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To influence consumer perceptions, firms often manipulate online product reviews on their own websites or third-party forums by anonymously adding positive reviews, deleting unfavorable reviews or offering rewards to encourage favorable reviews. This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions of online review deceptions and how these perceptions influence their subsequent purchase behavior. In particular, consumers’ awareness, suspicion and detection are studied and specific manipulation tactics are evaluated.

Both qualitative and quantitative studies are relied upon to understand consumer perceptions of online review deceptions. In-depth interviews with 16 experienced online shoppers were conducted to collect the illustrative accounts concerning consumer awareness of online review deceptions, their suspicion, detection and evaluation of different manipulation tactics. A survey of 199 consumers was then followed to validate and corroborate the findings from the qualitative study and generalize the interview results onto the general public.

The results from in-depth interviews suggest that consumers take a negative view toward online review deceptions, but the degree of negativity varies across different manipulation tactics. Moreover, different types of manipulations vary in terms of perceived deceptiveness, ease of detection and unethicality, as well as their effect on consumer purchase intention and perceived helpfulness of online product reviews. The findings from the survey further confirmed the qualitative findings.

The findings have a number of meaningful managerial implications for industry associations and policymakers on whether and how to regulate online review deceptions.

This study applies and extends information manipulation theory and deception detection literature to an online context to increase the richness of the relevant theories. It is among the first to empirically investigate online review deceptions from a consumer’s perspective, as opposed to a firm’s perspective as previous studies have done.

When apologizing for a brand crisis, self-attribution by a business inevitably affects consumer attitude and behavior. The purpose of this study is to draw from the dissonance-attribution model and investigate the effect of self-attribution in apologies on consumers’ brand attitude.

This study includes two scenario-based experiments of 2 × 2 design.

In the first experiment on product failure, the results show that internal attribution generates significant change in brand attitude in a positive direction, while external attribution leads to negative change in brand attitude. Dispositional attribution leads to significantly more positive brand attitude than situational attribution. Internal/dispositional attribution produces significantly more positive effect on consumer attitude than the other three types of attribution. Moreover, perceived risk is found to mediate the relationship between attributions and brand attitude, and such mediating effect is moderated by consumers’ corporate associations. However, in the second experiment on moral crisis, the mediating and moderating effects are not significant.

Clearly, how a company apologizes for a product crisis makes a big difference in the effectiveness of recovery strategies to restore consumer confidence. Sincere apologies based on internal/dispositional attribution are more effective to re-gain the respect of consumers and win them back.

This study is the first to examine consumer reactions to self-attributions by marketers apologizing for a brand crisis and the combined effect of self-attributions along the horizontal dimension (internal versus external attribution) and the vertical dimension (dispositional versus situational attribution).

Burgeoning consumerism in transitional economies has significant implications for both multinational corporations and local companies. Based on a survey of four cities in mainland China, this research examines consumer attitudes toward marketing, and compares the findings with those of previous studies of other economies. The results suggest that consumers in mainland China are less critical of marketing than their counterparts in advanced economies. Furthermore, consumer attitudes toward marketing, beliefs about business, and their interactions have significant effects on consumer satisfaction. The implications for marketing operations in transitional economies and avenues for future research are explored.

Previous studies have found significant differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing between countries and attributed such variations to differences in the stage of consumerism development and cultural values. This study aims to test these competing hypotheses using econometric decomposition to identify the source of such cross‐country variations.

Using survey data of consumer attitudes toward marketing from China and Canada, this study adopts econometric decomposition to examine the cross‐country difference in consumer attitudes toward marketing.

The results show that Chinese consumers have more positive attitudes toward marketing than Canadians and the two countries differ significantly across all predictor variables. However, the results of decomposition suggest that consumerism, individualism and relativism do not have any significant effect on the country gap in consumer attitudes toward marketing, while idealism has a significant coefficient effect.

The study finds different effects of cultural values on consumer attitudes across countries and has meaningful implications for international marketing strategies.

The study investigates the sources of cross‐national differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing using rigorous analyses to improve the accuracy of cultural attribution for international marketing and cross‐cultural consumer research.

As the population and purchasing power of ethnic minority consumers in the USA continue to grow, more marketers are using subcultural segmentation and targeted marketing to reach these consumers. Meanwhile, some marketers have grown increasingly concerned with the cost‐effectiveness of ethnic segmentation and differentiated marketing. This research reviews various methods for segmenting the ethnic markets and suggests the nested approach and cost‐benefit optimization for analyzing the cost‐effectiveness of ethnic segmentation and marketing. Furthermore, this research proposes four alternative strategies for marketing in a multicultural environment. Directions for future research and managerial implications are explored.

