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While the links between customer word-of-mouth and desirable organizational outcomes have been widely studied, the possibility that customers might routinely exaggerate their consumption experience stories has been neglected. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The first exploratory study examined exaggerated and unexaggerated word-of-mouth and the targets of such activities. The second exploratory study focussed on customer-exaggerated negative word-of-mouth and its drivers. The two experimental studies generated deeper insights into attributions of service failure and exaggerated negative word-of-mouth.

This research explicitly addresses customer exaggeration regarding service consumption and the reasons customers engaged in such behaviors. Study 1 focussed on the scope and targets of exaggerated word-of-mouth, and Study 2 concentrated on identifying the drivers of exaggerated negative word-of-mouth. Studies 3 and 4 experimentally elucidated the cognitive mechanisms leading to exaggeration.

Contributions include deeper understanding of the phenomenon of exaggerated negative word-of-mouth and developing and testing a model of the factors associated with consumers’ exaggerated negative word-of-mouth.

Implications include possible organizational and public policy actions to prevent Pinocchio customers from exaggerated negative word-of-mouth.

This paper explores the nature and scope of exaggerated customer word-of-mouth and contributes insights in four ways. First, this research explores the scope of consumer exaggeration during word-of-mouth storytelling and the intended targets of such communications. Second, this research focusses on exaggerated negative word-of-mouth and develops a conceptual model of the drivers of such activity. Third, the theory is tested and contributes empirical insights into exaggerated negative word-of-mouth. Fourth, through experiments, insights are gained into the cognitive mechanisms leading to exaggeration and the effects of attribution differences in personal vs service provider blame.

Despite the importance of online word-of-mouth (WOM) communication to senders, receivers and concerned companies alike, a surprisingly limited amount of research exists on the impacts of online WOM participation on the senders themselves. Motivated by an attempt to fill this significant gap in the literature, this paper aims to investigate the sender outcomes of online WOM participation.

The authors draw on insights from focus group studies and psychological theories of emotions, catharsis and regret and the signaling theory to develop a conceptual model linking the drivers and content characteristics of online WOM participation and sender outcomes.

The findings show that sender outcomes from online WOM transmission differ by the types of drivers stimulating the online sharing activity and the level of exaggeration in the senders’ self-generated contents. Specifically, online WOM triggered by emotions leads to catharsis and emotional homeostasis among the senders, while that stimulated by motivational drivers such as altruism, reciprocity, self-enhancement and belongingness leads to sender happiness. Exaggeration in self-generated WOM contents by the senders, in turn, leads to delayed outcomes of sender regret and reduced sender trust in general online WOM contents.

The most important contribution to online WOM research lies in the study of the outcomes of WOM transmission from a sender’s point of view. By drawing on our exploratory findings and psychological theories of emotions, catharsis and regret and the signaling theory, the authors develop a conceptual model linking the drivers and the exaggeration nature of online WOM participation and sender outcomes.

Managers should realize that the most fundamental way of ensuring positive consumption experiences is to listen to customer voices, including even the most negative of feedback shared privately or publicly, and use that information to improve essential customer experience aspects. The finding on the effects of online WOM exaggerations on sender regret suggests that companies and consumers alike should work on ensuring producing more accurate and complete online customer reviews. The finding on the negative effect of online WOM exaggerations on sender trust raises an important question on the meaning of high quality reviews from the company’s perspective. To pursue high quality reviews, merchants should not only aim at receiving the highest possible numeric ratings but also encourage most truthful accounts of purchase and usage experiences. In turn, online platforms such as Amazon should also factor the quality of online ratings more effectively into their product recommendation algorithms.

In further consideration of consumer welfare implications, online WOM transmissions should be more recognized as a tool for allowing consumers to cleanse their emotions associated with marketing stimuli.

Overall, the qualitative study and proposed conceptual model contribute to a more thorough and deeper understanding of individual-level sender outcomes of online WOM participation.

