Personalized managerial response and negative inconsistent review helpfulness: The mediating effect of perceived response helpfulness

Understanding the effect of managerial response on online review management has attracted the attention of scholars in recent years. However, the effect of personalized managerial response on the negative inconsistent review is a lack of evidence. This study investigates how personalized managerial responses influence negative review helpfulness according to the various levels of review inconsistency and the underlying mechanism behind the effect. We adopted a secondary data analysis based on the TripAdvisor dataset and used an online experiment study to investigate the impact mechanism. Findings reveal that the personalized managerial response positively influences review helpfulness, review inconsistency (negative rating with positive textual sentiment) moderates the effect of personalized managerial response on review helpfulness, and perceived response helpfulness mediates the above relationships. More specifically, personalized managerial response to negative inconsistent reviews has a pronounced effect on consumers’ perception of response helpfulness and their evaluation of review helpfulness. This study improves the current understanding of managerial responses, and provides practical guidance for hoteliers, consumers, and travel websites.     

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.     

Mitigating panic buying behavior in the epidemic: An evolutionary game perspective

The panic buying behavior under public health emergencies will lead to many adverse consequences, such as material waste, price fluctuation and uneven distribution of epidemic prevention materials, which will pose a threat to the social stability and economic development. In this paper, we construct a tripartite game model to explore the strategic choices of the public, merchants and the government in order to effectively respond to the panic buying behavior in the epidemic. The results demonstrate that: (1) Eight evolutionary stable strategies emerge in the panic buying events. The worst scenario can be improved by adjusting some relevant parameters. (2) The probability of the public choosing the strategy of “not involving in panic buying” depends on the potential benefits and losses of snapping up, rather than the extent of price rising. (3) The probability of merchants choosing the strategy of “not bid up price” depends on the intangible benefits. (4) The probability of the government choosing the strategy of “active supervision” depends on the supervision costs and government credibility, rather than the amount of fines. In addition, strategic suggestions to mitigate panic buying behavior are put forward from the perspective of each stakeholder.     

The effects of anticipated goal‐inconsistent behavior on present goal choices

Prior work has examined how, in the pursuit of long‐term goals, past goal behavior influences present goal choices. Instead, the present work focuses on how anticipating future goal behavior, specifically future goal‐inconsistent behavior, influences present goal choices. For example, how anticipating overspending on an upcoming vacation influences current spending behavior. The authors propose that the effect of anticipated goal‐inconsistent behavior on present goal choice is moderated by the perceived changeability of the future behavior. When future goal‐inconsistent behavior is perceived as changeable, consumers tend to imagine it away, and it has no systematic effect on present goal choices. However, when future goal‐inconsistent behavior is perceived as unchangeable, consumers accept it as a matter of fact, and systematic effects occur. Specifically, some consumers not only fail to buffer against future goal‐inconsistent behavior's negative consequences, but tend to exacerbate those consequences by increasing their goal‐inconsistent behavior in the present. Four studies examine this surprising behavior, using an individual difference (the response‐to‐failure scale) to identify when and for whom it occurs. The studies demonstrate the role of perceived changeability using various manipulations across multiple critical goal domains such as spending, eating, and academics.     

我国大麦价格波动特征及其影响因素分析

[目的]大麦价格剧烈波动会直接影响大麦种植户的生产积极性和大麦产业的平稳发展,研究大麦价格波动特征及其影响因素,有助于提升大麦产业链相关主体识别和应对市场风险的能力,促进大麦产业的健康发展。[方法]文章先采用HP滤波法和ARCH类模型分析了2011年4月至2017年2月我国大麦价格波动特征,然后采用脉冲响应函数分析了我国大麦价格波动影响因素。[结果]我国大麦价格波动存在明显的季节性和周期性,样本期内总体上呈现逐渐下降趋势;我国大麦价格具有显著的波动集聚性,我国大麦价格具有显著的不对称性;在该文选择的影响因素中,大麦进口量和国际大麦价格是影响我国大麦价格波动的主要因素。[结论]该文提出必须保障并提高国内大麦合理产能、完善大麦价格监测预警体系、加强国内大麦进口企业整合和推动大麦进口来源多元化的政策建议。     

Endogeneity in survey research

Endogeneity is a crucial problem in survey-based empirical research on marketing strategy (MS) and inter-organizational relationships (IORs); if not addressed, it can cause researchers to arrive at flawed conclusions and to offer poor advice to practitioners. Although the field is increasingly cognizant of endogeneity-related issues, many authors fail to properly address it, particularly in survey-based research. Emphasizing the role of essential heterogeneity, this article develops an overarching framework to help improve the understanding of endogeneity problems and how to tackle them when researchers use cross-sectional survey-based data. The authors provide explanations of and advice for how MS and IOR researchers can address six “painful” and sometimes hidden decisions: 1) Do you have an endogeneity problem? 2) What technique/estimator is appropriate? 3) What instrumental variables (IVs) should be chosen? 4) How should IVs be evaluated empirically? 5) How should the results be interpreted and evaluated? and 6) What results should you report? The authors provide a practical flowchart to guide researchers in their efforts to address endogeneity-related concerns.     

Understanding innovation

While innovation has become a pervasive term, many of today’s organizations still find innovation elusive. One reason may be that much of what is being said about innovation contributes to misunderstanding. To truly manifest innovation and reap its benefits, one must recognize that innovation is three different things: innovation is an outcome, innovation is a process, and innovation is a mindset. Innovation as an outcome emphasizes what output is sought, including product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, business model innovation, supply chain innovation, and organizational innovation. Innovation as a process attends to the way in which innovation should be organized so that outcomes can come to fruition; this includes an overall innovation process and a new product development process. Innovation as a mindset addresses the internalization of innovation by individual members of the organization where innovation is instilled and ingrained along with the creation of a supportive organizational culture that allows innovation to flourish. Such an understanding defines necessary elements, considerations, and vernacular surrounding the term so that better decisions can be made, thereby enabling innovation and having a greater propensity to succeed.     

Uncertainty,Control, and Karl Polanyi’s Protective Response

Post-Keynesian institutionalist economists like Wallace Peterson and John Kenneth Galbraith recognized that the impact of uncertainty on economic wellbeing depends in part on the degree of control people have over the sources and consequences of it. Given the inability of government and other large institutions to reduce uncertainty or to provide citizens with the ability to manage it, mediating structures are considered as an alternative means of promoting economic security. The article concludes by describing and evaluating several of these alternatives.