Nicknames as identity badges: How self-reflective nicknames can facilitate users’ online social interactions

An Internet nickname is essential in facilitating online interpersonal interactions. It is a pivotal element of interaction that provides other users with an initial impression and affects the decisions and behaviors of users during their online interactions. Although the existing literature has found that nicknames are relevant to users’ psychology and behavior, direct research on the motivation for and the effect of choosing a particular Internet nickname has been very limited. Borrowing from relevant theories on avatars, this paper summarizes the motivations behind Internet nickname choices in terms of three aspects: virtual exploration, social navigation and contextual adaptation. Moreover, from the perspective of collective self-esteem (CSE) and group identification, this research explores the influence mechanism between the motivations underlying Internet nickname choices and users’ online social interactions. A total of 394 samples were obtained from online communities in China to test our research model. We found that virtual exploration, social navigation and contextual adaptation are three motivations for creating Internet nicknames, and they have direct effects on the online social interactions of users. CSE has a full mediating effect between virtual exploration and online social interaction and acts as a mediated variable between social navigation and online social interaction. Group identification fully mediates the relationship between social navigation and online social interaction as well as that between contextual adaptation and online social interaction. The conclusion of this paper provides not only a new perspective for the study of Internet nicknames but also a potentially feasible way to stimulate users’ online social interactions.     

Ethical Environment in the Online Communities by Information Credibility: A Social Media Perspective

With the increasing popularity of social media, a new ethics debate has arisen over marketing and technology in the current digital era. People are using online communities but they have concern about information credibility through word of mouth in these platforms. Social media is becoming increasingly influential in shaping individuals’ decision-making as more and better quality information about products is made available. In this research, a social word-of-mouth model proposes using a survey to test the model in a popular travel community. The model highlights the role of social media and social support in social networking sites (SNSs), identifying increasing credibility and information usefulness resulting in an ethical environment to adopt word of mouth. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are both detailed.     

Consumer Responses to Slice-of-Life Versus Slice-of-Death Advertising Appeals: Exploring the Role of Polysemy,Branding, and Culture

Prior research has not verified the theoretical or practical value of slice-of-life and slice-of-death advertising appeals in relation to advertising and branding constructs like advertising polysemy and consumer-based brand equity. The authors make conceptual, measurement, and managerial contributions to this research issue dealing with slice of life versus death advertising appeals. Across three studies, the authors measure, evaluate, compare, and contrast slice-of-life and slice-of-death (SOL/D) advertising appeals across British and American cultures. The authors demonstrate the interrelationships of SOL/D appeals with advertising polysemy, consumer-based brand equity, cultural differences in advertising attitudes, and purchase intentions. From a measurement perspective, the authors develop and validate parsimonious measures of slice-of-life and slice-of-death (SOL/D) advertising appeals. Furthermore, they test the assumptions that underlie these appeals for United States and British customers, and investigate how the cultural characteristic of uncertainty avoidance moderates the impact of SOL/D advertising attitudes on purchase intentions. Managerially, the research demonstrates that SOL/D appeals offer value in predicting (a) consumer-based brand equity through advertising polysemy, (b) consumers’ advertising attitudes across different cultures, (c) consumers’ intentions to purchase, and (d) advertising differences and varying consumer responses in the United States and Britain.     

Can information and communication overload influence smartphone app users' social network exhaustion,privacy invasion and discontinuance intention? A cognition-affect-conation approach

