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This study investigates the impact of tourists’ perception of consumer-generated content (CGC) on their travel behaviors. Online questionnaire survey was conducted on the clients of travel agency along with onsite interviews of visitors at several busy tourist destinations/spots in Taiwan including Alishan, Sun-Moon Lake, and airports. In total 316 responses were generated. The findings indicate that usability of social media is the strongest factor that contributes to respondents’ perceived functional and hedonic quality. Functional quality of social media then draw respondents’ awareness that eventually increases their intention to visit a destination of interest. The results also indicate that functional quality is more important than hedonic in terms of increasing the propensity of using social media.

There is a rising number of Asian brands expanding to Western nations. However, one of the biggest challenges is their reputation of inferior quality. The objectives of this research are to examine the U.S. consumers’ quality perception of Asian brands and what steps can be taken to improve their perceived quality to ultimately influence patronage intentions. This study also considers how age influences U.S. consumers’ perceived quality and patronage intentions.

An online experiment using 328 U.S. female subjects was conducted to examine how quality cues (brand origin and product design) influence their perceived quality of Asian brands. The study also examines how age (due to different levels of exposure of Asian brands) moderates the relationship between product cues and perceived quality.

The findings showed that there was a difference between the younger (Generation X and Y) and older (Baby boomers and Swing) group’s perceived quality of these Asian brand origins, namely Japan and China. Product design had an impact on perceived quality, but age was not a moderating factor.

Chinese and Japanese brands can use these differences in perception of brand origins to market accordingly. Product design cues can also be used effectively to both age groups by Asian brands to improve the perceived quality of U.S. consumers.

This research provides novel insight on U.S. consumers’ perceived quality and patronage intentions from different Asian brand cues. The study also contributes to the body of literature on how the relationship between specific Asian brand cues and perceived quality may differ as a function of age.

Anthropomorphism in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered devices is being used increasingly frequently in consumer-facing situations (e.g., AI Assistants such as Alexa, virtual agents in websites, call/chat bots, etc.), and therefore, it is essential to understand anthropomorphism in AI both to understand consequences for consumers and to optimize firms' product development and marketing. Extant literature is fragmented across several domains and is limited in the marketing domain. In this review, we aim to bring together the insights from different fields and develop a parsimonious conceptual framework to guide future research in fields of marketing and consumer behavior.

We conduct a review of empirical articles published until November 2021 in Financial Times Top 50 (FT50) journals as well as in 41 additional journals selected across several disciplinary domains: computer science, robotics, psychology, marketing, and consumer behavior.

Based on literature review and synthesis, we propose a three-step guiding framework for future research and practice on AI anthropomorphism.

Our proposed conceptual framework informs marketing and consumer behavior domains with findings accumulated in other research domains, offers important directions for future research, and provides a parsimonious guide for marketing managers to optimally utilize anthropomorphism in AI to the benefit of both firms and consumers.

We contribute to the emerging literature on anthropomorphism in AI in three ways. First, we expedite the information flow between disciplines by integrating insights from different fields of inquiry. Second, based on our synthesis of literature, we offer a conceptual framework to organize the outcomes of AI anthropomorphism in a tidy and concise manner. Third, based on our review and conceptual framework, we offer key directions to guide future research endeavors.

We argue that the influence of public stakeholders (the state) and private stakeholders (nonstate social or economic stakeholders) on corporate philanthropy is interdependent, in that satisfying the state may increase the degree of scrutiny and pressure exerted by private stakeholders on the firm, particularly in institutional environments that place few checks and balances on the power of the state – thus creating suspicion that political patronage shelters firms’ social and moral wrongdoing. To test this theory, we examine the circumstances under which politically patronized firms engage more (or less) in corporate philanthropy. Utilizing a dataset that encompasses both publically traded and unlisted private firms in China, we find that corporate philanthropy is negatively associated with political patronage among unlisted firms but positively associated with political patronage among listed firms. These results are consistent with the predictions made based on our theoretical arguments. This chapter aims to foster further discussion regarding the interdependence of the influences exerted by different stakeholders on firms.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Purpose – This chapter describes how radical aims for community-owned broadband became compromised by the consequences of clientelism and elite patronage as some campaigners engaged in lobbying government.

