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Adaptive selling can help build positive relationships between salespeople and consumers. The literature shows that consumers respond positively to salespeople under approach but not avoidance motivations. This paper aims to demonstrate a circumstance under which consumers with avoidance motivations can also respond positively, something not previously shown in the literature.

This research paper uses three experimental between-subject designs to test hypotheses.

The current research identifies appropriate sales influence tactics (e.g. a customer-autonomy-oriented or a loss-avoidance-oriented influence tactic) where consumers with avoidance motivations can also respond to sales agents positively by the evidence of higher purchase intentions. In addition, this research shows that consumers with approach motivations may not always respond positively to salespeople. Further, goal facilitation appraisals of the salespeople serve as a mechanism between consumers’ shopping motivations and their behavioral responses (e.g. purchase intentions).

First, while the previous literature demonstrates that approach motivations generally lead to more positive effects (Elliot and Trash, 2002), this research indicates that avoidance motivations can also have positive effects, which is a finding that has not been demonstrated in the literature thus far. Second, this research identifies goal facilitation appraisals as one underlying process that explains the interactive effect between matching influence tactics and consumers’ approach/avoidance motivations when shopping. Third, the authors integrate regulatory focus theory by using gain- or loss-avoidance-oriented sales influence tactics to match approach and avoidance motivations.

This paper aims to extend and complement research on reference groups by suggesting that two distinct types of dissociative groups – specifically, a near versus distant dissociative group – have differential impacts on consumer choices. While prior research has examined the impact of dissociative groups on consumer evaluations and responses more generally, there has been little attention paid to how different types of dissociative groups may affect consumer choices. The current research attempts to address this research gap by identifying two different types of dissociative groups and exploring how, why and the conditions under which they might exert differential impacts on consumer choices.

Four experimental studies test these ideas. Studies 1–2 were conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Studies 3–4 were conducted in a laboratory setting at a large public university.

The findings suggest that consumers are less likely to buy a product if it is associated with a near dissociative group as compared to a distant dissociative group; and this effect is driven by construal-level mindsets. In addition, the proposed effect is moderated by group conformity such that for people low in conformity, the proposed effect holds; while for people high in conformity, they would not make a purchase as long as a product is associated with a dissociative group – regardless of whether it is near or distant.

For experimental control, the studies were conducted in the lab or using online participants, and thus might lack much of the richness of real field settings. Future research could seek to address these issues, perhaps, examining the effects of social distance to a dissociative group on consumer choices in a naturalistic environment.

This work advances an understanding of how different types of dissociative groups affect consumer behavior, with implications for marketing practices and public policymakers. First, the findings provide important insights into how to expand into a completely new market. Second, this research provides an important implication for launching a successful advertising campaign and designing an effective marketing segmentation strategy. Third, this research also offers important insights into how to pivot marketing strategies during a crisis. Finally, the research draws out the implications for policymakers to develop effective substance abuse prevention programs for children and adolescents.

To the knowledge, this is the first study to examine different types of dissociative groups and their differential impacts on consumer choices. Further, the current research complements prior research on reference groups by identifying the conditions under which a nearer social distance might lead to greater negative product evaluation. Finally, this research identifies the conditions under which the impact of different types of dissociative groups may vary, opening up new areas for research on why, how and when dissociative groups can affect consumer behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a means of the kinematic calibration of a parallel manipulator with full-circle rotation.

An error-mapping model based on the space vector chain is formulated and parameter identification is proposed based on double ball-bar (DBB) measurements. The measurement trajectory is determined by the motion characteristics of this mechanism and whether the error sources can be identified. Error compensation is proposed by modifying the inputs, and a two-step kinematic calibration method is implemented.

The simulation and experiment results show that this kinematic calibration method is effective. The DBB length errors and the position errors in the end-effector of the parallel manipulator with full-circle rotation are greatly reduced after error compensation.

By establishing the mapping relationship between measured error data and geometric error sources, the error parameters of this mechanism are identified; thus, the pose errors are unnecessary to be measured directly. The effectiveness of the kinematic calibration method is verified by computer simulation and experiment. This proposed calibration method can help the novel parallel manipulator with full-circle rotation and other similar parallel mechanisms to improve their accuracy.

The purpose of this research was to explore the stickiness of players' motivation in a virtual community and to explore the important factors for gamers.

In this research, motivation was the independent variable; the virtual community was the mediator; and stickiness was the dependent variable. An online questionnaire survey was conducted, with users of augmented reality (AR) as the research objects. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS and AMOS software to verify the research model and research hypotheses, to understand the relation between player motivation and stickiness and to determine whether there were any changes in the virtual community.

The authors found that the relation between players' motivation in AR-based games and the virtual community had a significant positive impact. Ingress had a significant positive impact on the virtual community and stickiness, and Pokémon had a significant positive impact too. The virtual community of the Ingress game played a completely mediating role in motivation and stickiness, but the virtual community in Pokémon did not have a mediating effect.

The novel approach adopted in this study enabled us to determine the causal relation between player motivation, the virtual community and stickiness, on the basis of the theoretical framework formulated, and the latter was used to construct a path analysis model diagram. The correlation between motivation and the virtual community, between the virtual community and stickiness, and the causal relation between all three was verified. The study results and conclusions may help companies understand how to use virtual communities in AR games to improve stickiness and motivate gamers to continue playing.

Prior research shows that managers with lower ability release less accurate management earnings forecasts and have more earnings restatements, lower earnings persistence and lower quality accruals estimations. Yet, whether the impact of managerial ability (MA) on financial reporting can be extended to the narrative section of firms' financial disclosures needs to be theoretically and empirically examined. The authors theorize in this paper that managers with low ability opportunistically inflate the tone to increase outsiders' perceptions of their ability. The authors also examine the relation between MA and the informativeness of tone to predict future firm performance and explain investors' reaction at earnings announcement.

The authors collect 24,000 earnings press releases of 1,149 distinct firms between 2004 and 2013. Content analysis is used to proxy the tone of the disclosures. The authors use the score developed by Demerjian et al. (2012) to measure MA. The authors then employ panel data regressions to examine the impact of MA on disclosure tone.

The authors find that low-ability managers inflate the disclosure tone to positively influence labor market's perceptions about their ability. This effect is magnified for younger and shorter-tenured managers, for firms with more intense monitoring and during bear markets. The authors also find that the tone of earnings press releases of low-ability managers results in a lower stock price reaction. Supplementary analyses show that the results do not only hold for the tone, but also can be extended to other linguistic features such as the numerical intensity and the readability of earnings press releases. The results are robust to alternative library specifications and other corporate disclosures such as CEO letters to shareholders or 10-K filings.

The paper shows that managers worry about how firm performance influences the labor market assessment of their ability. In particular, the authors find that managers of low ability are willing to opportunistically manipulate the content of corporate disclosures to improve this perception and build their reputation.

The authors contribute by providing theoretical and empirical evidence on how managers attempt to steer assessments of their ability by manipulating corporate disclosures. Consistent with prior business research suggesting that one's ability is a key feature that affects managers' propensity to engage in ethical practices, such as tax avoidance or manipulation of financial information, this study shows that less able managers tend to inflate the tone of the earnings announcements and that this ability-driven bias is likely to be magnified by career concerns.