Search results

This paper aims to explore the power of appeals based on fear mixed with challenge co-designed with vulnerable consumers in motivating the use of credence services.

A qualitative phase (Study 1), comprising focus groups of self-identified at-risk gamblers, revealed a series of conceptual themes for advertising stimuli that were then tested empirically (Study 2) on the likelihood to use credence services in a gambling context. Individual characteristics such as tolerance of ambiguity were also tested for their potential moderating influence.

In comparison to appeals based on single emotions, fear mixed with the challenge has a significantly stronger impact on intentions to use credence services in at-risk gamblers. Findings confirm the indirect positive impact of fear mixed with the challenge via sequential mediators of involvement with advertising and attitude towards credence service advertising. The moderating role of tolerance of ambiguity on credence service use intentions was confirmed.

The potential of a fear mixed with challenge appeal to motivate vulnerable consumers to seek credence services has not been investigated to date. The findings contribute to both the transformative service research and advertising literature streams by providing valuable insights into promotional campaigns aimed at vulnerable consumers such as at-risk gamblers.

Based on the situational approach for envy, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of two-dimensional workplace envy (being envied and envying others) on the task and contextual performance of employees working in either private or public sector organizations.

This study was conducted on survey data collected from 988 private sector employees and 530 employees from the public sector employed in Istanbul. Following a quantitative empirical design, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The study results revealed that envying-others dimension has a significant negative effect on both task performance and contextual performance. In addition, the findings indicate more envious feelings of private sector employees than public sector employees. For public sector employees, male participants were found to envy others more than females.

In addition to the contributions, this study has its limitations. First, although the study was carried out with a comprehensive sample, it is limited to the views of 1,518 employees in Istanbul and is a cross-sectional study. Also, employee performance is evaluated through self-reporting, which forms another limitation; it could have been more reliable for the supervisors to assess their subordinates' performance.

Apart from scholars, our findings have implications for practitioners. Feelings such as envy that comes with a sense of competition can create an environment that stimulates people, motivates them to work, can make them productive and can also cause an ultimately destructive situation. This makes it critical to manage envy in the workplace. Though there may be facilitators behind it, one crucial factor that fuels envy in the workplace is the lack of fair human resources policies and systems. Still, human resources management is undeveloped in most public organizations. With effective human resources management, there may be some roadmaps for managers to dissolve conflicts arising from envy. First, it is imperative to have systems that will separate the employee from the others, which everyone will accept, strengthening the feelings of justice among employees. Envy often occurs following a social comparison. Management can implement an incentive system that supports employee collaboration and avoid nepotism. Especially in private organizations where the competition is more among employees, managers should give more attention to understand their subordinates' feelings. The managers' attention to expressing their feelings toward their subordinates could establish an equal distance within the workplace. In this sense, language selection is critical, and managers should be mindful of linguistic triggers. Managers should not avoid giving both positive and negative feedback to their employees. Unwarranted and unsystematic reward and/or punishment systems, made with the good intentions of increasing competition, can trigger envy. Finally, managers should implement an open-door policy and open communication that will encourage all team members to be transparent to each other.

The study was based on a rationale that envy has detrimental workplace outcomes that lead to low task and contextual performance. Although there exists a recent interest for examining the relation between workplace envy and employee performance, based on being envied and envying others dimensions, these studies are limited. This study focuses on these dimensions and performance relations, and it also provides a comparative outlook for public and private sector employees in Turkey in terms of workplace envy.

This paper aims to examine the interesting but largely unexamined effects of pride-tagged money and surprise-tagged money on consumers’ spending and product-choosing behaviors.

The present research utilizes experimental design and survey methods to collect data and the ANOVA and bootstrap analysis methods to verify the assumed hypotheses.

Study 1 shows that people with pride-tagged (vs surprise-tagged) money are more likely to spend the money for themselves (vs others) and the personal achievement-expression motive plays a mediating role between the pride-tagged money and self-spending behavior. Study 2 replicates the findings of Study 1 and suggests that people with pride-tagged money are less likely to spend the money for others (e.g. donating). Study 3 shows that people with pride-tagged (surprise-tagged) money are more likely to purchase a self-relevant (other-relevant) product than those with surprise-tagged (pride-tagged) money.

The current research has classified products into self-relevant products (e.g. fitness card, supermarket gift card and mobile game equipment) and other-relevant products (e.g. restaurant set meal, pizza, movie ticket and hot pot) on the basis of perceived self-relevance on the products. Therefore, marketers could frame certain conditions that elicit self-relevant versus other-relevant choices and manipulate self-relevant versus other-relevant primes to shift preferences in favor of certain options. For example, around graduation time, graduates often feel proud of their accomplishments. In this case, marketers could take advantage of that feeling with a message like “treat yourself”, which could prompt them to spend more money for themselves. In addition, the marketers selling other-relevant products (e.g. pizza and hot pot) might develop and promote advertisements that deliver information about “sharing with your friends”. For example, in 2016, Pizza Hut began to use its new slogan of “love to share” to convey the idea of “double happiness as a result of sharing”.

