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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on the cognitive capacity theory. The paper aims to examine the effects of advertising recipients' positive and negative associations, that is their memories and fantasies evoked by the advertising stimulus, on brand attitude for advertisements that require little effort to process; focusing on positively framed advertisements.

This paper suggests a model on the effects of positive and negative association on brand attitude and tests it using partial least square. Advertisements that are easy to process were selected in a pre‐test.

It is shown that if advertisements are easy to process, the effects of consumers' associations depend on their favourableness: positive associations have a positive effect and negative associations have a negative effect on brand attitude. These findings are an extension of knowledge on the effects of associations, because for informational advertisements previous research has demonstrated that associations generally have a negative effect on brand attitude.

Results of this study suggest that evoking positive memories and fantasies in the target group enhances the effectiveness of advertisements that require little effort to process.

Effects of associations on brand attitude have not been studied for advertisements that require little effort to process. Previous studies have not distinguished positive and negative associations; this study analyses their effects separately.

This paper aims to understand how place brand managers in the US Deep South understand the brand images associated with their states and cities. The US South has its own unique identity – and the Deep South has its own differences from the rest of the country. Typically, the Deep South is seen as backwards, uneducated and the “buckle of the Bible Belt”. Given potentially negative brand associations, this research explores how destination marketing organization (DMO) managers in three Deep South states (Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama) think their places are perceived.

Miles et al.’s (2014) guidelines for qualitative content analysis are used to understand responses to open-ended questions regarding place brand associations. Surveys were sent to 104 DMO managers in each state, and 53 questionnaires were returned with usable responses. Deductive and inductive analyses were used to understand place brand associations, as well as how managers in the three states are promoting positive associations or correcting negative ones.

Managers reported both positive and negative brand associations but also detailed problems when promoting either: financial and political constraints, information sharing, and asset capitalization. Managers, then, face issues when trying to promote their cities and states, thus negatively influencing the economic and social returns on tourism investment into the region.

Not many studies examine this region of the USA when it comes to tourism-related brand associations. Usually studies focus more broadly on a Southern identity rather than specific associations DMO managers understand the state to maintain. The study also fills a gap regarding asking DMO managers how and why they do what they do. Finally, the study puts into action Gertner and Kotler’s (2004) framework for assessing corrective measures for a negative brand image.

Co‐branding is an often used marketing strategy within the theme park industry and it has existed in one form or another since the 1930s. Notwithstanding the growing interest for co‐branding in the theme park industry academic research in a theme park context has not been found yet. Empirical research on co‐branding is limited to a relatively few studies that have typically examined product concepts or fictitious products rather than real instances of co‐branding. This article aims to present results of an experiment on the effects of co‐branding from a real‐life theme park perspective.

The article is based on a classical field experiment in which the IBRA‐method of measuring brand associations was used. The IBRA‐method does not influence the brand associations like many other research techniques do (by giving certain cues). It is an unaided, unbiasing research technique. The objective of the study is to investigate whether the relationship between theme park Efteling and WWF, resulting in the co‐branded attraction PandaVision, could have a negative effect on the strong brand associations of theme park Efteling.

Through the field experiment an insight has been given into the possible effects a respondent's perceived brand fit within a co‐branding situation can have on the average evaluation of core associations of one of the constituent brands. Even strong brands (Efteling is the strongest brand in The Netherlands) can be harmed by a wrong co‐brand strategy. Results also showed that the brand fit manipulation has resulted in a more negative image of Efteling without affecting the evaluation of the co‐branded attraction PandaVision. Only measuring whether guests like or dislike your attractions is thus not sufficient.

This research is presented as a preliminarily study and the results should be interpreted with caution. The sample size was limited to 70 respondents and the experimental design with only students may not necessarily represent the typical visitor to the Efteling. Because of the crude manipulation of the treatment it is unclear what precisely caused the established effect. Is the effect caused by the degree of elaboration (meaning, because the respondent is triggered to think deeply about the matter at hand) or by the substantive guidance? Supplementary research with several experimental groups is needed to answer this question.

Theme parks should be aware of the dangers of co‐branding. Pairing with a wrong partner can damage the brand; negative spillover effects, erosion, brand dilution and even negative bottom line effects for the participating brands are possible. If the results occur for strong brands, weaker brands should be even more aware of the dangers.

