Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.     

Organization,technology and management innovations through acquisition in China’s pork value chains: The case of the Smithfield acquisition by Shuanghui

This paper reviews the changes in Shuanghui’s operations after the Smithfield acquisition as well as transformations in China’s pork industries. As income grows and diets change, there has been an increasing demand for high-quality pork and more processed pork products. However, China’s swine and pork industries are still at an early stage of development as evidenced by the low market concentration, intensive use of labour, a proliferation of intermediaries, and low levels of technology. Bounded by the established consumer preferences for freshness and the status quo in the midstream and upstream segments, Shuanghui is in a slow process of upgrading its domestic operations with Smithfield’s leading brands, import of chilled and frozen pork, advanced technologies, and the vertically integrated business model after this acquisition. In particular, it remains unclear whether Shuanghui can follow Smithfield’s experience to establish stable and safe hog supplies by multiplying self-owned hog farms, maintain and expand its current contracts with large-scale commercial hog farms, or rely more on global sourcing of pork primarily from the U.S.     

Socio-demographics,political attitudes and informal sector employment: A cross-country analysis

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between informal sector employment and micro-level socio-demographic characteristics, political acts and attitudes, and individual norms. Using self-reported individual micro-level data from the World Values Survey for seven developing countries (China, Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Yemen), our cross-country regressions and principal component analysis reveal that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals are strong predictors of their informal sector employment. Our estimations further document that individual preferences for an economically strong, interventionist and egalitarian state and confidence in state and political institutions are positively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment, whereas variables associated with confidence in free market institutions and support for competition are negatively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment. We also show that individuals who participate either actively or inactively in peaceful and lawful political processes are significantly less likely to work in the informal sector. Finally, we document that individual norms, such as religiosity and tax morale, are negatively correlated with informal sector employment. Throughout our analysis, instead of having to rely on ad-hoc informality categorizations of third parties, we base our measurement of informal sector employment directly on the self-evaluation of individuals, who have the best information on the degree of their informality.     

Data-based mechanistic modelling and forecasting globally averaged surface temperature

The main objective of this paper it to model the dynamic relationship between global averaged measures of Total Radiative Forcing (RTF) and surface temperature, measured by the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA), and then use this model to forecast the GTA. The analysis utilizes the Data-Based Mechanistic (DBM) approach to the modelling and forecasting where, in this application, the unobserved component model includes a novel hybrid Box-Jenkins stochastic model in which the relationship between RTF and GTA is based on a continuous time transfer function (differential equation) model. This model then provides the basis for short term, inter-annual to decadal, forecasting of the GTA, using a transfer function form of the Kalman Filter, which produces a good prediction of the ‘pause’ or ‘levelling’ in the temperature rise over the period 2000 to 2011. This derives in part from the effects of a quasi-periodic component that is modelled and forecast by a Dynamic Harmonic Regression (DHR) relationship and is shown to be correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index.     

中国家庭股市资产价值变动对居民消费的影响——来自CHFS的微观证据

近年来针对股市资产价值变动与消费关系的研究多采用宏观数据，难以揭示股市资产价值变动对居民消费影响的细节。为克服以上缺陷，文章利用中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）数据分析股市资产价值变动对中国居民消费的影响。实证结果表明：（1）股市资产价值变动对居民消费的影响总体较弱，其中市值变动的财富效应主要体现在改善性消费上，而对饮食等日常必须消费和奢侈品消费影响较小，这可能与我国居民的收入结构和投资方式有关；（2）随着年龄增长，居民的收入分布和资产配置倾向发生改变，股市资产价值变动对不同年龄居民消费的影响呈现先减小后增大的U型分布。研究结论揭示了股市资产价值变动对居民消费影响的分布特征，为今后股市改革方向提供了建议。     

The impacts of value chain upgrading on the export of processed food

Upgrading in global value chains (GVCs) is an important path for developing countries to move along to capture higher benefits. Several qualitative studies of GVCs have identified two main upgrading types: economic (product, process, functional, and inter-sectoral) and social upgrading. The upgrading concept is widespread in productive sectors such as processed food, which has become a key export for developing countries. However, they have confronted multiple product standards required by global buyers. This study uses a case study of Thailand’s processed food exports (TPFEs). Although Thailand is a leading exporter of processed food, the country needs to upgrade in many areas related to production to meet global product standards and requirements. If Thailand fails to comply with global product standards, it will lose its export competitiveness. This study uses a gravity model to evaluate the impact of economic and social upgrading (EUP and SUP) on TPFEs. Our results show that upgrading types are significant in TPFEs, particularly for exports to developed countries. Process upgrading has a negative impact on TPFEs because of increased production costs to comply with product standards. However, process upgrading can lead to increased producers’ and exporters’ knowledge about how to comply with international standards. Consequently, process upgrading exhibits a lagged positive effect on TPFEs.     

