“I live with terror inside me”: Exploring customers’ instinctive reactions to terror

Terrorist attacks occur mostly at public service-oriented sites. Consequently, their victims are likely to be customers. The present study explores how customers instinctively react toward the reality of terror in a matrix of 2 × 2 aspects concerning terror circumstances: temporal proximity (brief or long) and physical proximity (close or remote) from the terror event. In qualitative in-depth interviews, customers from France and Israel were requested to share their instinctive reactions and coping strategies when approaching hospitality (hedonistic) and transportation (utilitarian) services. Participants (N = 47) comprised customers having a protracted acquaintance with persistent terror threats. The analysis identified differences in reactions, subject to temporal and physical proximities. When terror attacks are physically close, customers’ emotions, cognitions, and behaviors undergo modification with time. However, when terror attacks occur at a location remote from the customer, customers’ emotions and cognitions, but not their behavior, change with time. These reactions were comparable for the two service contexts. Practical implications were elaborated to enable service establishments (i.e., hospitality and transportation) to design and manage their operations for the short and long term to assist customers in the difficult era of terror.     

Feeling trusted and taking-charge behaviour: An internal branding perspective based on self-categorization theory

Although the mechanism of internal branding is related to both organizational factors and employees’ personal factors, the existing research mainly focuses on organizational factors. Thus, the literature on the formation and function of internal branding from the employee perspective is scarce. In this multisource study, we applied self-categorization theory to test the relationships among employees’ feeling trusted, perceived insider status, self-efficacy and taking-charge behaviour within the framework of internal branding. Data from 169 employee-supervisor dyads from the hotel industry in Northwest China revealed that employees’ perception of feeling trusted is an important factor that causes them to internalize their hotel employer’s brand and categorize themselves as “insiders” who regard the hotel brand as part of themselves and present brand-aligned behaviour to achieve brand success. In addition, employee self-efficacy is an important boundary-level variable that facilitates the transformation of brand internalization to brand-aligned behaviour. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

经济政策不确定性与企业员工配置——来自沪深上市公司的经验证据

企业员工配置是企业内部管理的重要一环,经济政策不确定性是否会影响企业员工配置?本文以员工数量衡量企业员工配置,利用2010-2018年沪深A股上市企业数据和经济政策不确定性指数建立面板数据模型,考察经济政策不确定性对企业员工配置的影响,实证研究发现:经济政策不确定性会显著增加企业员工配置,且该影响经更换变量、调整样本容量以及内生性处理后依旧显著,该反应在还债能力较弱、盈利能力较差、股权制衡度较高、地区经济发展水平较低的企业中更为明显。文章的研究结论对于企业管理和宏观经济管控有一定的参考价值。     

Factors influencing consumers' purchase decision-making in O2O business model: Evidence from consumers' overall evaluation

Online-to-offline (O2O) has become a rapidly growing e-commerce model worldwide, but the factors influencing consumers' purchase decision-making have not been examined well. After exploring the working mechanism of the O2O model, we extract eleven indexes of consumers' overall evaluation in the O2O model with Crawlzilla and R techniques. Social network analysis (SNA) is adopted to build social networks reflecting consumers' overall evaluation in the O2O model. Based on the modified social network and the extracted subgraph, this study (N = 768) reveals consumers' overall evaluation behavior patterns in the O2O model by calculating network density, central potential, edge betweenness. The results show that shoppers overall evaluate the eleven indexes, especially perceived product quality, online product price, promotion intensity, business reputation, and product brand, which reflects the significant associations between the indexes. Among all the eleven evaluation indexes, perceived product quality, online product price, and business reputation dominate consumers’ decision-making behavior. When making purchase decisions, consumers not only overall consider online product price, perceived product quality, and business reputation but also balance perceived product quality, business reputation, and promotion intensity. Finally, we make some suggestions on marketing strategy for e-commerce companies.     

The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

Is the system reliability profitable for retailing and consumer service of a dynamical system under cross-price elasticity of demand?

