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Previous research has shown that consumers prefer a bonus pack to a price discount for virtue foods, whereas they prefer a price discount to a bonus pack for vice foods. Acting as a guilt-mitigating mechanism, a price discount justifies consumers' purchasing behavior, allowing them to save money and consume less vice foods. However, for virtue foods, neither the anticipated post-consumption guilt nor the resulting need for justification lead consumers to prefer a bonus pack to a price discount. This study investigates whether product promotions remain effective with other moderating variables.

The authors use pricing tactic persuasion knowledge (PTPK), which refers to the consumer persuasion knowledge of marketers' pricing tactics, as a lens to understand whether the power of these promotions could be enhanced or mitigated. The authors inferred that increasing the frequency of exposure to these foods could positively influence consumers' purchasing choices. They conducted three studies to examine these effects. In Study 1, using pearl milk tea (vice food) and sugar-free tea (virtue food), the authors contended that consumers would prefer a price discount when purchasing pearl milk tea, but a bonus pack when purchasing sugar-free tea. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors varied the participants' frequency of exposure to photographs of people in everyday situations with vice (virtue) foods.

In Study 1, PTPK was shown to be more predictive of consumer choices regarding price discounts and bonus packs. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors contended that increased exposure to vice (virtue) foods increases the selection of vice (virtue) foods by participants who were unaware of having been exposed to vice (virtue) foods.

This research has not only made quite managerial and policy implications for marketing but also brought the theoretical contributions for marketing researches. This research demonstrates that either for vice foods or virtue foods, a price discount is preferred to a bonus pack.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between consumers’ perceived justice and their behavioral intentions and explores the effects of psychological contract violation on the relationships.

This study conducts sampling through the survey to consumers after restaurant dining. This study collected data from 400 respondents and analyzed the data with the structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that consumers who experience higher level of distribution justice and procedure justice are more likely to have behavioral intentions. This study also reveals that psychological contract violation is a partial mediator of the above relationships. Consumers will feel less psychological contract violation when they perceive more distribution justice and procedure justice and will not significantly affect them more likely to repurchase intention.

During restaurant service, if consumers feel distribution or procedure injustice, they are more likely to engage in negative word-of-mouth. However, the lack of significant and positive effect of interaction justice on negative word-of-mouth in this study can be because of other intervening variables, such as intensity. Furthermore, in terms of customer’s repurchase intention, the results indicate significant and positive effects for all three types of justice on repurchase intention.

This study aims to improve the passenger accessibility of passenger demands in the end-of-operation period.

A mixed integer nonlinear programming model for last train timetable optimization of the metro was proposed considering the constraints such as the maximum headway, the minimum headway and the latest end-of-operation time. The objective of the model is to maximize the number of reachable passengers in the end-of-operation period. A solution method based on a preset train service is proposed, which significantly reduces the variables of deciding train services in the original model and reformulates it into a mixed integer linear programming model.

The results of the case study of Wuhan Metro show that the solution method can obtain high-quality solutions in a shorter time; and the shorter the time interval of passenger flow data, the more obvious the advantage of solution speed; after optimization, the number of passengers reaching the destination among the passengers who need to take the last train during the end-of-operation period can be increased by 10%.

Existing research results only consider the passengers who take the last train. Compared with previous research, considering the overall passenger demand during the end-of-operation period can make more passengers arrive at their destination. Appropriately delaying the end-of-operation time can increase the proportion of passengers who can reach the destination in the metro network, but due to the decrease in passenger demand, postponing the end-of-operation time has a bottleneck in increasing the proportion of passengers who can reach the destination.

In physical stores, consumer repurchase is the primary goal of retail operators. This includes many aspects of consumers' perceived value of a store, including images of goods, services, brands, atmosphere etc. Thus, repurchase intention in a physical store is a critical research issue to the retailer.

This study took Taiwan Chunghwa Telecom's 3C electronic channel stores as the research object to investigate Taiwanese consumers' repurchase intentions for communication service and 3C products in this chain's physical stores. This study aimed to investigate the mediating role of perceived value (PV) between consumers' channel brand image (CBI) and store image (SI) on repurchase intention (RI). It further examined how the moderated mediating role of electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM) strengthens the influence of consumers' channel brand and store image on repurchase intention through perceived value.

The research results found that perceived value played a fully mediating role and electronic word-of-mouth is the moderating role on the proposed theoretical model by investigating two moderated mediation models.

This study considered that CBI represents commodity value and SI is the overall satisfaction obtained from consumer services. Thus, both channel brand and SI are active decision variables for consumers to purchase and repurchase in a physical store. For the moderated mediating role of EWOM, this study found that the indirect effect of both CBI and SI on RI through PV is stronger at low degree of EWOM than at high degrees of EWOM.

Security assurance evaluation (SAE) is a well-established approach for assessing the effectiveness of security measures in systems. However, one aspect that is often overlooked in these evaluations is the assurance context in which they are conducted. This paper aims to explore the role of assurance context in system SAEs and proposes a conceptual model to integrate the assurance context into the evaluation process.

The conceptual model highlights the interrelationships between the various elements of the assurance context, including system boundaries, stakeholders, security concerns, regulatory compliance and assurance assumptions and regulatory compliance.

By introducing the proposed conceptual model, this research provides a framework for incorporating the assurance context into SAEs and offers insights into how it can influence the evaluation outcomes.

