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Guided by stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory, this study analyzed the user-generated content (UGC) produced by attendees from six anime conventions in the USA.

A total of 739 online reviews and 1,932 photos were collected from the social platforms of six large anime conventions in the USA (Yelp and Facebook), and the study employed thematic analysis and image analysis to analyze the collected UGCs.

The findings revealed eight main themes (i.e. ambient and space, customers, service and products, sign and symbol, social density, emotional status, motivation, and behavior intention) and 32 subthemes across the three dimensions of SOR theory. Leveraging the power of cutting-edge image analysis, the image labels obtained from the analysis contributed to the creation of network clusters. The result of the image analysis also continued consistently with the thematic analysis result, which reflected SOR theory.

Theoretically, the study applied SOR theory and blended thematic and image analyses to gain a comprehensive understanding of anime convention attendees’ experience and categorized the attendees’ emotional status as positive or negative to reflect their overall evaluation. Practically, this study highlighted some complaints from attendees and provided suggestions for operators. However, the study focused only on large anime conventions in the USA; future studies should compare attendees’ experiences with small and large conventions or anime conventions worldwide.

The study utilized UGCs to understand the key patterns essential to attendees during anime conventions in the USA and applied SOR theory to its investigation.

Building on the broaden-and-build theory and incorporating a self-regulatory perspective, this study examines the relationship between trait gratitude and subjective career success and investigates the mediating roles of growth mindset of work and career network breadth.

Time-lagged data were collected in three waves from a sample of 314 employees in China. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings demonstrate that trait gratitude is positively related to SCS, mediated by growth mindset of work as an indicator of psychological resources and career network breadth as an indicator of social resources. Trait gratitude is more strongly associated with network breadth (i.e., social resources) than with growth mindset (i.e., psychological resources).

Organizations may find trait gratitude an applicable addition to the selection criteria during the recruitment process.

By identifying trait gratitude as an antecedent of SCS and revealing its underlying mechanisms, the current study points to a new perspective on the study of career success.

This study explores entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on project portfolio success in new product development projects, with the moderating effects of digitalization capability and modularization process.

The sample data of 204 firms was used to analyze the research hypotheses. This study adopted hierarchical regression to test the theoretical conceptual model incorporating EO, digitalization capability, modularization process, and project portfolio success.

These results indicate that EO positively affects project portfolio success. More importantly, digitalization capability and modularization process positively moderate the relationship between EO and project portfolio success.

Prominent studies have focused on different antecedent and consequence factors of project portfolio success; however, the impacts of EO still need to be noticed. This study makes a pioneering effort to make up this gap and investigate the effects of EO on project portfolio success, digitalization capability, and modularization process as moderators, which can enrich the current literature on project portfolio management.

This paper aims to explore the usage of selling influence tactics across prospective customers with differing information-related needs.

The research study uses an exploratory critical incident technique (CIT) methodology to identify and examine salesperson influence tactics.

This study identifies and explores the use of salesperson influence tactics across three information-based conditions often encountered by salespeople (i.e. information seeking customers, informed customers with information inaccuracies and informed customers making sub-optimal decisions). Regardless of condition, salespeople readily used non-coercive information exchange tactics. Whereas, recommendations and ingratiation tactics were applied by more effective salespeople when interacting with informed customers with information deficiencies. Furthermore, salespeople report executing less effectively with prospects with inaccurate preexisting information and with prospects making flawed or sub-optimal decisions.

Findings illustrate the need for a renewed focus on salesperson influence tactics, the conditions under which they are effective, and how salespeople adapt their influence tactics to various situations. The exploratory nature of this study limits the generalizability of findings.

A framework of adaptive selling strategies is proposed to help tackle new challenges faced by B2B salespeople in today’s information intensive market. When interacting with more informed customers, pre-existing information is often inaccurate and incomplete. Thus, salespeople must assess and address these flaws and gaps and can adapt their influence strategies to do so effectively.

Industrial buyers today have virtually unlimited avenues to conduct extensive research and gain supplier information without the aid of interactions with salespeople. Thus, salespeople often enter sales interactions when their prospects have significantly more information than ever before. By examining salesperson influence techniques in selling situations that vary based on prospective customer preexisting knowledge, this research provides guidance on how selling may need to change in a more information intensive era.

Risk response decisions (RRDs) are vital for project risk mitigation. Although past research has focused on RRDs for independent single projects, it has scarcely explored how to make RRDs for single projects in project portfolios (SPPPs). Consequently, this study aims to bridge the gap in extant literature by developing an integrated approach to select risk response strategies (RRSs) for SPPPs considering objective adjustments and project interdependencies (PIs).

An integrated quality function deployment (QFD) method was used throughout this study. More so, a balanced score card (BSC) and stratified-Z-numbers-full consistency method (SZFUCOM) was applied to identify SPPP success criteria (SP3SC) to determine their weights. In addition, a spherical fuzzy set-design structure matrix (SFDSM) was used to quantify the correlation between the risks and the relationship between the risks and the predecessor projects. Consequently, the relationships between the risks and SP3SC and RRSs were described by the spherical fuzzy set (SFS) and Z-numbers, respectively. Besides, the results are weaved into QFD to transform SP3SC into risks and then into RRSs, while a linear optimization model is used to obtain the optimal RRSs. Lastly, a construction project portfolio (PP) was used to test the veracity of the results to prove their validity.

