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Relational norms, referring to shared values about behavioral rules, distinguish communal and exchange relationships based on different reciprocal expectations between actors. This research explains how reciprocal expectations behind the two relationships trigger gift givers' disparate behavioral goals and further determine their gift choices.

The current work uses three lab experiments (N = 482) and one consumer survey (N = 422) to collect Chinese gifting data. Multiple data-analysis methods – crosstab analysis, ANOVA, linear regression and bootstrapping procedures – confirm the hypotheses.

Gift givers distinguish communal and exchange recipients. When selecting gifts for communal (exchange) recipients, people depended more strongly on rational analyses (intuition), preferring products superior on cognitive (affective) attributions. Further, givers primed to be rational decision-makers by anticipating that recipients would evaluate the gifts immediately in their presence, regardless of the communal or exchange context, preferred cognitively superior products.

From a managerial perspective, marketers can make targeted recommendations by highlighting the appropriate attribute dimension (cognitive or affective) after learning givers' reciprocal expectations.

This work contributes to the gift-giving literature by revealing the direct link between gifting goals and gift choices, extending the understanding of consumers' gift-selection strategies.

This study aims to focus on the internal audiences of a nation brand, i.e. the citizens of a country and is built on the theoretical premise that migration intentions (MIs) prevalent among the skilled and educated elite of a home country signifies a weak nation brand.

Through the theoretical support of the migration motive theory of push and pull (Richmond, 1993), nation branding theory (Anholt, 2006) and the two-construct country image model (Roth and Diamantopoulos, 2009), the authors constructed a framework that incorporates the relationship between affective and cognitive country images of both home and migrant country and migration motives and intentions to migrate.

The findings reveal that push and pull factors are strongly affected by the images of the home country and the migrant country, respectively and strong home country images are associated with weak MIs, while the opposite is true if a strong migrant country image is possessed. Further, evidence of the dominance effect of cognitive images in complex decision-making environments such as migration was also provided. Moreover, the results also suggest significant differences between Chinese and Pakistani respondents.

This study guides nation branding researchers by opening up a debate on self-images and conceptually independent attitudinal constructs of country image. For policymakers in developing countries, the results reveal that they should primarily strengthen their internal brands and focus on cognitive images to stem the flow of brain drain.

This study takes the traditional country image debate to migration discourse, moves it forward, contextualizes it as a function of a nation’s brand strength and provides evidence that confluence of migration studies with the theoretical stream of nation branding can provide significant explanations for migrant behavior.

This paper aims to explore the distinctions and similarities about Eudaimonia (a deeper pleasure beyond the hedonic enjoyment) and hedonic enjoyment, especially the influencing factors of Eudaimonia.

Survey and experiment are conducted to obtain the data. Structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analysis and analysis of variance are used to analyze the data.

Three empirical studies support the idea that Eudaimonia, as a deeper-level pleasure, is a distinct construct from hedonic enjoyment. Like hedonic enjoyment, Eudaimonia can lead to satisfaction. Unlike hedonic enjoyment, Eudaimonia is driven by effort. Moreover, the effort impact on Eudaimonia is enhanced by the uniqueness of the craft task.

This paper shifts hedonic consumption studies from a product-based paradigm (e.g. utilitarian vs hedonic) to an experience-based paradigm (hedonic enjoyment vs Eudaimonia). The extension of pleasure to Eudaimonia domain successfully explains why prior hedonic consumption studies find that pleasure is more than the absence of effort and can be more inspiring than purely sensory.

As the hospitality industry is shifting its focus from service to experience, customers are becoming co-creators of the perceived value of a hospitality service because experiences customers obtained when consuming a hospitality service involve the participation of the customers. Thus, more research is needed to examine the relationships among consumer’s personal factors and their evaluations of hospitality services. This study developed and tested hypotheses that examined the effects of customers’ intrinsic characteristics on their evaluations of a restaurant service. Data were collected from college students in the United States (n = 220) and China (n = 254) using a scenario approach. Findings reveal that customers’ gender, personality, and cultural background had significant effects on their evaluations of a restaurant service. Specifically, female customers rated the same service higher than male customers on the reliability dimension of service quality and overall service quality; customers with personalities of extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness rated the service higher than customers with neuroticism personality on the responsiveness dimension; and customers in individualistic cultures rated the service higher than those in collectivistic cultures on most of the service evaluation measures. Implications of the study’s findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of online health care communities and the impact of two-way online social support on customers’ well-being and patients’ quality of life, at different social exclusion levels.

