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This paper aims to extend previously reported research on the Sisyphus Effect in consumers’ decision making to consumers classified as either maximizers or satisficers. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the Sisyphus Effect influences consumer behavior related to purchasing brand-extension products and explore factors that influence the Sisyphus Effect in brand extension.

A survey was administered to participants in three studies. A convenience sample consisting of 875 participants was asked to complete the questionnaires. The authors assessed whether the participants were maximizers or satisficers. In addition, the participants were given information on brand-extension products that differed in the level of involvement and price and were asked whether they would purchase them.

Using regression analysis, the authors found that consumers’ willingness to purchase extended products became weaker as maximization tendencies became stronger. In addition, purchase involvement was confirmed as a situational factor that can increase maximization tendencies even in individuals who do not maximize as a default strategy. Finally, for low-involvement extended products, the authors found that product price played a moderating role in the negatively correlated relationship between maximization tendency and willingness to purchase a product.

This study suggests avenues to increase the effectiveness of a brand-extension strategy and illustrates some tactics that are not likely to be successful.

This study shows the influence of consumers' goal and strategy of maximization on the process behind their behavioral response to price.

Data was collected through a 2×2 experimental design involving 314 respondents and analyzed using PLS-SEM.

The results show that when buyers maximize, their transaction value and acquisition value perceptions predict their behavioral response to deals and discounts. Further, these buyers do not consider sales price information to form their internal reference price. On the other hand, when buyers satisfice, their transaction value perceptions predict the behavioral responses to price deals, and the relationship between transaction value and the behavioral response is not mediated by acquisition value. Further, such buyers consider sales price to form their internal reference price.

The theory of purchase value assumes that consumers seek to maximize their value. Our work relaxes this assumption to show how value maximizers (and satisficers) differ in the process of value formation and their responses to price promotions.

Online social networks are increasingly important venues for businesses to promote their products and image. However, information propagation in online social networks is significantly more complicated compared to traditional transmission media such as newspaper, radio, and television. In this chapter, we will discuss research on modeling and forecasting diffusion of virally marketed content in social networks. Important aspects include the content and its presentation, the network topology, and transmission dynamics. Theoretical models, algorithms, and case studies of viral marketing will be explored.

This study aims to examine the effect of opinion leadership on individuals’ susceptibility to social influence, which eventually affects their adoption behavior and assess how these relationships vary with gender in new product adoption.

Data were collected based on a survey of young consumers regarding the adoption of new consumer electronics. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and multiple sample analyses.

The study finds that opinion leaders are more sensitive to influence from others when the mechanism of status competition is at work. Although consumers who are more susceptible to normative influence tend to adopt new products later than others, those who are more susceptible to status competition are more likely to adopt earlier. The results also provide evidence for gender differences. Female leaders are more susceptible to status competition, whereas male leaders are less sensitive to informational influence. The effects of susceptibility to normative influence and status competition on adoption behavior are stronger for female than for male consumers.

The overall structural model predicts an interesting relationship between individual influence and susceptibility, as well as the effects of these factors on adoption behavior. This study also provides deeper insights into the dynamics of the social influence mechanisms at work for each gender in new product adoption.

The purpose of this paper addresses the issue of inconsistent findings regarding the impact of consumers' need for touch (NFT) on webrooming behavior. It investigates the moderator of maximization by drawing on maximizing mindset theory.

Three studies were carried out to test the hypothesized relationships. The first study investigated the impact of autotelic NFT on webrooming intention. The second study examined the impact of instrumental NFT on webrooming intention. The third study tested all hypotheses by the structural equation modeling approach.

The results confirm moderation by consumers' maximizing mindset. The moderated mediation analyses show that the interaction effect of autotelic NFT and maximization influences webrooming intention indirectly via anticipated sensory pleasure. Likewise, the interaction effect of instrumental NFT and maximization influences webrooming intention indirectly via product fit uncertainty.

The study draws on maximizing mindset theory to show that consumers' autotelic NFT and instrumental NFT drive their webrooming intentions depending on the activation of their maximizing mindset. The nonsignificant relationship between autotelic NFT and webrooming intention in the context of satisficers explains the conflicting findings reported in the literature. Consumers' affective and cognitive responses were also studied to uncover the underlying mechanisms of their webrooming intention. This research contributes to the literature by enhancing the understanding of webrooming behavior.

This paper aims to present social trust as a variable of influence by demonstrating the possibilities of trusted social nodes to improve influential capability and rate of successfully influenced social nodes within a social networking environment.

This research will be conducted using simulated experiments. The base algorithm in research uses genetics algorithm diffusion model (GADM) where it carries out social influence calculations within a social networking environment. The GADM algorithm will be enhanced by integrating trust values into its influential calculations. The experiment simulates a virtual social network based on a social networking site architecture from the data set used to conduct experiments on the enhanced GADM and observe their influence capabilities.

The presence of social trust can effectively increase the rate of successfully influenced social nodes by factorizing trust value of one source node and acceptance rate of another recipient node into its probabilistic equation, hence increasing the final acceptance probability.

This research focused exclusively on conceptual mathematical models and technical aspects so far; comprehensive user study, extensive performance and scalability testing is left for future work.

