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Inaction inertia is the phenomenon in which people are less likely to accept an opportunity after having previously missed a relatively superior one. This research explores how framing quantity promotions as either a freebie (e.g. “buy 1, get 1 free”) or a price bundle (e.g. “buy 2, get 50% off”) influences inaction inertia. Relevant mediators are also identified.

Three experiments, two using imaginary scenarios and one using an incentive-compatible design, test the hypotheses.

Consumers who miss a freebie quantity promotion express higher inaction inertia than consumers who miss a price bundle promotion. The cause of this difference is higher perceived regret and greater devaluation that result from missing a superior freebie (vs price bundle) promotion.

Future research should examine how factors influencing perceived regret and devaluation moderate the quantity promotional frame effect on inaction inertia.

The findings provide insights into which quantity promotional frames practitioners should use to reduce inaction inertia.

This study's comprehensive theoretical framework predicts quantity promotional frame effects on inaction inertia and identifies relevant internal mechanisms. The findings are evidence that inaction inertia is caused by both perceived regret and devaluation in certain contexts. Furthermore, this study identifies the conditions in which a price bundle promotional frame is more beneficial than a freebie promotional frame.

Based on mental accounting theory, this study explored whether the comparability of missed and subsequent promotional formats/frames affects inaction inertia.

Four experiments with imaginary and incentive-compatible designs were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Consumers are more likely to express inaction inertia after having missed a comparable promotion than after having missed a noncomparable promotion. Devaluation of the promoted target mediates the impact of comparability on inaction inertia, while referent others' actions do not moderate the comparability effect. Finally, when consumers accept a subsequent inferior promotion, they prefer using a different payment format because it reduces comparability of the two promotions.

Companies should use different promotional formats/frames to reduce comparability and inaction inertia when a new promotion is relatively inferior to a recent previous one. Companies should offer different payment options to help customers actively avoid comparing a current promotion with a missed promotion.

This study provides a more comprehensive conceptual structure for understanding the relationship between psychological comparability and inaction inertia. It provides insights into what actions companies should take to reduce inaction inertia. Furthermore, this study empirically tests the influence of multiple comparison referents, which provides a reference point for future studies on the factors affecting inaction inertia. A new method to examine whether consumers actively avoid comparisons is used, which clarifies the internal mechanism of inaction inertia.

Taking a mental accounting theory perspective, this study explores how pricing strategy (all-inclusive vs partitioned) influences consumers' perceived residual value of a product and their subsequent intentions to upgrade to a newer model.

A pilot study and two formal experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses.

A partitioned (vs all-inclusive) price causes consumers to later recall a lower total cost and perceive lower residual value for the existing product, thereby increasing upgrade intentions. This finding holds for both utilitarian and hedonic products. Perceived residual value mediates the impact of the pricing strategy on upgrade intentions. The pricing strategy effect is stronger for state-oriented individuals than for action-oriented individuals.

This study extends understanding of the impact of pricing strategies from consumers' short-term immediate demand to long-term upgrade intentions. It also identifies a previously uninvestigated moderator (action-state orientation), clarifying the boundary conditions of pricing strategy effects. The study's conceptual framework links pricing strategy, sunk costs, perceived residual value and upgrade intentions, providing rich insights and potential research paths. These findings further enhance understanding of upgrade intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of brand strategies and spokesperson expertise on consumer responses to hypermarket private-label products by combining concepts from consumer attitude change, resistance to persuasion and construal level theory (CLT).

Two experiments were conducted to test the propositions.

Consumers perceived the low-price (low-quality) characteristic of private-label products as a high-level (low-level) construal consideration when forming purchase decisions. Product relevance negatively affected consumers’ perceived product distance. Compared with store brands, separate brands enhanced consumer product attitudes and purchase intentions. Brand strategies and product distance affected consumer message-processing mindset (i.e. resistant to persuasion or open to persuasion) when processing advertisements, ultimately moderating the effect of spokesperson expertise.

The findings are useful for hypermarkets seeking to implement brand strategies and select spokespersons for private-label products. Additionally, the findings show that advertisers should design advertising elements to match consumers’ construal approaches to product-related information.

This study contrasts two common hypermarket brand strategies, identifies the construal levels corresponding to the dual roles of private-label products and expands CLT dimensions. Additionally, the results bridge two research approaches (persuasion and resistance to persuasion) and demonstrate the pivotal influence of brand strategies. The findings also advance understanding of the effects of spokesperson expertise and contribute to resistance theory by showing how to effectively reduce attitude certainty after resistance to persuasion.

When using popular music in advertising, the songs' release period (nostalgia) and the lyrics' relevance to the product are two important characteristics but neglected in previous music‐related studies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of these two variables on consumers' responses to advertisements.

