Personalisation–privacy paradox: The effects of personalisation and privacy assurance on customer responses to travel Web sites

Personalisation refers to individualizing products, services, and contents according to customer interests and preferences. In order to deliver appropriate personalised offerings, firms inevitably need to collect rich customer data profiles. Prior research suggests that personalised services lead to positive customer responses such as increased willingness to disclose personal information and make purchases. However, another stream of research emphasizes negative outcomes of personalisation – namely, privacy concerns surrounding the use of personal information and associated negative effects on behaviour. The objectives of this study are twofold: (1) to examine how privacy assurance affects proximal outcomes of personalisation, such as perceived usefulness and privacy concerns; and (2) to identify the role such outcomes play in predicting customer behavioural responses, such as willingness to disclose personal information and make purchases. Our findings show that enhancing privacy assurance increases the perceived usefulness of services and decreases customer privacy concerns. Moreover, customer behavioural responses are positively related to the perceived usefulness of services and negatively associated with privacy concerns. However, despite the positive effects on perceived usefulness and purchase intentions, personalisation has no effect on privacy concerns and intentions to disclose personal information.     

Interpersonal Relationship,Service Quality,Seller Expertise: How Important Are They to Adolescent Consumers?

Drawing upon social capital theory and psychosocial development theory, this paper argues that a true buyer–seller relationship is a key determinant of favorable consumer behaviors for adolescent consumers of hairstylist services. Other important determinants include quality of the service delivery process (i.e., service quality as measured by the five SERVQUAL factors) and quality of the core service (in this case, the hairstylist's expertise). A survey of 350 adolescent consumers confirms these predictions. It shows that a true interpersonal relationship negatively moderates the positive effects of service quality on consumer satisfaction with, and overall assessment of the hairstylist. This negative moderating effect is labeled resource substitution benefit and the argument made that this is the fourth social capital benefit. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Moderators of the negativity effect: Commitment,identification, and consumer sensitivity to corporate social performance

Numerous studies have identified constructs such as commitment and brand familiarity as moderators of negativity effects. However, boundary conditions for this moderation have yet to be identified within a retailing context. This study tries to rectify this gap in the literature. This study finds that three factors (commitment, consumer–company identification, and consumer sensitivity to corporate social performance) moderate attitude change toward a retailer following exposure to moderately negative (vs. positive) publicity. However, given extremely negative information, the buffering effects of the moderating factors disappear, and attitude changes are significant for all consumers. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Max weber revisited: Some lessons from East Asian capitalistic development

Weber's thesis of the incompatibility of the Confucian ethos and rational entrepreneurial capitalism has been challenged by the economic miracles of many East Asian countries. One thesis presented here is that Confucianism is compatible with and has facilitated Asian capitalism by its influence on managerial values and practices. According to Weber, the release of tensions created by Calvinism was an important motivating force in the development of capitalism in the Occident. Confucianism offers a parallel mechanism to the profit-seeking drive in Western capitalism. We show that, in Confucian societies, there also exists tensions — in this case, between ideals and reality. These tensions are released through the Confucian concept of a ceaseless pursuit of renovation, a motivational mechanism for the development of capitalism in East Asian societies that parallels the West. Weber held that the classic model of bureaucracy, with impersonality at its core, is essential to the development and continuation of capitalism. Our second thesis is that humanism is an important element in Confucian bureaucracy and that humanistic bureaucracy can be both effective and efficient for the development of capitalism.     

Does Institutional Blockholder Short‐Termism Lead to Managerial Myopia? Evidence from Income Smoothing

We examine institutional blockholders’ influence on income‐smoothing practices in the Korean market, which provides an interesting setting where family‐oriented chaebols dictate the corporate landscape and impede shareholder activism. The empirical results reveal that institutional shareholders with a short‐term (long‐term) investment horizon facilitate (constrain) managerial myopia. This positive (negative) association is most evident among firms with domestic institutional investors. Therefore, we argue that the presence of domestic institutional investors with transient investment goals incentivizes firms’ management to smooth out earnings.     

A membership pricing policy to facilitate service scale-expansion

This paper proposes a multi-year membership pricing policy for a service business like a gym chain. In the pricing policy, the equivalent membership price per year is relatively low to attract customers, and the multi-year membership fees must be prepaid in full. The prepaid cash provides resources for scale-expansion by opening new stores. We develop a nonlinear mixed integer programming model to formulate the pricing decisions. Numerical experiments reveal that the multi-year membership pricing policy, from a long-term perspective, is substantially better than the business-as-usual pricing policy (1-year membership) in cash balance, profit, and market share. Yet, the performances of the two pricing policies do not differ much from a short-term perspective. These findings indicate that the multi-year pricing policy may be a good strategy, because it initially attracts less attention of competitors; suddenly it emerges and substantially outperforms its competitors in cash balance, profit, and market share.     

Inoculating consumers against deception: The influence of framing and executional style

This study examines conditions affecting consumer susceptibility to advertising deception and educational efforts designed to inoculate consumers against it. Results show that consumers are best able to detect deception when their frame of reference (cognitive or affective) is incongruent with the advertisement's executional style (attribute or emotional). Attempts to inoculate consumers against deception by providing factual brand comparisons have their strongest effect among consumers with an affective frame of reference and for emotionally charged ads.

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Die Immunisierung von Konsumenten gegen werbliche Irreführung: Der Einflu der persönlichen Informationsausrichtung und des werblichen Argumentationsstils

Zusammenfassung Die Studie befa\t sich mit den Bedingungen werblicher Irreführung von Konsumenten und mit den Bemühungen der Verbrauchererziehung, Konsumenten durch vergleichende Warentestergebnisse gegen solche Irreführung zu immunisieren. Ihre Ergebnisse zeigen, da\ Konsumenten werbliche Irreführung am ehesten dann durchschauen, wenn ihre persönliche Informationsausrichtung (kognitiv oder affektiv) nicht mit dem werblichen Argumentationsstil (informativ oder emotional) übereinstimmt. Versuche, Konsumenten mit Hilfe vergleichender Warentest-Informationen gegen werbliche TÄuschung zu immunisieren, sind am wirkungsvollsten bei Konsumenten mit affektiver Informationsausrichtung und bei emotionshaltiger Werbung.

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The authors wish to thank Joel Cohen and the Editors and reviewersof Journal of Consumer Policy for their valued suggestions, and Jill Joyce for assistance in data collection and analysis.     

Semistatic hedging and pricing American floating strike lookback options

We price an American floating strike lookback option under the Black–Scholes model with a hypothetic static hedging portfolio (HSHP) composed of nontradable European options. Our approach is more efficient than the tree methods because recalculating the option prices is much quicker. Applying put–call duality to an HSHP yields a tradable semistatic hedging portfolio (SSHP). Numerical results indicate that an SSHP has better hedging performance than a delta-hedged portfolio. Finally, we investigate the model risk for SSHP under a stochastic volatility assumption and find that the model risk is related to the correlation between asset price and volatility.