Search results

Examines consumers’ perception of brands as influenced by their origins and the differences in classification ability between consumers’ knowledge levels. Specifically, culture‐of‐brand‐origin (COBO) is proposed to have replaced country‐of‐origin (COO) as the most important origin influence regarded by consumers in their perceptions of brands. Culture‐of‐brand‐origin is used to mean the cultural origin or heritage of a brand. Data were gathered from 459 respondents in the Asian city of Singapore; and used to assess Singaporean consumers’ ability to classify the cultural origins of fashion clothing brands. This was compared to their ability to classify the country origins of the same brands. Six brands were used in a between‐subjects design, with three brands of western countries and three of eastern countries. Results indicate that consumers can more readily identify the cultural origin of brands over their country‐of‐origin. Reveals that a consumer’s ability to make this distinction is influenced by the consumer’s perception of how well he/she knows the brand.

This study examines consumer brand associations, focusing on the differences between association held for western brands and eastern brands by young Singaporeans under the country‐of‐origin umbrella. The study also examines consumer ethnocentric tendencies (CET), finding very low levels of ethnocentrism among respondents, and results indicate CET had no effect on brand preference or purchase intention.

Healthcare delivery faces increasing pressure to move from a provider-centered approach to become more consumer-driven and patient-centered. However, many of the actions taken by clinicians, patients and organizations fail to achieve that aim. This paper aims to take a paradox-based perspective to explore five specific tensions that emerge from this shift and provides implications for patient experience research and practice.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that synthesizes literature in health services and administration, organizational behavior, services marketing and management and service operations to illuminate five patient experience tensions and explore mitigation strategies.

The paper makes three key contributions. First, it identifies five tensions that result from the shift to more patient-centered care: patient focus vs employee focus, provider incentives vs provider motivations, care customization vs standardization, patient workload vs organizational workload and service recovery vs organizational risk. Second, it highlights multiple theories that provide insight into the existence of the tensions and how they may be navigated. Third, specific organizational practices that engage the tensions and associated examples of leading organizations are identified. Relevant measures for research and practice are also suggested.

The authors develop a novel analysis of five persistent tensions facing healthcare organizations as a result of a shift to a more consumer-driven, patient-centered approach to care. The authors detail each tension, discuss an existing theory from organizational behavior or services marketing that helps make sense of the tension, suggest potential solutions for managing or resolving the tension and provide representative case illustrations and useful measures.

The dropout rates of open e-learning platforms are often cited as high as 97%, with many users discontinuing their use after initial acceptance. This study aims to explore this anomaly through the lens of affordances theory, revealing design–reality gaps between users' diverse goals and the possibilities for action provided by an open IT artefact.

A six-month case study was undertaken to investigate the design implications of user-perceived affordances in an EU sustainability project which developed an open e-learning platform for citizens to improve their household energy efficiency. Thematic analysis was used to reveal the challenges of user continuance behaviour based on how an open IT artefact supports users in achieving individual goals (e.g. reducing energy consumption in the home) and collective goals (lessening the carbon footprint of society).

Based on the findings, the authors inductively reveal seven affordances related to open e-learning platforms: informing, assessment, synthesis, emphasis, clarity, learning pathway and goal-planning. The findings centre on users' perception of these affordances, and the extent to which the open IT artefact catered to the goals and constraints of diverse user groups. Open IT platform development is further discussed from an iterative and collaborative perspective in order to explore different possibilities for action.

The study contributes towards research on open IT artefact design by presenting key learnings on how the designers of e-learning platforms can bridge design–reality gaps through exploring affordance personalisation for diverse user groups. This can inform the design of open IT artefacts to help ensure that system features match the expectations and contextual constraints of users through clear action-oriented possibilities.

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

This study examines the impact of mediator style, mediation outcome, and mediator background variables on community mediation participant satisfaction and fairness perceptions along several dimensions. Our data were collected from a community mediation program located in a justice court in the Southwestern United States. During a twelve‐month period, 40 mediation sessions, each involving a single mediator, were videotaped. The 108 mediation participants completed surveys assessing their perceptions of and satisfaction with their specific mediation experiences. The findings indicate important impacts of mediator facilitativeness on all perceptions and of conflict resolution success on satisfaction. Mediator experience impacted perceptions of the mediator; mediator gender and law background had no impacts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine semi-strong market efficiency by observing the behavioral finance implications of Jim Cramer’s recommendations in bull vs bear markets. The authors extend the literature by analyzing investor reaction through the lenses of prospect theory, overreaction, and herding.

The authors test for abnormal returns in response to Mad Money buy and sell recommendations. The authors use a sample of buy and sell recommendations from MadMoneyRecap.com from July 28, 2005 through February 9, 2009. The 3.5-year time period is the most recent and comprehensive set of Mad Money recommendations that has been tested to date.

The results indicate market inefficiency at the semi-strong level. Furthermore, the findings highlight the loss aversion tendencies of investors in regards to prospect theory of Kahneman and Tversky (1979) as well as the disposition effect of Shefrin and Statman (1985). Evidence also exists consistent with the herding and overreaction hypotheses.

The evidence suggests contrarian behavior in which investors respond positively to good news in bad times – perhaps, in effort to stay the course and at least break even. This behavior may suggest that losers tend to hold on to losses in hopes of recouping them. Thus, positive information in bad times could further persuade market participants to hang on to or buy more of losers, while also persuading non-shareholders to buy in as well.

Though other studies including Kenny and Johnson (2010) have estimated abnormal returns in response to analyst recommendations, to the knowledge, none has examined behavioral implications of investor reaction to buy and sell recommendations in both bull and bear markets. Furthermore, the study captures a longer bull and bear market and covers two definitions of such markets.

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.

This paper aims to assess the direct effects of antecedents of initial trust, the mediating effect of trust and the moderating effect of demographic variables on non-adopters’ behavioral intention to use mobile banking.

The study tested the models of theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior to evaluate potential antecedents of trust (diffusion of trust, infrastructure quality, perceived costs, privacy and security) moderators (demographic variables) and mediators (initial trust) that will influence behavioral intention to use mobile banking. The Hayes’ Process Macro developed by Andrew F. Hayes (2013) was used as a statistical analysis in SPSS to estimates the path coefficients using multiple regression. The tool provides insights on the direct and indirect effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable through the existence of moderating variables and mediation variables.

The results show that the non-adopters of mobile banking asserted that the antecedents of initial trust played a significant influence on behavioral intention to use online banking services.

There is a dearth of literature addressing mobile banking in the Philippines. The first initial trust formation in internet banking using computer workstations and laptops in the Philippines was conducted by Chiu et al. (2016). This research fills in the gap by expanding and formulating a deeper understanding of the antecedents of initial trust that influence consumer behavioral intention that might be responsible for the slow diffusion of mobile banking services in the country. The results from this study will help financial institutions create a beneficial connection with consumers while alleviating the fears of non-adopters and enhancing their understanding of the benefits of mobile banking.