Customer orientation,engagement, and developing positive emotional labor

Frontline employees must deal on a daily basis with emotionally demanding customer interactions. Such interactions, when coupled with organizational directives to focus upon exemplary customer service, can prompt employees to express feelings and emotions that are not genuine. Such ‘surface acting' has been found to create stress in frontline personnel, but an understanding of how this negative aspect of emotional labor may be minimized is lacking in the services literature. How a frontline employee's individual attributes might interact with a service work context to build deep, as opposed to surface, acting is the current focus. Applying job demands–resources theory, this study investigates how a frontline employee's customer orientation helps to develop positive work engagement, even in the face of contextual demands. Engagement is then linked positively to the beneficial behavior of deep acting which, in contrast to surface acting, has been identified as a less stressful form of emotional labor.     

Managing Opportunism in China: The Roles of Guanxi,Environmental Uncertainty,and Management Culture

ABSTRACT

This cross-cultural comparison aims to understand whether the influence of consumer ethnocentrism (CE) on consumer preference for domestic versus foreign products is product category and country-of-origin dependent. Three countries with dissimilar cultural orientation and economic status—China, South Korea, and the United States—were examined. American consumers were found to be more ethnocentric than Chinese and South Korean consumers. CE was found to significantly and positively predict American and Korean consumers’ preference for domestic products across product categories, while Chinese consumers’ CE did not translate into their preference for Chinese products. In addition, the relationship between CE and purchase preference varied across product categories as well as countries of origin.     

Using the fuzzy set theory to developing an environmental impact assessment index for a thermal power plant

Korean thermal power has had a prominent position in energy policies for the past decades. However, pollutants from the combustion of fossil fuels used in converting thermal energy into electrical energy have undesirable effect on the environment. This paper applies fuzzy set theory (FST) to identifying the significance of various environmental impacts using a specific case study of the electric power utilities in Korea. To this end, we consider nine environmental impacts: mortality, morbidity, forest, agricultural production, materials, visibility, thermal discharge water, landscape, and global warming. A survey of randomly sampled 1,000 households was administrated to obtain value judgments from FST about the environmental impacts of a thermal power plant. The overall results show that global warming is the most important attribute in environmental effect-related decision-making processes and followed by morbidity and mortality in order. The implications of the results for electric power utilities are also discussed. We found that the work and results can provide valuable insights for major decision making in energy and environmental planning of the electric power utilities.     

Impacts of health and environmental consciousness on young female consumers' attitude towards and purchase of natural beauty products

This study investigated young female consumers' beauty product shopping behavioural patterns, their perceived importance of product attributes, and their attitude towards and purchase of natural beauty products. This study also examines whether consumers' product attitudes and shopping behaviours are influenced by their health and environmental consciousness. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 210 female college students enrolled at a south‐eastern university in the US. In order to examine the impacts of both health and environmental consciousness on other selected variables, the respondents were divided into four groups based on their scores on the two variables, and a series of analysis of variance were conducted to compare characteristics of the four groups. The results showed that health and environmental consciousness significantly influenced the importance placed on beauty product attributes. Additionally, those with a high level of both health and environmental consciousness were significantly more positive in their evaluations than those with low scores on both variables in their perceptions of natural beauty products. Those with low scores on both variables were significantly less willing than the other groups to pay more for natural beauty products. Analysis of variance results also indicated that the two groups with a high level of environmental consciousness purchased natural beauty products more frequently than those with a low level of health and environmental consciousness, indicating a relatively stronger impact of environmental consciousness than health consciousness on frequency of natural beauty product purchases. Health and environmental consciousness were both significantly related to a respondent's perceived level of knowledge of beauty products and ability to distinguish natural from conventional beauty products.     

Medical costs in patients with heart failure after acute heart failure events: one-year follow-up study

Aims: This study investigated annual medical costs using real-world data focusing on acute heart failure.

Methods: The data were retrospectively collected from six tertiary hospitals in South Korea. Overall, 330 patients who were hospitalized for acute heart failure between January 2011 and July 2012 were selected. Data were collected on their follow-up medical visits for 1 year, including medical costs incurred toward treatment. Those who died within the observational period or who had no records of follow-up visits were excluded. Annual per patient medical costs were estimated according to the type of medical services, and factors contributing to the costs using Gamma Generalized Linear Models (GLM) with log link were analyzed.

Results: On average, total annual medical costs for each patient were USD 6,199 (±9,675), with hospitalization accounting for 95% of the total expenses. Hospitalization cost USD 5,904 (±9,666) per patient. Those who are re-admitted have 88.5% higher medical expenditure than those who have not been re-admitted in 1 year, and patients using intensive care units have 19.6% higher expenditure than those who do not. When the number of hospital days increased by 1?day, medical expenses increased by 6.7%.

Limitations: Outpatient drug costs were not included. There is a possibility that medical expenses for AHF may have been under-estimated.

Conclusion: It was found that hospitalization resulted in substantial costs for treatment of heart failure in South Korea, especially in patients with an acute heart failure event. Prevention strategies and appropriate management programs that would reduce both frequency of hospitalization and length of stay for patients with the underlying risk of heart failure are needed.     

Coordinating under incomplete information

We show that, in a minimum effort game with incomplete information where player types are independently drawn, there is a largest and smallest Bayesian equilibrium, leading to the set of equilibrium payoffs (as evaluated at the interim stage) having a lattice structure. Furthermore, the range of equilibrium payoffs converges to those of the deterministic complete information version of the game, in the limit as the incomplete information vanishes. This entails that such incomplete information alone cannot explain the equilibrium selection suggested by experimental evidence. We thank Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Hans Carlsson, Ani Guerdjikova and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Part of this work was done while Asheim was visiting Cornell University, which hospitality is gratefully acknowledged.     

Residents' Perceived Impacts of Gaming Development in Macau: Social Representation Perspectives

The purpose of the research was to provide a better understanding of local residents' perceived impacts of gaming tourism based on social representations theory. An empirical investigation was conducted in Macau, where gaming tourism is under explosive development. Through a survey of 396 local residents, two social representation groups were identified: “Ambivalents” and “Rationalists”. The two social representation groups presented significantly different perceptions and attitudes toward the impacts of gaming tourism in Macau. The three most significant factors that influenced residents' representations were personal income, perceptions of gaming tourism being able to increase personal/family income, and satisfaction with government performance in managing gaming tourism development. The research provides theoretical implications for future gaming impact studies and also practical ones for local governments and stakeholders in the tourism industry in Macau and other gaming destinations.     

The long‐term effects of sales promotions on brand attitude across monetary and non‐monetary promotions

This study compares the influence of sales promotions on brand attitude across promotion types over time. An experiment is conducted with 154 subjects, who are exposed to test materials for 12 weeks. Evidence shows that the long‐term effects of sales promotions on brand attitude vary across deal types. Non‐monetary promotions seem to work better in eliciting consumers' favorable brand attitude than monetary promotions over time. However, such effects are moderated by consumers' deal proneness. Although monetary promotions may induce more negative effects than non‐monetary promotions, these effects are weaker for high deal‐prone consumers than for low deal‐prone consumers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Five Seconds to the Ad: How Program-Induced Mood Affects Ad Countdown Effects

The study examines how program-induced mood and a five-second countdown warning affect reception of midroll video commercials. Building on mood regulation theory, findings from three studies suggest that program-induced moods and five-second countdowns systematically influence advertising effectiveness. When the main program is tragic (comedic) and when a countdown precedes (does not precede) the midroll ad, viewers have more positive attitudes toward the ad and purchase intentions. The findings are replicated in realistic (Study 1) and controlled (Studies 2A and 2B) settings.