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Although word of mouth (WOM) affects customers’ purchasing intentions to a large extent, prior research has neglected the role of WOM as a driver of customer satisfaction.

Several scholars have suggested that WOM can not only affect customer expectation but also can influence perceived quality. Consistent with existing research results and the expectancy disparity model, this paper established a causal relation between WOM and customer satisfaction and confirmed it was drawing on an experimental study.

This paper indicates that positive or negative WOM affects customer satisfaction by promoting or lowering customers’ expectations. This relation is moderated by product type, rather than the source of the WOM. With experience goods, positive (negative) WOM will decrease (increase) customer satisfaction. However, with search goods, positive (negative) WOM will increase (decrease) customer satisfaction.

The results of this study have implications for academia and management. Academically, this study establishes the causal relation between WOM and customer satisfaction, expanding the research on the relation between WOM and satisfaction. From a managerial perspective, the promotion of WOM also can create certain service risks.

There was unfinished business to address in the version of the planner–doer model developed in Thaler and Shefrin (1981). The unfinished business involved identifying and modeling the crucial roles played by temptation and mental accounting in pensions and savings behavior. The present paper has two objectives.

The first objective is to describe the key lessons learned in transitioning from the model in Thaler and Shefrin (1981) to the model in Shefrin and Thaler (1988), a transition which addressed some of the unfinished business. The second objective is to describe as yet unfinished business associated with developing a multicommodity, intertemporal version of the planner–doer framework, incorporating the concepts of temptation and mental accounting, to replace the neoclassical theory of the consumer.

Doing so will provide a theoretical foundation for nudges related to household budgeting, spending, saving, borrowing and investing.

This paper presents the first behavioral theory of the consumer, focusing on the manner in which consumers actually make decisions about budgeting, spending. borrowing and saving. The approach in the paper can be viewed as a behavioral counterpart to the neoclassical theory of the consumer. In contrast to the neoclassical approach, which assumes that consumers set and follow utility maximizing budgets, the empirical evidence indicates that only a small minority of consumers describe themselves as setting and following budgets. The behavioral theory presented here focuses on the heuristic nature of consumers' actual budgeting processes and extends the approach described in Thaler and Shefrin's 1981 seminal paper on self-control. The core of the present paper is a working paper which Shefrin and Thaler began in 1980, and as such represents unfinished business from that time. The first part of this paper describes earlier unfinished business from the 1981 framework that the authors subsequently addressed as they developed the behavioral life cycle hypothesis during the 1980s.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether negative operating cash flows are related to investment inefficiency, and specifically whether they are related to subsequent overinvestment and if this relationship is driven by agency problems within the firm.

The study conducts fixed effect regressions, testing the relationship between negative operating cash flows and the firm’s subsequent investment inefficiency. The relationship is further examined for all firms based on size, corporate governance and cash holdings – all of which are related to agency problems.

The proportion of firms reporting negative operating cash flows has been increasing over time and is positively related to subsequent investment inefficiency. This increase is explained not only by the rise in investment of intangible assets. The positive relationship is not explained by the firm size or corporate governance, but is related to cash holdings. These results are consistent across four different measures of firm investment.

The percentage of publicly traded firms with negative operating cash flows has never been higher. This paper is one of the first to identify factors that may be contributing to this rise.

This study extends prior findings by identifying previously unexplored factors related to the rise in firms with negative operating cash flows. The rise in investment of intangible assets does not explain the increase alone. High cash holdings also influence the rise in negative operating cash flows.

In this chapter, we review and examine the differences and similarities between social, sustainable, and environmental entrepreneurship. We explore the concepts, key questions, empirical methodologies, and disciplinary roots that differentiate and relate these emergent interest areas. The result of this comparative analysis inevitably raises the question of whether these new literature streams are inclusive or separate from the traditional domain of entrepreneurship research. We find that these three areas share many similarities, yet are distinguishable from one another and from more traditional, commercial forms of entrepreneurship. However, we determine that although these three areas of entrepreneurial scholarship raise unique questions and highlight different types of phenomena, they are not their own fields of study, but rather promising contexts for studying key questions of the entrepreneurship field.

New types of manufactured goods can have disbenefits and negative consequences, as well as benefits and positive consequences. However, disbenefits and negative consequences have received little consideration within manufacturing literature related to new product development (NPD). The purpose of this paper is to provide preliminary analysis, and propose improvements to NPD screening processes, which can facilitate reduction of disbenefits and negative consequences that can arise from new manufactured goods.

The research comprised a review of the literature relating to: new product development processes; disbenefits of manufactured goods; and negative consequences arising from manufactured goods.

There is often broad consensus about the disbenefits of manufactured goods. However, some disbenefits are not stopped before they have contributed to potentially irreversible negative global consequences. This can be because there is often disagreement about, for example, the composition and extent of negative consequences.

NPD processes should be improved to facilitate reduction of disbenefits and negative consequences. In particular, the screening of new manufactured goods as they progress from idea to concept to development should be improved.

The originality of the paper is that it provides descriptions of underlying characteristics that differentiate disbenefits and negative consequences. These descriptions can enable better understanding of how negative unintended consequences arise from the introduction of new types of manufactured goods. The value of this paper is that it proposes improvements to NPD screening processes that can facilitate reduction of disbenefits and their negative consequences.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of perceived control on product preferences of consumers under self-threat.

By conducting four experiments, this paper manipulated the participants’ self-threat and three sources of perceived control – namely, the controllability of the threat itself, the internal and external locus of control of the individual and priming the existing positive or negative experience of the individuals. After the manipulations, the participants’ product preferences for self-growth goods or hedonic goods were measured.