An online survey in China’s Anti-Hepatitis B Online Community includes 326 respondents. A combined hierarchical regression analysis and structural equation model test the hypotheses.

Both receiving and giving online social support, as reciprocal altruism behaviors, enhance patients’ well-being. Receiving online social support influences psychological well-being most; giving has the largest impact on existential domains. Social exclusion boosts the benefits of giving online social support but attenuates the benefits of receiving it.

This research focusses on the effects of online social support among socially excluded patients. Extensions could rely on objective instead of subjective measures and alternative methodologies to test the underlying processes. Additional insights could derive from a bidirectional perspective.

Medical treatment institutions should leverage customer resources; health care providers should prioritize patients who feel socially excluded as effective online support providers. Health care community administrators can use several means to convince patients to contribute to communities.

Social support in online health care communities is a collaborative service that uses customers as service resources. This study explains the collaborative service and how customers feel about their bidirectional roles. It also extends reciprocal altruism research to a health information technology realm by systematically exploring how giving, vs receiving, online social support affects customers’ well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into indigenous, solution-based business models and their relevance for inclusive service innovation within specific social contexts in emerging economies, with particular emphasis on the role of culture and technology.

A proposed framework illustrates four factors that nurture socially driven service innovation in emerging economies: solution, inclusion, culture, and technology. Extant literature from studies in India, Latin America, and China illustrates distinct indigenous innovations and service relationships that exist at the base of the pyramid (BoP), which provides a foundation for a better understanding of socially inclusive service innovations.

A conceptual model of inclusive service innovation reflects an integrated, virtuous cycle, composed of service relationships that stem from the BoP at various levels of analysis across different income segments. These findings suggest notable research directions.

This study reinforces the importance of a solution orientation as a competitive business model to gain customer engagement.

Researchers and practitioners in emerging and advanced economies can use the approach suggested by this paper in their efforts to build sustainable business cultures and improve the well-being of society.

Previous research has not addressed the social or communal roles of service innovation; this study proposes an innovative switch from a traditional strategy of selling services toward a proactive approach that involves low-income customers as active resources to co-create social and business value.

Patient value co-creation represents a key research priority and an essential determinant of health care service outcomes. Yet few studies empirically examine the factors that motivate patients to participate actively in value co-creation. The purpose of this paper is to seek to identify the motivators of such activities in online health communities (OHC) and examine their specific and unique effects.

A netnographic study helps identify the motivators that drive patients’ value co-creation activities in OHCs. The combination of these results with social identity theories suggest the hypotheses; mediation analyses test the hypothesized model with data collected from eight OHCs that address both life-threatening and non-life-threatening illnesses.

The netnographic results show that social identity drives patients’ value co-creation activities. Interactions among OHC members and the cognitive resources of the OHC both contribute to the development of its social identity. Furthermore, benevolence trust, shared vision, and shared language determine how likely an OHC member is to identify with a particular OHC, which further influences his or her value co-creation activities in that OHC.

Although value co-creation is critical to the health care sector, few studies examine antecedents of patient value co-creation empirically. This study represents an initial attempt to do so by combining innovative netnographic analyses with mediation analyses.

The concept of face has been deeply embedded in Chinese culture. This paper aims to examine the role of face in service failure and recovery encounters, and to explore the factors that influence customer emotions, recovery satisfaction and behavioral intention based on a proposed conceptual model.

The paper uses a scenario role‐play‐based experimental design to examine the proposed conceptual model in service failure and recovery encounters.

The results show that face plays an important role in service failure and recovery encounters. Specifically, it is found that the utilitarian recovery and symbolic recovery customers receive in the service recovery encounter can both influence customer face restoration, which in turn affects customer emotions, and behavioral intention on service recovery. Customer emotions are significantly correlated to customer recovery satisfaction.

The practical implications of this study are mainly two‐fold. First, service providers should pay attention to customers' perceptions of face during service encounters. They should also train their employees to treat all customers with utmost sincerity, which will help to enhance the positive emotional experience of customers. Second, the recovery offered by service providers should not be limited to utilitarian recovery. It has to take into account symbolic recovery as well.

This paper investigates the role of face in service recovery encounters and suggests that face significantly influences customer emotions and behavioral intention on service recovery, and customer emotions in turn significantly affect customer recovery satisfaction