Search results

The purpose of this paper is to advance product appeal and website appeal as focal psychological mechanisms that can be invoked by business-to-consumer e-commerce sites to mitigate problems of information asymmetry via signaling to bolster consumers’ purchase intention under the influence of trust.

Survey approach was employed to validate the research model.

Website appeal partially mediates the positive effect of product appeal on consumers’ purchase intention. Trust in e-commerce sites not only increases purchase intention directly, but it also reinforces the positive relationship between website appeal and purchase intention while attenuating the positive relationship between product appeal and purchase intention. Service content quality, search delivery quality, and enjoyment are confirmed as positive antecedents of website appeal whereas diagnosticity and justifiability are established as positive antecedents of product appeal.

This study not only delineates product and website appeal as complementary drivers of consumer purchase on e-commerce sites, but it also derives five signals that aid in bolstering both product and website appeal. Trust is revealed to exert a moderating influence on the impact of product and website appeal on purchase intention.

Practitioners should prioritize their resource allocation to enhance qualities most pertinent to product and website appeal. E-commerce sites should offer product-oriented functionalities to facilitate product diagnosticity and reassure consumers of their purchase decisions.

This study distinguishes between product and website appeal as well as between their respective antecedents. It also uncovers how trust can alter the effects of both website and product appeal on consumers’ purchase intention.

The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer-side effects of “under new management” (UNM) signs. The authors integrate cue-utilization theory and relevance theory to guide hypotheses about the conditions under which these signs are and are not beneficial.

Two consumer-based experiments were used to examine the quality and reputation effects of restaurants signaling a management change on potential and existing customers.

The results suggest that positive and negative effects are possible. The direction of these effects is contingent upon consumers’ prior experience, type of service (i.e. search/experience) and the relevance of the signal.

The study is limited to one industry (i.e. restaurants) and examines the effects of market signals on perceived quality and reputation. In addition, this research brought forth the notion of “signal relevance” and suggested that it may be explicitly tied to attributions. However, this assertion must examine multiple signals (relevant/irrelevant) and their contingent effects on consumer perceptions.

The findings advise businesses to use caution when using signals such as an “UNM” sign, as they appear to have different effects depending on the experience of the consumer with the service and the relevance of the signal.

This research contributes to the literature on cue utilization theory to understand the effects of marketplace cues on consumer perceptions. It contributes to marketing theory and practice by proposing a model of cue effects based on prior customer experience, type of service and cue relevance.

The purpose of this study is to explore factors that help to determine employee trust in and affective commitment toward the organization.

Data for this study were collected using surveys administered to employees of a company located in the southeastern United States. The final sample included 391 matched supervisor–subordinate dyads.

We found organizational signals of trustworthiness led to affective commitment through increased levels of employee trust. Employees and supervisors who perceived HR professionals to be competent, who felt organizational information distributions were of high quality and who felt the organization disclosed relevant information exhibited higher levels of trust in the organization. Employees showed higher affective commitment when they trusted the organization. We found that supervisor trust directly impacted subordinate affective commitment as well.

These findings help extend signaling theory from the attraction of employees to their retention and help researchers and practitioners alike to understand the organizational trust- and commitment-building process.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent and in what ways signaling theory has been explored within the field of international marketing. This paper systematically reviews the use of signaling theory in the field of international marketing. Communication is a core aspect of the international marketing process. Research in this field has explored effective and unique ways of improving the communication flow to reduce the asymmetry of information between international consumers and the firm. This notion is adopted, enhanced and strengthened by signaling theory. Signaling theory has recently received the attention of international marketing scholars.

The systematic review methodology was applied for the purpose of identifying the relevant studies. We extracted academic articles over the last 23 years from the domain of international marketing that directly contribute to signaling theory based on 57 journal articles extracted through the systematic review process.

Based on systematic research the results reveal that the topic has grown and continues to expand within the broader international marketing field. We offer a theoretical conceptual framework to better understand signaling theory in the context of international marketing.

The authors map and critically evaluate the use of signaling theory in international marketing. Relevance of signaling theory in international marketing is growing and authors present an integrative framework that organizes the existing literature, and provides scholars to further expand on emerging themes of the domain. The paper offers some useful future research directions.

This study aims to investigate a startup accelerator’s decisions toward exerting effort in an information acquisition process and selecting an information disclosure strategy. In particular, the authors are interested in examining which factors may cause the accelerator to report more or less accurate information, which will subsequently affect the investment decision and the outcome of the ventures. This study examines the impact of the equity share taken by the accelerator on the effort level being exerted in the information acquisition process, as well as the accelerator’s decision on the information disclosure regime.

The authors use mathematical models built upon well-established theoretical and practical concepts to analyze the research problems and derive the findings.

The authors show that when the accelerator takes a sufficiently large equity share from the entrepreneur in exchange for admitting the entrepreneur’s venture into the acceleration program, the accelerator is motivated to exert a significant level of effort to observe an accurate signal for the quality of the venture, and then disclose the information about the venture’s quality consistently with the observed signal (informative disclosure regime). On the other hand, if the accelerator takes a small equity share, it is optimal for her to exert no effort in the information acquisition process and simply adopt the basic disclosure regime, where the accelerator reports the quality of the venture based solely on the ex ante expected payoff of the venture, regardless of the observed signal.

The results indicate that an equity sharing scheme, which awards a sufficient amount of equity to the accelerator, can be an effective tool to help obtain accurate information about the quality of a startup venture and make a well-informed investment decision.

