How do relational bonds affect user engagement in e-commerce livestreaming? The mediating role of trust

E-commerce livestreaming depends heavily on user engagement. However, the effect of relational bonds (i.e., financial bonds, social bonds, and structural bonds) on user engagement in e-commerce livestreaming has not been well understood. Our study develops a conceptual model to investigate the impacts of relational bonds on user engagement and addresses the mediating role of trust. We collected data from users of the DianTao App. The results show that social bonds and structural bonds positively affect user engagement, while financial bonds have no direct impact on user engagement. Financial bonds, social bonds, and structural bonds are positively related to trust in the broadcaster. Similarly, financial bonds, social bonds, and structural bonds are also positively associated with trust in the platform. Furthermore, trust in the broadcaster and trust in the platform directly affects user engagement, fully mediating the impact of financial bonds on user engagement, while partially mediating the impacts of social bonds and structural bonds on user engagement. In addition, we find that experience moderates the mediating effects of trust between relational bonds and user engagement. The findings of this study provide useful insights for operators who should invest in building relational bonds and user trust to improve user engagement in e-commerce livestreaming.     

Increasing Shopper Trust in Retailer Technological Interfaces via Auditory Confirmation

This research examines the effects of sounds made by retail technological interfaces – self-checkout kiosks, credit card readers, mobile apps, websites – at point-of-sale. We propose that such sounds, retail transaction auditory confirmation (RTAC), increase trust in technological interfaces by providing auditory confirmation that stages of the checkout process have been successfully executed. Increased trust in technological interfaces leads to positive downstream consequences in the form of satisfaction and purchase intention. Visual and auditory distraction in the retail environment reduces trust, even when visual confirmation is provided, but synchronously provided audio-visual confirmation attenuates the negative effects of environment distraction.     

Relying on the heuristic of trust: a case study

This study examines the reliance on trust as a heuristic by individuals when making personal financial decisions, using a qualitative case study. We show that in the face of complexity and choice, individual investors predominantly resorted to the heuristic of trust to make financial decisions. This demonstrates the need for industry and public policy‐makers to be aware that individuals can and will resort to simplified heuristics as a basis for financial decision‐making, particularly within an environment where substantial complexity and choice exist.     

Consumers buying behaviour towards agri-food products: A mixed-method approach

This study aims to identify the factors that can influence consumer purchasing behaviour in the context of agri-food. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Behaviour-Consequence theory, this study proposed a model to explain purchasing behaviour that included environmental factors as well as a set of cognitive processes. This study adopted a mixed method approach and in the first stage, a qualitative analysis was conducted to extract the constructs for the study. In the second stage, the quantitative analysis was performed by means of CB-SEM using 891 responses collected through a survey. This resulted in identifying the factors that influence agri-food purchasing behaviour. According to the findings, health consciousness and food safety concerns in the form of a stimulus have a positive relationship with agri-food image, agri-food label, and agri-food benefits acting as the organism. Similarly, the three organisms have a positive relationship with trust. Ethnocentrism is also found to have positive and significant association with trust. The combination of trust and ethnocentrism has consequences, in the form of agri-food purchase behaviour. The study's findings have significant implications for marketers and marketing strategists.     

Value co-creation and social media: Investigating antecedents and influencing factors in the U.S. retail banking industry

This study seeks to examine and unearth antecedents to co-creation behaviours within a U.S. retail banking context. A critical aspect for marketing managers and academics alike, co-creation has a strong influence on tangible factors such as profit and intangible factors such as referrals, satisfaction and feedback. Antecedents were identified as trust, customer engagement and participation attitude whilst social media usage was a consumer characteristic identified as influencing co-creation. Data was collected from 489 U.S. retail banking customers via an online survey. The data was analysed via structural equation modelling. The findings indicate that customer engagement influences trust, co-creation and participation attitude. Participation attitude was found to influence trust and co-creation but trust had no direct effect on co-creation. The study further found that social media usage intensity influenced co-creation behaviours. The findings contribute in three ways. First, this is one of the first studies to scrutinise participation attitude in an attempt to explain co-creation behaviours for U.S. banks over social media. Second, identification of precursors to value co-creation has been ascertained in a U.S. retail banking social media context. Third, the study additionally contributes to the findings that social media usage has a moderating effect in value co-creation and offers a potential segmentation strategy.     