The findings of this research indicated that when consumers have a higher perceived control of the threats they are facing, they are more likely to adopt problem-focused coping strategies and show a preference for self-growth goods, which can help them resolve their threats. However, when consumers have a lower perceived control on the threats they are facing, they are more likely to adopt emotion-focused coping strategies and show a preference for hedonic goods, which can help them adjust their emotions.

This paper systematically confirms the interactive effect of perceived control and self-threat on consumers’ product preferences, as well as the meditation role of problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. It also provides insights for marketers to know what factors may affect consumers’ preferences for products in self-threat situations, thus contributing to marketing practices.

The purpose of the article is to explore young people's perceptions of the desirability of brands and brand ownership in Hong Kong using drawings and open‐ended questions.

A total of 48 Chinese children aged 13 to 19 were asked to draw what comes to their minds for two statements: “This young person has a lot of new and expensive branded goods”; and, “This young person does not have a lot of branded goods”. After drawing, respondents were personally interviewed to answer four questions associating possessions of branded goods with happiness, friendship, and personality traits.

Analysis of the drawings and interviews indicated that there were significant differences in young people's perceptions of someone with or without a lot of branded goods in terms of type of possessions, leisure activities, observable qualities and personality traits. Respondents were more likely to relate possessions of branded goods with happiness, friendship, and self‐esteem. A person with a lot of branded goods however, was perceived as arrogant, wasteful, vain and superficial. A person without a lot of branded goods was perceived as easygoing, friendly and down‐to‐earth. Results demonstrate that respondents were able to appreciate the value of possessions based on emotional attachment, personality association and social meaning. The results supported John's model of consumer socialization that children and young people in the reflective stage of consumer socialization could understand fully the value of possessions.

Markets and advertisers that target young Chinese consumers should be sensitive to their negative association of personality traits and possessions of branded goods with arrogance and wastefulness. They can encourage the instrumental materialism of how to use branded goods to enhance friendship and to achieve self‐defining goals.

Based on these findings, three hypotheses were proposed about young people's perceptions of possessions that can be further tested in a quantitative survey.

Self‐esteem is an important motivational drive for consumption involving both the acceptance and rejection/avoidance of symbolic goods. This paper examines the relationship between self‐esteem and the rejection of goods and brands within the context of fashion consumption by young professionals. A conceptualisation which accounts for consumers’ use of various strategies in their efforts to maintain or enhance their self‐esteem is suggested. A small‐scale exploratory study is used to examine first, how consumers invest products and brands with negative symbolic meanings; and second, how this leads consumers to reject products and brands. The importance of understanding negative symbolic consumption when marketing high involvement products such as fashion goods is identified; and the implications for fashion retailers and marketing management are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the formation mechanism of the “One Case One Meeting” system in rural China, which is an institutional arrangement to voluntarily provide public goods to villagers. The survey data are used to test the applicability of the “One Case One Meeting” system.

Applying the Nash equilibrium and the nested game models, this paper analyzes the formation mechanism of the “One Case One Meeting” system. Based on the survey data, the zero‐inflated Poisson regression model (ZIP) and the zero‐inflated negative binomial regression model (ZINB) are applied to examine the impacts of the “One Case One Meeting” system on village‐level public investment.

The results suggest that the “One Case One Meeting” system can be executed more effectively, provided that the following two conditions are both satisfied: first, acquaintance community; and second, election participants have the freedom to express their real opinions. The empirical results from the ZINB model show that the system has a significant positive impact on village‐level public investment in production while the results from the ZIP model show that the system does not significantly affect village‐level public investment in consumption.

Based on the findings, the paper suggests that villages adopt the “One Case One Meeting” system for issues related to public investment in production, but does not suggest this model for issues related to public investment in consumption. In addition, it is necessary to enhance democratic consciousness in farmers' education and, in order to create more channels for village public investment in production, it is necessary to regulate the election system.

This paper aims to analyze the direction and balance of transnational information flows and look at how nonpriced digital information exchanges related to international trade in goods and services.

The authors obtained quantitative data about Web-related data flows between countries and regions using Telegeography data on “Server Location as a Percentage of Top Websites.” They then explore how those flows are correlated to trade in goods.

Web traffic is highly transnational. More than half of the top 100 websites in 9 of the world’s 13 sub-regions are hosted in the USA. More than 15 per cent of the top 100 websites in 9 of the 13 subregions are hosted in Western Europe. East Asia has the largest negative balance in the relationship between incoming and outgoing Web requests. The authors found a very strong negative correlation (−0.878) between Web traffic balances and the balance of trade in goods across all subregions. A similarly strong positive correlation was found with services trade; however, the incompleteness of the data does not allow for strong conclusions yet.

Further research is needed to correlate Web traffic flows with capital flows. The authors also do not have a well-developed theory to explain the strong negative correlation between information flows and goods trade.

The data and analysis have useful implications for digital economy policy. It indicates that digital protectionism of the sort practice by China may succeed in increasing domestic producers’ share of Web requests, but does not make them globally competitive. The strong negative correlation between the balance of unpriced Web information and the balance of trade in goods indicates interdependence rather than domination, challenging narratives that information flow imbalances are caused by market power of the big platforms.

The paper demonstrates the degree to which unpriced digital exchanges are transnational and how various countries are more or less globally competitive in the supply of information that the rest of the world finds attractive.

No other published papers have used the data on website traffic data, and previous research has not explored empirically the correlation between information flows and goods trade.