From a theoretical standpoint, first, this research contributes to the emotional accounting research by advancing the notion that money associated with different positive feelings could influence consumers’ spending behaviors in different ways. Second, the research distinguishes self-relevant products from other-relevant products. Third, it shows that people with pride-tagged money and those with surprise-tagged money have different preferences for products. Self-relevant products, such as fitness card, supermarket gift card and mobile game equipment, that represent a certain degree of independence are more used and/or consumed by consumers with pride-tagged money, whereas other-relevant products, such as restaurant set meal, pizza, movie ticket and hot pot, that involve the perceptions of interdependence are more bought by consumers with surprise-tagged money to share with others.

In consideration of the lack of research regarding airline lounge customers’ behavior, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among brand personality, self-congruity, functional congruity, positive emotion, customer satisfaction and revisit intentions in airline lounges.

On the basis of theoretical associations among study constructs, a conceptual model was proposed and tested using the data collected from airline lounge patrons through an online survey.

The empirical results showed that brand personality was positively related to self-congruity. Self-congruity was significantly associated with positive emotions and functional congruity. In addition, functional congruity was significantly associated with positive emotions. This result also indicated that positive emotion significantly influenced customer satisfaction. The mediation tests showed that both self-congruity and functional congruity significantly affected customer satisfaction through positive emotion. Customer satisfaction was a significant predictor of revisit intentions within the context of airline lounges.

Overall, these results help airline lounge operators understand lounge travelers who become more demanding with regard to brand personality, self-congruity and functional congruity.

This research was the first to test the effectiveness of image congruity theory in the domain of airline lounges. Our findings contribute to the body of knowledge on customer behaviors in airline lounges and image congruity.

The effect of affect in accounting contexts has recently attracted interest, but numerous questions still remain. Given that affect can significantly impact a variety of accounting judgments and decisions in theoretically different manners, the purpose of this synthesis is to understand the state of extant accounting literature in affect and identify directions for future research.

This synthesis systematically reviews experimental accounting papers related to affect in both theoretical and functional respects. The authors first elaborate on the affect infusion theory as the theoretical foundation for the synthesis. The authors then present the sampling method. In Section 4, the authors conceptually and factually summarize affect accounting papers in terms of four major functional areas: auditing, managerial/corporate accounting, tax and financial accounting. The implications of moderators examined in some papers are also discussed. Finally, the authors conclude by revisiting the importance of affect in accounting contexts.

Throughout the synthesis, the authors provide future research opportunities with respect to theories, each functional area and other gaps in the accounting literature.

This synthesis contributes to the accounting literature by providing a pathway to understand the development of accounting research on affect, integrating theoretical foundations and offering future research opportunities to advance the literature.

Luxury consumption research has focused more on the consumers of goods than services, despite the trend that consumers are more interested in luxury services, such as luxury hospitality services, than ever before. Additionally, the results regarding the factors that can influence consumers’ luxury service product purchase intentions can be further tested. The purpose of this research is to examine the factors that contribute to consumers’ luxury hotel stay repurchase intentions, to further develop the luxury hospitality service consumption literature and to identify implications for practitioners to consider.

To contribute to the luxury consumption literature, this research incorporates a “luxury hotel brand attachment” variable into a luxury consumption value model to examine consumers’ intentions to repurchase luxury hotel stays when traveling for tourism purposes. The authors draw on a survey of over 450 luxury hotel consumers.

The findings confirm that luxury hotels’ perceived functional value, hedonic value and symbolic/expressive value affect consumers’ emotions, which in turn affects their luxury hotel attachment and repurchase intentions. In addition, luxury hotel attachment moderates the influence of emotion on repurchase intention.

Luxury hotels need to review their customers’ emotions during their stay and their attachment with the hotel. These factors can influence customers’ repurchase intentions. To stimulate customers’ emotions, luxury hotels need to offer functional value (e.g. attentive service staff), hedonic/expressive value (e.g. position as a form of self-indulgence) and symbolic value (e.g. conspicuous lobby). However, managers should know that having superior perceived functional value does not influence customers’ repurchase intentions directly. These characteristics may be commonly shared by most luxury hotels. Furthermore, they do not need to be too worried about providing financial value (e.g. value-for-money).

