 mono‐cultural American students, the authors created a total of 16 US‐US, 15 Korean‐Korean, and 15 US‐Korean dyads. The authors audio‐recorded their negotiation conversations and analyzed the content of the negotiation transcripts. The authors focused on the use of pronouns and coded how they were used and the impact this use had on the outcomes of the intra‐ and inter‐cultural negotiations.

Results show that inter‐cultural dyads generate higher joint gains than Korean or US intra‐cultural dyads. The explanation based on social awareness and social distance theorizing shows that inter‐cultural negotiators, one of whom is bi‐cultural, who use language, especially the pronoun “you” to close social distance, achieve higher joint gains than intra‐cultural negotiators who do not.

The authors conclude that the language people use in social interaction, especially pronouns, is an indicator of social awareness and signals attempts to close social distance.

This research demonstrates that the way negotiators use language predicts their economic outcomes.

Performance feedback theory (PFT) has informed analyses in numerous national contexts and has been used to explain various business and management activities of firms. Stemming from behavioral theory and grounded in a cognitive perspective, which views organizational actions as being the results of decisions produced by groups of individual decision-makers, PFT research has mostly assumed the universal nature of cognition and decision-making processes. However, PFT also presumes that individual decision-makers bring with them different backgrounds and experiences. Hence, this paper offers propositions on how cultural differences in individualism-collectivism influence the major components of PFT, including the formation and revision of performance goals (aspiration levels), and search behaviors and risk preferences in response to gaps between goals and actual performance. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

This paper offers theoretical propositions for the above purpose.

This is not an empirical analysis.

By integrating the individualism-collectivism differences framework into the PFT model, the authors answer previous calls to integrate concepts and frameworks from other theories into PFT while considering the role of cultural differences in aspiration-consequence relationships. Additionally, much of PFT research has focused on outcomes, while actual internal processes have remained unobserved. By focusing on how cultural differences influence various PFT processes, this conceptual analysis sheds light on the unobserved bounds of decision-makers' cognitions.

Advertising intensity is treated either as a resource that allows firms to create competitive advantages (intangible asset view) or as an investment to build advertising resource (investment expense view). This current research supports the investment expense view. The authors do so by examining the moderating role of firm age (a proxy for knowledge) in the relationship between advertising intensity and performance as well as the influence of cultural communication styles on this moderation.

Secondary data were collected from multiple sources. With a sample of 262 companies from 10 countries (149 firms from high-context cultures and 113 firms from low-context cultures), ordinary least squares was used to estimate the regression coefficients to test the hypotheses. An instrumental variable approach with two-stage least squares estimates was used to address an endogeneity bias. Average industry advertising intensity excluding the focal firm was used as an instrumental variable.

The findings demonstrate that firm age significantly moderates the advertising intensity/performance relationship, but this moderation is only significant in high-context cultures. These findings imply that firms within high-context cultures must continually invest in advertising expenditures, while firms in low-context cultures may not need to do so to increase performance.

The results of this study provide insight into the debate of whether advertising expenditures boost performance, as well as provide international marketing managers with a clearer picture on how to invest in advertising within their respective markets.

A majority of the studies that examine the advertising intensity/performance link rely solely on the resource-based view. The authors utilize a multi-theoretical perspective to provide a fine-grained understanding of this relationship. Moreover, the authors apply the investment expense view to examine advertising intensity as an investment to build advertising resources, rather than a resource. This investment must be incorporated with the knowledge to properly employ the investment to develop advertising resources. Further, the authors find that firms expanding into high-context cultures must devote more effort into developing advertising capabilities to properly employ advertising resources than firms in low-context cultures.

Theories of outstanding, historically notable, leadership have traditionally emphasized charisma. Recent research, however, suggests that charisma may represent only one pathway to outstanding leadership. Outstanding leadership may also emerge from ideological and pragmatic leadership. In this article, we examine the conditions influencing the emergence and performance of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders. It is argued that different conditions operating at the environmental, organizational, group, and individual levels influence the emergence and performance of each of these three types of leaders. Implications for understanding the origins and impact of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the globalization (vs localization) of different cues (advertising copy, brand name, spokesperson, brand logo) influences consumers’ perceived brand globalness.

The authors conducted conjoint analyses for two products differing in product category involvement (chocolates vs computer) with 200 consumers from the Netherlands. Additionally, based on cluster analysis, the authors divide respondents into two groups: local vs global consumer culture individuals, and the authors compare the results of the conjoint analysis for these two clusters.

Advertising copy is most important in determining perceived brand globalness. The spokesperson and the brand logo determine perceived brand globalness more strongly for a low-involvement product, whereas the brand name is more important for a high-involvement product. Further, the spokesperson and the brand logo are relatively more important for global consumer culture individuals, while local consumer culture individuals find the brand name and advertising copy relatively more important.

The most important cue to position a brand as global is the advertising copy. Brand managers of a low-involvement product and/or targeting global-minded consumers should concentrate on the spokesperson and the brand logo to position their brand. Managers of a high-involvement product and/or targeting local-minded people should focus on the brand name.

While a number of researchers have emphasized the importance of perceived brand globalness for international consumer behavior, the present study is the first to the authors’ knowledge to investigate the relative importance of different cues in creating perceptions of brand globalness.

Customer referral programs (CRPs) are popular; however, they often generate low referral rates. The authors propose that certain CRP referral tasks may hinder consumers’ referral likelihood. This study aims to explore the effects of referral tasks (communication content and approach) on customers’ referral likelihood on social platforms and the role of self-construal.

This study establishes a theoretical model based on online social platforms and conducts three scenario-based experiments. The authors obtain data from consumers on Sojump platform and test the hypotheses using analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis and mediation analysis in SPSS. The valid sample sizes for these three experiments are 288, 203 and 214, respectively.

Three experimental studies indicate that communication content and approach have a significant effect on referral likelihood. Furthermore, the effect of communication content on referral likelihood depends on the communication approach. Self-construal plays a moderating role in the effect of communication content and approach on perceived social costs.

CRPs typically involve tasks and rewards; consumers are asked to complete a referral task and then receive a reward. Both tasks and rewards can affect an individual’s willingness to participate; however, existing studies on CRP focus primarily on the reward component. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate the role of referral tasks (communication content and approach) in CRPs. The authors extend the related research by examining the impact of referral tasks on consumers’ willingness to recommend. In addition, this study introduces self-construal into CRPs research.

The growth in social content such as video facilitates consumer exposure to social information at e-tail settings. Research has recommended enhancing the e-store socialness. Focusing on focal consumer outcomes (flow and purchase intentions), the current research delineates a boundary condition, proposing that e-tail socialness improves outcomes when the consumer interdependent self, rather than the independent self, is activated.

The experimental approach is employed to test the research thesis. Two experiments (N1 = 303 Females 42.4%; N2 = 387 Females 51.4%) that used different manipulation for socialness and sample frames (USA and Canadian) are performed. Analysis of variance was applied.

The results generally support the research thesis, suggesting that e-tail socialness enhances consumer flow and purchase intentions when the interdependent self is activated. The effect, however, is marginal for segments with high brand preference.

As more information increase overload and reduce decision quality, e-tail practitioners should focus on providing social information predominately for consumers whose interdependent self is activated. This recommendation is particularly relevant for segments with low brand preference.

So far, studies recommend enhancing the e-store socialness, or increasing the social volume, to achieve better outcomes. Such research stream is giving rise to the “social is better in e-tail” conventional wisdom. The current work contributes by delineating a boundary condition based on consumer self-construal. This work suggests that the use of online socialness is fruitful predominantly for interdependent consumers.