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The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.

This research paper aims to illustrate that the new product communication effects of mental simulation (process-vs. outcome-focused) might depend on product attributes (typicality and benefits). Communication effects include ad attitudes and product attitudes in this study.

One 2 (mental simulation: process-focused vs. outcome-focused) x 2 (attribute typicality: high vs. low) x 2 (attribute benefits: hedonic vs. utilitarian) between-subjects experiment design was conducted. SPSS was used to do data analysis.

This article reveals that high (low) typicality of new attributes causes a process-focused (outcome-focused) simulation to lead to better consumer attitudes (i.e. ad attitude and product attitude). In addition, for a new hedonic attribute, a low typical attribute induces better consumer attitudes. Furthermore, there are interaction among mental simulation, product attribute typicality and benefits. These findings have important implications for academic developments and marketing management.

Compared with previous studies, this study is unique in several ways. First, enterprises often develop new products by introducing new product attributes (i.e. new features). Product attribute typicality is an interesting issue for new product design and communication. This research illustrates that the marketing communication effects of attribute typicality depends on attribute benefits and mental simulation. Second, the current research finds the new product attribute benefit (i.e. hedonic/utilitarian) play an important role and moderates the effects of mental simulation on consumer attitudes.

The purpose of this research is to survey whether consumer ethnocentrism and animosity will affect consumers' perceived betrayal and cause negative word-of-mouth (NWOM).

This study conducted a 2 (consumer ethnocentrism) × 3 (consumer animosity) between-subject experiment design to test the hypotheses. Comprised of 380 respondents, this study used ANOVA to examine the data.

The results showed that if a brand violates the perception of fairness, ethnocentrism and animosity will have a positive effect on perceived betrayal. In addition, low consumer animosity revealed a significant consumer ethnocentrism effect and low ethnocentrism revealed a significant animosity effect, while the relationship between perceived betrayal and word of mouth is negative.

The current research adds to the understanding about how the reaction to a domestic brand's marketing strategies that are viewed as unfair and hurt the domestic consumers' expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if self-rated and peer-rated organizational citizenship behavior mediated the relationship between affective commitment and intention to leave in Malaysia.

A survey yielded 516 responses from multiple locations in Malaysia across varied industries for a response rate of 64.5 percent. Validity based on confirmatory factor analysis and reliability were confirmed.

Affective commitment influenced self- and peer-rated organizational citizenship behavior and intention to leave. Only self-rated organizational citizenship behavior partially mediated affective commitment and intention to leave. While self-rated organizational citizenship behavior increased intention to leave positively, peer-rated organizational citizenship behavior did not influence intention to leave.

The findings confirm earlier research that self-ratings and peer-ratings are different, and, surprisingly, organizational citizenship behavior is not a factor supporting talent retention. Human resource practitioners need to shift their focus to affective commitment that reduces intention to leave and increases organizational citizenship behavior.

Past studies on organizational citizenship behavior relied on self-ratings, supervisor-ratings, or both ratings used in Western contexts. Little was known about the assessment of organizational citizenship behavior from peer perspectives and its relationship between affective commitment and intention to leave. Moreover, the relationships between affective commitment and self-rated and peer-rated organizational citizenship behavior were inconsistent. This study responded to those gaps by integrating affective commitment, self-rated, and peer-rated organizational citizenship behavior, and intention to leave into a single hypothesized model.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between the strength of intellectual capital (IC) and small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) innovation performance.

Primary data of 150 SMEs belonging to manufacturing medium-high tech industries were collected through a survey. The methodology consists of a confirmatory factor analysis and a cluster analysis, complemented by a t-test, to assess whether there is a significant difference in terms of innovation performance of SMEs characterized by a different strength of IC.

Overall, the findings show that SMEs of the sample can be divided into two groups characterized by a different strength of IC, and those SMEs disclosing a higher strength of IC, in terms of human capital, innovation capital and relational capital, exhibit a significantly higher radical and incremental innovation performance.

