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Country of origin has profound effects on consumer behavior; yet few studies have examined an antecedent of these effects: why some countries enjoy a positive image while others suffer a negative one. Developing an institutional theory of country image, the authors argue that weak legal institutions at the country level increase firm opportunistic behavior that expropriates consumers and decrease the product quality of local brands, thus decreasing the country’s image regarding its products and brands.

This study measures country image for products and brands using the number of valuable brands (i.e. brands included in the top 500 brands from 2008 to 2016) in a particular home country. Data concerning the rule of law in each country come from the World Bank, and data on the efficiency of countries’ judicial systems comes from Djankov et al. (2007). We also collect patent data from the US Patent and Trade Office, national culture from Hofstede Insights and GDP and GDP per capita from the World Bank as control variables. Panel Poisson regression, Tobit regression and truncated regression are used in the analyses.

Supporting the institutional theory of country image, both the rule of law and efficiency of the judicial systems show positive and significant effects on country image, even when economy size (GDP), degree of economic development (GDP per capita), level of technology and skill (patents) and culture are controlled.

To improve their country’s image and the brand value of local firms, policymakers should strive to strengthen legal institutions aimed at punishing firm opportunistic behavior in their countries.

Previous research on the country-of-origin effect has not yet appreciated the role of legal institutions in developing the construct of country image.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of TikTok, a popular short-form video marketing platform, on purchase intention for cosmetics among Generation Z consumers in Singapore.

A quantitative survey was conducted using a convenience sampling method, with a sample of 136 responses. This study examined the influence of various characteristics of TikTok influencers, such as trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness and entertainment content, on purchase intention.

This study found that trustworthiness and expertise of influencers, as well as entertainment content, had a significant positive impact on purchase intention. In addition, this study also found that influencer attractiveness and brand anthropomorphism were also significant factors influencing purchase intention. Thise study highlights the importance of the entertainment value, which is in line with the nature of TikTok as a medium.

This study contributes to the limited literature on the effectiveness of TikTok on purchase intention in Singapore, specifically in the cosmetics industry.

Although recent models of place branding have proposed culture as a crucial element in establishing a strong place or nation brand, the way in which cultural products influence the brand equity of other products from the same nation has not yet been studied. This study aims to argue that when a nation has strong legal institutions, as perceived by investors and managers, it offers fertile soil for cultivating cultural products that, when exported, can act as “cultural ambassadors,” promoting the country image in the minds of consumers and the value of the country's brands.

Exports of cultural products are provided by UNESCO. Valuable brands are those that brand finance included in its global top 500 most valuable brands list. The rule of law is provided by the World Bank. Panel regression models are used.

Supporting the hypotheses, exports of cultural products show positive effects on the value of brands from that country, and the rule of law shows positive effects on exports of cultural products.

Policymakers could improve the brand value of local firms by promoting exports of cultural products. To do so, policymakers should initiate judicial reforms that strengthen the rule of law to protect contracts and property rights.

This study examines the hitherto underexplored effects that a country's cultural product exports have on the brand value of firms from that country. Most prior research has focused on factors affecting imports of cultural products.

Although multinational enterprises (MNEs) based in emerging economies arose quickly during the past decade, most of these firms lack marketing capabilities and strong brands. Emerging-economy MNEs that have tried to build their own brands have been largely unsuccessful. The purpose of this paper is to argue that corruption in the MNEs’ home countries has been detrimental to their brand values. Corruption makes it more difficult for consumers to govern their transactions with local firms, thus decreasing firms’ trustworthiness and brand values.

Data of the global top 500 most valuable brands of 2008 and 2014 and the Poisson regression model are used.

This study finds that firms based in countries with lower levels of corruption establish more valuable brands than those based in countries with higher corruption, even when GDP and GDP per capita are controlled.

Policymakers who want to help local firms increase their marketing capabilities and establish strong brands should strive to increase the trustworthiness of local firms by undertaking anti-corruption reforms aimed at protecting consumers.

Few studies have address the research question that why emerging-market MNEs lack marketing capabilities and strong brands. This study finds that institutional factors such as corruption at country level prevent them from establishing strong brands.

A chaotic system is a nonlinear deterministic system that displays complex, noisy‐like and unpredictable behavior. The interest in chaotic systems lies mostly upon their complex, unpredictable behavior, and extreme sensitivity to initial conditions as well as parameter variations. Based on wavelet neural network's (WNN) online approximation ability, the purpose of this paper is to propose an adaptive Gaussian wavelet neural control (AGWNC) system to control a chaotic system.

The proposed AGWNC system is composed of a wavelet neural controller and a compensation tangent controller. The wavelet neural controller utilizes a Gaussian WNN to mimic an ideal controller, and the compensation tangent controller is designed to compensate the approximation error between the ideal and the wavelet neural controllers. The controller parameters of the proposed AGWNC can online tune in the Lyapunov sense, thus the uniformly ultimately bounded stability of closed‐loop system can be guaranteed.

The proposed AGWNC system is applied to a chaotic system. Simulation results are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed AGWNC scheme. Simulation results show that not only the favorable control performance can be achieved but also the control efforts without any chattering phenomena. Moreover, all controller parameters can be online tuning by the derived adaptive laws based on the Lyapunov function.

The proposed AGWNC approach is interesting for the design of an intelligent control scheme. The main contributions of this paper are: the overall closed‐loop control system is globally stable in uniform ultimate boundedness; the tracking error can be asymptotically attenuated to a desired small level around zero by appropriate chosen parameters and learning rates; and the AGWNC system can achieve favorable tracking performance.

Because of relatively short product life cycles, radical product innovation has more significant influences on firms' competitive advantages in dynamic environments. Past studies identified various cultural characteristics of a firm, which are key drivers of developing radical product innovation on an ongoing basis. However, few studies have investigated the interaction between organizational culture and external market feedback in developing radical product innovation.

