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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a brand-new phenomenon in customer consumption patterns. This resulted from heightened health awareness brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic. There is a dearth of appropriate health psychology perspectives in the existing study examining the effect of COVID-19 on consumers’ use of crowdsourced logistics (CL) platforms. In order to provide unique and thorough insights into how consumer health concerns can affect consumers’ subjective views and their decisions to use CL, this study combines the health belief model and the technology acceptance model.

Five hundred valid responses from an online survey that was created and administered in Singapore were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The findings show that all of the suggested constructs have a favourable influence on consumers’ intentions to use CL. The suggested model also demonstrates high explanatory power, with perceived usefulness serving as the primary driver, followed by perceived ease of use and self-efficacy.

The study advances previous academic research on CL and offers guidance to CL companies and lawmakers for promoting sustainable and secured last-mile delivery.

Gamification is a strategic approach employed by practitioners to foster meaningful engagement and enhance the acceptance of recommendations. Gamification affordances (e.g. achievement, self-expression, interaction, and cooperation) catalyze significant psychological processes in consumers, leading to behavioral changes. Despite its application, a gap remains in understanding how these gamification affordances in e-commerce contexts impact customers' perceived values and drive recommendation acceptances.

Employing affordance theory and perceived value theory as our foundation, we have crafted a comprehensive framework that addresses the multifaceted nature of e-commerce gamification, thereby unifying the fragmented knowledge in this area. We implemented a quantitative research design to empirically test the proposed model.

The research reveals that the four principal affordances of gamification – achievement, self-expression, interaction, and cooperation – significantly enrich consumer values across hedonic, utilitarian, and social dimensions. This enrichment facilitates an increased propensity for accepting recommendations.

This study provides a novel lens through which to view the influence of gamification affordances on recommendation acceptance within gamified e-commerce settings. It delineates the effects of each affordance on consumers' perceived value and highlights the pivotal affordances that shape gamified e-commerce experiences. These insights yield actionable strategies for practitioners aiming to refine e-commerce gamification designs and cultivate more engaging consumer interactions.

Despite the documented benefits of voice behavior for projects, little is known about antecedents of voice behavior in the project context, especially construction projects. Against this background, adopting a multi-team system perspective, this study attempts to investigate antecedents of team voice behavior from a contextual view.

This study identifies and examines six factors that influence team voice behavior. Specifically, project urgency, project temporality, and project complexity are identified from the project nature perspective. Satisfaction, trust, and commitment are generated from the relationship quality approach. Then, data from completed construction projects in China was collected to verify the effectiveness of these factors. Besides, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used in this study.

All six factors are found to be significant predictors of promotive team voice behavior. For prohibitive team voice behavior, only project complexity and project commitment make significant effects. Further, the differential effects of these factors on two types of voice behavior are revealed.

This study contributes to the literature on voice behavior in the project context, especially construction projects consisting of multiple teams. Also, this research enriches our knowledge on antecedents of team voice behavior in construction projects and thus affords practical implications to foster voice behavior.

This study aims to fill various gaps detected in the literature on mass prestige (hereafter referred to as masstige) theory. The originality of the work stems from the multidimensional application of Paul’s (2015) model, the introduction of brand addiction as a construct from the consumer-brand relationship (CBR) theory within the context of wines and the exploration of a new and less studied sector in masstige strategies.

A structured questionnaire was distributed to collect data from masstige wine brand buyers in Portugal, of whom 166 completed the questionnaire correctly. A conceptual model was developed and tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings include that only two dimensions of Paul’s (2015) masstige scale affect brand addiction: brand knowledge and excitement and status. Brand addiction has a positive effect on brand loyalty and electronic word of mouth (eWOM), and brand loyalty has a positive impact on eWOM. Theoretical and managerial implications were explored.

This research added a CBR perspective to masstige theory and applied masstige theory to wine brands for the first time. These three distinctive aspects collectively contribute to the novelty and significance of the research, opening up exciting possibilities for future investigations and providing a valuable contribution to the academic community and the wine industry alike.

Corporate philanthropy is increasingly a vital decision-making basis for consumers to purchase and establish relationships with enterprises. However, few studies have examined corporate philanthropy from the perspective of community evolution. To address this gap, this study aims to provide a more in-depth and holistic investigation of corporate philanthropy by examining the evolution of social media brand communities caused by corporate philanthropy and the characteristics of consumer interactive behavior.

Web crawlers developed by Python were employed to collect data of ERKE from Sina Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter). A total of 2,736 posts and 7,774 comments were collected and investigated using social network and sentiment tendency analyses.

The results showed that the evolution of the social media brand community presented a prominent three-stage characteristic influenced by corporate philanthropy. The findings not only support the benefits of corporate philanthropy but also show the possible disadvantages. Besides, this study further concluded the characteristics of consumer interactive behavior in the social media brand community.

This paper addresses an attractive and practical issue related to the impact of corporate philanthropy. Moreover, this study is one of the first studies to examine the impact of corporate philanthropy in the context of the social media brand community. The findings of this study will provide a valuable reference for community operations and practitioners of brands.

