Fear appeals and coping appeals for health product promotion: Impulsive purchasing or psychological distancing?

The prevalence of online health communities (OHCs) motivates health product companies to manipulate persuasion-based marketing strategies, including fear appeals and coping appeals, to promote health products. However, whether such a practice is effective remains unclear. Respondents may either impulsively purchase the recommended health products or simply distance themselves psychologically from the information. Building on protection motivation theory (PMT), this study uncovers the mechanisms behind these two coping responses to persuasive messages, namely, the impulsive purchasing and psychological distancing of OHC users. Correspondingly, we evaluated 366 valid questionnaires, and the results reveal that (1) when encountering fear appeals, perceived health threat can evoke cyberchondria, leading to psychological distancing; and (2) when encountering coping appeals, perceived response efficacy leads to product affection, fostering impulsive purchasing. This study provides new insights into the effects of persuasive messages for health product promotion in social commerce. Marketers should design appropriate persuasive messages to foster impulsive purchasing by generating individuals’ product affection and avoiding cyberchondria.     

土地市场扭曲如何影响制造业出口产品质量升级*——基于土地市场交易数据和制造业企业数据的实证分析

地方政府“以地谋发展”的策略在促进各地区制造业大规模集聚和出口贸易快速增长的同时，也势必会给企业出口产品质量带来深刻影响。本文综合利用中国土地市场网城市土地交易数据、中国工业企业数据、中国海关进出口产品数据和中国城市面板数据，实证检验了土地市场扭曲对企业出口产品质量升级的影响，并对其内在机制进行了探讨。研究发现：中国城市建设用地配置存在明显的工业偏向性，进而导致工业用地价格被低估，产生工业用地应得收益大于实际价格的反向扭曲问题。这种反向扭曲可通过抑制技术进步、阻碍产业结构高级化、弱化集聚经济效应等机制显著降低制造业企业出口产品质量。土地市场扭曲对企业出口产品质量升级的影响具有明显的异质性特征。具体而言，土地市场扭曲不利于一般贸易企业与混合贸易企业出口产品质量提升，但对加工贸易企业出口产品质量提升具有促进作用。土地市场扭曲对企业出口产品质量升级的抑制作用由东到西依次递增。土地市场扭曲不利于外资企业和国有企业出口产品质量提升，对集体企业及民营企业的影响不显著。     

Advertisement policy for dual-channel within emissions-controlled flexible production system

Nowadays, industrial firms are very much careful to build a green environment by reducing carbon emissions. The government imposes some rules and regulations to provide a better eco-friendly environment. In this study, the cap-and-trade mechanism has been considered in a production model to control the carbon emissions rate. The manufacturers invest in advanced green technology to reduce per unit emissions. As online and offline selling is crucial to any industry for increasing customer demand, the manufacturers sell their products by dual-channel and advertise their products by online channel to make more popular of their products. Keeping these in mind, a sustainable flexible production model with single-type substitutable product production is considered here by imposing a cap-and-tax policy, investing in green technology, and advertising for products. This model is divided into two cases: with and without investment in green technology. The demand of each manufacturer depends upon an online selling price, an offline selling price, and an online advertisement of the product. A classical optimization technique helps to get the optimum strategies for the online selling price, offline selling price, advertisement investment, green technology, cycle time, and production rate. From the numerical study, it is proved that the industry gets 6.97% more profit in the case of green technology investment and the proposed study gives 5.74% more profit than the traditional production system. Sensitivity analysis and managerial insights are performed.     

How power distance belief,self-construal,and relationship norms impact conspicuous consumption

Building on the idea that luxury products can signal the owner's status to others, this research elucidates how fundamental and pervasive social factors—power distance belief (PDB), self-construal, and relationship norms—dynamically impact consumers' preferences for conspicuous consumption. Through three experiments, we found that (1) high-PDB consumers are more likely to prefer conspicuous consumption compared to low-PDB consumers, and this effect is mediated by their need for status; (2) the relationship between PDB and conspicuous consumption is enhanced under interdependent self-construal, attenuated under independent self-construal, and mediated by consumers' need for status; (3) these effects are moderated by relationship norms, such that the positive effect of PDB on conspicuous consumption under interdependent self-construal is attenuated when communal relationships (vs. exchange relationships) are salient. Our conceptualization and findings contribute to the literature on the dynamics of individuals' status-related behavior in social psychology and related fields, and provide important practical applications for luxury businesses.     