The present study provides SME entrepreneurs and managers with an empirical evidence that possessing strong IC in its three dimensions seems to help SMEs reinforce their ability to generate both radical and incremental innovation. This calls that SME entrepreneurs and managers need to identify and effectively manage IC in order to strengthen and effectively leverage their investments on IC.

This study is particularly relevant because, instead of focusing on single categories of IC as previous studies mainly do, it adopts an overarching perspective of the dimensions of IC and their impact on both radical and incremental innovation performance. Moreover, it focuses on the SME context which has been less investigated than large firms within the domain of IC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of strategic control and operational control on new venture performance in the China context.

This study tests the hypotheses in a sample of 83 new ventures that have equity investment by established firms and are founded between 1993 and 2007 that issued initial public offerings while not more than eight years old.

The results of this study show that: strategic control has a significantly negative relationship with new venture performance; operational control has a significantly positive relationship with new venture performance; industry relatedness between the corporate investor and the new venture and the new venture’s political ties moderate the relationships between the two types of control and new venture performance. The results are robust to alternative measurements of new venture performance.

The management control that the corporate investor exercises over the new venture is a significant determinant of the new venture success. Managers have to distinguish between strategic control and operational control and understand their impacts on new ventures.

This study highlights the issue of management of corporate venturing capital relationships from the new venture’s perspective. In addition, this study separates strategic and operational control within management control and examines how they influence new venture performance.

This paper aims to examine the potential moderating effect of knowledge management on the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on organizational performance.

Questionnaire data were collected from 170 distinct companies in Taiwan.

The results confirm the positive influence of CSR on organizational performance. There are also some interesting moderating effects of knowledge management in the CSR–performance relationship.

A major contribution of this study is its confirmation of the context-dependence nature of CSR and the potential moderating effect of knowledge management between CSR and organizational performance.

Playing exergames may resemble doing conventional exercise and thus has the potential to enhance users’ health. However, no study has yet examined whether and how a need for exercise impacts users’ intention to continuously play exergames, i.e. continuance intention and its antecedents. We developed a model grounded in the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) to address this issue.

We recruited 583 participants to play exergames and collected their psychological responses and physical information. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

We found that health consciousness and perceived exercise benefits are positively related to a need for exercise, which is, in turn, positively related to continuance intention. Moreover, perceived exergame similarity with exercise strengthens the positive link between the need for exercise and continuance intention.

This is the first study using the UGT to explain the underlying mechanism linking health consciousness to continuance intention in the playing of exergames. In addition, we introduced the need for exercise as a novel construct in this study. Our findings provide insights to managers on incorporating health-related features into their exergame products to motivate users' engagement in playing exergames.

The main purpose of this study is to explain a firm's global initiatives from the intellectual capital (IC) perspective.

This study presents empirical evidence on the relationships among intellectual capital, business environment, and global initiatives using a sample of firms located in Taiwan but competing in the global market. Altogether 168 companies took part in the study.

The findings have confirmed that intellectual capital is positively associated with a firm's global initiatives. There is also moderating effect of the business environment on the relationship between intellectual capital and global initiatives. The important role of intellectual capital is highlighted for firms intending to compete in the international arena. The importance of human capital (top management teams' visionary leadership) also increases as the environment becomes more dynamic.

The dimensions and measures provided by this study might serve as a starting point for further studies on the management of intellectual capital in the international context. With a longitudinal study design and large‐scale questionnaire survey, the study might enrich the existing literature by identifying the intellectual capital‐global initiatives relationship and exploring the moderating effect of the environment on the intellectual capital‐global initiatives relationship. The study might further contribute to the literature by focusing on Taiwan rather than a developed Western economy as employed in related work.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX), knowledge sharing and performance.

To reach the objective, a sample was used which consisted of some oil and gas companies in Singapore with experience in balanced scorecard (BSC) perspectives. The partial least-squares structural equation modeling approach was used to test the model.

The results showed that LMX affects knowledge sharing and performance positively and meaningfully. Moreover, knowledge sharing affects performance.

An integrated model of LMX, knowledge sharing and performance was tested in the oil and gas industry. The combination of a developed country context and the significance of LMX enhances the contextual contribution of the paper.