The impact of cultural differences on technology adoption

This study examines the impact of Type I and Type II cultural differences on mobile phone adoption patterns. We use Hofstede's cultural dimensions to examine cultural differences of two countries (Type I: the U.S.; Type II: S. Korea) and employ the Bass diffusion model to delineate innovation and imitation effects on mobile phone adoption. The results show that in Type I culture innovation factor has a significantly higher level of effect on adoption than it does in Type II culture; and in Type II culture imitation factor has a higher degree of effect on adoption than it does in Type I culture. These findings imply that in individualistic cultures, people tend to seek information on their own from direct and formal sources, whereas in collectivistic cultures, people rely more on subjective evaluation of an innovation, conveyed from other-like-minded individuals who already have adopted the innovation.     

Contingent effects of firm and employee reputations on professional advice adoption

Applying resource-based theory and signaling theory, we argue that firm and employee reputations affect consumer adoption of advice offered by professional service providers, and these effects are contingent on contextual variables. Our study on brokerage reports in Singapore supports our arguments. We show that reliance on firm (employee) reputation when adopting advice is higher (lower) if the evaluation of an entity is an initial rather than a repeated one. Also, reliance on employee reputation increases with stronger recommendation or when the entity has a business relationship with the advice-giving firm. These findings have implications for advice-giving firms and policy makers.     

The impact of mobile app adoption on physical and online channels

The authors investigate the impact of customers’ mobile app adoption on grocery shopping behaviors. Specifically, they investigate the cannibalization of existing physical and online channels by the newly adopted mobile app and evaluate changes in households’ total expenditures at the focal chain. They find that households adopting the mobile app marginally decrease their spending in physical stores, but considerably increase their expenditures and shopping trips through the mobile app. They present evidence that the mobile app plays a synergistic role for customers who never used a digital shopping channel. Lastly, the authors find a competitive encroachment effect by the mobile app. They find the impact of mobile app adoption is greater in markets where the focal chain faces more intense competition from a nearby competitor.     

The impact of adoption timing on new service usage and early disadoption

Post-adoption usage can be a crucial element in obtaining substantial revenues from new service introduction, especially when adopters display low usage levels or decide to disadopt the service altogether. Here, the authors specifically examine the effects of adoption timing on post-adoption usage and disadoption. Using a longitudinal, individual-level usage data set of 6296 adopters of a new telecom service, they show that the earliest adopters have lower initial usage levels than do later adopters. However, early adopters show increasing usage after adoption, whereas late adopters tend to decrease their usage over time. Also, disadoption rates are higher among later adopters.     

The impact of internet adoption upon the shopping behaviour of island residents

Despite numerous studies of on-line shopping behaviour, the impact that the internet has had upon island communities remains largely unexplored. This is despite previous research highlighting the difficulties island residents encounter when attempting to access goods and services. This qualitative, exploratory research study interviews individuals across three UK island groups and examines the extent to which on-line provision has reconfigured the purchasing behaviour of local residents. The findings confirm that internet usage is widespread and that a broad range of products are purchased on-line. However the paper maintains that these findings underplay the significance of e-retailing. The internet has had a much more profound impact upon island consumers and the benefits that are derived from on-line availability extend beyond the reconfiguration of shopping patterns. The findings illustrate that the benefits that have accrued from internet adoption have fundamentally transformed the lives of many individuals. It has acted as a liberating mechanism that has positively impacted upon domestic undertakings and socio-cultural activities.     

面向全球人工智能高影响力科研人员的综合学术影响力评价模型研究

科技人才对于一国的科技创新发展至关重要,科学合理地评价科研人员的学术影响力,对于科技人才遴选、引进、管理具有重要意义,同时,也可以营造公平、公正的学术氛围,推动科技发展。本研究针对新兴科技领域知识迭代更新快的特点,提出了新兴科技领域科研人员学术影响力综合评价体系和模型,并以人工智能高影响力科研人员为例进行了分析。结果发现,成果引用情况对学术影响力影响最大,其次是学术研究能力和学术活跃程度。本研究提供了一种指标客观赋值的方法,对于科研人员学术影响力的客观评价提供支撑。     

The adoption of direct banking services

The adoption of new products and services is of increasing importance to many industries. This is especially so for those organisations that are marketing technological innovations. In this paper a model of the perceived innovation attributes and the personal characteristics of adopters and non‐adopters was developed, based on literature and consumer research. These are then tested using a questionnaire concerned with the UK market for direct banking services. The results are presented in detail which indicate that the model presented is an excellent predictor of adoption behaviour. From these results a number of interesting implications have been highlighted for marketing practice.     