This article presents the first application of the effects of co‐branding in a specific theme park setting. It is also the first article to use the unbiased IBRA‐method for measuring brand associations of a co‐brand strategy. Negative effects of co‐branding for strong brands in a real‐life situation were never reported before.

This study aims to investigate the associations between audit firm attributes (i.e. audit firm size, non-audit services, auditor industry specialization and auditor-client tenure) and specific indicators of audit quality. It also aims to test whether these relationships are moderated by a set of other factors like legal system and US versus non-US settings.

The method of Hunter et al. (1982) is used as a meta-analysis technique to test the study hypotheses and achieve the study aims. A total of 71 published papers from 1992 to 2017 are included.

There are significant positive relationships between all audit firm attributes and audit quality. Additionally, the associations between all audit firm attributes and audit quality are moderated by proxies for audit quality. Furthermore, these associations are moderated by other variables, such as US and non-US studies, pre-SOX and post-SOX periods, the legal system, the strength of auditing and reporting standards and country classification (developed or developing country).

The number of studies is insufficient for some variables, and therefore, the results should be interpreted with caution. In addition, the analyzed studies include several proxies, and thus, the number of studies is inadequate for the incorporation of other factors in the meta-analysis (e.g. audit firm experience and audit firm reputation).

This study contributes to audit quality research by providing empirical evidence of the associations between a specific set of audit firm attributes and audit quality using the meta-analysis method. More importantly, the study provides evidence on factors that moderate these associations.

Prior studies provide mixed evidence on the association of board busyness and firm productivity. Thus, this paper empirically analyzes how board busyness affects firm productivity.

To measure board busyness, this paper computes the percentage of directors on a board who sit on three or more boards. Furthermore, to calculate firm productivity, the paper employs data envelopment analysis.

Findings demonstrate that the association of board busyness and firm productivity (association) is generally negative and statistically significant but economically insignificant. In this respect, the findings reveal that the association is negative (positive) and both statistically and economically significant for firms having higher monitoring (advising) needs. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that regulatory oversight (1) weakens the general negative association; (2) changes the direction of association from negative to positive, for firms having higher monitoring needs; and (3) does not influence the association, for firms having higher advising needs.

Taken together, the findings indicate that the association of board busyness and firm productivity is conditional to monitoring/advising needs and regulatory oversight. As such, the findings enrich the current debates on the association. Furthermore, the findings offer novel perspectives to enrich the regulatory frameworks of countries which are constraining multiple directorships.

This study aims to investigate the effect of media coverage, negative media tone and the interaction between negative media tone and independent non-executive directors (INEDs) on strategic information disclosure (SD).

The authors rely on media agenda-setting theory, agency theory and a panel data set of 52 UAE non-financial listed firms from 2009 to 2016. Multivariate regressions examine the effect of media coverage and negative media tone on SD and examine the moderation of INEDs on the effect of negative media tone on SD while controlling for firm size, board size, board meeting frequency, firm profitability and leverage.

The results show that negative media tone has a negative effect on SD, and there is no association between media coverage and SD. The results show that INEDs are negatively associated with SD and have a negative moderating effect on the negative media tone–SD relationship. INEDs follow a conservative approach, encouraging less SD when their firms face negative media tone.

The authors measured media coverage and negative media tone by the number of news articles. In the robustness test, they use media tone score. They measured SD using an index that captures firm strategy dimensions. Though these measures are inherently subjective, they were used to measure variation in media coverage, media tone and SD across listed UAE non-financial firms. Mitigation of subjectivity was achieved through rigorous cross-checking measurements.

Findings assist UAE policymakers and the international business community with insights related to articulation of media to SD and INEDs’ role in moderating the effect of media on SD.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that combines media agenda-setting theory with agency theory and SD in an emerging market economy (the UAE). The study is also among the few studies that illustrate the possible role of INEDs under different media tones in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence the free cash flow (FCF) motive for stock repurchases. Specifically, it examines whether the positive association between FCF and open-market repurchases is partially driven by abnormal cash flows, and whether external analyst monitor and financial crisis influence the association.

The study employs a tobit regression model to test the hypotheses.