Thanks to the expansion of network technologies and the coupling of smartphone hardware, younger generations have unparalleled access to a diverse range of information and interactive communication opportunities. Despite voluminous research on the causes of social network exhaustion and privacy invasion, limited academic attention has been devoted to understanding the driving forces and contributing factors for discontinuing usage of smartphone app. Drawing on the cognition-affect-conation paradigm, the present research proposes a conceptual research model to examine how information overload and communication overload effect social network exhaustion, privacy invasion, and ultimately, smartphone app users' intentions to discontinue usage. The study evaluates data from 442 smartphone app users, employing statistical analyses to demonstrate that both information overload and communication overload significantly impact users' exhaustion and privacy invasion. Additionally, social network exhaustion and privacy invasion are two major predictors of smartphone app discontinuance intention. By identifying the influential factors and causes of younger generations' discontinuous usage intention of smartphone app, this study meets the need for a thorough assessment of the social network exhaustion and privacy invasion phenomena. The findings may potentially enhance comprehension of the discontinuation intention phenomenon in the context of cognitive overload. Furthermore, they may provide novel insights for practitioners regarding effective strategies conducive to managing mobile social network adoption behavior, as well as the preservation of engagement levels among young users in mobile-saturated societies.     

Adoption of Online Social Networks to Communicate with Financial Institutions

Spain's financial sector is not in a healthy state, and the problems that some financial institutions currently face perpetuate the widespread perception of risk across the entire sector. Moreover, the online social networks (OSN) that emerged a decade ago are suddenly at the very heart of digital society. In this study we develop a predictive model to determine that the motivational factors that influence Spanish users' intention to use OSN to communicate with financial institutions are quality management, availability of information, external conditions, trust, perceived compatibility, perceived usefulness, attitude, and intention. Data were collected from 335 Spanish OSN users through an online survey. The results suggest that quality management has a highly significant and positive effect on perceived usefulness and that perceived usefulness has a positive and significant effect on the intention to use social networks to communicate with financial institutions.     

An integrative research framework for the online social network service

Drawn upon appreciative inquiry (AI) and actor-network theory (ANT), this study proposes a new qualitative research framework for the study of the online social network (OSN) service. Integrating and applying AI and ANT will inspire OSN participants’ imagination and creation to a greater extent and thus the maximum benefits of OSN can be explored, and as a consequence OSN itself can further be improved in the service business context. This study gives a detailed discussion on the proposed framework in terms of its advantages and disadvantages, the suggestions for overcoming the disadvantages and the future research agenda in the area of OSN.     

Technological opportunism and firm performance: Moderating contexts

Technological opportunism is a sense-and-respond capability of firms with respect to new technologies. This research examines the effect of technological opportunism on firm performance from the dynamic capabilities' perspective, and how such an effect depends on relevant firm and/or market contingencies. Analyzing data from a variety of Taiwanese manufacturing industries, the authors find that technological opportunism has a positive effect on firm performance. The technological opportunism–firm performance link is negatively moderated by market orientation and network externality, and positively moderated by technological turbulence. These results confirm the underlying theme of the dynamic capabilities approach to technological changes and contextual (environmental and organizational) relevance. The finding that technological opportunism and market orientation fail to produce any synergistic impact implies that technological opportunism is a more influential source of a firm's competitive advantage.     

Public partnerships,governance and user involvement: a service user perspective

This paper explores public partnerships and governance from a service user perspective, drawing both on the author's own involvement in service user organizations and movements and on material associated with and produced by these organizations and movements. It addresses the ambivalent relationship between service user organizations and movements and the idea and practice of ‘partnerships’, and explores their preference for ideas of ‘alliance’. It charts the different approaches to and ideologies underpinning user involvement and their implications for partnership between state and service users and their organizations. It offers a set of components for improving such partnerships as well as highlighting the growing interest of service users' organizations and movements in developing and extending alliances.     

企业微博营销效果研究综述

作为一种新兴的社交媒体,微博迅速吸引了庞大的用户,微博营销也成为越来越多企业采取的营销新方式。本文以微博作为研究对象,讨论企业对微博营销效果的测度问题,对影响微博营销效果的主要因素进行了分析并展望研究趋势。     

The artisans' dilemma: Artisan entrepreneurship and the challenge of firm growth

An increasing number of entrepreneurial ventures are growing at exponential rates despite their founders' professed intentions not to grow their firms. We refer to these individuals as artisan entrepreneurs. Through an inductive, phenomenon-based research approach, we explore how artisan entrepreneurs subscribe to a counter-institutional identity yet engage in a divergent set of behaviors. We discover that artisans' counter-institutional identity contains two sides—promoting the exclusion of ‘who we are not’ (oppositional identity) or providing support for ‘who we are’ (relational identity). We theorize that artisan entrepreneurs' differing views regarding their independence led to very different approaches to growth. When artisans either do not see forms of external control as impinging on their independence or sense that serving stakeholders is a means to perform relational identity work, they embrace growth. Thus, artisans may find that growth serves stakeholders, but funding growth brings about financial pressures, which may force the artisan down a path of growth.     

