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This study aims to verify the circumstances under which managing the allowance for uncollectible accounts is used as a tool of earnings management.

The authors investigate whether bad debt expense, which is an income statement counterpart of allowance for uncollectible accounts, is adjusted downward when pre-managed earnings is slightly above zero earnings, prior year’s earnings or analysts’ forecasts.

The findings of this study show that firms manage bad debt expense downward to avoid losses, sustain the prior year’s earnings and meet or beat analysts’ forecasts. The authors also find that the understatement of bad debt expense to meet earnings benchmarks is pronounced for firms with high tax costs.

Standard setters and auditors can gain a better understanding in detail of the practices and methods of managing earnings via the allowance for uncollectible accounts.

This study is the first to examine earnings management via the allowance for uncollectible accounts in non-financial Korean firms. In addition, the findings provide the evidence that firms prefer to use the allowance for uncollectible accounts as a strategic tool to meet benchmarks, especially when their tax costs are high.

This paper aims to examine the relationship of internal/external physical environments and emotional well-being and to explore the possible influence of such an association with guest satisfaction and retention considering the moderating role of price perception in the luxury resort hotel context.

A total of 603 responses were gathered from a field survey at luxury resort hotels. The data were analyzed using quantitative data analyses to achieve research objectives.

The results from the structural model assessment revealed that both internal and external physical environments elicited emotional well-being, which in turn leads to the increased guest satisfaction and retention. More specifically, internal atmospherics had a stronger impact on triggering subsequent variables compared to external environment factors. The outcomes also indicated the significant mediating role of emotional well-being and satisfaction. Emotional well-being was found to mediate the effect of internal and external physical environments on guest satisfaction, while guest satisfaction mediated the effect of emotional well-being on guest retention. Moreover, price perception significantly moderated the guest satisfaction–guest retention association. Overall, the proposed conceptual framework satisfactorily accounted for variance in guest retention.

The findings help practitioners in luxury resort hotels to develop ways to boost guests’ post-purchase behaviors by using internal/external atmospherics and emotional well-being.

In the 1947 article, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, Colin Rowe famously compared the spatial and geometric properties of buildings by two architects: Palladio and Le Corbusier. Many of Rowe's observations in this article have since been extensively debated but not rigorously tested. This paper examines Rowe's proposition that Palladio's villa plans possess greater intelligibility and cellularity than Le Corbusier's villa plans.

Two established computational techniques, axial line analysis and isovist analysis, are adopted in this paper to quantify and compare the properties of intelligibility and cellularity in the four villas that Rowe used to construct his argument: Malcontenta, Rotunda, Stein, and Savoye.

While acknowledging methodological limitations, the results of this paper do not support Rowe's claims, but they do lead to a unique quantitative examination of spatial configurations and properties of four famous villa plans.

This is the first paper to quantitatively examine Rowe's claims that Palladian villas possess greater intelligibility and cellularity than Le Corbusier's villas.

This study aims to explore how a relational brand experience can be designed using an integrated retail experience. It addresses the research gap between relational brand experience strategy, retail experience design, as well as online-offline integration, by providing applicable tools and knowledge.

Based on a literature review, a relational experience analytical framework (REAF) was developed as a diagnostic tool for relational brand experience. A case study was then conducted using the REAF to determine the relational brand experience factors, strategies in practice and related initiatives.

Three distinguishing integrated relational brand experience factors were identified (online-offline integration, overall activeness and the centre of relationships). A typology for an integrated relational brand experience was established with clarifying experiential characteristics and the required initiatives for each type. Based on the findings, a framework was proposed for an integrated brand experience design and its application in the retail experience design process.

The frameworks and strategies proposed can serve as a guide to industry professionals in designing integrated relational brand experiences.

The theoretical contributions of this study are in clarifying the relational brand experience dimensions and an integrated relational brand experience strategy typology. It also illustrates the strategic application of integrated retail experience based on a brand experience strategy using the proposed framework and the process.

Fitness service organizations often promote the personal training service by attributing competent features, qualifications, or/and service provision of fitness service providers to efforts or talents. This study aims to investigate whether and when the promotional attribution of fitness service providers' competent features, qualifications, or/and service provision contributes to customers' compliance with service instructions.

The authors developed the experimental stimuli of performance attribution promotion (i.e. effort attribution and talent attribution) and validated them via a pretest (N = 400). Utilizing the validated stimuli, the authors conducted an experiment (N = 400) employing a single-factor (performance attribution promotion: effort vs talent) between-subject design. The authors performed partial least squares structural modeling (PLS-SEM) to test our hypotheses.

The results revealed the interaction effect of performance attribution promotion and customers' implicit mindset on customer participation expectation. Specifically, when customers were high in implicit mindset (i.e. incremental-minded), attributing competent features, qualifications, or/and service provision of fitness service providers to effort (vs talent) increased customer participation expectation. Yet, when customers were low in implicit mindset (i.e. entity-minded), such an effect did not occur. Further, the authors identified customers' intention to comply with service instructions as a downstream consequence of the aforementioned interaction effect.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. It enriches the performance attribution literature by finding its new consequences and boundary condition. Moreover, the findings aid fitness service practitioners in developing strategies for eliciting customers' compliance with service instruction through performance attribution promotion.

