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Drawing on social identification theory, this research aims to explore an important mechanism – patients’ perceived empathy from a hospital, which is defined as caring, individualized attention provided by the hospital – that explains how service quality influences patients’ loyalty to the hospital.

This study adopts a structural equation modelling framework to estimate the mediation relationship between service quality and patient loyalty using two studies based on hospital employees and patients.

In Study 1, hospital staff survey data showed that service quality enhanced patients’ perceived empathy from the hospital. In Study 2, the authors confirmed and extended the findings of Study 1 by using patient survey data that suggested that patients’ empathy mediated the relationship between service quality and patients’ loyalty to the hospital.

The results of the two studies suggested that service quality increased patients’ empathy, which in turn improved patients’ loyalty to a hospital. The results extend the customer loyalty literature by exploring the critical antecedents and mechanisms of customer loyalty in the healthcare context. The studies interpret healthcare phenomena from the service aspect of fulfilling patients’ unique needs and providing a good hospital service experience. Moreover, the authors offer an insightful approach to explaining the service quality–patient loyalty linkage in the healthcare industry. Important theoretical and managerial contributions and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The concept of postponement has been developed over many years. Past empirical research has been conducted almost entirely in Western countries. This paper aims to investigate the current status of postponement applications in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) to ascertain the effects of some determinants (i.e. environmental uncertainty, production techniques, and information system (IS) maturity) on postponement application.

A field survey of big manufacturers of electronic/information technology, clothing, and electric appliances is conducted. A total of 106 usable responses are received from 411 surveys yielding a satisfactory response rate of 25.8 percent.

The result indicates that the number of applications of postponement in Greater China is growing and the incidence of postponement applications is higher than in the Western countries. Environmental uncertainty, production techniques, and ISs maturity have have positive effects on applications of postponement techniques. Some specific postponement strategies for the three industries studied are noted.

From an exploratory perspective, the findings present in this paper may be useful in the sense that they give a broad and general picture of the current situation of the use of postponement in certain industries in Greater China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between attractiveness of athlete endorsers, match‐up, and consumers' purchase intention embedded in the China context.

The authors used a 3×2×2 between‐subject experimental design. Specifically, in this 12‐scenario study depicting a purchase experience they manipulated endorser attractiveness levels (high/middle/low), endorser‐product match‐up (high/low), and product type (to prevent single product bias).

The results showed that no matter whether the attractiveness is high, middle, or low, the high endorser‐product match‐up could produce higher purchase intention than the low endorser‐product match‐up could. Moreover, the purchase intention generated by the high‐attractive endorser with low match‐up would be higher than that generated by low‐attractive endorser with high match‐up.

This research demonstrates that endorsers' attractiveness, even compared to match‐up factor, and could affect consumers' purchase intention more significantly in China sport market. Practically speaking, the result suggests the companies which are related to sports should try their best to choose a highly attractive athlete endorser with outstanding performance and good morality in order to increase consumers' purchase intention.

The existence and form of interaction effects between service quality and satisfaction are still uncertain. The main purpose of this study is to examine whether satisfaction moderates the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions.

A structured questionnaire was distributed to the out‐patients of 12 regional hospitals (the middle level) in Taiwan.

The findings show that the forms of moderators played by satisfaction are not always the same under different dimensions of service quality (i.e. reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy). Satisfaction positively moderates the influence of reliability/empathy on behavioral intentions, but negatively moderates the relationships between responsiveness/assurance and behavioral intentions.

This study reveals the moderating role of satisfaction in the translation from service quality to behavioral intentions in health care services. Moreover, the natures of the moderating effects are not the same for different service quality dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to present the state-of-the-art E-commerce logistics in supply chain management by investigating worldwide implementations and corresponding models together with supporting techniques via furniture industry.

Typical E-commerce logistics companies from North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are comprehensively investigated so as to get the lessons and insights from these practices.

Future technologies like Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, and Cloud Computing would be possibly adopted to enhance the E-commerce logistics in terms of system level, operational level, and decision-making level that may be real time and intelligent in the next decade.

This paper takes the furniture industry for example to illustrate the E-commerce logistics and supply chain management (LSCM). Other industries like electronic appliance industry are not considered.

Opportunities and future perspectives are summarized from practical implementations so that interested parties like E-commerce and logistics companies are able to get some guidance when they are contemplating the business.