This research illustrates that the ownership stake of the accelerator can potentially indicate the accuracy of the information about the venture provided by the accelerator to outside investors. That is, when the stake held by the accelerator is large, the investors can conjecture that the information about the venture reported by the accelerator may be highly accurate and reliable. In contrast, if the accelerator holds a small stake, then it is likely that the information provided by the accelerator may not add any value to the publicly available information. These insights can guide investors (e.g. angle investors, venture capitalists, etc.) in making well-informed startup investment decisions.

A major transformation in retail logistics over the few years is backed by enormous improvements in internet technologies. It is now easy for e-retailers to entertain delivery progression, or consumers can share use-experience with future customers and thereby reducing information asymmetry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of different signals on consumer behavior in the presence of information asymmetry, in the context of online group buying (OGB) markets in China.

Based on the lemon market theory (LMT) and signaling theory, the study develops a research model of the OGB consumers’ context in China, which is validated using data from an online survey. A total of 528 responses are used for data analysis applying structural equation modeling technique.

The findings of the study show that perceived vendor quality (PVQ) and perceived product quality (PPQ) have significantly positive effects on intention to purchase from OGB websites. PVQ is associated with perceived reputation and perceived trustworthiness (PT) of vendor, and the determinants of PPQ are quality assurance information of products, and information about mer-chants. Further, PT has a mediating effect, while asymmetry of information has a moderating effect.

The research model is valid as a generic OGB model that can be investigated in other contexts to understand the generalizability of the findings. Future research is needed to incorporate additional relevant factors (e.g. price, advertising activity/investments) that may help increase the acceptability of the model to a wide range of e-commerce contexts. Two of the control variables (gender and prior internet experience) were found to be significant; this could be further examined in future studies to determine the relative impact on each causal relationship.

Whereas prior studies in the domain of consumer service proposed different signaling mechanisms that were believed to eliminate information asymmetry from a market, the study sheds light on the effectiveness of the signals in the OGB context. This is a unique effort that applies and extends LMT and signaling theory in OGB context by theorizing the associated dimensions and their causal effects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a relatively new signal of service quality, third‐party evaluation of a service brand.

The meaning of the third‐party signal to consumers was studied and the third‐party signal was compared with two other signals, word‐of‐mouth communication about a service brand and popularity of a service brand, for the ability to influence anticipated satisfaction with a homeowners' insurance product.The three signals appeared as factors in two experiments. The factor levels were favorable, absent, or unfavorable.

All three signals exhibited significant main effects. Of the three signals, third‐party evaluation accounted for the greatest proportion of variance in the dependent variable, and this signal also had the strongest negativity effect. Also, a significant two‐way ordinal interaction was found between word‐of‐mouth communication and third‐party evaluation. The boosting effect of a favorable versus an unfavorable word‐of‐mouth communication was less in the presence of a favorable third‐party evaluation than in the circumstance where the two signals conflicted.

Quality signals other than those under study were excluded from stimuli in this investigation. The ability to generalize the findings of this study to the real world is limited by the fact that the effects of other quality signals (brand, price, etc.) on the three signals studied are unclear.

This study strongly suggests that third‐party evaluation is perceived as a product quality signal by consumers. Incorporating a favorable third‐party signal into advertising may allay consumer uncertainty of service quality and increase the likelihood of service brand purchase.

Due to product diversity, traditional quality signals in the hotel industry such as star ratings and brand affiliation do not work well in the accommodation booking process on the sharing economy platform. From a suppliers’ perspective, this study aims to apply the signaling theory to the booking of Airbnb listings and explore the influence of quality signals on the odds of an Airbnb listing being booked.

A binomial logistic model is used to describe the influences of different attributes on the market demand. Because of the large sample size, sequential Bayesian updating method is utilized in hospitality and tourism field for the first attempt.

Results show that, in addition to host-specific information such as “Superhost” and identity verification, attributes including price, extra charges, region competitiveness and house rules are all effective signals in Airbnb. The signaling impact is more effective for the listings without any review comments.

This study contributes to the literature by incorporating the signaling theory in the analysis of booking probability of Airbnb accommodation. The research findings are valuable to hosts in improving their booking rates and revenue. In addition, government and industrial management organizations can have more efficient strategy and policy planning.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the beliefs of undergraduate business students studying in Canada and partners in China about the quality of the program; what they consider effective signals of quality; and their willingness to pay to improve the quality.

A survey was designed and distributed to 481 students in the transnational program during the 2009 and 2011 academic years. Statistical tests were conducted to examine mean differences in the perception of quality, different signals of quality and willingness to pay to improve quality.

The findings of the study indicate that Canadian University and Chinese partner students, mostly in their final years of study, have similar beliefs about the quality of the program. They consider the program as good quality but not top rated. Chinese partners' students in their earlier years of study have a lower perception of quality but this gets better as they progress through the program. Students perceive high quality reputation and professional accreditation as equally important in terms of signalling quality. Finally, many students are willing to pay more to improve the quality of the program.

Some limitations of the study include convenience sample selection and size, translation of survey, the framing of the survey questions and controlling for factors such as grade point average, gender and other factors.

The paper provides important information to monitor quality and to place a value on pursuing accreditation and tuition fee increases.

Students' perception of quality has remained under‐examined in the literature. The research establishes a framework which can lead to future explorations.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether bad real estate owners drive out good real estate owners from the online marketplace for offices.

This research is based on a statistical analysis of the advertisement of offices in Malmö CBD, collected weekly during a period of one year.

The hypothesis that the market for advertisement of office properties is a lemons market cannot be rejected. The result that owners who have appeared in court more than once in the last two years being more inclined to advertise supports this.

The research in this paper is limited to the Malmö CBD office market.

It provides an insight in how the online marketplace for offices works as a marketplace and how quality signals influences advertisement.

This paper is a direct test of Akerlof’s classical lemon model.