Revisiting media selection in the digital era: adoption and usage

This study presents an empirical analysis of the usage of limited media resources, gratification of user expectations, complementarity between different types of media, and the competitive relationship of media, based on new media in China, specifically Wechat, Weibo, and Renren. In this study, previously un-researched areas of the difference between old and new media as well as competition among the new media are analyzed so as to suggest strategies for increasing the market share. The results showed that (1) Wechat, a service which has converged the positive attributes of old and new media, provided a high level of user gratification by meeting user’s diverse requirements, while Weibo beat other social media regarding information seeking because its network structure has advantage on extensive information acquisition. On the other hand, Renren was less competitive than Wechat and Weibo, but it still had its place as an information seeking media because of the plentiful amount of information such as pictures and videos. (2) There was keen competition among the media that provided high levels of user gratification. (3) Old media were competitively superior in media richness, equivocality reduction, and the social relationship, while new media were competitively superior in information seeking and remediation of media. The conclusions suggest that, for social network service/site-based new media to obtain the advantage in the media market, they need to provide users more diverse communication functions and a platform for more meaningful communications.     

Common biases and heuristics in nutritional quality judgments: a qualitative exploration

The ways in which consumers make judgments about the nutritional quality of food products are a major concern for public policymakers. Given the focus on nutrition information in public health policies, the information processing paradigm has been widely used in past research. However, there is evidence that nutrition information processing is a difficult task for consumers. We examined 14 interviews from consumers of diverse social background in order to inventory the different kinds of heuristics used for making nutritional quality judgments. Narratives in which consumers elaborate about their strategies to assess nutritional quality of food products were analysed. Our findings show that: (1) consumers tend to use shortcuts to simplify nutrition information processing; (2) heuristics unrelated to nutrition information are commonly utilized; and (3) these heuristics rely on semantic, sensory and visual cues. The implications of our findings are discussed from a public policy standpoint.     

The potentials and perils of prosocial power: Transnational social entrepreneurship dynamics in vulnerable places

Social entrepreneurs can be powerful change agents for alleviating the suffering of the disadvantaged. However, their prosocial motivation and behavior frequently result in detrimental impacts on those they intend to support, especially when their operations span different socio-spatial contexts. We conducted a multiple comparative case study among 12 transnational social entrepreneurs of foreign, domestic non-indigenous, and local indigenous origin, who are seeking to improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities in rural Ecuador. We introduce the concept of prosocial power to social entrepreneurship research and demonstrate how it can work as a double-edged sword in the hands of transnationally embedded social entrepreneurs who operate in vulnerable places. Context-bound variations in social distance, bi-directional learning, reflexive impact measurement, and socio-spatial dominance were identified as being decisive for prosocial power to lead to positive or negative impacts on disadvantaged others.     

Social isolation and social anxiety as drivers of generation Z's willingness to share personal information on social media

Generation Z's (gen z) sharing of personal information on social media is a growing phenomenon with significant ramifications. Existing research, however, focuses on examining the role of social and/or psychological factors and fails to consider how and when social, psychological, and organizational factors affect gen z's willingness to share personal information on social media. To fill this gap, we propose a conceptual model based on the tenets of sociometer theory, to understand the dynamics of gen z's willingness to share personal information while considering its process and boundary conditions. Using a sequential multi-study design, we conducted an experiment followed by a survey to test our hypotheses using data collected from gen z in India. Our findings show that when gen z feels socially isolated/anxious, they are more likely to share personal information on social media. The effect of social isolation on sharing of personal information increases when gen z fear that they are missing out on the rewarding experiences others are having, are engaged in repetitive negative thoughts and perceive their firm's privacy policy as transparent and ethical. Our findings provide a better understanding of why, how, and when gen z's are willing to share personal information on social media. We extend existing limited research on the psychological aspects of digital natives' interaction with modern technologies. Our results equip social media marketing and brand managers with the knowledge they need to increase gen z's willingness to share personal information.     

Missing information,inferences, and evaluations

Research has shown consumers either form inferences to fill in missing information or adapt processing to accommodate missing values. This article illustrates that processing may influence which attributes are deemed necessary for the choice task and consequently inferred and that attribute-based processing,leads to inference use. The article also tests a framework that incorporates missing information, processing, inference use, and evaluation variables into a single parsimonious model that shows (1) the effects of missing information on processing and inference use and (2) the effects of inference use on evaluations. The model incorporates a link between processing and inference use that may help explain mixed results regarding the degree and direction of impact of missing information on evaluations. Finally, it explores other variables such as missing information overlap, product familiarity and importance, and attribute type that may also influence inference use.     

