Search results

Customer co-creation behaviors significantly affect a firm's performance and sustainable growth. This study tested the mediating role of corporate reputation in the relationship between corporate hypocrisy and two types of customer co-creation behaviors: customer citizenship behavior and customer participation behavior. The study also investigated the moderating effect of self-corporate brand connection on the corporate hypocrisy–corporate reputation relationship and the indirect relationship between corporate hypocrisy and customer co-creation behavior through corporate reputation.

The authors conducted a two-wave research survey with 346 Korean bank customers and tested our hypotheses using PROCESS Macro.

Corporate reputation mediated the relationship between corporate hypocrisy and customer citizenship/participant behavior. The negative effect of corporate hypocrisy on corporate reputation was more pronounced when self-corporate brand connection was high. Self-corporate brand connection further moderated the indirect effect of corporate hypocrisy on customer citizenship/participant behavior through corporate reputation.

The results clearly explain how corporate hypocrisy affects customer co-creation behavior. This study advances corporate hypocrisy and corporate reputation research by proposing and verifying a moderated mediation model.

This research aims to examine the influence of brand signals (transparency, innovativeness and reputation) on brand trust and price fairness toward organic food restaurant brand.

The empirical data were gathered with the survey instrument from respondents who had previously visited organic food restaurant. The formulated hypotheses were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

The collected data demonstrated the positive effect of brand signals on brand trust and price fairness. Trust in organic food restaurant brand was found to positively impact both price fairness and brand loyalty. Additionally, the results provided evidence of the positive linkage between price fairness and brand loyalty. Among brand signals, brand transparency exerted the greatest impact on brand trust and price fairness. The findings also indicated the significant indirect linkage of brand signals on restaurant brand loyalty through brand trust and price fairness.

Through the lens of signaling theory and equity theory, this study provides novel insights into how brand signals contribute to brand trust, price fairness and organic food restaurant brand loyalty. The managerial implications for implementing brand strategies for organic food restaurants were discussed.

Using a sample of listed Chinese companies that issued bonds from 2010 to 2019, the authors empirically test the link between CSR and corporate bond pricing, and the mechanism and channels behind this link.

This study systematically examines whether and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the corporate bond market in China.

Firms with better CSR have higher corporate bond credit ratings and lower corporate bond yield spreads. These associations remain stable in robustness checks, including checks that use regional typhoon disaster as an instrumental variable. The effects of CSR are more significant for firms with a worse information environment and for those operating in high-risk environments. Better CSR is associated with less earnings management, fewer financial restatements and less analyst forecast divergence. In addition, the effects of CSR are more pronounced after the 2013 market-oriented reform and when issuers are non-state-owned enterprises.

Because market participants can incorporate firms' CSR into their decision-making, establishing an effective channel for communicating CSR between issuers and market participants will enhance the effects of CSR.

Researchers need to attend to the mechanisms behind the link between CSR and corporate bond pricing, and to the characteristics of strong environmental contingency in emerging markets, specifically the periods and scenarios in which the effects of CSR change.

This study provides systemic evidence that CSR benefits corporate bond pricing through both informational and reputational channels and that the effects of CSR vary by time and firm. These findings enrich the literatures on both the economic consequences of CSR and the determinants of corporate bond pricing, and provide a plausible explanation for mixed findings on the effects of CSR in previous studies.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of corporate dividend policy on the capital structure in the Korean stock market. To distinctly discern the voluntariness of changes in corporate dividend policy, we analyze companies that, following a substantial increase, do not reduce dividends for the subsequent two years or, after a significant decrease, do not raise dividends for the following two years. Our empirical findings indicate that companies that increase dividends experience a significant decrease in both book and market leverage, even after controlling for variables such as target leverage ratios. This result suggests that a large increase in dividends can effectively reduce information asymmetry, leading to a lower cost of equity. On the contrary, after a decrease in dividends, both book leverage and market leverage significantly increase, revealing a symmetric relationship between dividend policy and capital structure. In conclusion, large dividend increases in Korean companies not only reduce information asymmetry but also lower the cost of equity capital, resulting in observable changes in the leverage ratio.

This paper aims to investigate the spillover effects of jump and crash events among Chinese nonfinancial firms.

This sample consists of more than 1.5 million weekly observations of over 3,000 Chinese listed firms over the period 1991–2015. The authors utilize univariate tests to compare the post-event performance of matched peer and non-peer control firms and cross-sectional regressions of their abnormal returns/cumulative abnormal returns (ARs/CARs) and returns on assets (ROAs).

The authors find that extreme risk-adjusted abnormal stock returns (stock price crashes and jumps) generate statistically significant ARs/CARs in the same directions in industry, size, leverage, and geographical location matched peer firms in Chinese stock market. Further tests reveal that peer firms' response to the crash event is pronounced more in the group of firms about which the information asymmetry is high between investors and firms.

Portfolio investors can adjust their portfolios accordingly by selling stocks of the matching rival firms during a crash period. Policymakers may develop policies so as to protect the interests of small investors in the events of crashes in the markets. They can reduce the information asymmetry between the firms and the investors by making information about the firms more transparent, so as to reduce the contagion in case of crash event.