This study conceptualizes tourists’ luxury hotel stay intentions by examining the influence of perceived luxury value (i.e. functional value, financial value, hedonic value and symbolic/expressive value), tourists’ emotions and luxury hotel brand attachment. In addition, this research explores how luxury hotel brand attachment can moderate the relationship between consumers’ emotions and their repurchase intentions. Several implications of the study are identified, and avenues for future research are suggested.

Based on appraisal theory and social response theory, this study aims to explore the mechanism of AI failure types on consumer recovery expectation from the perspective of service failure assessment and validate the moderate role of anthropomorphism level.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to validate the research model. First, to test the effect of robot service failure types on customer recovery expectation; second, to further test the mediating role of perceived controllability, perceived stability and perceived severity; finally, to verify the moderating effect of anthropomorphic level.

Non-functional failures reduce consumer recovery expectation compared to functional failures; perceived controllability and perceived severity play a mediating role in the impact of service failure types on recovery expectation; the influence of service failure types on perceived controllability and perceived severity is moderated by the anthropomorphism level.

The findings enrich the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of service failure types, and have implications for online enterprise follow-up service recovery and improvement of anthropomorphic design.

This research aims to predict private club members’ intentions to switch service providers based on the benefit exchange theory through a structural model with a second-order factor.

This study uses a qualitative procedure to develop a functional, social and psychological model based on the benefit exchange and switching intention literatures. A further quantitative analysis surveyed a sample of 366 private club members and assessed the usefulness of this model.

The results of the confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling indicate that social benefits have a stronger impact on switching intention than loss of functional benefits under the context of a high level of interaction between members and between members and service providers. In addition, they confirm the moderating effects of psychological benefits on the relationship between functional benefits and switching intention.

The findings indicate that members are unlikely to switch if there are positive word of mouth and interpersonal interactions between members and the club (social benefits). Even if they are disappointed with the functional benefits of the club’s products or services, they may still choose to stay with it owing to psychological benefits affecting their decision to switch. The findings offer managerial insights into utilizing relationship marketing activities to strengthen interpersonal relationships, word of mouth, trust, commitment and emotional factors to retain members.

This research confirms that the benefit exchange theory can explain members’ intentions to switch from their current clubs and provides valuable recommendations to managers on retaining their clubs’ members. Because the switching intentions of club members have not previously been adequately studied, this study fills an important gap in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of gender on the neural substrates of theories on consumer behavior (i.e. the original compared with the revised versions of consumer learning [CL] theory) and to examine whether gender influences brain activation associated with word-of-mouth (WOM) communications (i.e. information specificity, source expertise and tie strength) after a product harm crisis. This article also discusses the WOM effects of product quality perception, negative emotion and purchase intentions by precise localizing brain activity.

This study applied functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity (i.e. the blood oxygen level-dependent signal) during WOM communication after a product harm crisis.

The male participants treat the product quality as a constant and tend to support the original CL theory. The female participants, however, showed differentiable brain activation across three factors, suggesting a dynamic representation for product quality (i.e. not a constant), and they appear to be more sensitive to the revised CL theory.

This paper concluded that the original CL theory applies to males and the revised version applies to females. Therefore, gender determines whether the original or the revised version of the CL theory works in consumers’ decision-making, and the extant of research has not focused on the information after a product harm crisis in terms of whether the information being communicated is specific or tensile through WOM communication.

This study seeks to understand the communication factors associated with effective social media for nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Specifically, the study investigated how interactive and emotional communication strategies influence public engagement in different ways, and how the effects differ by service-oriented and other types of NPOs.

Using computer-assisted textual and emotional analyses, the authors examined the functional interactivity, contingency interactivity and emotion elements of 301,559 tweets from the 100 largest US nonprofits. Negative binomial regression was applied to test the relationships among these elements and public engagement on Twitter (i.e. likes and retweets).

Findings revealed negative effects of functional interactivity on likes, negative effects of contingency interactivity on likes and retweets but a positive effect of functional interactivity on retweets. The findings also showed negative effects of emotion valence on likes and retweets but positive effects of emotion strength on likes and retweets. There were varying effects of interactivity and emotion on public engagement for service-oriented and other types of NPOs.

This study advances the nonprofit social media scholarship in several ways. First, this study suggests a clear yet largely ignored distinction in the effects of functional and contingency interactivity on public engagement. Second, this study is an early attempt to examine the role and impact of emotion elements in nonprofit social media success without downplaying the role of interactivity. Third, this study is one of the earliest attempts to include interaction effects for different types of NPOs. Last, this study contributes to the organizational social media use research by demonstrating the benefits of computer-assisted approaches in processing text data on social media. From a practical perspective, this study provides strategic guidelines for NPOs to design effective communication contents and improve their public engagement on social media.