一种动态加权的LDPC译码方法

为了加快低密度奇偶校验（LDPC）码的译码速度，有效改善LDPC码的译码性能，针对校验节点更新过程中的对数似然比（LLR）值的大小，设计了一种LDPC码的动态加权译码方法。以IEEE 802.16e标准的奇偶校验矩阵为例，根据LLR值的变化规律，利用增长因子和抑制因子对和积译码算法和最小和译码算法进行动态加权。仿真结果显示，基于动态加权的译码方法相对于传统译码方法误码率都有明显改进，译码复杂度也有所降低。     

The impact of destination tariffs on China’s exports: Country,firm, and product perspectives

Based on multi-product heterogeneous firm trade theory, we combine China's customs data with the World Integrated Trade Solution’s (WITS) tariff data from 2002 to 2013 and analyze the impact of destination tariffs on China's exports at the country, firm, and product levels. The results reveal that tariffs had a negative effect on country-level exports and their extensive margins. After controlling for the inter-firm composition effect, tariffs had negative effects on firm-level exports and their intensive margins, but positive effects on their extensive margins. After also controlling for the within-firm export composition effect, tariffs had a negative impact on the exports of core products; however, the negative impact diminished as the core grade and technological content of the products increased. Using these elasticities to analyze Sino-U.S. trade frictions, we determine that the additional U.S. tariffs reduced China's exports of high-tech products more than its medium- and low-tech products.     

Dialectical mind can be sweet toward crisis‐associated products/brands

Consumers’ thinking style (e.g., dialectical thinking), which is fundamental to cognition, has been paid inadequate attention in the consumer literature. This research explores the impact of dialectical thinking on Chinese consumer responses toward crisis‐associated products/brands. Findings in three experimental studies indicate that, in comparison to those primed with nondialectical thinking, consumers primed with dialectical thinking report higher levels of purchase intention and trust for a crisis‐associated product/brand. This is the case not just for products with Chinese cultural background, but also for products with western cultural background. Consumers’ perceived severity of crises moderates the impact of dialectical thinking, with a stronger impact in a highly severe crisis situation than in a less severe one. A survey study indicates a similar pattern. These findings are important in suggesting ways of encouraging Chinese consumers to be insistent on quality standard in order to better protect their consumer rights, and moreover, for multinational corporations on how best to respond and formulate strategies of handling product‐harm crises in the Chinese market.     

“Retail is detail! Give consumers a gift rather than a bundle”: Promotion framing and consumer product returns

Retailers often use the promotion strategy of offering supplementary products (e.g., free gift, bundle) to attract consumers and increase sales. Despite the growing literature on the promotions that are differently framed but offer economically identical values, little research has examined the link between promotion framing and consumer product returns. The current article sheds light on this relationship, hypothesizing that a free gift promotion would be superior to a bundle promotion in reducing consumer product returns. The findings suggest that a gift‐framed promotion leads to a lower product return intention than an economically equivalent bundle promotion, because consumers tend to perceive more loss from giving up the gift‐framed (vs. bundle‐framed) deal. Further, this study examines a moderating role of brand familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar) and shows that the merits of free gift framing on product return intention via perceived loss are amplified (attenuated) when the promoted brand is familiar (unfamiliar). Overall, the investigations of this study imply that it is better to frame a promotion as a “free gift” than a “bundle” to increase perceived loss in returning the purchase and thus to decrease consumer product returns. This strategic intervention works especially when the gift is offered by familiar brands.     

“Autonomous,yet Connected”: An esthetic principle explaining our appreciation of product designs

Esthetic principles describe the levels or combination of design dimensions that are esthetically appreciated. Current principles focus on dimensions connected to product design itself (e.g., unity and variety) or dimensions that refer to a product design's relationship to other product designs (e.g., typicality and novelty). However, product design also has a social significance—they help consumers shape their identity—and this social dimension has hitherto been overlooked in research on esthetic appreciation. In this paper, we propose and investigate the social esthetic principle “Autonomous, yet Connected.” In four studies, we show that a product's design leads to the highest esthetic appreciation if it strikes an optimal balance between nurturing the two seemingly opposite needs for connectedness and autonomy. Further, we show how conditions of safety and risk moderate the effects of the principle, which suggests our principle may have evolutionary grounding.     

Network ties and export propensity of Vietnamese small and medium enterprises

This paper investigates the impacts of different network ties on export propensity of Vietnamese small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector. Using data from a survey of over 2,600 manufacturing SMEs in 2015, we found that social networks contribute positively to the export propensity of SMEs, while the size of business networks negatively associates with the likelihood of export. However, bank networks and political networks are not significant for the propensity to export of Vietnamese SMEs. We discuss the results in detail and offer recommendations for SME owners, managers and policy makers.