A 2 × 2 experimental design was used to examine the effects of a song's period and the lyrics' relevance. The hypotheses were tested with a structural equation analysis.

Previously heard old songs have positive ad effects due to evoking consumers' good moods or by generating more favorable nostalgia‐related thoughts. High‐relevance lyrics facilitate the production of favorable ad execution‐related thoughts, which improve ad attitude directly and indirectly through good moods.

Only undergraduate students are sampled. Further, the experiment focuses solely on music‐dominated ads for low involvement products.

For advertising targeting the young generation, the use of a popular song released during their childhood can elicit feelings of nostalgia and lead to good moods as well as favorable brand attitudes. Such effects, can be strengthened by high‐relevance lyrics.

Placing a previously heard popular song in a TV ad can evoke nostalgic feelings and generate favorable ad effects even when the product and other ad design elements are not related to nostalgic themes. The persuasion mechanism of nostalgia follows a dual‐route process, in which the cognitive route seems to be more influential than the affective route. The importance of lyrics' relevance is demonstrated to the extent that its impact on brand attitude can exceed that of song's nostalgia.

This study aims to identify the driving forces of customer value co-creation (VCC) that occur through employee positive psychological capital (PPC), employee service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (SOOCB) and customer brand experience (BE).

In total, 493 valid samples were retrieved from 30 hotels in Taiwan. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to extensively and accurately examine customer VCC from a cross-level perspective.

The results showed that employee PPC was not positively related to customer VCC, that employee PPC affected customer VCC indirectly through the mediating effect of employee SOOCB and that the relationship between employee SOOCB and customer VCC was positively moderated by customer BE.

First, this study investigated the customer VCC driving forces through the role of the employee, and thus advances the customer VCC field. Second, it identified employee SOOCB as a key mediating mechanism that links the indirect relationship between employee PPC and customer VCC. Third, it identified customer BE as a key moderating mechanism in the relationship between employee SOOCB and customer VCC. Fourth, regarding methodology, few studies investigate VCC through a cross-level approach. The present study used hierarchical linear modeling to extensively and accurately examine customer VCC and its cross-level relationships, thus providing greater research value compared with single-level analysis. Finally, the result findings suggest that organizational leaders should enhance the PPC of employees in furtherance of encouraging the employees to perform extra-role SOOCB, which makes customer co-creation behavior, and ultimately, contributes to managerial practice.

This study examines whether relational capital influences self-disclosure behavior through the mechanism of needs-based motivation in virtual communities.

This study adopts hierarchical linear model (HLM) to differentiate between the relationships at different levels, with 378 online questionnaires recovered from 42 virtual communities.

The results show that group-level relational capital is positively related to self-disclosure and affects it through the partially mediating mechanism of motivation. Relational capital also strengthens the positive influence of the need to be on trend on individual self-disclosure behavior.

This study makes four research contributions. Firstly, we identify the means by which relational capital established within a virtual community influences user disclosure behavior. This focus differs from those of previous studies, which have emphasized privacy and security of information systems, cost–benefit considerations, and/or adopted personality traits as the research basis. Secondly, this study examines and verifies the mediating mechanism of motivation, establishing an alternative perspective for theoretical studies, and providing future studies with a reference for investigating the self-disclosure behavior of members. Thirdly, this research introduces and verifies the moderating effects of relational capital based on member relationships, thus making further theoretical and empirical contributions. Finally, we adopt HLM to conduct our analyses, thereby ensuring higher precision regarding the explanatory power of group-level explanatory variables for individual-level dependent variables.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a proportional-integral-derivative-based fuzzy neural network (PIDFNN) with elitist bacterial foraging optimization (EBFO)-based optimal membership functions (PIDFNN-EBFO) position controller to control the voice coil motor (VCM) for tracking reference trajectory accurately.

Because the control characteristics of the VCM are highly nonlinear and time varying, a PIDFNN, which integrates adaptive PID control with fuzzy rules, is proposed to control the mover position of the VCM. Moreover, an EBFO algorithm is further proposed to find the initial optimal fuzzy membership functions for the PIDFNN controller.

Due to the gradient descent method used in back propagation (BP) to derive the on-line learning algorithm for the PIDFNN, it may reach the local optimal solution due to the inappropriate initial values. Hence, a hybrid learning method, which includes BP and EBFO algorithms, is proposed to improve the learning performance of the PIDFNN controller.

Future work will consider reducing the computational burden of bacterial foraging optimization algorithm for on-line parameters optimization.

The real-time control system is implemented on a 32-bit floating-point digital signal processor (DSP). The experimental results demonstrate the favorable effectiveness of the proposed PIDFNN-EBFO controlled VCM system.

A new PIDFNN-EBFO control scheme is proposed and implemented via DSP for real-time VCM position control. The experimental results show the superior control performance of the proposed PIDFNN-EBFO compared with the other control systems.