Showrooming,Webrooming, and User-Generated Content Creation in the Omnichannel Era

Omnichannel retailing characterizes a seamless and integrated approach of diverse retail channels. Showrooming and webrooming are prominent shopping trends among consumers in omnichannel retail. The purpose of this study was to examine (1) whether omnichannel consumers’ psychographic characteristics (i.e., information attainment, price comparison, social interaction, assortment seeking, and convenience seeking) had an influence on showrooming and webrooming, which then had an influence on omnichannel consumers’ user-generated content creation intention on social media and (2) whether the social-local-mobile (SoLoMo) experience moderated the links between omnichannel consumers’ showrooming/webrooming and user-generated content creation intention. An online survey was administered to a total of 680 omnichannel consumers with showrooming and webrooming experience from a U.S. consumer panel. This study found that omnichannel consumers’ showrooming and webrooming positively affected user-generated content creation intention on social media. Omnichannel consumers’ information attainment, price comparison, and social interaction positively affected showrooming. Information attainment, social interaction, and assortment seeking positively affected webrooming. The SoLoMo experience moderated the link between webrooming and user-generated content creation intention on social media. Managerial implications were discussed.     

Willingness to act and environmentally conscious consumer behaviour: can prosocial status perceptions help overcome the gap?

Green marketing has not shown expected results in recent years in terms of real changes in behaviours, products and market structures as had been anticipated. Consumer behaviour plays an important role in making these changes happen, and drivers of environmentally conscious consumer behaviour still need to be examined. Concepts of ‘concern’, ‘information about environmental impact’ and ‘willingness to act’ are seen as the key predictors of environmentally conscious consumer behaviours. Although green marketing has been able to address genuinely concerned consumers, additional insights are needed regarding how to appeal to more mainstream consumers. Thus, this paper proposes an extended model of environmentally conscious consumer behaviour in which the gap between willingness to act and actual environmentally friendly consumption is addressed by the moderating role of ‘prosocial status’ perceptions. In the model, ‘concern’ is positively related to ‘willingness’ and both ‘willingness’ and ‘information’ are positively related to ‘behaviour’, while ‘prosocial status’ perceptions moderate ‘behaviour’. The model was verified using a quota sample of 319 general population respondents from a Central European country. According to data, ‘prosocial status’ perceptions increase the positive association between ‘willingness’ and ‘behaviour’ and could be incorporated into green products and advertising to signal personality traits like kindness and intelligence. One possible implication for marketers is that women have a higher average representation in groups of people with high prosocial status perceptions.     

User-generated product reviews on the internet: the drivers and outcomes of the perceived usefulness of product reviews

This study examines how people cope with the user-generated product reviews (UGPRs) found on various websites where anonymous web users post and share their personal product usage experiences. Based on information processing model of communication, we postulate that there are source, message, media, and receiver factors to influence individuals' psychological processing of the UGPR messages, and its subsequent behavioral outcomes. A survey was administered by a professional market research firm to 262 randomly selected US residents from 18 to 55 years old. Consistent with the predictions, the results of the structural equation modeling analysis showed that the perceived source expertise, message objectivity, website credibility, and receiver–source similarity had positive and direct impacts on the perceptions of UGPR usefulness, which, in turn, positively influenced individuals' willingness to share product reviews with others. A series of causal model invariance tests also confirmed that the findings were statistically invariant across different subgroups divided by such factors as product categories, websites, subjective product class knowledge, past UGPR experience, and the susceptibility to informational influence.     

Are opportunities recognized or constructed?: An information perspective on entrepreneurial opportunity identification

Using a case study of ten SMEs the authors apply a model of human information processing which provides a frame to help understand the entrepreneur’s use of information to identify opportunities. Their model integrates an algorithmic or pattern type of information processing and a heuristic or trial and error type of information processing into a pragmatic frame of the entrepreneur’s opportunity recognition-construction mechanism. This article shows how human information processing can moderate entrepreneurial opportunity identification.     