The valuation relevance of environmental performance revisited: The moderating role of environmental provisions

This study attempts to broaden our understanding of the value relevance of environmental performance by providing empirical evidence on the moderating role of financial environmental reporting. Previous studies find that firms' environmental performance can be both positively and negatively associated with market value. Such contradictory findings can be attributed to the fact that environmental performance is associated with future economic benefits and costs. This study suggests that firms with recognized environmental provisions on their balance sheets enable investors to disentangle these opposite effects either by signaling strong future financial performance or by enhancing the reliability of environmental performance information. Regardless of the mechanism by which this moderation effect is invoked, it is hypothesized that capital market participants place a positive and significantly higher value on the environmental performance ratings of firms with recognized environmental provisions than on the ratings of firms without environmental provisions. Utilizing a sample of 692 firm-year observations of French listed firms and employing a linear price-level model that associates the market value of a firm's equity with its environmental performance, I provide empirical evidence to corroborate this thesis. In addition to contributing to the academic debate on the market valuation implications of environmental performance, this study intends to provide useful insights from a country that can be considered a pioneer of environmental reporting legislation; hence, it provides valuable lessons for other jurisdictions that are in the process of developing their sustainability reporting regulations. Finally, the findings of this study support the calls for more integrated reporting showing that the interaction of financial and non-financial information has market valuation implications.     

Exploring an in-store customer journey for customers shopping for outdoor apparel

The omni-channel shopping phenomenon creates major challenges for brick-and-mortar stores to remain relevant and appeal to customers. A way to counteract these challenges is to offer customers a journey where in-store experiences enable them to encounter numerous physical and virtual touchpoints evoked by affective, cognitive, physical, relational, sensorial and symbolic responses. This study ascertained the customer journey activated by the experiences causing value and resulting in intentions to revisit a retailer specializing in outdoor apparel. Our web-based survey collected 300 valid responses for analyses. The statistical analyses confirmed a positive relationship between the customer in-shop experience factors and the shopping trip value experienced, which in turn mediated the relationship with intention to repatronage. Some conclusions are made and various suggestions for future research are recommended.     

COVID-19, stock market and sectoral contagion in US: a time-frequency analysis

We assess the conditional relationship in the time-frequency domain between the return on S&P 500 and confirmed cases and deaths by COVID-19 in Hubei, China, countries with record deaths and the world, for the period from January 29 to June 30, 2020. Methodologically, we follow Aguiar-Conraria et al. (2018), by using partial coherencies, phase-difference diagrams, and gains. We also perform a parametric test for Granger-causality in quantiles developed by Troster (2018). We find that short-term cycles of deaths in Italy in the first days of March, and soon afterwards, cycles of deaths in the world are able to lead out-of-phase US stock market. We find that low frequency cycles of the US market index in the first half of April are useful to anticipate in an anti-phasic way the cycles of deaths in the US. We also explore sectoral contagion, based on dissimilarities, Granger causality and partial coherencies between S&P sector indices. Our findings, such as the strategic role of the energy sector, which first reacted to the pandemic, or the evidence about predictability of the Telecom cycles, are useful to tell the history of the pass-through of this recent health crises across the sectors of the US economy.     

Examining artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in marketing via a global lens: Current trends and future research opportunities

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured substantial interest from a wide array of marketing scholars in recent years. Our research contributes to this emerging domain by examining AI technologies in marketing via a global lens. Specifically, our lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer. Our country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in economic inequality across countries due to the considerable economic resources necessary for AI adoption. Our company-level analysis focuses on glocalization because while the hardware that underlies these technologies may be global in nature, their application necessitates adaptation to local cultures. Our consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns, as AI technologies often collect, store and process a cornucopia of personal data across our globe. Through the prism of these three lenses, we focus on two important dimensions of AI technologies in marketing: (1) human–machine interaction and (2) automated analysis of text, audio, images, and video. We then explore the interaction between these two key dimensions of AI across our three-part global lens to develop a set of research questions for future marketing scholarship in this increasingly important domain.