This study has important implications for portfolio investment managers and policymakers.

To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first study that combines the jump and crash events and attempts to assess their spillover effects on other firms in Chinese stock market.

This paper aims to highlight the effect of mobile commerce (m-commerce) ubiquity on usage behavior as well as the mediator mechanism of brand trust between ubiquity and usage behavior. To extend the findings, this research also examines the moderator role of product reputation on the nexus between brand trust and usage behavior in the m-commerce context.

Given the quantitative approach, the authors gathered 1,565 valid responses from m-commerce app users. Data were analyzed in SmartPLS 4.

Ubiquity positively impacted brand trust, and the latter positively influenced m-commerce usage behavior. Brand trust also partially mediated the effect of m-commerce ubiquity on usage behavior, along with product reputation moderating the positive effect of brand trust on usage behavior.

By combining resource-based theory with signaling theory in the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, this paper's novelty focuses on the investigation of m-commerce ubiquity, brand trust as a mediating mechanism and product reputation as a moderator in explaining usage behavior in the m-commerce context.

Social interaction in comment sections has become a key factor for backers' decision making in crowdfunding platforms. However, current research on the two-way social interaction in crowdfunding is insufficient, and there exist inconsistent conclusions. This study focuses on the social interaction between creators and backers and explores its influence on the successful exit of crowdfunding projects.

The extended Cox model is used for the empirical analysis of 1,988 crowdfunding projects on the Modian (www.modian.com) platform, a crowdfunding platform for cultural and creative projects in China. The two-way social interaction is reflected in comment quantity and sentiment, as well as reply rate.

Results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between comment quantity/sentiment and the successful exit of crowdfunding projects. This relationship is strengthened by high reply rate.

This study focuses on comment quantity and sentiment. The inverted U-shaped results reconcile previous conclusions. Replies from creators are regarded as a separate factor, and their moderating role is explained. The study research proves the importance of social interaction in crowdfunding platforms and provides suggestions for backers, creators and platform managers.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the direction of the causal relationship between dividend policy (DP) and earnings management (EM).

This research utilizes the panel data analysis to investigate the causal relationship between EM and DP. It provides empirical insights based on a sample of 280 French nonfinancial companies listed on the CAC All-Tradable index during the period of 2008–2015. The study initiates with a Granger causality examination on the unbalanced panel data and employs a dynamic panel approach with the generalized method of moments (GMM). It further estimates the empirical models simultaneously using the three-stage least squares (3SLS) method and the iterative triple least squares (iterative 3SLS) method.

The estimation of our various empirical models confirms the presence of a bidirectional causal relationship between DP and EM.

Our study highlights the prevalence of EM in the French context, particularly within DP. It underscores the need for regulatory bodies, the Ministry of Finance, external auditors and stock exchange organizers to prioritize governance mechanisms for improving the quality of financial information disclosed by companies.

This research is, to the best of our knowledge, the first is to extensively investigate the reciprocal causal relationship between DP and EM in France. Previous studies have not placed a significant emphasis on exploring this bidirectional link between these two variables.

Whereas the majority of research explores the direct relationship between quality management practices and firm operational performance using data on developed economies, this paper asserts that the effect of quality management practices on firm operational performance needs to be evaluated with reference to the contingency approach, especially in developing countries. Therefore, the authors empirically test whether competitive intensity moderates the relationship between quality management practices and inventory management process.

The authors employ a fixed-effect model on data from more than 7,000 observations operating in 27 Eastern and Central European countries.

The findings reveal that the adoption of quality management practices decreases inventory days only in a highly competitive market. Additionally, the results indicate that this effect is changing when distinguishing between countries and sectors.

This study advances research on quality management practices by emphasizing the importance of contingency and institutional approach.

The purpose of the study is to examine the impact of corporate reputation (hereafter CR) and the degree of economic development on firms’ cost of capital remains unresolved. This study addresses these issues.

Using a global sample across 20 countries, the study investigates the discrete and joint effects of CR and jurisdictional economic development on the cost of equity (COE) and cost of debt (COD) capital. The analysis encompasses a dual data set, comprising 1,308 observations for COE and 1,223 observations for COD, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of these dynamics.

The findings indicate that CR leads to a reduction in the cost of capital for reputable firms. Nevertheless, the extent of this decrease varies per type of capital and firm’s reputation level and is contingent upon the economic development level within the firm’s jurisdiction. Particularly noteworthy is the moderating effect of economic development on CR, which shows that COE capital tends to be lower for reputable firms operating in economically developed jurisdictions. Albeit, this is not the case for COD capital for reputable firms in similarly developed jurisdictions.

This study illustrates that effective CR management, aimed at reducing the cost of capital, necessitates a combination of the firm’s unique competitive advantage and the economic development context of its jurisdiction to truly achieve its intended goal.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first global study to explore the impact of CR on both COE and COD capital. Furthermore, this study is primarily towards understanding the moderating role of economic development in the relationship between CR and cost of capital.