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The purpose of this paper is to examine a new research model which includes both hedonic and utilitarian determinants that influence Line users’ attitudes toward hospitality companies that offer free Line stickers for potential users.

To target the right population, Line users who had used hospitality company-branded Line stickers are recruited as participants. Data from 372 usable questionnaires are tested against the research model by using the structural equation modeling approach.

The results show that all of the proposed variables, perceived usefulness, perceived social presence, perceived richness, perceived enjoyment, perceived novelty and perceived appeal, were found to be critical factors significantly influencing users’ attitudes.

This study targets Line users who had experiences in using hospitality company-branded Line stickers. Therefore, a validation using another large sample gathered elsewhere is required to generalize the findings.

The findings can give hospitality managers an increased understanding of the attitudes of Line users toward the companies providing stickers to them; the results may be used as a guideline to develop more appropriate business strategies for hospitality organizations with which to promote their products/services.

The proposed model is new; little research has been done on examining Line users’ attitudes toward hospitality companies that offer free Line stickers for users. This study contributes to an understanding of the factors that actually influence users’ attitudes toward those hospitality companies offering brand Line stickers.

This study contends that customers’ perceived value can drive medical tourism. To demonstrate this, the purpose of this paper is to propose and test a research model capturing elements of perceived benefits and sacrifice that, by affecting the perceived value of medical tourism products, influence the buying intention of potential customers.

Potential medical tourists from China are tapped due to their cultural similarity to Taiwan, and the absence of a language barrier. Data from 301 usable questionnaires were tested against the research model using the structural equation modeling approach.

The results indicated that perceived value was a key predictor of customer intentions. As for benefits, perceived medical quality, service quality and enjoyment were critical components that significantly influenced the perception of value. Regarding sacrifice, the effects of perceived risk on perceived value were significant.

This study targeted potential medical tourists. Therefore, a validation using another large sample gathered elsewhere is required to generalize the findings.

The findings can assist governments in developing policies that promote medical destination and provide insights into research on how destination countries can make medical tourism a win/win option for themselves and international patients.

The proposed model is original; unlike most prior papers which take a conceptual approach to medical tourism, this study contributes to an understanding of the factors that influence the travel intentions of medical tourists through its empirical investigation, and especially in its targeting of customers’ value perception.

This study seeks to propose a conceptual approach to assess the perceived service quality properly using Fuzzy logic. First, it aims to verify whether it is a better solution than the Likert scale. Second, it seeks to evaluate patients' feedback towards hospital service quality using Fuzzy linguistic analysis.

The SERVQUAL questionnaire was developed according to the characteristics of each hospital's out‐patient service. Three regional hospitals in Hsin‐Chu, Taiwan were evaluated. After being completed and collected, first, the effectiveness of the Fuzzy linguistic scale and the Likert scale was compared. Second, gap values of each element were evaluated to find the core service quality attributes for continuous improvement. Finally, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to segment markets using certain service quality attributes and different demographic variables.

The result indicated that the Fuzzy linguistic scale is higher than the Likert scale in terms of reliability in the measurement. Moreover, through gap analysis and ANOVA, a better focus was achieved on the 8th, 10th, 14th, 21st and 3rd service quality attributes from the SERVQUAL measurement on which management should concentrate and which they should endeavor to work out. The 1st, 2nd, 14th and 16th items from the SERVQUAL measurement can be market segment factors, respectively.

The study successfully introduced Fuzzy linguistic analysis into the Gap theory and SERVQUAL measurements, and provided more internal consistency and stability than the Likert scale. After discussing the findings of the gap analysis and ANOVA, the organization could find the critical service quality attributes and create a value for improving or enhancing them.

The basic assumption is that there is a symmetric relationship between review valence and rating, but what if review valence and rating were linked asymmetrically? There are few studies which have investigated the situations in which positive and negative online reviews exert different influences on ratings. This study considers brand strength as having an important moderating role because the average rating of existing reviews for a particular product is a heuristic cue for decision makers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to argue that an asymmetric relationship between review content valence and numerical rating will depend on brand strength.

The authors have conducted a sentiment analysis via text mining, using self-developed computer programs to retrieve a data set from the TripAdvisor website.

This study finds there is an asymmetric relationship between review valence (verbal) and numerical rating. The authors further find brand strength to have an important moderating role. For a stronger brand, negative review content will have a greater impact on numerical ratings than positive review content, while for a weaker brand, positive review content will have a greater impact on numerical ratings than negative review content.

Marketers could adopt sentiment analysis via text mining of online reviews as a valid measure or predictor of consumer satisfaction or numerical ratings. Strong brands should direct more attention to negative reviews, because in such reviews the negative impact transcends the positive. In contrast, weak brands should aim to exploit as many positive reviews as possible to minimize the impact of any negative reviews.