By delving into the concept of assurance context, this research seeks to shed light on how it influences the scope, methodologies and outcomes of assurance evaluations, ultimately enabling organizations to strengthen their system security postures and mitigate risks effectively.

The purpose of this study is to understand the mediating role of psychological need and immersive experience on graduates' skill gaps on massive open online courses (MOOCs) adoption intention.

The proposed research model is developed by combining two popular theoretical models, namely, the self-determination theory, network externalities theory along technology adoption theory. Data are collected from 318 respondents to test the model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied to analyze the data.

The study reveals that the sense of psychological needs and immersive experience mediates the influence of skill gap and social interaction on MOOC adaption willingness. However, immersive experience alone cannot influence adoption intention. Similarly, psychological needs cannot have a significant impact on adoption intention without the graduate skill gap.

This study specifically focuses on investigating the mechanism of how psychological needs satisfaction mediates the relationship between graduates' skill gap and MOOC adoption intention. The findings suggest us to develop a course that will increase learners employability skill. This study also contributes by incorporating the idea of immersive experience to facilitate improved virtual social interaction.

This paper answers, in the Chinese stock market, who can realize the “spot value” of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The authors use event-study to build the research framework. Using CSR report content analysis, the authors measure the specification level of CSR disclosure. Applying the Baidu index, the authors mine Chinese investors’ profiles data to investigate retail investor heterogeneity closely.

The authors find strong evidence that the measure captures a behavioral bias in CSR pricing: firms that choose to disclose CSR report experience positive abnormal return more among retail investors than institutional investors, more among young investors than older, but no difference between female and male investors.

For Chinese public firms, the authors give them evidence that they can realize positive abnormal returns by applying certain CSR disclosure strategies. For Chinese investors, especially retail investors and youths, the authors ask them to rethink whether their positive evaluation of CSR is a rational trade-off choice or whether they are fooled by the “hedging mask” and “attention-grabbing.”

The findings can give some suggestions to regulators: encouraging voluntary disclosure and reducing mandatory disclosure can drive enterprises to engage in more CSR activities because the voluntarily CSR disclosure can realize both long-term value and “spot value.” Complementarily, a more rigorous CSR report auditing regulation can suppress the “greenwash” by increasing the “lying cost.”

Using behavioral finance theory, the authors connect the gap between neoclassical research on the “U-shaped” value realization of CSR and the increasing voluntary CSR disclosure in the Chinese market. The authors find that heuristic reason and emotionality orientation results in the Chinese “CSR-friendly” market.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the utilitarian value of the dedication-based relationship maintenance mechanism of social exchange theory and customer perceived relationship investment to investigate the relationship performance of a retailer launching a self-service technology (SST). Computer anxiety and time consciousness are hypothesized to moderate the effects among these relationships.

The results of the structural equation model, with in-store kiosk use experience data collected for 211 respondents, supported the research model. Multiple regression analysis was used for testing the moderating effects.

The utilitarian value of dedication-based relationship maintenance is related to perceived relationship investment. Higher levels of customer-perceived relationship investment impact relationship performance. Computer anxiety and time consciousness act separately as both partial and full moderators.

First, this study did not consider different kinds of products/services to have different effects with regard to customer cognition. Second, most of the respondents were students, and this is a limitation in business research, because of such factors as lower incomes and higher information technology ability as compared to individuals with other occupations. Third, it is difficult to distinguish whether the level of perceived convenience is due to the convenience stores per se or the in-store kiosks that they have. Future research may thus consider analyzing in more detail how perceived convenience is evoked. Finally, future research can consider constraint-based relationship maintenance mechanisms with regard to operating in-store kiosk businesses.

Retailers who are willing to continually launch SSTs should tie such efforts to their relationship marketing strategies. Moreover, retailers who are willing to launch e-businesses should establish strategies designed to enhance customer experience with regard to the use of technology. Finally, launching SSTs should involve the continual development of an effective purchasing process and functional relationship marketing strategies.

This paper can help managers organize relationship maintenance mechanisms, especially with regard to the development of user utilitarian value, in order to obtain improved relationship performance.

This exploratory study examines and comprehends the relative importance of mobile app attributes from a consumer perspective. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis approaches explore users' behavior and attitudes toward the priorities of mobile app attributes and preferences, identifying correlations between attributes and aggregating individual attributes into groups.

Online convenience sampling and snowball sampling resulted in 417 valid responses. The numerical data are analyzed using the relative to an identified distribution (RIDIT) scoring system and gray relational analysis (GRA), and qualitative responses are investigated using text-mining techniques.

This study finds enhanced nuances of user preferences and provides data-driven insights that might help app developers and marketers create a distinct app that will add value to consumers. The latent semantic analysis indicates relationship structure among the attributes, and text-based cluster analysis determines the subsets of attributes that represent the unique functions of the mobile app.

This study reveals the essential components of mobile apps, paying particular attention to the consumer value component, which boosts user approval and encourages prolonged use. Overall, the results demonstrate that developers must concentrate on its functional, technical and esthetic features to make an app more exciting and practical for potential users.

Most scholarly research on apps has focused on their technological merits, aesthetics and usability from the user's perspective. A post-adoption multi-attribute app analysis using both structured and unstructured data is conducted in this study.