Retailing strategy is one of the most crucial factors for industries. A proper retailing strategy can help to enhance consumer service and increase the industry's profit. An improved approach to retailing is suggested in this research to deliver superior customer service while maximizing profits in a dynamic system. The study analyzes a retailing strategy for a demand with cross-price elasticity upon the retail price. A product's cross-price elasticity and the system reliability are critical factors in retailing. Understanding the cross-price elasticity of demand between products helps retailers to make pricing decisions that maximize profits by maintaining demand. Imperfect products are produced due to an imperfect production system. The imperfect ones must be adjusted with some costs to make them perfect for better retailing. The system failure rate is crucial for retailing under cross-price elasticity of demand patterns. Production system reliability, cross-price elasticity of demand, and consumer service are all essential factors that can impact a company's success in the market. The production rate is considered time- and system failure rate-dependent. Contradictory to the literature, a dynamical system is proposed for improved retail management, which is solved using the Euler-Lagrange theory. Finally, one can achieve the expected maximum profit for this retail system with optimum selling prices for different products by reducing the system failure rate. Some numerical illustrations with graphical representations are provided to validate the current study. Numerical examples show that applying cross-price elasticity of demand for more than two identical products provides 35% more profit for the retail industry than a single type of product.     

粤港澳大湾区创新生态系统内部耦合时空演化及空间收敛分析

在构建以国内大循环为主体、国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局下，高效协同的区域创新体系有助于将粤港澳大湾区三地建设成为具有全球影响力的科技创新中心。通过构建创新生态系统综合评价指标体系，采用耦合协调模型和空间计量模型，实证检验大湾区10个城市2007-2019年创新生态系统内部耦合协调水平、时空跃迁特征以及收敛性。研究发现，大湾区整体及各城市耦合协调度呈上升趋势，基本实现从失调衰退区到协调过渡区的转化，具体可划分为4个等级层次；大湾区创新生态系统协调耦合度存在显著的绝对β与条件β收敛趋势，即最终收敛于同一稳态水平，且城市间差距逐渐缩小。其中，经济发展水平、对外交流水平、人力资本水平对创新生态系统协调耦合度起显著正向作用。     

Learning from R&D outsourcing vs. learning by R&D outsourcing

We analyze how research and development (R&D) outsourcing influences product innovation. We propose a separation between learning from R&D outsourcing, whereby the firm improves its ability to innovate by using outsourced R&D directly in new products, from learning by R&D outsourcing, whereby the firm indirectly uses outsourced R&D by integrating it with internal R&D to create new products. Building on the knowledge-based view, we argue that learning from R&D outsourcing is likely to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with product innovation, because the initial benefits of using outsourced component R&D knowledge to innovate products is eventually outweighed by the hollowing out of the firm's ability to innovate. In contrast, we propose that learning by R&D outsourcing is likely to have a U-shaped relationship with product innovation, because the initial challenges of integrating internal and external R&D are eventually overcome, resulting in more innovations. Finally, we distinguish between domestic and foreign R&D outsourcing and propose a liability of foreignness in R&D outsourcing as it has a lower impact on new products than domestic R&D outsourcing. The empirical analysis shows that outsourced R&D has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the number of new products, while the interaction between outsourced R&D and internal R&D has a U-shaped relationship with the number of new products. It also shows that domestic outsourced R&D has a higher positive impact on the number of new products than foreign outsourced R&D.     

家族控制与企业创新投入

家族企业对社会情感财富目标的追求是其区别于非家族企业的重要特性，社会情感财富目标与企业经济利益间冲突对企业R&D投入的影响不容忽视。以社会情感财富为理论基础，基于573家上市家族企业2011-2015年的面板数据，分析受市场化程度影响时，家族涉入情境下信息透明度对企业R&D投入的影响。结果显示：信息透明度可以有效缓解信息不对称和代理冲突，促进企业R&D投入；家族控制对R&D投入有消极影响；当企业信息透明度较高时，会抑制家族所有者为个人谋取私利的动机，进而增强其对企业R&D投资的积极作用。在市场化程度更高、产权保护力度较大的地区，信息透明度会缓解家族控制权对R&D投入的消极作用。     

Sustainability Northwest: An Integrative Case of a Not‐for‐Profit Organization

Sustainability Northwest (SNW) is a fictional not‐for‐profit organization (NPO) that seeks to develop thought leaders for a sustainable future. This instructional case allows professors to assign students with up to six different roles, including SNW's chair of the board, executive director, volunteer treasurer, and the external auditor. Unique learning objectives include (i) the application of the CPA Canada Handbook, Accounting—Part III to prepare an NPO's financial statements using fund accounting, (ii) the development of recommendations to improve an NPO's board of directors, (iii) the analysis of system flow documents to identify control weaknesses, and (iv) the preparation of an audit planning memo. Instructors can use this case in several milieus. First, professors can foster a student's ability to integrate technical knowledge by (i) assigning students all six roles in a capstone course to promote integration within an individual course or (ii) assigning multiple roles across multiple courses to promote integration across a program of studies. Second, instructors can focus on a particular technical skill by assigning specific roles. This case is ideal for senior‐level undergraduate students or graduate students.