Celebrity endorsements: Investigating the interactive effects of internalization,identification and product type on consumers’ attitudes and intentions

In line with Kang and Herr's work (2006), this research questions the ELM's contention that celebrity credibility serves foremost as a peripheral element in a persuasive communication context. Nevertheless, in a different light to the Kang and Herr's ‘either-central-or-peripheral-role’ of a source characteristic, this research advances that celebrity credibility plays concomitantly central and peripheral roles in a persuasive message context depending on product involvement and brand-purchase motive. Particularly, this research uses the notions of ‘source internalization’ and ‘source identification’ (Kelman, 1961) to theorize that source credibility can have a concomitant dual role (peripheral and central) in a persuasion context. More precisely, this research investigates the interactive effects of source identification and internalization with product involvement as well as brand-purchase motives on consumers' attitudes and intentions. Source internalization is predicted to have persuasive effects in the contexts of high-involvement as well as informational products. Source identification is predicted to have persuasive effects in the context of low-involvement as well as transformational products. The findings of two experiments show that celebrity credibility acts through only a single route (i.e., only internalization has persuasive effects) uniformly across different product involvement levels and brand-purchase motive types. We interpret these results with the lens of the ‘match-up’ hypothesis (Kamins, 1990).     

Is Current Way of Promoting Sustainability,Sustainable?

Consumer behavior regarding sustainable products has been a complex concept. There is a discrepancy between consumer’s espoused concern towards environment and their purchase of environment friendly products. Past literature suggests greenwashing being a possible reason for this discrepancy. With greenwashing being caused by mismatch between communication and perceived performance, this article focuses on assessment of simultaneous impact of both communication and performance elements on brand attitude. A quantitative study was undertaken to test the hypotheses. This was followed by a qualitative study to understand alternative explanation of hypotheses that was not accepted. The research revealed that a consumer’s attitude toward a green brand is impacted both by his or her general skepticism towards green ads and the credibility that she assigns to the firm’s green message. Perceived value of product also had a positive impact on brand attitude. Findings advance academic literature and support managerial community by highlighting factors for building a positive green brand attitude and resultantly avoiding the trap of being equated with greenwashing.     

Regime-switching and interest rates in the European monetary system

This paper examines the impact that a currency target zone has on short-term interest rates. For a number of countries in the European Monetary System, we characterize the short rate using a regime-switching model that allows for a differently parameterized mean-reverting square-root process in each regime. We find that the volatility, the level, and the speed-of-adjustment are all higher in the regime that is operative during speculative attacks and currency crises. Moreover, we allow the conditional probability of being in each regime to be state-dependent so the model can be used to examine questions relating to the likelihood of realignments and the stability of the target zone system.     

慈善组织监管与慈善组织公信力重塑路径研究综述

公信力是慈善组织的灵魂,但当前国内慈善组织的丑闻事件层出,不仅沉重打击了慈善组织在公众心中的神圣形象,而且在一定程度上严重影响了慈善组织的长远发展。因此,对慈善组织的公信力流失问题进行研究,具有重要的理论和实践意义。综合国内外学者的观点,其研究的重点集中在慈善组织公信力的内涵、公信力流失的原因、公信力评估及公信力的重塑路径4个方面。这些研究为我们反思慈善组织公信力流失现象以及加强监管、重塑慈善组织的公众形象提供了很好的学术基础。     

公用事业引进民间资本的思考——基于城市公交行业的分析与政策建议

近年来我国政策层面连续出台了两部纲领性文件,对相关领域引进民间资本发出了强烈的信号。然而在城市公用事业领域民间资本的流向却与之相背。我们思考了该领域引进民间资本的一些问题,并提出了几点相应的政策建议。在当前城市公交存在供需失衡且建设资金又有巨额缺口的情况下,尽快扭转民资流向无疑是正确的选择。建立良好的公私互动机制、增强政府承诺的可信性并实施回报率规制是扭转资金流向的关键。     

北京跨界水源地生态可持续发展模式比较研究——以官厅水库流域延庆怀来两县为例

水资源短缺和水环境污染的现状使得北京跨界水源地发展模式受到各界的关注。以官厅水库流域的北京市延庆县和河北省怀来县为例,运用指标体系进行对比分析,得出了延庆县符合生态可持续的发展模式,其生态可持续发展水平也接近或达到相关标准;而相对而言,怀来县的发展模式和发展现状距离生态可持续的目标差距较大。而行政区划是导致北京跨界水源地境内外发展模式不同的重要原因。     

Do consumers still believe what is said in online product reviews? A persuasion knowledge approach

The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of knowledge about manipulated online product reviews on the effectiveness of such reviews in influencing consumers' product evaluations. The results of two empirical studies show that consumers clearly differ with regard to their knowledge that product reviews can be manipulated and that consumers who have such knowledge are less influenced in their product evaluations by reviews, specifically by negative ones. Furthermore, the effects of negative reviews are even weaker when consumers acquire their knowledge through a highly credible source (compared to a less credible source).     

并购对价与融资方式选择:控制权转移与风险承担——基于吉利并购沃尔沃的案例分析

并购对价和融资方式是实现公司控制权转移的支付手段和资金保证,不同的对价和融资方式反映了不同的控制权转移风险。本文以吉利并购沃尔沃为主线,分析并购对价方式和融资方式的影响因素及其对并购整合的影响。本文研究的启示是,相对现金对价,股票对价和混合对价可使并购双方共同分担海外并购风险。在外部融资选择中,除银行贷款、债券或股票融资外,利用海外并购项目的号召力,引进政府资源,实现以项目换资金,对于规避并购融资风险具有重要意义。     

A multi-dimensional Bühlmann credibility approach to modeling multi-population mortality rates

In this paper, we first propose a multi-dimensional Bühlmann credibility approach to forecasting mortality rates for multiple populations, and then compare forecasting performances among the proposed approach, the CBD model, the Lee-Carter model (LC), the joint-k (JoK-LC), the co-integrated (CoI-LC), and the augmented common factor (ACF-LC) Lee-Carter models for multiple populations. Mortality data from the Human Mortality Database are fitted to the underlying mortality models for both genders of three well-developed countries (the US, the UK, and Japan) and both genders of a developed country (France) and a developing country (Poland) with an age span 25–84 and a wide range of fitting year spans. Empirical illustrations show that the proposed multi-dimensional Bühlmann credibility approach contributes to more accurate forecast results, measured by AMAPE (average of mean absolute percentage errors over all fitting year spans), than the CBD, LC, JoK-LC, CoI-LC and ACF-LC models for three forecasting year spans 2004–2013 (10-year wide), 1994–2013 (20-year wide) and 1984–2013 (30-year wide).