Evaluating discounts as a dimension of customer behavior analysis

Today, increased competition between organizations has led them to seek a better understanding of customer behavior through identifying valuable customers. Customers’ expectations about the price and quality of products and services play an important role in their selection process. In online businesses, competition and price differences between suppliers is high, so discounts will attract different customers. As a result, discounts and the frequency and amount of purchases can lead to better understanding of customer behavior. Customer segmentation and analysis is essential for identifying groups of customers. Hence, this study uses a model based on RFM called RdFdMd, in which d is the level of discount used to analyze customer purchase behavior and the importance of discounts on customers’ purchasing behavior and organizational profitability. The CRISP-DM and k-mean algorithm were used for clustering. The results indicate that using the R_dF_dM_d model achieves better customer clustering and valuation, and discounts were identified as an important criterion for customer purchases.     

Workplace deviance and human resource management relations: A case study of Turkish hotel employees

The main purpose of this study is to examine the negative associations between employees' perception of the effectiveness of performance appraisal practices and deviant workplace behavior. This study also tests the mediating effect of the forms of organizational justice in the relationship between performance appraisal practices and deviant workplace behavior. Moreover, it also investigates how line managers' performance appraisal politics may influence the relationship between perceptions of performance appraisal practices and employee deviant workplace behavior. In order to facilitate this study, the research team employed a survey design. A total of 193 service employees from different service establishments attended the forum where the study was conducted in the capital city of Turkey, Ankara. The results of this study strongly support the premise that effective performance appraisal practices influence employee deviance behavior, and especially that interactional justice is an important predictor of employee violative behavior. Moreover, the findings indicate that there is no evidence regarding the moderating effect of employees' perception of managers' appraisal politics in the negative relationship between performance appraisal effectiveness and employee deviance.     

Balancing health,harmony and hegemony: Parents' goals and strategies in children's food related consumer socialization

Parents play a pivotal role in socializing their children for healthy eating. The objectives of the present study were (1) to identify food socialization outcomes valued by parents, and (2) to study how parents socialize their children for (healthy) eating at home and during food shopping. Including both parents' perceptions of valued food socialization outcomes and associated processes addresses a significant gap in the food socialization literature. The study used semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews with parents of young children. Data were subsequently analysed by interpretive, thematic procedures. The sample consisted of middle‐ to high‐income families from two cities in Denmark. Findings reveal four main food socialization goals valued by parents: (1) Nutrition and Health, (2) Healthy Relationship with Food, (3) Food Assimilation and (4) Self‐Regulation and Autonomy. Parents prioritized children's acquisition of a healthy relationship with food which included preserving family relations and harmony, more than strictly attending a nutritious diet, contrasting the focus on the nutritional value of diet usually emphasised by public health authorities. The study therefore concludes that parents' notions of what constitutes healthy diets for their children is not completely aligned with common nutrition‐oriented recommendations. Also, fathers were found to play a very active role in their children's food‐related consumer socialization. The findings underline the importance of addressing the priorities and strategies of both mothers and fathers when marketers and policy makers target contemporary families regarding children's food socialization.     

Synchronizing relational benefits with customer commitment profiles

ABSTRACT

The literature no longer considers commitment to be a distinct variable. Instead, commitment represents a combination of affective, calculative, and normative dimensions for individual customers, resulting in the adoption of a person-centric view for its measurement. However, customer satisfaction as a result of confidence benefit, social benefit, and special treatment benefit may vary among customers with different commitment profiles which encourages variable-centric view. Considering both variable- and person-centric views, this study uses survey data to examine the impact of relational benefits on the satisfaction of customers with different commitment profiles. It also examines the moderation role of relationship age. With cluster analysis identifying three commitment profiles, findings from structural equation modeling confirmed that highly-committed customers expected excessive special treatment benefit; low-commitment customers preferred confidence benefit to reduce cognitive dissonance; while affective-dominance customers expected all three types of benefit proportionately. The study’s theoretical and practical contributions conclude the paper.     

Host Country National Employees’ Prosocial Behavior toward Expatriates in Foreign Subsidiaries: A Common Ingroup Identity Model Perspective

Social categorization is predominately assumed to have negative effects on the prosocial behavior of host country national (HCN) employees toward expatriates in foreign subsidiaries. Challenging this assumption, I draw on the common ingroup identity model to propose that dual identity – simultaneous identification with membership in a subgroup and in a superordinate group – reduces HCNs’ intergroup biases and facilitates prosocial behavior. More specifically, I hypothesize that HCNs’ organizational identity has a moderating effect on the positive relationship between HCNs’ expatriate outgroup categorization and dual identity, such that this relationship is weaker when organizational identity is low. Furthermore, I hypothesize that dual identity mediates the relationship between expatriate outgroup categorization and two prosocial behaviors: information sharing and affiliative citizenship behavior. Results from the data collected from 1,290 HCN employees in Japan provide support for these hypotheses and the moderated mediation model.     

