Out-of-stock,sold out,or unavailable? Framing a product outage in online retailing

Terms, such as “out-of-stock,” “sold out,” and “unavailable” are commonly used by retailers to communicate a product or brand outage. Although these terms are technically equivalent, prior research on product outage and product scarcity suggest that they may be interpreted and processed differently by consumers. The present research investigated whether the manner in which a product outage was framed elicited different consumer behavioral intentions, attributions, and perceptions in the context of online retailing. Data were collected by means of an online experiment. The experiment incorporated a hypothetical scenario approach in which research participants were asked to react to a particular combination of treatment and blocking factors. Results demonstrated that ceteris paribus, framing a product or brand outage as “sold out” produces fewer negative product and website reactions than does framing it as “out-of-stock” or “unavailable.”     

Loyalty toward online food delivery service: the role of e-service quality and food quality

This study assesses the direct influence of food quality and e-service quality on customer loyalty toward online food delivery (OFD) service and its indirect influence through the mediation of customer satisfaction and perceived value. This study uses a survey of 405 OFD service customers from Bandung, Indonesia. By applying variance-based partial least squares to evaluate the proposed model, this study confirms the direct effect of food quality on online loyalty, but not e-service quality. Further, this study discloses the partial mediation role of customer satisfaction and perceived value on the relationship between both food quality and e-service quality on online loyalty toward OFD services.     

外资进入影响行业工资差距的路径与异质性研究——来自中国服务业的经验证据

外商直接投资（FDI）可以通过劳动力需求效应和技术溢出效应改变东道国的劳动力就业结构和行业相对劳动生产率，进而影响行业工资差距，并且这种影响具有不确定性；由于投资动机和进入方式的不同，FDI对行业工资差距的影响具有异质性并表现为地区差异。基于中国服务业的经验分析发现：外资进入通过增加低工资行业的相对就业规模和提升高工资行业的相对劳动生产率扩大了行业工资差距，适应中国低技能劳动力丰裕而高技能劳动力相对稀缺的劳动力市场条件；在以垂直型和合资型FDI为主的地区外资进入具有显著的扩大行业工资差距效应，而在以水平型和独资型FDI为主的地区这一影响并不明显。因此，应努力提高劳动力人力资本水平并充分保障低技能劳动力的权益，积极鼓励和引导水平型FDI进入并适度减少垂直型FDI的引入，持续增强企业的技术吸收能力并不断缩小技术差距，进而在高效利用外资的同时缩小行业工资差距。     

低水分活度的预包装食品中菌落总数复查的研究

为了探讨食品抽检中菌落总数指标复检的可能性,通过对水活度较低的预包装食品乳粉、营养米粉、燕麦片、膨化食品、蜂蜜进行菌落总数测定,对低水分活度预包装食品菌落总数指标的稳定性进行分析。结果表明,同一批次、同一储存条件的未开封预包装食品在不同保存周期内菌落总数在统计学上无显著差异,本研究结果可为低水分活度预包装菌落总数的复查可行性提供参考依据。     

Do consumers care about CSR in their online reviews? An empirical analysis

This research investigates how consumers assess hotels’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices when writing online reviews. The study explores the CSR discourse in online reviews over a 10-year period, highlighting how CSR’s social and environmental dimensions relate to the main hospitality topics (experience, amenities, location, transactions, value). Based on a longitudinal automated text analysis covering 480,000 reviews across six European cities, the findings reveal that hotel customers have gradually begun paying more attention to CSR factors, particularly to social and environmental ones. However, the aggregate results suggest that the overall CSR consumer discourse is still very limited, although it does have important implications in terms of consumer emotions and hospitality dimensions.     

Cultural Differences in Online Community Motivations: Exploring Korean Automobile Online Brand Communities (KAOBCs) and American Automobile Online Brand Communities (AAOBCs)

To gain a better understanding of online brand communities, this study has examined why people joined in online brand communities and whether there were some differences in the motivations of Internet users based on different cultures. Open-ended questions were asked to the community members from both South Korean Automobile Online Brand Communities (KAOBC) and American Automobile Online Brand Communities (AAOBC) in the first stage and then generated and utilized an online survey for the study. The study found that KAOBC members tended to have a stronger social network, business, and communication motivations than AAOBC members. As a primary motivation, information seeking is the strongest motivation for members of both KAOBC and AAOBC. They had a similar level of information motivation.     

Online Group-Buying of Tourism Products: Effects of Value and Trust on Site Attachment,Altruism, and Loyalty

Although online group-buying is increasing rapidly, little theoretically based research has been conducted on behaviors of online group-buyers of tourism products. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop and test a theoretical model examining the relationships among value, trust, site attachment, altruism, and loyalty in the context of online group-buying of tourism products. The results indicate that the six hypothesized relationships among value, trust, site attachment, altruism, and loyalty are significant and thus validate the theoretical model. The findings of this study provide theoretical and practical implications for academics and managers of online group-buying sites.     

Trends and Future Directions in Online Marketing Research

Over the last decade, the increased adoption of the Internet in public life as well as in developing businesses has led to a phenomenal rise in academic research on online marketing. This article is set to extensively review scholarly articles appearing from 2000 to 2014 on the topic from 10 top-tier academic journals to understand the research trends in the domain. A literature review has reported eight major subjective categories with an analysis of online marketing effectiveness framework. This review found three most significant subject categories: (1) online marketing issues; (2) Internet usage, perception, and attitude; and (3) online shopping and e-commerce. Additionally, some new online marketing research topics such as word-of-mouth, user-generated content, and social network are also highlighted. Finally, a selection of research topics that got the maximum attention of researchers is presented along with discussion of the future research directions in the online marketing space.     

E-Shopping Patterns of Chinese and US Millennials

A conceptually based taxonomy of 22 distinct forms of e-shopping vehicles is proposed. A modification of the UTAUT and UTAUT2 models is introduced to explain how vehicles are interrelated in regard to consumer reliance upon them for their e-purchasing. A survey of over 1,000 millennial university students, 697 Chinese and 306 US, revealed strong support in both samples for the hypothesized six dimensional pattern underlying consumer vehicular reliance. Further, differences between Chinese and US samples lay not in the nature of the dimensions, but rather in the strength of reliance upon each dimension. Thus, the study demonstrates the utility of the concept/measure of shopper vehicular reliance, VPR (Vehicle Purchasing Reliance) for both practitioners and scientists. In cross-national comparisons, observed differences between samples in strength of reliance supported four of five hypotheses predicated on previously established national distinctions a) in trust and b) in the cultural value of individualism-collectivism.     

Identification of Web User Segments Based on Beliefs about Online Ads

Online advertising has been one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, due to the increased number of Internet users. From the perspective of marketing management, identifying the profile of web users who click online ads will enable designers to create better online advertising campaigns. Hence, the main objectives of this article are (1) to segment web users based on their beliefs about online ads, (2) to identify personality traits of each segment, and (3) to investigate attitudinal and behavioral differences across segments about online ads. Data were collected through an online survey and by using cluster analysis, web users were segmented into three groups based on their beliefs about online ads: “Supporters,” “Neutrals,” and “Opponents.” Personality trait differences as well as attitudinal and behavioral differences among three segments were examined and significant differences were found in terms of their personality traits, such as variety seeking, market mavenism, and innovativeness.