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The purpose of this paper is to present the contemporary thinking on deliberate lookalikes and to provide a better understanding of its key forms (counterfeits, copycats and no-name imitations) and markets (deceptive and non-deceptive).

This editorial contains a review of current and past literature on deliberate lookalikes along with summaries of all the articles accepted for publication in the special issue on deliberate lookalikes. The guest editors used academic databases such as Web of Science to find the most representative scholarly work on deliberate lookalikes literature.

This editorial identifies pertinent research gaps in the literature on deliberate lookalikes. The five selected articles address some of these research gaps and provide useful insights on the purchase and usage of deliberate lookalikes along with directions for future research and ways to apply different research methods that could have important implications for scholars and managers.

The editorial and special issue extends the knowledge about the deliberate lookalikes and their effects on firms, brands and consumers. This work opens new avenues for the research about different forms and markets in the context of lookalikes.

This paper explores the moderating effects of four personal cultural orientations or PCOs (independence, interdependence, risk aversion and ambiguity intolerance) on the relationships among counterfeit proneness, subjective norms, ethical judgments, product evaluation and purchase intentions for counterfeit products.

A field study with 840 consumers in Hong Kong using a self-administered structured questionnaire is used to test all the hypotheses.

Consumers with high (low) scores on interdependence (independence) show stronger positive effects of counterfeit proneness on subjective norms and its effects on the counterfeit evaluation and purchase intentions. In contrast, consumers with high (low) scores on independence (interdependence) show stronger positive effects of counterfeit proneness on ethical judgments and its effects on counterfeit evaluation and purchase intentions. Consumers with higher scores on risk aversion and ambiguity intolerance show negative moderating effects on most of the relationships in the unified conceptual framework.

The authors collected data in Hong Kong, which is predominantly Chinese in culture. Hence, future research in other parts of the world with more diverse cultural values would help test the validity and generalizability of the results.

The findings would be useful for managers of genuine brands to learn more about the process that explains deliberate counterfeit purchase behavior.

The authors extend the unified conceptual framework for deliberate counterfeit purchase behavior by incorporating four PCOs to explore cultural differences in the socio-psychological decision-making process underlying this behavior.

Due to increasing supply chain complexity, the supply chain uncertainty has become an imperative issue, which hinders the development of modern logistics and supply chain management. The paper attempts to conceptualize reverse logistics uncertainty from supply chain uncertainty literature and present the types of reverse logistics uncertainty in a triadic model.

The concept of reverse logistics uncertainty is developed based on a triadic model of logistics uncertainty and supply chain uncertainty literature. A desk research is conducted to develop a taxonomy of reverse logistics uncertainty. To better depict the reverse logistics uncertainty, we use case studies to discuss the types of reverse logistics uncertainty in the triadic model.

The study reveals four types of supply chain uncertainties in the reverse logistics. We call them reverse logistics uncertainty. Type-A and Type-B uncertainty are new types of supply chain uncertainty in the reverse logistics.

The types of reverse logistics uncertainty have not been empirically validated in industries. Especially, the two new types including Type-A and Type-B reverse uncertainty need further exploration.

Although reverse logistics has been discussed in the past decades, very few studies have been conducted on the supply chain uncertainty in returns management arena. The paper offers valuable insights to better understand the supply chain uncertainty in the reverse logistics. This also provides suggestions for both managers and researchers to reflect on the reverse logistics uncertainty management and business sustainability.

This study aims at proposing and testing a model delineating how and when the quality of a special B2B professional service, investment relations (IR), would drive corporate intangible value.

This study employs a proprietary dataset on voting records of an annual investment relations (IR) awards event and the corresponding company-level archival data for analysis. Regression analysis is used to test hypotheses.

IR service quality not only directly enhances corporate intangible value, but also indirectly boosts it via information transparency. While competitive intensity does not moderate the relationship between IR service quality and corporate intangible value, its moderating effect on the relationship between information transparency and this value is negative.

The findings advance academic understanding of the mechanism and boundary conditions underlying the complex and dynamic relationships among IR service quality, information transparency, corporate intangible value and competitive intensity. Future research endeavors to verify the present findings in other service and/or geographic settings would help establish their external validity.

The findings advise companies to expand the traditional role of IR by taking it as a powerful communication and relationship marketing tool to improve their visibility and attract investors.

The findings suggest that superior IR service would strengthen the company’s social bonding with institutional investors and effectively signal to them its commitment to good corporate governance practices.

Matching a proprietary dataset on IR voting records with the corresponding company-level archival data over a five-year period to investigate the performance implications of IR service quality within the Hong Kong context rectifies methodological limitation and geographic confinement of prior IR research.

This paper aims to explain the discrepancy between pro-environmental intentions and behaviors with moderating effects of two socio-cultural values (espoused individualism and faith in others) on the link between intentions and actual behaviors to save electricity.

An online survey of 303 consumers in Hong Kong with a structured questionnaire was used to collect the data to test all the hypothesized relationships.

Attitude toward saving electricity has a significant positive effect on the intentions to save electricity, but subjective norms and perceived behavioral control have no such effect on intentions but do positively affect the actual electricity saving behavior. Finally, the link between intentions and behavior to save electricity is negatively moderated by espoused individualism and positively by faith in others.