There has been concern expressed in the financial press and focus established in the accounting literature over rising levels of executive compensation. Individuals on the compensation committee, a sub-committee of the board of directors, collectively determine executive compensation and are responsible for maintaining the pay-for-performance standard, a concept that warrants further attention. This study examines the process of exaggeration of a group decision over individual beliefs and the impact of leadership upon a committee's outcome when making compensation awards. In an experiment with 98 subjects role-playing as compensation committee members, results show that in a committee of individuals where a coterie and a majority belief is present, group polarization occurs and the compensation results are exaggerated as compared to individual beliefs. The findings also suggest, though, that the appointment of a leader as chair of the committee, either in the majority or minority view, has a moderating effect on the group outcome. These results highlight and add to the literature the potential for agency costs in the group decision process that may be found in the executive compensation-setting environment.

This study aims to contribute to the existing social marketing literature by considering young adults’ views and perceptions about social marketing and social marketing campaigns in the context of alcohol consumption.

Eighteen interviews were conducted with young adults aged 25-30 years in Australia and the USA. Biographical interviews were used to collect information on individuals’ drinking histories and how their attitudes towards social marketing campaigns have formed during their lives.

Four main themes emerge in the study, namely, ethicality (freedom of choice), expensiveness, exaggeration and effectiveness. These four issues represent the main barriers and challenges for social marketers. Future research needs to explore the relationship between the attitudes of the target audience towards social marketing, and the actual effectiveness of social marketing campaigns.

This is an exploratory study that is limited by its context, sample size and participants’ demographical characteristics.

This study provides empirical evidence behind challenges and barriers facing social marketing identified by Andreasen (2002).

The persistent growth of ‘nativists’ in Hong Kong not only highlighted people's consideration over mainlandization, it also stimulates Beijing's nerve on national security. This paper adopts a critical perspective to explore the development of ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ that emerged in 2015. It will show the development of ‘Hong Kong nationalism’ is a phenomenon compounded by the creation of critical academics, government exaggeration, and pro-Beijing media labeling. In fact, this phenomenon leads to the suppression of political space for critical opposition.

The interaction between Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, central government, critical academics, and pro-Beijing media will be used to adopt a conceptual framework to show how their interrelationship would derive tremendous impacts to the development of ‘Hong Kong Nationalism.’ It will further investigate some implications for the further political development in Hong Kong.

The development of ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ illustrates the triangular relations between critical academic, HKSAR and the Beijing government, and pro-Beijing media. The critical academics create and imagine such ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ with Hong Kong's political destiny that stimulates the nerve of Beijing and HKSAR on territorial integrity. The ‘imagined nationalism’ advocated by critical and opposition academics and advanced by the activists not only opened the Pandora's box that derives a Trojan horse scenario for the development of pan-democratic camp which affects the democracy movement tremendously.

This paper is the first academic paper to explore ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ through analyzing the discourse advocated by critical academics. This paper can also fill in the gap from existing literature about social movement in Hong Kong as most of them ignored the influence of radical nativist movement.

The environments provided by classrooms to facilitate learning among students can be seen as useful vehicles for making meaning out of gossip, lies, exaggeration and partial truths (i.e. counter-knowledge). This paper aims to focus on professional learning communities as a process to counteract the problem of counter-knowledge.

This paper has analysed the relationships between professional-learning communities and counter-knowledge using an empirical study of 210 undergraduate students to identify whether there is a significant impact on student achievement by professional learning communities. This study uses PLS-Graph software version 3.0 to conduct an analysis of the data collected.

Outcome findings support that professional learning communities provide a way of counteracting counter-knowledge and the noise heard through gossip, lies, exaggeration and partial truths.

Results also confirm that counter-knowledge is a variable that, when controlled, has the effect of strengthening the relationship between learning and student achievement.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to build a theoretical model that identifies textual cues to distinguish between authentic and fictitious reviews, and to empirically validate the theoretical model by examining reviews of positive, negative as well as moderate polarities.

Synthesizing major theories on deceptive communication, the theoretical model identifies four constructs – comprehensibility, specificity, exaggeration and negligence – to predict review authenticity. The predictor constructs were operationalized as holistically as possible. To validate the theoretical model, 1,800 reviews (900 authentic + 900 fictitious) evenly spread across positive, negative and moderate polarities were analyzed using logistic regression.

The performance of the proposed theoretical model was generally promising. However, it could better discern authenticity for positive and negative reviews compared with moderate entries.

