Using humour to increase effectiveness of shameful health issue advertising: testing the effects of health worry level

ABSTRACT

Communicating shame-inducing health issue information is a challenging task as the feelings of shame might elicit withdrawal and avoidance coping, leading to delay in health screening and treatment. With the cognitive and emotional buffering benefits, using humour as a message strategy might help increase approach coping. Real-world ad campaigns dealing with these health issues have been using humour as an advertising tool, and with the lack of humour effects research in health communication, this is a pending topic to pursue. Given that past studies have found health worry to be a significant contributing factor in health behaviours, the audience factor of the individual's general health worry level is investigated. Three experimental studies provide evidence to humour benefitting low health-worry-level individuals in lower shame contexts and high health-worry-level individuals in higher shame contexts. Theoretical and practical implications provide the significance of the findings.     

Behavioral credit scoring model for technology-based firms that considers uncertain financial ratios obtained from relationship banking

The Korea government offers technology credit guarantee service to many technology-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) suffering from funding problems. Many advanced application credit scoring models have been developed based on technology to reduce the high default rates of this service. However, a credit scoring model which can reflect changes in firms after a loan has been granted has not yet been developed. In the study reported here, we propose a behavioral credit scoring model that reflects the debt-paying ability of recipient firms, which is observed as a time series of financial ratios of firms via the relationship banking activities. We utilize this time series, as well as missing patterns of financial information, as additional predictors of loan defaults. We compare our proposed behavioral credit scoring models, fitted at different points of elapsed time, to the application credit scoring model. Finally, we suggest the best behavioral credit scoring model for technology-based SMEs. Our study can contribute to the reduction of the risk involved in credit funding for technology-based SMEs.     

Diagnosing service quality using customer reviews: an index approach based on sentiment and gap analyses

Recognizing the importance and potential benefits of customer reviews as a source of the voice of customers, this study proposes an analytic framework and procedures for analyzing customer reviews—termed a customer review-based gap analysis—that are tailored to diagnosing service quality. To this end, we conduct sentiment analysis on customer reviews to capture customers’ perceptions and expectations at the service-feature level, which are not expressed explicitly in their reviews. A case study of a mobile navigation service shows that the customer review-based gap analysis can provide the practical information required to diagnose service quality from customer review data. The suggested indexes for capturing customers’ perceptions and expectations reveal quality strengths and drawbacks at the service-feature level. In addition, incorporating these indexes into those for quality performance and objectives based on a service-feature hierarchy provides a diagnostic tool capable of examining service quality in both overall as well as detailed aspects.     

A normative approach to motivating savings behavior: the moderating effects of attention to social comparison information

Research examining the influence of social norms on motivating savings behavior is scarce. The current study tested social norm effects in conjunction with benefit information and the moderating role of attention to social comparison information (ATSCI) when responding to public service advertisements (PSAs) promoting savings behavior. Results from two experiments, testing positive and negative social norm information, respectively, support the argument that lower ATSCI individuals exhibit greater intellectual autonomy and discernment of information, especially regarding norm information, while higher ATSCI individuals generally demonstrate greater social compliance tendencies. Implications for theory development and enhancing savings campaigns are discussed.     

The Korea-Vietnam trade and the bilateral exchange rate: Asymmetric evidence from commodity trade data

The contribution of the current article is to detect the asymmetric impact that exchange rate fluctuations have on Korea's trade with Vietnam. To this end, the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) process is applied to export and import data disaggregated by 25 commodities. We uncover that the ups and downs of exchange rates have an asymmetric impact on some, though not all, types of Korea's commodities exported to and imported from Vietnam in both the long- and short-run.     

Tying in two-sided markets with heterogeneous advertising revenues and negative pricing

We offer a theory of anticompetitive tying in two-sided markets when below-cost or negative pricing is possible. With the coexistence of two consumer groups (one regarding tying and tied goods as complementary and the other as independent), a tying-good monopolist may face difficulties in extracting rent under separate sales and wish to use tying to directly capture the large advertising revenue created in the complementary segment. We uncover two distinct mechanisms by which tying raises monopoly profits but reduces social welfare. Our theory of tying can be applied to real-world antitrust law enforcement, such as the Google Android case.     

Auditors’ scepticism in response to audit committee oversight behaviour

We use two experiments and a survey to examine how audit committee (hereafter, AC) oversight behaviour, particularly AC sceptical attitude and proactive behaviour, affects auditor scepticism, and whether the influence is driven by the risk aspect of auditors’ assessment of AC oversight behaviour. We find that when ACs exercise insufficient scepticism, auditors (junior auditors, managers, and partners) perceive AC oversight as weak, and increase their scepticism. However, AC proactive behaviour does not significantly influence auditor scepticism. Our findings suggest auditors view weak AC oversight as a risk indicator and respond by exercising greater scepticism.     

Does venture capital investment enhance corporate innovation? Evidence from Korea

We examine whether venture capital (VC) investment enhances corporate innovation in Korea. Using a matched sample of 802 firms from 1998 to 2012, we find that after the first round of VC investment, VC-backed firms are more innovative than non-VC-backed firms. Our results suggest that the positive influence of VC investment largely comes from the ability of VC firms to reduce information asymmetry between investors and ventures: VC funds managed by independent venture capitalists significantly enhance corporate innovation, whereas those managed by governmental venture capitalists do not. Furthermore, this positive influence becomes more pronounced where there is greater information asymmetry. Finally, we show that funds with profit-based compensation structures are more likely to encourage corporate innovation than those with fee-based compensation structures.     

The impact of COVID-19 on consumer evaluation of authentic advertising messages

This study investigates the relationship between the COVID-19 threat and consumer evaluation of a product with authenticity appeals in advertisements. We propose that threatening situations like COVID-19 motivate consumers to lower their uncertainty and increase their preference for products with authentic advertising messages. Because individuals react differently to threatening environments according to their early-life experiences, commonly reflected in childhood socioeconomic status, we examined whether childhood socioeconomic status moderates the relationship between threat and consumer evaluation of authenticity in advertisements. First, secondary data from Google Trends provided empirical support for our predictions. In additional experimental studies, participants evaluated different target products in four studies that either manipulated (Studies 2 and 3) or measured (Studies 4 and 5) COVID-19 threat. Our results provide converging evidence that consumers positively evaluate products with authentic advertising messages under the COVID-19 threat. Consumers' motivation to lower their uncertainty underlies the effect of COVID-19 threat on their evaluation of authentic messages (Study 3). This attempt to reduce uncertainty is more likely to occur for consumers with relatively higher childhood socioeconomic status (Studies 4 and 5). These findings suggest that using authenticity appeals during a pandemic could effectively reduce consumers' perceived uncertainty and generate positive consumer evaluations.