The approach to RRDs for single projects is observed to be different from that of SPPPs. In addition, this study finds that project portfolio objective adjustments (PPOAs) and PIs have significant impacts on RRDs given that they influence the risk priorities of independent single projects and SPPPs. Moreover, the application of an integrated QFD effectively synthesized the results from the findings of this study, as well as enabled companies to determine robust RRSs. Finally, the consistency results of the SZFUCOM were better than those of the triangular fuzzy number-full consistency method.

The study innovatively explores the method of RRDs for SPPP, which has been ignored by past research. SP3SC highly compatible with PP success is determined. Z-numbers are first used to evaluate the effect of RRSs to enhance the robustness of RRDs. The study proposes a method of RRDs comprehensively considering PPOAs and PIs, which provides robust methodological guidance for SPPP managers to control risks.

This study aims to examine the role of functional and symbolic image congruity in Chinese consumers' brand preferences in the auto market, and the role of brand familiarity in moderating the relationship between brand image congruity and consumers' preferences.

A one‐on‐one survey was administered to 1,440 consumers by market research specialists on two popular auto brands in China.

While confirming existing findings concerning functional image congruity, the results revealed that symbolic image congruity had a negative impact on Chinese consumers' brand preference when a brand's perceived symbolic image is higher than consumers' ideal expectations (i.e. upward incongruity), and brand familiarity does not moderate the role of symbolic image congruity in Chinese consumers' brand preference.

The paper's findings could help managers to improve their brand management and enhance consumer satisfaction.

Drawing from the social exchange theory, the job demands-resources theory and the employee–organization relationship framework, this article aims to investigate underlying mechanisms through which organizational resources impact frontline service employees’ (FLEs) core service performance and customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

An empirical study was conducted based on a multi-source data from 211 employee–customer pairs, with structural equation modeling used to test hypotheses.

FLE felt gratitude toward the firm fully mediates the impacts of supervisory guidance and employee-oriented relationship investment in influencing employees’ service performance and customer-oriented OCB. The study further finds that when the perceived job autonomy is low, providing supervisory guidance is more effective in eliciting employee gratitude than employee-oriented relationship investments. In contrast, when the perceived job autonomy is high, employee-oriented relationship investment elicits higher employee gratitude than supervisory guidance.

First, as cross-sectional pair data were used to test the proposed hypotheses, a stronger case might be made for the use of longitudinal data. Second, the current study uses a large variety of industries to study the phenomenon of employee gratitude and customer-oriented performance. Third, given recent globalization trends, it is increasingly important for researchers to address how the knowledge gained within an US context is applicable on a global scale. Finally, the two types of organizational resources included in the study are both positive resources.

The findings offer insights about how firms can strategically invest organizational resources to favorably influence FLE gratitude and customer outcomes as well as how job autonomy plays a role in leveraging the impacts of those resources.

This study is one of the few to advance our understanding of how FLE felt gratitude serves as an intervening mechanism through which functional and social resources invested by service organizations lead to desirable customer outcomes. In addition, this study explores the moderating role of FLE perceived job autonomy, suggesting the contingent nature of organizational resources in affecting customer-oriented FLE behaviors, which was rarely attended in previous research.

This study aims to test the experiential advantage argument from both the hedonic and eudaimonic well-being perspectives and seeks to explore the mediating roles of a sense of meaning, as well as the moderating effects of consumers’ motivational autonomy, in a novel context – China.

Study 1 (n = 203) used a between-subject experiment where participants role-played an imaginary purchase with experiential versus material focus; Study 2 (n = 290) used a recall method where participants were asked to recall their past experiential purchase or material purchase that cost more than RMB500 (about US$70); Study 3 (n = 185) used a between-subject experiment where participants were assigned to one of the four scenarios (two types of purchases (experiential vs material) × 2 levels of motivational autonomy (high vs low).

The authors find that the experiential advantage argument holds true for eudaimonic well-being as well as hedonic well-being in three studies with Chinese consumers. In addition, the authors find that a sense of meaning serves as an additional mediator for the experiential advantage argument. Further, the authors find that the level of motivational autonomy positively moderates the effect size of experiential advantages and the mediating roles of a sense of meaning.

The authors only address the two ends of the experiential–material purchase continuum. Whether the discovered mediation roles of a sense of meaning and the moderation roles of motivational autonomy hold for hybrid experiential products remain unknown.

The authors enriched the experiential advantage literature through exploring the mediation roles of a sense of meaning and the moderating effects of motivational autonomy in the experiential advantage model.

This paper aims to apply vector space model (VSM)-PCR model to compute the similarity of Fault zone ontology semantics, which verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the application of VSM-PCR method in uncertainty mapping of ontologies.

The authors first define the concept of uncertainty ontology and then propose the method of ontology mapping. The proposed method fully considers the properties of ontology in measuring the similarity of concept. It expands the single VSM of concept meaning or instance set to the “meaning, properties, instance” three-dimensional VSM and uses membership degree or correlation to express the level of uncertainty.

It provides a relatively better accuracy which verified the feasibility and effectiveness of VSM-PCR method in treating the uncertainty mapping of ontology.

The future work will focus on exploring the similarity measure and combinational methods in every dimension.

This paper presents an uncertain mapping method of ontology concept based on three-dimensional combination weighted VSM, namely, VSM-PCR. It expands the single VSM of concept meaning or instance set to the “meaning, properties, instance” three-dimensional VSM. The model uses membership degree or correlation which is used to express the degree of uncertainty; as a result, a three-dimensional VSM is obtained. The authors finally provide an example to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of VSM-PCR method in treating the uncertainty mapping of ontology.