Cognitive foundations of firm internationalization: A systematic review and agenda for future research

Managerial cognition has a fundamental role in the internationalization of firms. However, there exists no coherent understanding of how prior research has examined and captured the cognitive foundations of internationalization. This paper provides a systematic review of this body of literature. The review identifies three main streams of research that, overall, consists of nine more specific research areas. We show that especially the areas addressing (1) managerial learning, (2) characteristics of upper echelons, (3) intra-organizational perceptions, and (4) external actors’ perceptions provide opportunities for the further advancement of internationalization literature. For harnessing these opportunities, we find that the microfoundational approach could support the empirical examination of the cognitive foundations and would notably contribute to the Uppsala model-based theorization of the firm internationalization process.     

The micro-foundations of strategic ambidexterity: Chinese cross-border M&As,Mid-View thinking and integration management

Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) display several unique properties in relation to the ways in which their international business operations are organised and managed. Their seemingly puzzling ‘light-touch’ integration approach can be significantly understood from a strategic ambidexterity perspective: on the one hand, the ‘light-touch’ enables the exploitation of the targets’ existing knowledge bases; on the other hand, elements of the ‘light-touch’ facilitate the exploration of the new knowledge arising from the collaboration between targets and acquirers. However, an important theoretical gap remains: why do Chinese companies deploy such a strategic ambidexterity approach in their post-acquisition integrations? This paper aims to fill this gap by proposing Mid-View thinking as a micro-foundation of strategic ambidexterity in integration management from a cultural and philosophical perspective. To illuminate our conceptualization and argument, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with CEOs/high-level managers of acquired German companies. Communication approach and organizational control—as two critical aspects in integration management—reveal how Mid-View thinking can serve as a micro-foundation of strategic ambidexterity. We conclude this paper by presenting its theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and future research directions.     

Forecasting artificial intelligence on online customer assistance: Evidence from chatbot patents analysis

The main goal of this research is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the actual progresses in artificial intelligence, with emphasis on chatbots as emerging forms of customer assistance in online retailing. Drawing upon an analysis of the chatbot patents in the past 20 years, our findings show the increasing technology push towards the adoption of new conversational agents based on natural language. Findings also highlight the extent to which the research and development efforts are attempting to improve artificial intelligence systems that characterize chatbots. To this end, technology advancements are mainly focusing on: (i) improving chatbot ability to automatically draw inferences on users starting from multiple data sources, and (ii) using consumers’ knowledge adaptively to provide more customized solutions. Finally, results show the tight relationship between the digital assistants’ analytical skills and their ability to automatically interact with the users.     

环境信息披露对上市公司企业价值的影响——“组织可见度”是否起到中介作用

我国现行企业环境信息披露政策下,企业对于信息披露的方式、时间等有很大的自由裁量权力。因此,企业这一社会责任的自觉履行需要企业价值最大化等动机支撑,但其作用机理是否有效,投资者的关注度及解读尤为重要,亦即“组织可见度”在环境信息披露对企业价值的影响中扮演重要角色。本文以我国化工行业上市公司2013-2017年样本,实证检验环境信息披露对企业价值的影响,并依次从分析师关注水平和媒体关注水平两个角度衡量组织可见度,检验其是否具有中介效应,并分析所有权性质差异下的不同结果。结果表明:环境信息披露能提升企业价值,组织可见度在环境信息披露对企业价值的影响过程中发挥了部分中介效应。进一步研究发现,当使用分析师关注水平衡量组织可见度时,该中介作用只体现在国有企业中;当使用媒体关注度衡量组织可见度时候,该中介作用在两种类型的企业中均只得到了部分体现。企业环境信息披露政策本意是通过其影响企业的市值表现促进企业更好地履行其环境社会责任,本文通过揭示其中组织可见度的中介作用,有助于启示企业对其市值管理、有关管理部门对企业履行环境社会责任引导时的操作思路。     

治理机制对顾客参与价值共创行为的影响——虚拟品牌社区的实证研究

虚拟品牌社区是企业与顾客进行价值共创的重要平台,顾客参与价值共创行为对企业长远发展具有十分重要的作用。现有研究多是基于不同的理论从顾客视角出发探索顾客参与价值共创行为受到的心理动机和个人特征等因素的影响,鲜有从企业视角出发,探索治理机制对虚拟品牌社区中顾客参与价值共创行为的影响。本文立足交易成本理论与社会交换理论,从企业视角切入,引入关系质量作为中介变量,构建虚拟品牌社区治理机制、关系质量与顾客参与价值共创行为的关系整合模型。采用问卷调查法对模型进行验证,研究结果显示:(1)契约治理机制只对知识贡献行为产生显著正向影响,对顾客公民行为的影响不显著,而关系治理机制对知识贡献行为与顾客公民行为均具有显著正向影响。(2)关系质量在契约治理机制与顾客公民行为的关系中起完全中介作用,在契约治理机制与知识贡献行为、关系治理机制与知识贡献行为以及关系治理机制与顾客公民行为的关系中起部分中介作用。由研究结论可知,虚拟品牌社区一方面应综合运用契约治理机制与关系治理机制来有效地促进顾客参与价值共创行为,以弥补单独运用某一种治理机制存在的不足;另一方面也应注重关系质量在虚拟品牌社区中促进顾客参与价值共创行为的重要作用。这些研究发现为促进虚拟品牌社区的可持续发展提供了有价值的启示。