This study enables one to critique the importance of adapting and innovating during challenging times to sustain and grow a business and also emphasizes the need for businesses to be flexible, resilient and willing to make necessary changes to stay relevant and thrive in dynamic and unpredictable environments.

In the competitive world of India’s quick-service restaurants industry, Shilpa Bhatt Bahuguna, the young entrepreneur behind “Pizza Italia,” aimed to secure the top spot in Uttarakhand. Despite facing setbacks by closing six out of the eight outlets during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bahuguna’s focus on product quality and localization had garnered word-of-mouth publicity for her brand. Now, with a limited budget for promotions, Bahuguna sought below-the-line strategies to ensure profitability and success for new outlets. Her determination to establish Pizza Italia as an indigenous brand and her plans for global expansion through franchising reflected her vision for growth and impact in the market. With her entrepreneurial spirit, Bahuguna remained poised to achieve even greater success in the future. Bahuguna aimed to leverage her product quality and word-of-mouth promotion to capture the market. She planned to expand her brand globally and open new outlets in Uttarakhand and London. However, Bahuguna was challenged to promote her brand on a limited budget, favoring “below-the-line” strategies.

This case study is appropriate for an undergraduate- or graduate-level program in marketing management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

Internal employees of firms are a reliable source of information for potential job seekers. However, few studies have focused on why internal employees actively recommend their firms. Based on the social exchange theory, this study aims to construct a chain mediation model using perceived challenge stress and employee experience as mediators to explore how leadership empowerment behavior affects employee referrals.

Bootstrap repeated sampling analysis was conducted on a sample of 307 employees collected through two-time points.

Leadership empowerment behavior is positively related to employee referrals; perceived challenge stress and employee experience mediate the effect of leadership empowerment behavior on employee referrals, respectively; in addition, perceived challenge stress and employee experience play a chain mediating role between leadership empowerment behavior and employee referrals.

The findings can help provide insight into the drivers of employee referrals and can effectively guide organization reputation management.

Downward line extension is a valuable growth strategy that enables multiple products and services to meet diverse customer needs. However, downward extended products launched by high-status brands may be challenged by horizontal extended products launched by relatively low-status brands when these two types of products target similar consumers. This study aims to examine the impact of product type (horizontal extended versus downward extended) on consumers’ purchase intentions, the underlying mechanism and the moderating role of power distance belief.

Four scenario-based experiments were conducted to probe the research questions.

Consumers develop lower purchase intentions for downward (versus horizontal) extended products due to the reduction of perceived fit and self-congruity (Study 1). Beyond that, power distance belief moderates the impact of product type on consumers’ purchase intentions, as a low power distance belief reduces the negative effect of downward line extension (Studies 2a, 2b and 2c). Perceived fit and self-congruity mediate the interaction effect between product type and power distance belief on consumers’ purchase intentions (Study 2c).

This study provides marketing practitioners with guidance on implementing the strategy of downward line extension.

This study serves as a preliminary effort to compare consumers’ responses between downward and horizontal extended products, which deepens the understanding of downward line extension. It also contributes to the body of knowledge about line extension and power distance belief by demonstrating the moderating role of power distance belief in a line extension context.

There is an ongoing challenge to map the efficacy of e-retailing strategies in building both value co-creation opportunities for online customers and customer value for companies. Based on the service-dominant (S-D) logic, an integrative model is provided that connects the impact of convenience and personalisation strategies (CPSs) on an e-retailer's performance – by offering co-creation opportunities and customer engagement.

The survey instrument is validated and the model is tested with data from active online customers using a novel methodology that blends artificial neural network (ANN) analysis with partial least squares (PLS) in both the measurement model and the path analysis.

The findings robustly support the model and yield evidence of the contribution of CPSs in effective value propositions, the interface between the S-D logic and customer engagement, and the direct effect of customer engagement on tangible forms of value for companies.

This study is the first scholarly effort to provide a comprehensive understanding of how and why CPSs can maximise customer value for the e-retailer, while simultaneously testing the customer value/engagement interface with a new blended ANN-PLS method.

The role of family business staffing practices in their ultimate success remains largely unknown. The purpose of this paper is to test the notion that firms with greater family essence manifest their commitment by leveraging referrals as a recruitment source, which in turn is associated with higher performance. The hypothesized model posits that reduced agency costs from hiring through owner referral utilization (ORU) provide high-family essence firms with stronger performance.

The study draws upon a sample of 194 small and medium-sized family business owners.

Findings from OLS regression and the PROCESS model in SPSS support the hypothesis that recruiting nonfamily employees from referrals helps lessen agency conflicts and serves as an intervening mechanism in the relationship between family firm essence and firm performance.

This study draws on agency theory to shed light on how family firms successfully bring nonfamily employees into the fold despite their human resource limitations. The results extend theory on family businesses by demonstrating that those with higher degrees of family essence are more likely to attract applicants via ORU. Leveraging this recruiting practice allows family businesses to hire nonfamily employees who share the values and goals of the family firm, thus lowering agency costs and fostering higher performance. More broadly, the findings offer insight into the role of staffing practices in family firm success.