To address the identified research gaps, this empirical research began by presenting conceptual foundations that lead to the hypothesized model and then analyzed survey data from 201 original equipment manufacturer suppliers in search of evidence supporting the hypotheses.

The results suggested that a supplier's entrepreneurial orientation and long-term orientation significantly and positively affected proactive market orientation, with proactive market orientation significantly and positively correlated with radical product innovation. The study confirmed that a proactive market orientation is essential in order for entrepreneurial orientation and long-term orientation to affect radical product innovation. Additionally, this study found that supplier–customer electronic integration has a moderating effect on proactive market orientation and radical product innovation.

Radical product innovation is a topic of great interest for both academia and industry, yet a comprehensive conceptual framework for its antecedents is still lacking. To fill this theoretical gap, the present study extended the studies on radical product innovation and examined the relationship between different strategic orientation types in terms of supplier–customer strategic behaviors to determine how suppliers enhance radical product innovation.

The purpose of this study is to develop resin composite materials composed of polycaprolactone (PCL) acrylates and hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles for ultraviolet digital light projection (DLP) three-dimensional (3D) printing technique.

Two PCL-based triacrylates, namely, glycerol-3 caprolactone-triacrylate (Gly-3CL-TA) and glycerol-6 caprolactone-triacrylate (Gly-6CL-TA) were synthesized from ring-opening polymerization of ε-caprolacton monomer in the presence of glycerol and then acrylation was performed using acryloyl chloride. 3D printing resins made of Gly-3CL-TA or Gly-6CL-TA, 5% HA and 3% of photoinitiator 2,4,6-Trimethylbenzoyl-diphenyl-phosphineoxide were then formulated. The surface topography, surface element composition, flexural strength, flexural modulus, cytotoxicity and degradation of the PCL-based scaffolds were then characterized.

Resin composite composed of Gly-3CL-TA or Gly-6CL-TA and 5% (w/w) of HA can be printed by 405 nm DLP 3D printers. The former has lower viscosity and thus can form a more uniform layer-by-layer structure, while the latter exhibited a higher flexural strength and modulus after being printed. Both composite materials are non-cytotoxic and degradable.

This study provides a direction of the formulation of environment-friendly resin composite for DLP 3D printing. Both resin composites have huge potential in tissue engineering applications.

This study aims to propose an integrated view and emphasize the importance of bank intangible value binding in customers' robo-advisory adoption. It explores the relationship between robo-advisors and traditional banking and defines the role of bank intangible assets value. It also attempts to understand if trust in the banking institution and the financial consultant determines the effect of these relationships.

The target sample of the study was investors who currently use wealth management services. This study collected 228 valid questionnaires and then executed structural equation model analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results showed that intangible value bindings play a mediating role, which positively affects consumers' willingness to adopt robo-advisors. Consumers' trust in banks and financial consultants are antecedent variables, which positively affect the intangible value bindings between consumers and banks. In addition, when the consumers' investment amount is higher, it will weaken the positive relationship between the intangible value binding and robo-advisor adoption intention.

Most of the past studies have focused on whether robo-advisors would replace personal financial consultants. This study proposes a hybrid model that contains both robo-advisors and traditional banking services, which encourage the acceptance of robo-advisors.

During COVID-19 restrictions, people spent more time in cyberspace and consuming health-related information. An increase was also observed in mediated caring messages or health-relevant information sent to one another. This study aims to explore how the information and interactions around COVID-19 can provide a good learning opportunity for public health, specifically related to eHealth literacy and eHealth promotion.

While mainstream literature has concentrated on experimental designs and a priming effect, this study inspects psychological distance related to a health threat under real-life circumstances. The article adopted a survey approach and utilized PLS-SEM techniques to examine the proposed hypotheses.

Results indicated that whereas closer social support correlates with closer psychological distance and less usage of the social media approach, more substantial COVID-19 impacts were associated with closer psychological distance but greater use of social media. Since both closer psychological distance and social media approach contribute to eHealth literacy, social support from closer and virtual social networks should be embraced but utilized through different routes and for different purposes. The timing of messages but not psychological distance affects people's social media approach, indicating that morning messages should be employed. Moreover, eHealth literacy mediates timing preferences and leads to a preference for eHealth communication earlier in the day. Overall, morning messages create a virtuous circle during a health crisis.

This paper establishes a mechanism of virtuous cycles for eHealth communication during a health threat. Additionally, it bridges existing research gaps by expanding chronopsychology and CLT in the health domain using an empirical approach, a real-life case and an extension of performance regarding information-seeking and utilization.

The present study conceptualizes and examines the interplay of transformational leadership, ambidexterity and wireless information technology (IT) competency for enhancing innovative capability.

Drawing primarily on the knowledge-based and dynamic capabilities view theory, the present study explored supply chains of a large global apparel company and their effect on innovative capability through a mixed methods approach.

The results show that transformational leaders strongly influence the development of ambidexterity and enhance radical innovative capability through wireless IT competency.

The results of this study suggest that supply chain integration through transformational leadership and wireless IT competency can promote simultaneous exploration and exploitation to enhance innovation.

The growth of cloud and/or virtual supply chains facilitated by digital wireless communications and Internet technology is advancing logistics and supply chain innovations. With increasing global competition, digitalized supply chains and ever-growing environmental uncertainty, leadership traits, especially transformational leadership and ambidextrous leaders, can be major contributing factors for successful development of wireless IT competency to support innovative capability.

Wireless IT competency facilitates knowledge integration particularly for combining prior internal knowledge of exploitative innovation with new external knowledge to develop explorative innovation.