First, the results suggest that the positive association between FCF and stock repurchases is partially driven by abnormal cash flows. Second, the association between pre-managed FCF and stock repurchases is strengthened as more analyst following the firms. Third, firms repurchase less when they report more negative abnormal cash flows, and that tendency is more pronounced during the 2008 financial crisis period. Further analysis shows that during the crisis period, the effect of negative abnormal cash flows on operating performance gets stronger.

The study makes several contributions to the literature. This paper is the first to show that managers use abnormal cash flows to fulfill the share buy-backs. In addition, it shows that analysts provide effective external monitoring by strengthening the association between pre-managed FCF and repurchases. Furthermore, it finds that firms adjust their strategy in times of financial crisis period in response to the increased risk. Finally, it contributes to the earnings management literature by showing the differential effects of accruals management and cash flow management on earnings performance.

Consumers tend to form their perceptions about a company via two associations: corporate ability (CA) that centers on expertise in producing quality products and corporate social responsibility (CSR) that focuses on societal obligations. To date, investigations on the adoption of such association-based corporate communication strategies are yet to address the interactive and multi-source features of social media. Drawing theoretical insights from corporate associations and the warranting principle, the purpose of this paper is to fill the gap and examine the joint effect of association-based corporate posting strategy and corresponding electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) comment valence on social media.

A three (corporate posting strategy: CSR vs CA vs hybrid (CSR + CA)) by two (eWOM comment valence: positive vs negative) between-subjects experiment (n=193) was conducted.

The effect of corporate posting strategy on consumers’ CSR associations was found to be significant only when eWOM comment valence was positive. Significant main effects of both posting strategy and eWOM comment valence were found on CA associations, perceived corporate reputation, and purchase intention.

This study extends the theoretical framework of corporate associations to the interactive context on social media and provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of association-based posting strategies when they are jointly presented with eWOM comments at different valence levels. Findings of this study also provide implications for business and communication professionals to communicate with consumers on social media more effectively.

This study aims to overcome the problem of traditional association rules relying almost entirely on expert experience to set relevant interest indexes in mining. Second, this project can effectively solve the problem of four types of rules being present in the database at the same time. The traditional association algorithm can only mine one or two types of rules and cannot fully explore the database knowledge in the decision-making process for library recommendation.

The authors proposed a Markov logic network method to reconstruct association rule-mining tasks for library recommendation and compared the method proposed in this paper to traditional Apriori, FP-Growth, Inverse, Sporadic and UserBasedCF algorithms on two history library data sets and the Chess and Accident data sets.

The method used in this project had two major advantages. First, the authors were able to mine four types of rules in an integrated manner without having to set interest measures. In addition, because it represents the relevance of mining in the network, decision-makers can use network visualization tools to fully understand the results of mining in library recommendation and data sets from other fields.

The time cost of the project is still high for large data sets. The authors will solve this problem by mapping books, items, or attributes to higher granularity to reduce the computational complexity in the future.

The authors believed that knowledge of complex real-world problems can be well captured from a network perspective. This study can help researchers to avoid setting interest metrics and to comprehensively extract frequent, rare, positive, and negative rules in an integrated manner.

In light of the key role attributed to the board of directors as a monitoring tool to constrain earnings management practices, this study aims to examine the effect of some board attributes on accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) context, whose institutional, economic and legal environment is markedly different from that of most organization for economic cooperation and development countries.

The authors selected a sample of 161 nonfinancial companies from nine MENA countries between 2014 and 2021 (corresponding to an unbalanced data panel of 486 observations). The authors used the generalized least squares regression test to examine the relationship between board attributes and earnings management.

The authors found that three board attributes (size, independence and gender diversity) have no effect on both types of earnings management practices, while CEO duality has no effect on accrual-based earnings management but has a significant and negative effect on real earnings management. Overall, the results suggest that most board attributes do not play a crucial role in reducing earnings management.

The results provide valuable insights into the universal role of corporate governance mechanisms and raise questions about the role of the board of directors in improving reporting quality in the MENA context.

Regulators should adapt corporate governance mechanisms to the characteristics of the institutional context in which they are inserted.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effect of various board characteristics on both types of earnings management practices in the MENA context. It also provides the first empirical evidence of the relationship between board gender diversity and earnings management in the MENA region.