As one of the big emerging markets, China’s enormous population and rapid increase in consumer spending have attracted many multinational corporations (MNCs). Meanwhile, the misconception of China as a homogeneous market often leads to difficulties in assessing market demand and enacting effective strategies. Examines the diversity among Chinese consumers across seven regional markets. Data from a national survey suggest that consumers from various regions are significantly different from one another in terms of purchasing power, attitudes, lifestyles, media use, and consumption patterns. MNCs need to take a cautionary approach when expanding into the inland regions, and must adapt to the local market conditions and devise sustainable strategies.

New product concept screening, i.e., selecting a few viable innovative concepts from numerous candidates, involves high stakes and is complicated and resource intensive. Over the years, there has been heated debate about the relative merit of monadic (sequential) tests vs that of preference-based paired comparisons. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study proposes the Generalizability Theory as a framework to assess and compare the performance of traditional monadic test with the Adaptive Concept Screening (ACS) in terms of their testing results and psychometric quality.

Using 50 yogurt concepts and two independent groups of respondents, the results indicate that ACS requires a significant smaller sample of respondents to achieve a necessary minimum G coefficient for decision making. Moreover, ACS offers a more discriminating and reliable solution for early stage concept screening as manifested by a higher G coefficient and greater percentage of variance due to the selected concepts given the same sampling design.

The results lend strong support to ACS as a more cost-effective method for screening new product concepts and the Generalizability Theory as a systematic framework for assessing concept testing methods.

This study adopts the Generalizability Theory framework to assess the validity of new product concept screening method.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of competing methods and model selection, which are non‐trivial issues given the financial implications. Researchers have adopted various methods including statistical models and machine learning methods such as neural networks to assist decision making in direct marketing. However, due to the different performance criteria and validation techniques currently in practice, comparing different methods is often not straightforward.

This study compares the performance of neural networks with that of classification and regression tree, latent class models and logistic regression using three criteria – simple error rate, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), and cumulative lift – and two validation methods, i.e. bootstrap and stratified k‐fold cross‐validation. Systematic experiments are conducted to compare their performance.

The results suggest that these methods vary in performance across different criteria and validation methods. Overall, neural networks outperform the others in AUROC value and cumulative lifts, and the stratified ten‐fold cross‐validation produces more accurate results than bootstrap validation.

To select predictive models to support direct marketing decisions, researchers need to adopt appropriate performance criteria and validation procedures.

The study addresses the key issues in model selection, i.e. performance criteria and validation methods, and conducts systematic analyses to generate the findings and practical implications.

This paper aims to find the numerical solution of planar and non-planar Burgers’ equation and analysis of the shock behave.

First, the authors discritize the time-dependent term using Crank–Nicholson finite difference approximation and use quasilinearization to linearize the nonlinear term then apply Scale-2 Haar wavelets for space integration. After applying this scheme on partial differential, the equation transforms into a system of algebraic equation. Then, the system of equation is solved using Gauss elimination method.

Present method is the extension of the method (Jiwari, 2012). The numerical solutions using Scale-2 Haar wavelets prove that the proposed method is reliable for planar and non-planar nonlinear Burgers’ equation and yields results better than other methods and compatible with the exact solutions.

The numerical results for non-planar Burgers’ equation are very sparse. In the present paper, the authors identify where the shock wave and discontinuity occur in planar and non-planar Burgers’' equation.

The purpose of this paper is to show how accelerated technology innovations lead to shorter product lifecycles, and consumers often face the dilemma of choosing between keeping the existing product and upgrading to a new version. They may enact certain coping strategies to deal with the stress and uncertainty. Based on the work of Mick and Fournier, this study aims to propose a set of coping strategies, which include refusal, delay, extended decision‐making, and pretest.

Based on a survey of consumers regarding the 3G mobile phones, the authors test the effects of coping strategies within the framework of the technology acceptance model.

The results of canonical analyses suggest that coping strategies have significant influence on consumers' product beliefs, which in turn mediate the effects of coping strategies on consumers' attitude toward adoption and their purchase intention.

Coping strategies help better understand consumers' adoption of new technology products and furnish meaningful implications for marketing technology products to today's tech‐savvy consumers.

This study develops measures of coping strategies and provides an empirical test of their effect on product beliefs and behavioral intentions with respect to consumers' decision whether to upgrade to a new technology product.