The effect of customer empowerment on adherence to expert advice

Customers often receive expert advice related to their health, finances, taxes or legal procedures, to name just a few. A noble stance taken by some is that experts should empower customers to make their own decisions. In this article, we distinguish informational from decisional empowerment and study whether empowerment leads customers to adhere more or less to expert advice. We empirically test our model by using a unique dataset involving 11,735 respondents in 17 countries on four continents. In the context of consumer adherence to doctors' therapy advice (patient non-adherence to doctor advice may cost about $564 billion globally to the pharmaceutical industry every year), we find that decisional empowerment lowers adherence to expert advice. The effect of informational empowerment varies predictably across cultures and is only universally beneficial when initiated by the customer. These findings have important implications for professional service providers.     

The Dawn of the AI Robots: Towards a New Framework of AI Robot Accountability

Journal of Business Ethics - Business, management, and business ethics literature pay little attention to the topic of AI robots. The broad spectrum of potential ethical issues pertains to using...     

An assessment of the impact of digital technology adoption on economic growth and labour productivity in Nigeria

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking - This study investigates the impact of digital technology adoption on economic growth and labour productivity in Nigeria for the period of...     

The Impact of AI on the Advertising Process: The Chinese Experience

Knowing that the demand for advertising in a growing e-commerce market cannot be sufficiently addressed in a traditional advertising operation model, advertisers and e-commerce platforms apply artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in advertising to improve efficiency and meet the market demand. From observations in the Chinese advertising market over the past five years, the authors gain insight into how AI technologies are applied in the advertising process and propose that the advertising process powered by AI technologies is composed of four steps: consumer insight discovery, ad creation, media planning and buying, and ad impact evaluation. This new advertising process, which is supported by a data-based platform with algorithms at its core, is tool based, synchronized, and highly efficient. AI has reorganized and upgraded the traditional advertising process and improved advertising efficiency; however, the new process is still born out of the traditional process and is not yet a reengineered one.     

The effect of a no-pain, no-gain lay theory on product efficacy perceptions

We document the existence of an inference strategy based on a no-pain, no-gain lay theory, showing that consumers infer pharmaceutical products to be more efficacious when they are associated with a detrimental side effect or attribute. Study 1 finds that consumers high in need for cognition infer a bad-tasting cough syrup to be more effective than a good-tasting one. However, taste does not impact efficacy beliefs of consumers low in need for cognition. A second study conceptually replicates these results, showing that consumers who take allergy medications (i.e., those high in issue involvement) infer an allergy medication with common side effects to be more effective than one with rare side effects. Our final study builds on these findings by demonstrating that consumers high in need for cognition believe a pain killer with common side effects to be more effective than one with rare side effects. Demonstrating a boundary condition of this inference strategy, the effect is observed only when the pain killer has been on the market for a relatively long period of time.     

Understanding Programmatic Creative: The Role of AI

In this article, we expand the concept of programmatic advertising to include programmatic creative as a vital component. While artificial intelligence (AI) has already automated the media buying process, the advertising creative process still requires extensive human efforts. Such discrepancy calls for AI to transform the advertising creative process. We provide a framework for understanding and investigating programmatic creative by drawing evidence from the advertising industry in China. We specifically discuss how big data and machine learning algorithms underpin programmatic advertising. We argue that AI will integrate programmatic buying and programmatic creative in the future. We also discuss the technological, regulatory, and legal challenges faced by programmatic creative. We argue that new theories and methods are needed to conduct research in this area and provide guidance for the advertising industry.     

The effects of consumers’ ethical beliefs on copying behaviour

Computer technologies, in general, and Internet technologies, in particular, have had a tremendous impact on all aspects of business over the last several years. One area of continued concern is the protection of intellectual properties within the boundaries of these computer-mediated environments, most notably copyrights. While the ability to share copyrighted information has always existed at the most basic levels, the advent of the information age has allowed the sharing of this information to take place in potentially greater quantities and without a loss of quality. As such, copying digital works creates a major threat to industries dealing in the production and distribution of copyrightable creations. The focus of this research is to better understand how consumers’ ethical philosophies and judgements regarding the opportunities to download copyrighted works from the Internet impact assessments of copying behaviour.     

