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Existing studies of shopping momentum effect show that an initial purchase causes the consumer to switch from a deliberative mindset to an implemental mindset, thereby leading to buy subsequent items based on Gollwitzer’s Rubicon model. Since purchase activity goes through the actional phase which has not been studied yet, the purpose of this paper is to explore the characteristics of the actional mindset compared with those of the planning and deliberative mindsets.

This study conducts three experiments to examine whether the implemental mindset can be differentiated from the actional mindset via recalls and perceptual processing measures.

The findings provide evidences that the actional mindset is different from the implemental mindset, and the planning phase is associated more with broad-mindedness, whereas the actional phase is with narrow-mindedness.

Manipulation of the actional mindset can be extended to real purchases in physical shopping spaces, and various choice objects could be tested with a larger number of participants.

To boost the shopping momentum effect, marketers should put customers into an actional mindset by leading them to show their decisions such as carrying a shopping bag and uploading their purchased items. To avoid overbuying, customers should stay in planning mindsets without verbalizing their decisions. Putting goods into virtual shopping baskets in online shopping could be a good way to avoid overbuying.

The paper empirically explores the characteristics of actional mindset in terms of cognitive and perceptual processing and suggest meaningful implication in online shopping situation.

Considers the factors which influence Taiwanese decisions to buy Japanese or US refrigerators, basing the conclusions on the results of a survey of 586 respondents drawn from Taiwan’s four largest cities – Taipei, Kaoshiung, Taichung and Tainan. Describes how the questionnaires were constructed and pretested, and explains how the data was recorded (using a 5‐point Likert‐type scale) and analysed (using factor analysis and t‐tests). Tests particularly for cultural values of the Chinese, consumer ethnocentrism, openness to foreign culture, country image, and consumer sophistication. Finds that, despite the longer presence of Japanese goods in Taiwan, Japan’s proximity to Taiwan, and more cultural similarities between the Japanese and Taiwanese, Taiwanese consumers rate the USA’s country image factor higher than Japan’s, with consequent implications regarding intention to buy US goods. Recommends that US marketers build on their advantageous country image when they promote US appliances in foreign markets. Cautions against making too much of this snapshot data but concedes that further research into different foreign markets, different appliances, and with a longitudinal approach, would ascertain if findings are consistent with this survey, which has obvious benefits as new markets, such as China and India, open up to western goods and appliances.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

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.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of foreign aid (FA) on corruption in selected Asian countries (Pakistan, India, Srilanka and Bangladesh) using the panel data from 2000 to 2014.

The author used Levin-Lin-Chu and Im-Pesaran-Shin panel unit root tests to check the stationary properties of the variables. The Pedroni’s and Kao panel cointegration approach was applied to analyze the variable’s long-run relationship. The author used panel dynamic ordinary least squares (PDOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) framework to estimate the coefficients of cointegrating vectors. Additionally, the panel granger causality test was performed to check the causal relationship between the variables.

The results from PDOLS and FMOLS indicate that FA has a significant negative impact on the level of corruption. This infers that the foreign assistance decrease the level of corruption perception index, hence, more corruption in the country.

Overall, the study fulfills the need to understand the aid-corruption nexus, particularly in the case of the Asian region.

Despite the extensive academic interest in social media sentiment for financial fields, multimodal data in the stock market has been neglected. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of multimodal social media data on stock performance, and investigate the underlying mechanism of two forms of social media data, i.e. text and pictures.

This research employs panel vector autoregressive models to quantify the effect of the sentiment derived from two modalities in social media, i.e. text information and picture information. Through the models, the authors examine the short-term and long-term associations between social media sentiment and stock performance, measured by three metrics. Specifically, the authors design an enhanced sentiment analysis method, integrating random walk and word embeddings through Global Vectors for Word Representation (GloVe), to construct a domain-specific lexicon and apply it to textual sentiment analysis. Secondly, the authors exploit a deep learning framework based on convolutional neural networks to analyze the sentiment in picture data.

The empirical results derived from vector autoregressive models reveal that both measures of the sentiment extracted from textual information and pictorial information in social media are significant leading indicators of stock performance. Moreover, pictorial information and textual information have similar relationships with stock performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that incorporates multimodal social media data for sentiment analysis, which is valuable in understanding pictures of social media data. The study offers significant implications for researchers and practitioners. This research informs researchers on the attention of multimodal social media data. The study’s findings provide some managerial recommendations, e.g. watching not only words but also pictures in social media.

This paper aims to develop a research model that explains how instant messaging (IM) technologies enable employees to be empowered.

The paper uses survey of 253 Chinese work professionals with respect to their use of IM tools at work.

IM does empower work teams via shaping the social networks and facilitating knowledge sharing in the workplace, resulting in heightened team performance.

The survey was conducted in China so generalization to other national contexts is tentative. It focuses on the bright side of IM, but neglects the dark side, e.g. security concerns and work interruptions.

IM is not only a social tool, it also has the potential to contribute to work teams. However, IM cannot achieve better work performance alone. Its contribution to strengthen the social networks at work is also critical. These social networks at work can enable employees to overcome psychological barriers to knowledge sharing.

Studies of IM in the workplace have not previously considered social network perspectives, nor the value of such IM‐facilitated social networks for work performance. This large scale survey of work professionals across four locations in China provides evidence for the considerable positive impacts of IM on work.

The goal of this study is to gather information from library patrons to answer the questions of whether real‐time reference services (instant messaging, IM) are beneficial to patrons and how valuable they are to fulfilling their task needs. The study was designed to elicit information about how patrons were dealing with the rapidly changing technological environment, and how helpful they felt IM reference services were to them.

The investigation uses the technology acceptance model (TAM) as the basic framework and extends it by the variable of perceived relevance (PR) which intends to extend understanding of the adoption of IM services. The sample consisted of three university libraries' patrons on the basis of convenience, and 323 usable responses were obtained.

This research found general support for TAM. Specifically, the findings show that perceived ease of use of IM services is the key factor for the patrons' attitudes about the IM service. Overall, the model explained 58 percent of the variance in behaviour intention. Thus, the results show that the proposed model does satisfactorily explain the adoption of the IM service.

The findings of this research provide some useful insights into a patron's behavioural intention toward adoption of an IM service which will stimulate thought about real‐time reference services that could be offered by other libraries. And it will be valuable for better understanding of factors affecting the determinants of IM acceptance, which allows libraries to devise more effective approaches to improving the patrons' perceptions of a target system and thereby boost subsequent acceptance of the system.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.