E-commerce is booming with the development of new business models and will be continuously boosted in the near future. With large number of enterprises carrying out E-commerce, logistics has been largely influenced.

Insights and lessons from this paper are significant for academia and practitioners for considering E-commerce LSCM.

This paper aims to use the institutional and information-processing perspectives to explore their association with between internationalization and the Penrose effect phenomenon for business groups (BGs).

The authors use ordinary least squares regression models to test arguments about data pertaining to 101 Taiwanese BGs’ foreign direct investments.

The results indicate that greater levels of depth and scope in the process of internationalization during one period may negatively affect rates of growth in the following period. The results further demonstrate that institutional distance moderates the relationship.

Using the perspective of information-processing demands, the authors provide alternate explanations regarding the relationship between the process of internationalization (depth, scope and rhythm) and the Penrose effect.

Owners and managers should focus on both the depth and the scope of internationalization. BGs are likely to incur high dynamic adjustment costs, which then limit the rate of BGs’ growth. Managers should balance international market uncertainty with current managerial resources when determining how deeply and broadly to expand internationally and where to enter. In addition, as recent major panel studies suggest, management capabilities and practices can improve significantly, which has a positive effect on firm growth and performance. This does require the careful development and acquisition of the managerial resources needed for internationalization.

The purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of how firms can maintain longitudinal satisfaction. Previous research on longitudinal satisfaction demonstrates that the product attributes weight on satisfaction shifts over time. However, the existing literature lacks an understanding of the intervening mechanism. Inspired by the hedonic adaptation theory, this research first argues that the shift depends on the attribute’s variability. Then, it posits that hedonic adaptation might play a mediation role in connecting the attribute’s weight and longitudinal satisfaction. Finally, the research incorporates consumer intentional activities into the antecedents of longitudinal satisfaction.

The authors test a series of hypotheses across two studies. Using the Slope-shift Parameter Theory and Structural Equation Modeling, data collected from smartphone owners in four MBA classes (Study 1) and eight business venues in China (Study 2) are analyzed to confirm the research model.

The findings suggest that hedonic adaptation occurs during the ownership process. It is revealed that both the attribute’s variability and consumption behavior play important roles in sustaining long-term satisfaction, confirming the mediating effects of hedonic adaptation on the relationship above.

The hedonic adaptation theory is applied to study the mediating role of product attribute variability and consumption behavior in sustaining customer satisfaction over time. Three contributions are offered: First, hedonic adaptation occurs during the ownership process; second, the attribute’s variability and consumption behavior both play important roles in sustaining longitudinal satisfaction; third, the mediating effects of hedonic adaptation are confirmed for the relationship between attribute’s variability and sustaining satisfaction and consumption behavior and sustaining satisfaction.

Polymeric parts produced by 3D stereolithography (SL) process have poorer mechanical properties as compared to their counterparts fabricated via conventional methods, such as injection or compression molding. Adding nanofillers in the photopolymer resin for SL could help improve mechanical properties. This study aims to achieve enhancement in mechanical properties of parts fabricated by SL, for functional applications, by using well-dispersed nanofillers in the photopolymers, together with suitable post-processing.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have high strength and Young’s modulus, making them attractive nanofillers. However, dispersion of CNTs in photopolymer is a critical challenge, as they tend to agglomerate easily. Achieving good dispersion is crucial to improve the mechanical properties; thus, suitable dispersion mechanisms and processes are examined. Solvent exchange process was found to improve the dispersion of multiwalled carbon nanotubes in the photopolymer. The UV-absorbing nature of CNTs was also discovered to affect the curing properties. With suitable post processing, coupled with thermal curing, the mechanical properties of SL parts made from CNTs-filled resin improved significantly.

With the addition of 0.25 wt.% CNTs into the photopolymer, tensile stress and elongation of the 3D printed parts increased by 70 and 46 per cent, respectively. With the significant improvement, the achieved tensile strength is comparable to parts manufactured by conventional methods.

This allows functional parts to be manufactured using SL.

In this paper, an improved procedure to incorporate CNTs into the photopolymer was developed. Furthermore, because of strong UV-absorption nature of CNTs, curing properties of photopolymer and SL parts with and without CNT fillers were studied. Optimized curing parameters were determined and additional post-processing step for thermal curing was discovered as an essential step in order to further enhance the mechanical properties of SL composite parts.