The paper advances the extant literature by theorizing the textual differences between authentic and fictitious reviews. It also represents one of the earliest attempts to examine nuances in the textual differences between authentic and fictitious reviews across positive, negative as well as moderate polarities.

In last month's issue of the Journal we published an abstract of the Annual Report of the Public Analyst for the City of Salford, Mr. H. H. Bagnall, B.Sc., F.I.C., and we gave particular prominence to that portion of his report which related to the analyses of seven samples of toffee. The instances of gross exaggeration and falsehood in advertisements to which Mr. Bagnall calls attention are really very much akin to the misdescription of an article upon the label, and such procedure should undoubtedly be a punishable offence. It is an unfortunate fact that exaggeration or misrepresentation are not uncommon features of the claims made in advertisements of the present day, but if public attention is called to blatant examples of this kind, much may be done towards educating the purchaser to realise that laudatory statements made by a manufacturer in regard to his own goods are at best biassed and in many cases false and misleading. Unimpeachable and independent testimony is the only thing which can carry conviction to the purchaser.

This study aims to describe the critical literacy of online newsreaders on the viva.co.id website in dealing with clickbait news. Critical literacy is oriented to the critical power of online newsreaders by analyzing, evaluating and reflecting on the relationship of online newsreaders, texts and social and political contexts. This research will focus on the type of clickbait exaggeration or news headlines that use exaggeration.

This study uses a quantitative method with a descriptive approach. The purpose of quantitative research is to provide information on a situation by using scientific procedures to answer a question in an actual way (Sugiyono, 2010). Scientific observation is carried out carefully to obtain accurate results on a phenomenon. This study presents an overview of the situation or a phenomenon regarding the critical literacy of online newsreaders on the viva.co.id website in dealing with clickbait titles in Surabaya. The population in this study were all online newsreaders entitled clickbait on the viva.co.id website, where the number of online newsreaders on the viva.co.id website was not known. Sampling in this study used the Lemeshow formula (Lemeshow, 1997, as cited in Priyambodo, 2019). This formula determines the number of samples if the population is not known. Based on the calculation using the Lemeshow formula, it can be seen that the minimum sample size required is 96 respondents who are rounded up to 100 respondents with a 95% confidence level.

Based on the findings of the data recapitulation of the overall dimensions of critical literacy, this study shows that newsreaders entitled clickbait on the website viva.co.id have critical literacy skills that fall into the high category with an overall average of 4.07. This finding shows positive results because critical literacy skills are skills needed by newsreaders entitled clickbait on the website viva.co.id. Currently, online news is very much in number, and it may be that the news is not by the existing facts; therefore, this ability is considered very important because, with this ability, the reader can find out the ideology or interests that affect a news publication (Priyatni, 2010).

This research only uses an online news provider, namely, viva.co.id, it is an Indonesia-based online news provider that covers all news subjects.

This study will give understanding about the use of critical literacy to prevent negative impact on clickbait and is very useful for all online newsreaders, information practitioners and scientists.

The use of critical literacy to assess online news is rarely studied in Indonesia, especially when dealing with clickbait news that can harm or bring disadvantages for readers. So, this study is very important to help readers to prevent clickbait news.

In this chapter, I examine how racial disparities in punishment for nonviolent drug crimes align with significant differences in how the black and white drug problems are constructed in media, law enforcement, and academia.

By examining differences in how the black and white drug problems have been constructed over the past 70 years for the opioids (heroin, prescription painkillers), cocaine (both powder and crack), and marijuana, I illustrate how these distinct representations of the black and white drug problems accompany more punitive policies in response to black drug epidemics even as white drug epidemics are typically met with tolerance or indifference.

Historically, powerful interest groups like media and law enforcement have benefitted from circulating myths and exaggerations about the illegal drug problem that encourage punitive drug policies. By contrast, at least some academics have benefitted from taking the opposite tack and debunking many of these myths. Unfortunately, academics have been less willing to challenge myths about the black drug problem than the white drug problem. Indeed, some academics actually reinforce many of the myths about the black drug problem promoted by media and law enforcement.

This chapter builds upon a substantial academic literature that challenges myths about illegal drug use by whites. However, it goes beyond this literature to consider the paucity of similar academic research exposing media and law enforcement myths about the black drug problem.