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Consumers display complex shopping behaviors in the multichannel environment, which includes traditional retail stores and the internet. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the customer-sales associate relationship, customers’ receptiveness to online store shopping, and their interaction effects on the customer’s attitude toward multichannel shopping behavior when the firm decides to establish an online store as the online channel. The authors also examine how customers’ multichannel shopping behavior affects their future spending intentions.

Survey data were collected by soliciting 231 customers who purchased cosmetics in department stores within the past three months. Subjects were asked to give their overall evaluation of their offline and online shopping experiences in the last three months.

Results show that the customer-sales associate relationship significantly reduces customers’ attitude toward searching offline but purchasing online. Receptiveness to online store shopping has significant effects on customers’ attitude toward multichannel shopping behaviors regardless of whether they search or purchase via the online channel. The customer-sales associate relationship also moderates the relationship between customers’ receptiveness to online store shopping and multichannel shopping behaviors. Finally, unlike other types of online and offline multichannel shoppers who display higher future spending intentions when the physical store decides to open an online store, those who prefer physical stores for both information searching and product purchasing display lower spending intentions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to use customer-sales associate relationships to investigate consumers’ attitude toward multichannel shopping behavior. The findings provide meaningful implications for service providers that use sales associates to increase consumers’ value via face-to-face service, but find it challenging to go online.

To understand the effectiveness of electronic word of mouth, the purpose of this paper is to examine how high- vs low-knowledge consumers judge and attribute the credibility of positive and negative online reviews by drawing upon accessibility–diagnosticity theory and attribution theory.

This study conducts an observation-based study in an online forum and a 2 (review valence) × 2 (consumer knowledge) between-participants factorial experiment to examine the proposed hypotheses.

High-knowledge consumers elicit less perceived credibility and make more non-product-relevant attribution than low-knowledge consumers in negative online reviews. Consumer attribution is also found to mediate the effects of the review valence by consumer knowledge interaction on review credibility.

This study adds to extant research by examining how consumer knowledge plays a key role in determining consumer perception of online review credibility. This study also advances the understanding of different casual inferences about online reviews between high- and low-knowledge consumers.

This study aims to propose an integrated view and emphasize the importance of bank intangible value binding in customers' robo-advisory adoption. It explores the relationship between robo-advisors and traditional banking and defines the role of bank intangible assets value. It also attempts to understand if trust in the banking institution and the financial consultant determines the effect of these relationships.

The target sample of the study was investors who currently use wealth management services. This study collected 228 valid questionnaires and then executed structural equation model analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results showed that intangible value bindings play a mediating role, which positively affects consumers' willingness to adopt robo-advisors. Consumers' trust in banks and financial consultants are antecedent variables, which positively affect the intangible value bindings between consumers and banks. In addition, when the consumers' investment amount is higher, it will weaken the positive relationship between the intangible value binding and robo-advisor adoption intention.

Most of the past studies have focused on whether robo-advisors would replace personal financial consultants. This study proposes a hybrid model that contains both robo-advisors and traditional banking services, which encourage the acceptance of robo-advisors.

This study aims to explore how absorptive and joint learning can foster radical innovation. Furthermore, dependence asymmetry is investigated as a moderator of the effects of these factors on radical innovation. Radical innovation is an important source of any firm’s success. Yet, there has been a dearth of research in the literature on how different types of inter-partner learning cultivate the process of generating such innovation.

The authors use a sample of 204 Taiwanese electronics suppliers to test the effects of joint learning and absorptive learning on radical innovation. The empirical analysis adopts a structural equations modeling approach.

The authors find that a supplier’s joint learning has a stronger effect on radical innovation than its absorptive learning. However, when accounting for the moderating effect of dependence asymmetry, the analysis shows that absorptive learning does have a significant effect on radical innovation. The effect of joint learning on radical innovation is not moderated by the degree of dependence asymmetry.

This study broadens and deepens the understanding of how radical innovation by suppliers can be generated in customer–supplier relationships, and how this is shaped by the power-dependence structure.

Inter-partner learning; radical innovation; power; dependence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of original equipment manufacturing (OEM) suppliers’ electronic integration with global customers on their capability widening, following the literature on electronic integration, firm innovativeness, product modularity and dynamic capabilities. It also examines the moderating roles of supplier innovativeness and product modularity in the proposed relationship.

This study conducts empirical examination on a sample of OEM suppliers in Taiwan. It collects 201 self-reported responses via mailed surveys of 1,069 electronics companies listed in the 5000 Largest Firms in Taiwan, and the archival data are obtained from the Taiwan Economic Journal database.