会计服务业服务创新模式的多案例研究

通过创新提升我国会计服务业的行业竞争力是迫切的现实需要,创新模式的研究是创新研究的基础,而现有服务创新模式缺乏应有的理论支撑。本文按照多案例研究方法,采用扎根理论的方法分析案例资料,对会计服务业的服务创新模式进行了探索性研究,得出先导型服务创新模式和反应型服务创新模式两类典型的服务创新模式,并对其内涵和特征进行深入剖析,还揭示了两类模式之间的相互关系和作用。本文为会计服务业的创新活动提供了直接的指导,并扩展了服务创新模式的研究。     

Contextual advertising in games: Impacts of game context on a player’s memory and evaluation of brands in video games

Contextual advertising is growing in digital marketing communication. Previous research on traditional media has shown that the surrounding context affects advertising effectiveness. Similarly, the context in a game may influence a player’s processing of brands advertised in that game. To examine the effects of contextual advertising in games, the present article affords two independent experiments investigating how positive and negative game contexts influence players’ memories and attitudes with respect to brands advertised via billboards in games. Drawing from literature on the limited capacity model, the authors demonstrate that positive and negative game contexts decrease brand memory since they require a high level of cognitive effort. The authors also find that varying a game context influence the perception of brands advertised in the game via the contextual priming mechanism and that positive contexts generate more positive brand attitudes than negative or neutral contexts. The findings have important implications for consumer researchers and marketers, as they indicate how contexts in games can be utilized to establish brand awareness and increase positive brand perceptions in contextual advertising using games.     

There is nothing permanent except change—analyzing individual price dynamics in “pay-what-you-want” situations

This study is examines the dynamics in prices paid in “pay-what-you-want” situations over multiple customer–seller transactions on an individual customer level. The analysis of potential dynamism in prices paid allows for an assessment of the profitability of pay-what-you-want pricing for sellers of frequently bought products and services. To empirically validate the framework, the authors conduct a field study that focuses on the aggregate and individual dynamics in prices paid over customers’ multiple purchases. Using latent growth modeling, the authors find significant but declining decreases in prices paid. Further, they identify stable individual and relational difference factors which predict steeper or more gradual declines in prices paid. Customers’ individual preferences for fairness and price consciousness as well as their overall satisfaction with the seller alleviate price declines. The authors discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.     

I Know What I Know,but I will Probably Fail Anyway: How Learned Helplessness Moderates the Knowledge Calibration–Dietary Choice Quality Relationship

Prior research suggests that knowledge calibration (KC) supports consumers’ maintenance of a healthy diet. However, no previous studies have considered that learned helpless consumers may refrain from using their knowledge, even though they may be fully aware that they possess it. This research gap is considered in three studies. Study 1 investigates the moderating effect of learned helplessness (LH) by means of a cross‐sectional survey. Studies 2 and 3 are online choice studies. Besides from replicating Study 1, Studies 2 and 3 eliminate potential social desirability bias by objectively measuring respondents’ dietary choice quality. In addition, Study 3 takes into account the possibility that respondents’ responses may be biased by food preferences, medical conditions, and/or food allergies. Moreover, Studies 2 and 3 both investigate the consequences of the findings on consumers who live under a dieting regime. These studies demonstrate that consumers suffering from LH do not stand to gain from calibrating their dietary knowledge to the same degree as other consumers. It is also shown that dieting behavior has a tendency to weaken this negative moderating effect of LH on the relationship between KC and dietary choice quality. Finally, the implications of the findings for marketers and public policymakers are discussed.     