Print and Online Catalogs

Abstract

A study is presented that examines the influence of print and online catalogs on consumer information processing. Petty and Cacioppo's (1979) elaboration likelihood model and research from the field of humancomputer interaction are used to hypothesize differences in consumer information processing when exposed to retail catalog information via print and online communication modes. Theory suggests, and results support, that a print catalog is more effective at stimulating cognitive elaboration and positive affect than a direct extension of the print catalog online. Implications for academics and practitioners are discussed.     

Building relationships through dialogic communication: organizations,stakeholders, and computer-mediated communication

Online media are integral to daily life, and while many organizations use them to reach broad audiences, others still appear to be uncomfortable with online media because they do not understand how to maximize their potential to interact effectively with stakeholders. Numerous organizations use online media for one-way communication to disseminate information, despite the affordances of the media platforms for two-way, dialogic communication. This article draws on two dominant interpersonal theories of computer-mediated communication—social information processing theory and the hyperpersonal model—to propose dialogic strategies that organizations can use to improve their online communication with their stakeholders. We illustrate the application of these principles through three stages of relationship building: initiating/experimenting, intensifying, and integrating/bonding. The article integrates the applications within an overall dialogic communication strategy, and provides organizations and practitioners with a model with which they can engage stakeholders with dialogic methods via social media.     

Managing the reputation of the banking industry after the global financial crisis: Implications of public anger,processing depth and retroactive memory interference for public recall of events

The global financial crisis of 2007/2008 devastated the reputation of the UK banking industry. This paper examines possible connections between the depth of an individual's cognitive processing of information about the banking industry's role in the onset of the crisis obtained from UK media (and elsewhere) and the subsequent extent and accuracy of the person's memory of events. Depth of processing was posited to depend on the level of an individual's feelings of anger at the banks' reported behaviour before and during the crisis and on the degree to which a person had suffered financially as a consequence of the crisis. A number of hypotheses were developed on the basis of Nabi's (1999) cognitive functional model and were tested via a survey of 413 members of the public in Greater London. It was further hypothesised that, because media coverage of the banks' involvement in the crisis was largely hostile, many members of the public attributed blame for the crisis mainly to the banks, resulting in extensive feelings of anger and hence deeper cognitive processing.     

Examining the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals in Prompting Help‐Seeking: The Case of At‐Risk Gamblers

With a sample of Australian at‐risk gamblers, this research examines the impact of gender and individual difference in experiential avoidance (EA; cognitive and emotional suppression) on the processing of fear appeals. Study 1, through thematic analysis, explores fear appeal perceptions among at‐risk gamblers. The results identify that relevant threats, such as social and psychological, should be integrated into fear‐inducing advertising stimuli. Study 2 uses multigroup comparisons in structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the robustness of the revised protection motivation model (RPMM) in predicting the effectiveness of fear appeals to induce help‐seeking intentions in at‐risk gamblers. This research examines the boundary conditions of the RPMM through the moderating roles of gender and EA. The results provide evidence that fear partially mediates the impact of perceived susceptibility (PS) on help‐seeking intentions in low experiential avoiders, whereas high experimental avoiders resist fear elicitation. Furthermore, evoked fear does not lead to help‐seeking intentions in male at‐risk gamblers. In female at‐risk gamblers, while fear prompts help‐seeking intentions, PS (i.e., probability of harm) does not translate to behavioral intentions via fear. For both genders and low and high experiential avoiders, cognitive appraisals of PS significantly and positively impact help‐seeking intentions. This research demonstrates the unique roles of gender and EA on fear appeal effectiveness in at‐risk gamblers.     

Understanding the negativity effect: The role of processing focus

Numerous studies have demonstrated that negative information has a stronger influence on overall impressions than does positive information of equal intensity. Recent attempts to explain this phenomenon with evolutionary arguments show strong potential for predicting how and when the effect will be manifested. This paper tests information-processing implications of one evolutionary perspective (Peeters and Czapinski, 1990), finding general support. In particular, empirical evidence indicates that processing of negative information is relatively less subjective and more integrative in focus than processing of positive information.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers' Response to Health Information Complexity

This study develops and empirically tests a model for understanding food consumers' health information seeking behaviour. Data were collected from 504 food consumers using a nationally representative consumer panel. The obtained Lisrel results suggest that consumers' product-specific health information seeking is positively affected by general food involvement and by usability of product-specific health information. Moreover, product-specific health information seeking and product-specific health information complexity are both positively related to post-purchase health-related dissonance. This link between information complexity and post-purchase dissonance has implications for marketers of food products since our results suggest that consumers might avoid purchasing the same food item again if post-purchase dissonance is experienced.     