Two key contributions of this paper are the calculation of social trust via content integrity and the application of social trust in social influential diffusion algorithms. Two models will be designed, implemented and evaluated on the application of social trust via trusted social nodes and domain-specified (of specific interest groups) trusted social nodes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between corporate governance structures and stakeholder and shareholder value maximization perspectives in 267 African banks from 2006 to 2011.

The authors used the Prais–Winsten ordinary least squares and random effect regression models to explore this relationship to ensure consistency and efficiency in results. The data for this study were collected from Bankscope.

The results of this study show that corporate governance structures such as CEO duality, nonexecutive members and extreme large board size lead to a reduction in both shareholder and stakeholder value maximization. However, audit independence and board size also promote both shareholder and stakeholder value maximization. Although gender diversity promotes profit maximization, it was not significant in any of the models estimated. The results further suggest that the same corporate governance structures promote and detract shareholder and stakeholder value maximization in Africa although the effect of corporate governance structures was weightier on shareholder value maximization confirming the agency theory.

From these findings, bank management must pursue the institution of good corporate governance structures and avoid weak corporate governance structures to promote shareholder and stakeholder value maximization. Also equity holders may have to pay particular attention to corporate governance structures because they benefit the most from the institution of good corporate governance structures.

This study explores and compares how corporate governance structures promote shareholder and stakeholder value maximization separately in African banks. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first of such studies.

This paper aims to present a vital strand that is part and parcel of an informed discussion towards the adoption of labour-friendly practices (LFP). This study is intended to examine the influence of LFP on five dimensions: job performance (JP), employee satisfaction (ES), corporate governance (CG), customer satisfaction (CS) and organizational performance (OP).

The study was conducted on top and middle-level management personnel in several companies across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A total of 1,000 questionnaires was distributed personally and via email of which 366 usable responses were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results reinforce the premise that LFP positively and significantly influences value maximization.

This paper affirmed that what is good for the employees (or other stakeholders) is also good for shareholders, but within the constraints of an ideal context, where the shareholders subscribe to strict ethical principles and the stakeholders act with their moral agency intact. Thus, the discussion of LFP comprises not just about what is satisfying for the employees but also what is conducive for optimal value creation. The empirical findings were, however, more compatible within the agency theory framework because of the non-instrumentality that was observed too ideal and philosophical for the stakeholder theory of value creation.

The social media revolution has brought tremendous change in business strategies for marketing and promoting the products and services. Online social networks have become prime choice to promote the products because of the large size of online communities. Identification of seed nodes or identifying the users who are able to maximize the spread of information over the network is the key challenge faced by organizations. It is proved as non-deterministic polynomial-time hard problem. The purpose of this paper is to design an efficient algorithm for optimal seed selection to cover the online social network as much as possible to maximize the influence. In this approach, agglomerative clustering is used to generate the initial population of seed nodes for GA.

In this paper agglomerative clustering based approach is proposed to generate the initial population of seed nodes for GA. This approach helps in creating the initial populations of Genetic algorithm from different parts of the network. Genetic algorithm evolves this population and aids in generating the best seed nodes in the network.

The performance of of proposed approach is assessed with respect to existing seed selection approaches like k-medoid, k-means, general greedy, random, discounted degree and high degree. The algorithms are compared over networks data sets with varying out-degree ratio. Experiments reveal that the proposed approach is able to improve the spread of influence by 35% as compared to contemporary techniques.

This paper is original contribution. The agglomerative clustering-based GA for optimal seed selection is developed to improve the spread of influence in online social networks. This paper is of immense importance for viral marketing and the organizations willing to promote product or services online via influential personalities.

This paper deals with external audits, which are now commonly used in many industries (e.g. food, automotive and electrical). This study aims to assess whether a given organization meets the specific criteria. If the audit ends with a positive result, information about it is provided to selected interested parties, e.g. clients or contractors. Credibility is pivotal in adding value for all interested parties within the audit processes. This study seeks the factors which, in the opinion of the audited enterprises, have the most decisive impact on the credibility of external audits.

In keeping with the extant literature, research questions were developed regarding the factors influencing the credibility assessment of external audits. Data collected from 100 companies in the Polish food sector were used to construct the model and carry out statistical analyses. Linear regression analyses were also applied to determine the key factors influencing the credibility of audits.

This study is part of the research trend on the rationality of external audits and certification of quality management systems. This paper identifies nine main factors shaping the credibility of external audits. Two of them have the most decisive influence on credibility. The first one is the professional audit method (procedure). The second factor is the auditor’s knowledge of the specificity of the audited area.

This study did not consider the impact that the image/credibility of the organization represented by the auditors may have on the reliability of audits. This is one of the fundamental limitations that should be considered when analyzing the obtained results. To recognize this type of dependence, additional research should be carried out. Another limitation is that the research covers the food industry only. It would be interesting to know the situation in other types of industries.

This paper looks at the possibility of increasing the added value for audited enterprises. The proposed model can be used by managers of organizations conducting external audits and auditors to effectively use resources for process improvement, influencing the maximization of credibility of activities in the area of conformity assessment.

The originality of this study lies in adopting the perspective of audited enterprises in assessing the credibility of audits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that adopts this approach. This paper contributes to the literature, particularly to better understand audited enterprises’ behavior (trust in audit results, satisfaction with audits, etc.).