The influence of visually dynamic imagery on purchase intentions: The roles of arousal and lay rationalism

The presence of motion is increasingly common in online advertising. Despite the increase in spending on digital advertisements and decades of academic research on dynamic imagery in advertising, our understanding of this phenomenon remains limited. The dynamic default hypothesis posits that animated imagery should generate more arousal than comparable static imagery. However, research on advertisements containing dynamic imagery reveal inconsistencies in their ability to stimulate arousal. A potential explanation for these inconsistent findings lies in the behavioral urgency hypothesis, which postulates that not all motion is weighted equally in terms of its ability to generate arousal. We conduct three experiments to test this proposition. Interestingly, our findings show that imagery appearing to loom closer to consumers stimulates greater levels of arousal than either static or imagery appearing to recede away from consumers. Additionally, our work identifies moderating effects of lay rationalism which can work to strengthen or attenuate these effects. Together, this work provides a more comprehensive explanation for the varied findings in the literature.     

Consumers' concern about the environment and its impact on business

The discrepancy between ecologically conscious attitudes and actual behaviour is described as an inner resistance, and as connected with a propensity to ignore the external costs of wealth. Evidence is presented that this propensity is based on pro-material traits such as the positional attitude and the passion for goods. These traits are traced back to control orientation, whereas ecological responsibility is shown to be related to autonomy orientation. The societal origins of these basic orientations, and hence the conditions of reinforcing post-materially and ecologically minded behaviour, are discussed.

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Das Umweltbewutsein der Konsumenten und seine Auswirkungen auf die Anbieter

Zusammenfassung Ein Bericht über eine empirische Untersuchung, die gezeigt hat, da\ der innere Widerstand gegen naturverträgliches Wirtschaften mit promateriellen Einstellungen zusammenhängt, die auf eine kulturell verbreitete Grundhaltung zurückgehen, nämlich die Kontrollorientierung. Die Bereitschaft zu konsequent umweltschonendem Verhalten dagegen korrespondiert mit postmateriellen Einstellungen, denen eher die Autonomieorientierung zugrundeliegt. Kontroll- und Autonomierorientierung werden nach Deci und Ryan als konkurrierend nebeneinander existierende, kulturell geprägte Auffassungen über den Grund des eigenen Handelns betrachtet. Der Verfasser stellt dar, wie diese Werthaltungen in der westdeutschen Bevölkerung verteilt sind, und diskutiert die Frage nach den gesellschaftlichen Einflüssen, die sie hervorbringen und verstärken.

     

Reseller adoption of manufacturers' e-business tools: The impact of social enforcement, technology-relationship fit and the mediating role of reseller benefits

Manufacturer-reseller relationships are increasingly becoming technology-infused as distribution managers are employing e-business tools to streamline existing channels. This research examines the role of social enforcement, relationship-technology fit and the perceived reseller benefits in reseller adoption of manufacturers' e-business tools. The results of the empirical test involving a sample of 224 resellers suggest that social enforcement and technology-relationship factors impact reseller e-business adoption, while reseller benefits play a mediating role. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed.     

The moderating influence of brand image on consumers' adoption of QR-code e-wallets

In a post-pandemic era marked by thriving digital payments and e-commerce transactions due to physical distancing norms, the growth of mobile payments or E-wallets is expected to expand in tandem with the global trend toward cashless payment solutions. However, it is unclear whether this momentum would be sustained for over-the-counter (OTC) retail payments, particularly QR-code E-wallets, that are more affordable and accessible to merchants and customers than NFC-based (near field communication) systems in emerging markets. This study aims to model the interaction effects of brand image in shaping consumers’ E-wallet usage intentions. Incorporating a consumer-brand relationship element (i.e., brand image) should improve the understanding of consumers’ digital service experiences in proximity-based retail encounters. The research model was empirically tested using 305 responses from QR-based E-wallet users in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Statistical analysis was performed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses. An empirical examination of the model revealed effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, and perceived value as significant positive predictors of consumer usage intention. Furthermore, brand image was found to significantly strengthen the positive effect of perceived value and weaken the positive impact of hedonic motivation on the outcome. The study’s key contributions include reaffirming the crucial contingent role of brand image in consumer technology adoption studies and investigating consumer perceptions of QR-based E-wallets, which are expected to gain traction, especially in emerging markets. E-wallet providers should reinforce their value propositions by providing seamless, engaging, and easy-to-use experiences that improve users' brand perceptions.     

The social significance of AI in retail on customer experience and shopping practices

This paper draws on practice-informed, ethnographic research to develop an understanding of the novel social consequences and opportunities afforded from consumers' interactions with AI digital humans as part of the in-store shopping experience. We reveal and interrogate consumers’ experiences with AI digital humans in an exploratory study undertaken during the launch phase of an in-store kiosk digital store greeter in a flagship store of a large national technology and appliance chain. Our findings contribute to understanding the social significance of AI in retail on customer experience (CX) and the managerial implications of consumers interactions with AI digital humans are described and discussed.