The results show that electronic integration with global customers affects capability widening negatively, whereas supplier innovativeness affects capability widening positively. In addition, product modularity plays a moderating role in the relationship between electronic integration and capability widening.

This study contributes to the electronic integration literature by providing empirical evidences on how OEM suppliers’ electronic integration affects their capability widening. This study also adds to the supply chain management literature by demonstrating the relationship between OEM suppliers’ innovativeness and their move into higher value-added activities, as well as how product modularity interplays with electronic integration between customers and suppliers on suppliers’ capability widening in global supplier‒customer relationships.

For OEM suppliers with a low level of product modularity, they may widen their capabilities by exploring other value-added activities (e.g. original design manufacturing or original brand manufacturing). For OEM suppliers with a high level of product modularity, the improvement of their manufacturing capabilities is a helpful approach to create competitive advantage.

This study is one of the first to examine the interplay between electronic integration and product modularity on capability widening of OEM suppliers from an emerging market. Meanwhile, this study provides support for the relationship between supplier innovativeness and innovative activities in the global supply chain context.

To improve the effectiveness of online reviews in the cultural industries, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of online cultural reviews of professional and consumer commentators on consumer responses toward elite and mass cultural offerings by drawing upon associative learning theory and social influence theory.

This study used a 2 (cultural offerings: elite vs mass)×2 (commentators: professional vs consumer) between-participants factorial design to examine the proposed hypotheses. A total of 195 participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental cells.

The ANOVA results indicate that the credibility of online cultural reviews is significantly higher for professional commentators than for consumer commentators across both elite and mass cultural offerings. Furthermore, the results confirm that there is a significant cultural offering type by commentator interaction on a consumer's offering evaluation, overall attitude, and behavioral intention.

This study provides strong support for the congruence between cultural commentators and cultural offerings in online cultural reviews. The findings can also effectively explain the weak correlation between professional judgments and popular appeal.

For better effectiveness of online cultural reviews, the findings recommend cultural marketers that the use of professional commentators is effective for elite cultural offerings, whereas the use of consumer commentators is effective for mass cultural offerings.

This study proposes a useful dichotomy to classify cultural offerings as elite and mass. Meanwhile, this study is one of the first to examine the congruence between cultural offerings and cultural commentators in online reviews.

The goal of this study is to investigate the relationships among brand attachment, online source credibility, and severity of negative online information on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk.

A 2×2×2 experiment was conducted to explore the effects of brand attachment (low or high), online source credibility (low or high), and online information severity (low or high) on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk.

The results showed that the severity of negative online information affects perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk significantly. However brand attachment can reduce the effects of negative online information on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk significantly. The results also showed that the effect of the severity of negative online information on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk is moderated by online source credibility.

In addition to the main effects in the proposed research model, it is the first study to explore the moderating effects of brand attachment and online source credibility on the relationship between negative online information and perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk.

Internet portals have long been providing free services (e.g. e‐mail, blog) to attract new users and retain existing customers. However, it is uncertain whether the users will continue to use the present free service over time. Blog enables people to interact with others extensively and the population of blog users has been skyrocketing in recent years. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of virtual community on a user's attitude and intention to continually use the current blog service.

The conceptual empirical model has been developed on the foundation of social psychology, relationship marketing, and transaction cost analysis (TCA). Users of blogging communities who have frequent experience of interacting with other members were the objects for this study. In total, 243 valid samples were obtained for empirical testing by employing structural equation model.

Results show that asset specificity and community pressure play mediating roles in the relationship between community identification and attitude toward using blog services, which in turn affects intention to stay with a blogging community. Perceived usefulness is successful in determining the attitude of using blogging community.

This paper is believed to be the first that uses a sociology view of community and asset specificity to investigate its impacts on online consumer loyalty. The study advances the relationship marketing literature in explaining user's new service adoption behavior by adding community identity and community pressure generated through the process of using web‐based services. The paper concludes with implications for web‐based service providers, and additional extended research relevant to the study of virtual community and asset specificity is also provided.

Consumer satisfaction continues to be an important area of both academic research and managerial interest. Yet most satisfaction research has utilized US subjects to develop and test satisfaction theory. The purpose of this research is to test the basic disconfirmation of expectations model in a very different culture than the USA, and compare the results to a matched sample of subjects in the USA. Specifically, a sample of student subjects from Taiwan is compared to a sample of student subjects in the USA. The results indicate support for the generalizability of the model in this Asian culture.