Host Country National Employees’ Prosocial Behavior toward Expatriates in Foreign Subsidiaries: A Common Ingroup Identity Model Perspective

Social categorization is predominately assumed to have negative effects on the prosocial behavior of host country national (HCN) employees toward expatriates in foreign subsidiaries. Challenging this assumption, I draw on the common ingroup identity model to propose that dual identity – simultaneous identification with membership in a subgroup and in a superordinate group – reduces HCNs’ intergroup biases and facilitates prosocial behavior. More specifically, I hypothesize that HCNs’ organizational identity has a moderating effect on the positive relationship between HCNs’ expatriate outgroup categorization and dual identity, such that this relationship is weaker when organizational identity is low. Furthermore, I hypothesize that dual identity mediates the relationship between expatriate outgroup categorization and two prosocial behaviors: information sharing and affiliative citizenship behavior. Results from the data collected from 1,290 HCN employees in Japan provide support for these hypotheses and the moderated mediation model.     

Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable

Social media emerged as a primary source of information among young users, but its severe effect on mental state due to information overload, still an area of concern for the researchers. Generation Z users' addiction to the mobile phone/gadgets is increasing with a rise in social media and consequently their behavioral outcomes have transformed completely. Nowadays behavioral issues including stress, fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’ and ‘phubbing’, anxiety etc. rising each day but the relationship among these issues and information overload is less examined. The social media users are unable to filter the trustworthy information due to its enormous size and thus role of information support from government becomes essential. The current study extends the S-O-R theory exploring relationship between the stimulus of enormous information on the responses generated among the Generation Z such as social media fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety. The findings from a sample of 319 users belonging to Generation Z suggest that social media platforms need to understand user's compulsive usage that is resulting into fatigue and consequently anxiety. The role of government information support on reducing fatigue and anxiety is found to be positive. The relationship between ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety is found significant and shows presence of partial mediation. The study offers significant theoretical and practical implications. It is significant for the service providers and social media platforms to advance interfaces with minimum fatigue for the users and offers information support to the users to reduce stress caused by information load.     

A social commerce investigation of the role of trust in a social networking site on purchase intentions

Trust is a crucial issue in online shopping environments, but it is more important in social commerce platforms due to the salient role of peer-generated contents. This article investigates the relationship between trust in social commerce and purchase intentions and describes a mechanism to explain this relationship. We propose a main and two alternative models by drawing on three concepts: social commerce information seeking, familiarity with the platform, and social presence. The models clarify the mechanisms through which trust, familiarity, social presence, and social commerce information seeking influence behavioral intentions on social commerce platforms. Findings from a survey of Facebook users indicate that trust in a social networking site (SNS) increases information seeking which in turn increases familiarity with the platform and the sense of social presence. Moreover, familiarity and social presence increase purchases intentions. Findings indicate that the main model fits the data better than the alternative ones. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Social media or shopping websites? The influence of eWOM on consumers’ online purchase intentions

This study empirically tests and compares the influence of friends’ recommendations on social media and anonymous reviews on shopping websites in the context of online purchase intention. For this purpose, we analyse the impacts of these two platforms based on the components of information adoption model (IAM) which are borrowed as information quality, information credibility, information usefulness and information adoption. We conduct a survey and find anonymous reviews as more influential on consumer’ online purchase intentions than friends’ recommendations on social media. However, as this result was contrary to that expected, we conduct another study through in-depth interviews in order to enlighten our results found in the first study. In Study 2, we find the reasons why consumers prefer anonymous reviews rather than friends’ recommendations. Information quantity, information readiness, detailed information and dedicated information are factors which make shopping websites superior than social media in terms of the impact of electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Academic and managerial implications are discussed.     

数据链网络信息融合的有中心无中心处理结构

针对数据链网络的发展趋势及应用需求,揭示了有中心无中心融合处理的基本原理 ,并对其处理流程与关键技术进行了深入分析,并提供了解决思路及仿真分析。在此基础上 ,结合机载信息融合的功能及应用,分析对比了有中心无中心融合处理结构的优缺点,并提 出了适合当前数据链网络现状的融合处理方式建议,对网络化多平台信息系统的信息融合架 构设计、方案选择具有重要参考意义。