This study aims to investigate the relationships among sensory, emotional and cognitive attributes on a hotel’s website, customers’ telepresence, their attitudes toward the hotel’s website, brand attitudes and their behavioral intentions, based on telepresence and parasocial interaction theories as theoretical backgrounds.

A cross-sectional, online, self-administered survey was conducted to examine the proposed framework from previous hotel guests in the USA, who booked the hotel via its website within the previous 12 months.

Results identified sensory and emotional attributes influenced customers’ telepresence; however, cognitive attributes did not affect telepresence on the hotel’s website. Telepresence then influenced customers’ attitudes toward the hotel’s website and their behavioral intentions. Both attitudes toward the hotel’s website and brand attitudes influenced customers’ behavioral intentions.

This study was the first study to propose the telepresence model in the hotel website context, investigating antecedents and outcomes of the telepresence.

Fitness service companies often promote the companies' personal training service by attributing trainers' competent characteristics, qualifications or/and service provision to their effort or talent. This promotion is called performance attribution promotion. Utilizing attribution theory and the theory's adjacent studies, this study investigated whether and why performance attribution promotion affects consumers' service purchase of personal fitness training.

The authors developed the experimental stimuli of performance attribution promotion and validated those through a pretest (N = 200). Using the validated stimuli, the authors conducted an experiment with employing a single factor between-subject design (performance attribution promotion: effort vs talent) based on random assignment (N = 200).

The analysis results revealed that attributing trainers' competent characteristics, qualifications or/and service provision to effort (vs talent) leads to a higher level of service registration intention. Moreover, this effect was mediated by the perceived teaching expertise but not by the perceived teaching trustworthiness.

These findings enrich the literature by illuminating a new mechanism and consequence of performance attribution promotion. The authors' study also extends the marketing studies related to expertise perception by presenting the attribution of visible features as one of the characteristics determining expertise perception. Finally, the authors' findings also have implications for fitness service companies and other stakeholders that seek to effectively leverage trainers' competent outcomes for consumer acquisition.

Formability is an important property of automotive pre-coated metals (PCMs). The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of long alkyl chains of polycarbonatediol to control the formability of polyester coatings.

Polyester resins with long alkyl chains were synthesized using different contents of polycarbonatediol. These resins were characterised by gel permeation chromatography (GPC), ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The polyester coatings were characterised according to their viscoelastic behaviour, formability, flexibility and anti-corrosion property.

The tensile strength of PCM should be larger than 5.6 MPa of the compressive stress at a strain of 23.4 per cent to overcome the harsh condition of deep drawing. To analyse the formability, F_ε (forming coefficient based on strain) and F_U (forming coefficient based on strain energy) were calculated. When F_ε and F_U were larger than 1, the polyester coatings exhibited good formability.

Long alkyl chains of polycarbonatediol gave flexibility and good formability to the polyester coatings.

There are two conditions that lead to the good formability of PCM. One is tensile strength and the other is forming coefficients based on strain and strain energy.

Long alkyl chains of polyester were a major factor to improve flexibility and formability. Thus, to have good formability, the tensile strength of PCM should be larger than 5.6 MPa, and the forming coefficients should be larger than 1.

Using 5,055 sample firm-years in Korea between 2009 and 2013, this paper aims to examine the association between the characteristics of the internal audit and the number of external audit hours as a proxy for audit efficiency.

This study is motivated by the International Standard on Auditing No. 610: “Using the work of internal auditors”. This auditing standard guides external auditors in using the work of internal auditors to obtain audit evidence and consult internal auditors for direct assistance. The authors expect that external audit efficiency will increase when the work of competent internal auditors is used.

The authors find that the number of internal auditors relative to the number of employees is associated with the number of external audit hours. This result suggests that the greater the availability of internal auditors, the greater their contribution will be to the financial statement audit and the more efficient the audit. The authors find evidence that external auditors use the work of internal auditors with accounting and legal expertise to improve audit efficiency. They also find some evidence that the work of internal auditors with greater availability is more effective during initial external audit engagements.

This study adds to the extant literature on the contributions of internal auditors to external audits by using archival data and by measuring audit effort using a large database of audit hours. In addition, our findings have practical implications for firms and external auditors who are evaluating the role and value of using the work of internal auditors. The authors also believe that the findings will be of interest to regulators or auditing standards boards.

Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), this paper examines the inter-country airline logistics relationships in East Asia. Based on the flight schedule data, which has been gathered by the authors, the overall features of airline logistics structure and the specific roles of each airport could be more clearly examined.

The main results of this paper are as follows: Beijing has the highest Degree Centrality, but excluding the domestic lines, Incheon has the highest Degree Centrality, which would imply that a relatively high Centrality of logistics for China’s airports is due to the greater number of domestic lines. The focal hub status of Incheon airport is also supported by the fact that Incheon contains the highest Betweenness Centrality.

Secondly, evaluated by the types of brokerage role, Incheon has a remarkably strong role as a liaison, which means Incheon airport functions as a transfer hub between two different regions outside of Korea. However, considering only the to/from China airline links, Hong Kong has the highest score as a liaison. These conflicting results imply that as China’s airline transportation continuously increases, Hong Kong will become a strong rival to Incheon.

Thirdly, in the analysis of Structural Hole which functions the broker and acts as a hub by linking unconnected airports, Incheon has the highest possibilities as a hub airport. However, only considering to/from China airlines, Hong Kong would dominate Incheon.