This study was conducted with a sample of consumers in Hong Kong; hence, its findings may not be generalizable to other countries.

This study provides new insights into the link between pro-environmental intentions and behaviors by looking beyond the theory of planned behavior and exploring the moderating role of socio-cultural values on the intention-behavior link.

This paper reviews the strategic responses of successful local Chinese banks (LCBs) in the changeable Hong Kong banking sector over the past decades. Given the mixed outlook of the industry resulting from the handover of sovereignty, financial internationalization, and regional and domestic economic developments, this paper also discusses the benefits of using strategic alliance as a means for LCBs to meet current and future challenges. Based on case reviews, the paper demonstrates the values of strategic management concepts for small banks to cope with an externally oriented and politically uncertain operating environment.

Analyses the strategic marketing practices of the six major banking groups in Hong Kong. Details significant differences. Attributes these to the regulatory constraint which confines banks coming late to the wholesaling business. Wider application of marketing is still limited to the well‐established banks with a large retailing customer base. Hong Kong banking is generally perceived as a favourable location for exploring Asian businesses. Suggests that, in order to strengthen further the status of Hong Kong as an international financial and banking centre, a stable political environment and effective cost control programme are indispensable.

The purpose of this study is to explore how different types of environmental claims may affect the communication effectiveness of environmental advertising. Two two moderating variables include the perceived eco‐friendly image of the originating country and consumer involvement.

The examination involves the analysis of the responses of 1,200 subjects in Shanghai, China, to mock advertisements containing environmental claims using a 2 x 3 factorial design.

Environmental claims enhance the communication effectiveness of advertisements for both high‐ and low‐involvement services. For high‐involvement services, substantive environmental claims generate more favorable attitudinal responses than do associative environmental claims.

This research focused on a single Chinese city and on two service categories with contrasting degrees of involvement. While such a confinement can enhance the internal validity of the findings, their external validity has yet to be established.

These findings suggest that marketers should adopt a situational perspective by taking into account environmental claim type, country disposition, the degree of environmental consciousness of their target consumers, and service type when designing their environmental advertising campaigns.

Although a number of previous studies have focused on the application of environmental claims to advertise products, similar investigation into how these claims may help advertise services is virtually non‐existent. In this respect, the present study can be viewed as the first empirical work devoted to closing this research gap.

Examines the influence of cultural values, ecological affect and ecological knowledge on the green purchasing behavior of Chinese consumers. Using structural equation modeling to assess the significance that ecological affect and ecological knowledge have on green purchase intention and actual green purchase, the results demonstrate that a strong positive relationship exists. However, other important findings suggest that Chinese people’s level of ecological knowledge is low and actual green purchase behavior minimal. Yet in contrast, Chinese consumers express a positive ecological affect and green purchase intention. In relation to the hypothesis that the Chinese strongly adhere to the cultural value of living in harmony with nature, the relevant descriptive statistic shows that today’s Chinese only pay moderate allegiance to this “man‐nature” orientation. Moreover, this cultural value is only found to exert significant bearing on ecological affect but not ecological knowledge.

This study incorporates two Chinese cultural variables guanxi (personal relationship) and xinyong (personal trust) with other relational variables that are well defined in the west, i.e. supplier competence, commitment, conflict handling and satisfaction to see how they generate partnership relationship in a sino‐western relationship marketing context.

Research objectives are achieved through a combination of model building, quantitative design, testing of hypotheses using AMOS and analysis of findings. The subject scope is imbedded within cultural impact on relationship marketing in a sino‐western context.

This study finds that Western suppliers must be competent in product knowledge, market development, and adaptation to buyers' requirements to resolve conflicts in order to establish their xinyong with the buyers. Competence allows suppliers to show psychological commitment and establish guanxi with the buyers. It also shows that guanxi has a stronger influence on xinyong than on satisfaction. Suppliers should use guanxi to generate buyer's perception on xinyong whilst maintaining a reasonable level of buyer satisfaction with their products and services. Also, relationship between xinyong and satisfaction is not significant. A buyer's satisfaction on the supplier's product and services does not necessarily mean that this buyer perceives the supplier having xinyong because Chinese mix (up) business with personal relationships together and sometimes they make trade‐off between them!

This relationship study was conducted in a single‐product relationship context within the clothing industry in the PRC environment and therefore, its findings may not be generalised to other industry. Future Chinese relationship study should increase the sample size so as to cover more industries to allow comparison across industries. This is especially valid between a manufacturing and a service‐based industry. A service‐based industry may even emphasize more on guanxi and xinyong because of its intangible aspects! Future research should include the xinyong constructs, the concepts of face and reciprocity. To what extent these important Chinese cultural values affect satisfaction and xinyong have not been determined.

Effective conflict handling skills and guanxi are vital to formulate a xinyong positioning strategy. A supplier must be competent in product knowledge, market development skills, and adapt to a buyer's requirements to resolve conflicts with the buyer to establish xinyong.

This research is an initial attempt to establish the relationship between guanxi, xinyong and partnership relationship and generates a new research area in Chinese relationship marketing.