This study finds there is an asymmetric relationship between review valence (verbal) and numerical rating and considers brand strength to play an important moderating role. The authors have used real data from the TripAdvisor website, which allow people to express themselves in an unsolicited manner, and linked these with the results from the sentiment analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to establish an integrated model of Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), to assist enterprises to process supplier quality performance rating and comparison and find the core improvement direction to create the value of all supply chain members.

This study used the integrated model to process supplier quality performance rating and comparison, which not only improved the order-winners and qualifiers and continued to increase supplier quality performance, but resolved the complex and difficult cause-effect relation issue to find out core improvement items. The cases of Taiwanese industrial computer manufacturers were used to describe the application and benefits of this methodology.

The results recommended that the improvement item of supplier A shall focus on design and quality conformance. The recommended improvement item and order for supplier B is design, delivery reliability and delivery speed. This study established ANP and DEMATEL evaluation models, and expanded the application field in the supplier performance evaluation.

The ANP model is used to calculate the importance of the evaluation criteria, and the DEMATEL method is introduced to consider the impact of the casual relationship of evaluation items and to adjust the importance of the evaluation item, and to solve the complex and difficult practical causation issue.

Brands are increasingly considering the use of chatbots to supplement, or even replace, humans in service interactions. Like humans, chatbots can follow certain service scripts in their encounters, which can subsequently determine the customer experience. Service scripts are verbal prescriptions that seek to standardize customer service interactions. However, while the role of service scripts is well documented, despite the increasing use of chatbots as a service mechanism, less is known about the effect, on consumers, of different service scripts presented during chatbot service encounters.

An experimental scenario was developed to test the research hypotheses. Respondents were randomly allocated to scenarios representing a 2 (service interaction: human, chatbot) × 2 (service script: education, entertainment) design. A total of 262 US consumers constituted the final sample for the study.

The findings indicate that when employing an education script, a significant positive effect occurs for human service agents (compared to chatbots) in terms of both satisfaction and purchase intention. These effects are fully mediated by emotion and rapport, showing that the bonds developed through the close proximity to a human service agent elicit emotion and develop rapport, which in turn influence service outcomes. However, this result is present only when an educational script is used.

This paper contributes to the emerging service marketing literature on the use of digital services, in particular chatbots, in service interactions. We show that differences occur in key outcomes dependent on the type of service script employed (education or entertainment). For managers, this study indicates that chatbot interactions can be tailored (in script delivered) in order to maximize emotion and rapport and subsequently consumer purchase intention and satisfaction.

The consumer culture in recent times has evolved into one of the most powerful ingredients shaping individuals and societies. Although the behavioural intentions and purchase decisions related models continue to dominate research and managerial practice, a deeper look indicates that most studies do not take the complete picture in account and study parts of the above mentioned phenomena. Furthermore, consumers operate in a dynamic and ever‐changing environment which in itself demands a re‐examination of their behavioural intentions and purchase decision influences from time to time. This paper aims to focus on these issues.

Using the context of the young adults market, this study looks into how contextual factors vis‐à‐vis loyalty and switching impact consumer purchase intentions. The study involved both qualitative and quantitative research methodology.

The findings suggest that contextual factors have the strongest influence on purchase decisions. Furthermore, contextual factors influence the brand loyalty and switching behaviour.

The findings provide important insights with regards to the factors on which practitioners should focus to better tailor their content and approaches.

The study supplies unique learning to managers and researchers alike, through conceptualising and subsequently empirically verifying the issue of purchase decision, brand loyalty and switching with regard to contextual factors.

Project risk management (PRM) and human resource management (HRM) are the two critical success factors (CSFs) for international project management. This paper aims to correlate these two CSFs, identify the human resource (HR) barriers, develop a hybrid model for risk management and develop strategies to overcome the HR barriers to effective risk management in international projects.

In total, 20 key HR barriers have been identified through a literature survey and verified by project professionals. These HR barriers are ranked according to their ability to trigger other barriers by analysing their interactions using the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method. Based on Ulrich’s revised model for HR functions, a hybrid framework for international PRM has been proposed.

DEMATEL analysis categorized nine barriers as cause barriers and 11 as affected barriers. The “PROJECTS” model proposed for HR strategy development suggests eight strategies to overcome these nine cause barriers. The hybrid PRM framework developed includes the effect of the HR dimension.

This paper presents the generalized prioritization of HR barriers to international PRM. For a specific international project, the HR barriers and their prioritization may change slightly. The hybrid framework for PRM and the strategy development model suggested are yet to be validated.

Correlating two CSFs in international project management, i.e. HRM and PRM and ranking the HR barriers using the DEMATEL method is the uniqueness of this research paper. The hybrid framework developed for PRM based on HR functions in Ulrich’s revised model and the proposed new HR strategy development model “PROJECTS” are unique contributions of this paper.