Social media and sustainable purchasing attitude: Role of trust in social media and environmental effectiveness

The role of social media in promoting sustainable attitudes is currently understudied. Underpinned by social learning theory, this study unveils the effect of social media usage and browsing on sustainable purchasing attitude, the underlying mechanism, and the boundary condition. Drawing on a sample of 693 experienced respondents analyzed using structural equation modeling, this study reveals that social media usage and browsing have a significant positive association. Both constructs significantly impact sustainable purchasing attitudes with complementary partial mediation of the drive for environmental responsibility. Further, trust in social media and perceived environmental effectiveness significantly moderate the relationships belongs to the browsing and drive for environmental responsibility. Contrary to the theorization, moderating constructs cannot substantially impact the proposed associations of social media usage. In this manner, the present research is innovative and provides valued knowledge to comprehend social media's role in encouraging sustainable attitudes.     

Supplier empowerment: Mediating situational factors and perceived performance

The understanding of the behavioral and cognitive factors that affect organizations' performance has attracted increasing attention of scholars and practitioners. Based on the literature of psychological empowerment at the individual and the team levels, this study develops the concept of supplier empowerment in the context of purchasing and supply management. Further, this study proposes a research model that explores the role of supplier empowerment as a cognitive concept in mediating the relationship between situational factors (a supplier's process modularity and the mutual trust with its customers/buyers) and the supplier's perceived performance in its operations and customer service. This model is tested with 208 responses from automotive industry suppliers. The findings highlight the importance of empowered suppliers in decreasing inventory levels and increasing order fulfillment performance.     

组织内人际信任对员工创造力的作用：基于元分析的证据

采用元分析方法收集56项人际信任与员工创造力关系的独立实证研究样本(17482个个体样本)进行再分析,结果表明：人际信任能有效激发员工创造力,人际信任与员工创造力存在显著中等强度的正向关系(r=0.34)；感知到领导信任、同事间相互信任较信任领导对员工创造力的作用都大；当数据来源于同一个体时,得到的人际信任对员工创造力影响水平更高；人际信任对员工创造力的作用在新生代员工群体中较年长员工群体显著；东方文化背景下人际信任对员工创造力的作用强度要高于西方文化背景；发展水平低的国家中,人际信任对员工创造力的作用要大于发展水平高的国家。     

Culture and the capital–performance nexus in dual banking systems

While recent surveys have taken a special interest in culture to explain the failure of existing regulation, empirical evidence on the role of culture in influencing the bank capital-performance link is still largely unexplored. In this paper, we ask the following: Should regulators and policy makers make room for culture as an effective tool for a successful bank regulatory environment? We identify three proxies for cultural values derived from Hofstede (1980, 2001) and the World Values Survey and investigate to what extent individualism, masculinity, and trust can enhance or impede the capital-performance link for conventional and Islamic banks. Analyzing a panel of 729 banks operating in 33 countries from 1999 to 2013, our findings provide empirical evidence that cultural values enhance the capital-performance link for the two bank types. Our results have important policy implications: our paper represents a first initiative and provides evidence that culture has merits and can be used as an additional tool to implement regulatory guidelines in a successful way.     

Impact of auditory sense on trust and brand affect through auditory social interaction and control

Voice assistants—or voice-enabled artificial intelligence—have changed the way people interact with their surroundings dramatically. Utilizing an enactive view of social cognition theory, this study demonstrates how voice assistants can act as [semi] autonomous agents to hold instantaneous social interactions with consumers. This research employed two experimental studies. Study 1 used two voice assistant mobile applications, Microsoft Cortana and Google Assistant, and Study 2 used Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana. The contributions this paper makes are two-fold. First, the results illustrate how perceived auditory sense drives perceived auditory control through auditory social interactions with a voice assistant that lead to brand affect and consumers’ trust in the voice assistant. Second, results shed light on the role of surprise as a repelling drive that attenuates the effect of perceived auditory control on brand affect.