基于金融环境因素的外国直接投资与产业集聚研究评述

本文对外国直接投资与产业集聚这一领域内的前沿研究成果进行梳理,对该理论的发展脉络进行述评,并从外国直接投资溢出效应和其他方面综述了近年来国内外有关外国直接投资与产业集聚的实证研究。在对外国直接投资作用于产业集聚制约因素分析的基础上,提出了金融环境因素这一新视角,该视角在外国直接投资促进产业集聚过程中起着至关重要的作用,却被学者们所忽视。毋庸置疑,该视角未来的研究将对我国外国直接投资与产业集聚研究具有重要意义。     

Three dimensional product presentation quality antecedents and their consequences for online retailers: The moderating role of virtual product experience

This study investigates the impact of three-dimensional (3D) product presentation quality (3D-Q) on attitude toward presented product and attitude toward website, which in turn affect users’ satisfaction. Therefore, this research developed a hypothetical online retailer website, which presents a variety of 3D laptops that allows users to control the content and form of the 3D flashes. We measured 3D-quality based on a multi-dimensional construct. In other words, we define and operationalize 3D-quality based on information quality, system quality, authenticity, and enjoyment (second-order). We employed a non-student sample (n=410) to collect the data. We find that 3D-quality determines perceptions of attitude toward presented product and attitude toward website, which in turn influence users’ satisfaction. Furthermore, we find that virtual product experience moderates the relationships between attitude toward presented product, attitude toward website and users’ satisfaction. Our study provides important implications for e-tailers.     

Approaches to child labour in the supply chain

This paper examines the difficulties of dealing with child labour in the supply chain. It begins by identifying a number of the factors which make global supply chains so difficult to manage. It goes on to outline a framework of different approaches that can be taken to managing the supply chain with relation to child labour, moving from national and international regulation, through to the role of NGOs and the companies themselves. Focusing on an 'engagement' strategy for dealing with child labour, the paper traces a case study of Adidas-Salomon and its attempts to implement their 'standards of engagement' in this area with relation to one of their supplier factories in Vietnam. The research draws on the direct involvement of one of the authors who visited the site and was able to interview staff and observe the operation in practice. Her findings are supported by wider work on the implementation of corporate approaches to human rights at a range of companies interviewed by another of the authors. The paper aims to highlight the issues needing to be addressed for companies considering the 'involvement' approach to child labour. It also aims to develop theory on our understanding of different approaches to corporate rights.     

草根牛博操控者

如何在微博上快速赚钱？那些上百万粉丝的草根微博背后是谁？谁在瓜分那些著名的微博账号？《创业家》独家解密微博生意经和微博势力关系谱。     

Self-disclosure and Privacy Calculus on Social Networking Sites: The Role of Culture

Social Network Sites (SNSs) rely exclusively on user-generated content to offer engaging and rewarding experience to its members. As a result, stimulating user communication and self-disclosure is vital for the sustainability of SNSs. However, considering that the SNS users are increasingly culturally diverse, motivating this audience to self-disclose requires understanding of their cultural intricacies. Yet existing research offers only limited insights into the role of culture behind the motivation of SNS users to self-disclose. Building on the privacy calculus framework, this study explores the role of two cultural dimensions – individualism and uncertainty avoidance – in self-disclosure decisions of SNS users. Survey responses of US and German Facebook members are used as the basis for our analysis. Structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis results reveal the distinct role of culture in the cognitive patterns of SNS users. The authors find that trusting beliefs play a key role in the self-disclosure decisions of users from individualistic cultures. At the same time, uncertainty avoidance determines the impact of privacy concerns. This paper contributes to the theory by rejecting the universal nature of privacy calculus processes. The findings provide for an array of managerial implications for SNS providers as they strive to encourage content creation and sharing by their heterogeneous members.