Design/methodology/approach – Five years of participant observation and an auto-ethnographic methodology richly describe the author's involvement in a community broadband co-operative, various regional and national support groups and finally with a national group conducting campaigning, research and co-ordination activities for community ownership of Next Generation Access broadband.

Findings – This illustrates the difficulties faced by Third Sector and Civil Society organisations attempting to engage in lobbying activities in the same manner as conventional commercial lobbyists. In particular, it describes how lobbying necessitates a complex interlocking of activities, such as research, consultancy, conference organisation and other such forms of networking; and it describes how all of these activities can become subordinated to the interests of political patrons. It also suggests that the uncertainty around the meanings and relevance of the Third Sector/Civil Society has allowed the entry of older forms of exerting power such as clientelism and patronage.

Research limitations/implications – Further research is needed into a much larger group of organisations to examine the processes by which Third Sector and Civil Society groups engage with government.

Originality/value – The chapter uniquely applies Critical Management Studies and a political studies perspective on clientelism and patronage to the analysis of Third Sector and Civil Society organisations.

Islamic banking institutions have been in operation for nearly 50 years now and despite having been in competition with much more entrenched conventional rivals have demonstrated remarkable potential for growth and sustainability in different countries in both Muslim-dominated and Muslim-minority jurisdictions. The sustained upsurge in Islamic banks’ operations level to even a double-digit mark is not accidental but a replica of the levels of engagement of customers with Islamic banking institutions among other factors. There are various studies on Islamic banking, which covered wide range of issues, including those on Islamic banks customers’ patronage factors.

Accordingly, this chapter presents discussions on factors that influence customers’ engagement/patronage with Islamic banking. From plethora of studies conducted over long period of time and in different countries, many different factors have been identified as the determinants of customers’ engagements. The factors include but are not limited to customers’ personal attributes such as their understanding, knowledge, and perceptions of banking products, the banking institutions’ related factors such as product pricing, technology adopted by bank, environmental factors, and other myriads of determinants.

Retail marketing is in the midst of an evolution. The paradigm is shifting from a product-centric to a consumer-centric focus, with a particular emphasis on understanding how consumers transition from harboring an interest in a product to actually purchasing that product. In response, shopper marketing, and in-store marketing (ISM) in particular, have emerged as important mechanisms to influence shopper behavior in brick & mortar and online retail environments. The academic literature is replete with work on what factors of ISM influence shopper behavior. In this chapter, we categorize prominent streams of findings on ISM into firm, customer, competitor and product characteristics of ISM and examine how the notion of a “store” is evolving from bricks to clicks – namely from physical formats to online shopping experiences. Insights from this chapter will help retailers and store managers identify what their customers respond to within a physical store, how technology is changing the way they can capture information on customers, and how shopper behavior is evolving in response to brick & mortar and online retail environments.

Recognizing Gigerenzer’s (1991) dictum that scientists’ tools are not neutral (tools-in-use influence theory formulation as well as data interpretation), this chapter reports theory and examines data in ways that transcend the dominant logics for variable-based and case-based analyses. The theory and data analysis tests key propositions in complexity theory: (1) no single antecedent condition is a sufficient or necessary indicator of a high score in an outcome condition; (2) a few of many available complex configurations of antecedent conditions are sufficient indicators of high scores in an outcome condition; (3) contrarian cases occur, that is, low scores in a single antecedent condition associates with both high and low scores for an outcome condition for different cases; (4) causal asymmetry occurs, that is, accurate causal models for high scores for an outcome condition are not the mirror opposites of causal models for low scores for the same outcome condition. The study tests and supports these propositions in the context of customer assessments (n = 436) of service facets and service-outcome evaluations for assisted temporary-transformations of self via beauty salon and spa treatments. The findings contribute to advancing a nuanced theory of how customers’ service evaluations relate to their assessments of overall service quality and intentions to use the service. The findings support the need for service managers to be vigilant in fine-tuning service facets and service enactment to achieve the objective of high customer retention.