기후변화로 인해 농경지의 병해충 발생 세대수가 증가하고 있으며, 노린재류 등을 포함한 일부 해충의 경우에는 발생량도 증가하는 경향을 보이고 있다. 볼록총채벌레, 붉은불개미 등 열대 및 아열대 지역 원산 외래해충의유입도 늘어나고 있는 실정이다. 따라서 우리는 이러한 외래종의 국내에서의 정확한 발생특성을 이해하고 이러한 해충의 발생지에서 기후노출지수(생육적온에 놓인 날의 횟수, 발생지역의 상대습도)와 해충의 고유생육 특성과 관련되는 민감도 지수(기주식물, 월동란밀도, 월동생존율 등) 그리고 돌발 해충의 발생시 방제할 수 있는 적응능력 등에 관한 자료를 취합하여 시군구별 이들 해충발생의 취약성(vulnerability)을 평가한다. 시군구별 이들 돌발해충의 발생 취약성 평가를 위한 실태조사(Surveillance)는 정점조사(Fixed plot survey)와 순회조사(Roving survey)를 실시하였고, 특정 지역에 특정 해충의 발생여부를 조사하는 일반실태조사(General surveillance)와 발생량 및 발생시기, 기주식물 등을 조사하는 특별실태조사(Specific survey)를 실시하였고 해충종별로 페로몬 트랩(pheromone trap), 황색끈끈이트랩(yellow stiky trap), 유아등 트랩(light trap) 등을 이용하여 발생여부 및 발생량을 조사하여 분석에 이용하였다.

Many herbivorous insects sequester plant defense compounds from their host plants to protect themselves from natural enemies. In plants, these defense compounds are often stored as protoxins separated from their activating enzymes. A well-known example is the glucosinolate-myrosinase defense system in plants of the order Brassicales. When plant tissue is ingested by herbivores, glucosinolates are hydrolyzed by the enzyme myrosinase to form highly reactive isothiocyanates. We previously reported that flea beetles of the genus Phyllotreta selectively sequester high amounts of glucosinolates from their crucifer host plants, and convergently evolved their own myrosinase which enables them to utilize sequestered glucosinolates for their own purposes (Beran et al., 2014). The presence of intact glucosinolates in these beetles suggests that despite tissue damage, ingested glucosinolates are not activated by the plant myrosinase. Rapid and efficient glucosinolate uptake from the gut lumen into gut epithelial cells can prevent hydrolysis and thus might be crucial to overcome this activated plant defense. We use the horseradish flea beetle Phyllotreta armoraciae as a model to study the molecular basis of sequestration in insects. In short-term feeding experiments, we showed that ingested glucosinolates are rapidly sequestered in the foregut. To identify the transporters that mediate glucosinolate import from the foregut lumen into gut epithelial cells, we focused on the MFS transporter family, which is known to transport a wide range of substrates. A phylogenetic analysis of putative MFS transporter sequences identified in P. armoraciae and other beetles revealed several specifically expanded clades in P. armoraciae. Out of 21 candidate genes that were heterologously expressed in Sf9 cells, nine showed glucosinolate transport activity in vitro. Interestingly, most candidate genes were exclusively expressed in the malpighian tubules, and two genes were additionally expressed in the foregut. We currently elucidate the function of these transporters in glucosinolate sequestration in vivo using RNAi. To better understand the function of sequestered glucosinolates, we performed bioassays with P. armoraciae larvae and the generalist predatory ladybird Harmonia axyridis. Upon predator attack, P. armoraciae larvae emitted high amounts of isothiocyanates and ladybird larvae stopped feeding within a few seconds and were highly irritated. However, silencing myrosinase gene expression in P. armoraciae larvae led to increased mortality compared to control larvae in survival assays with ladybird larvae. Our results demonstrate how Phyllotreta use plant defense metabolites to defend themselves against predators.

본 논문은 ｢레다와 백조｣와 ｢한 아일랜드 공군비행사는 자신의 죽음을 예상하다｣를 활용하여 두 가지 주장을 한다. 먼저 모두에게 공통적인 일련의 능력에 자신의 시를 고정시키기 위해서 문법적 기법들을 현란하게 전개하는데, 본질적인 인생을 정의하기 위해서 사용된다. 둘째, 헤겔의 I = I라는 공식(자아는 항상 자신의 역사적 의식을 말하려 하는데)으로 자신을 말하는 능력보다는 자아의 대화로 형성되는 지속적으로 변하는 것으로 정의되는 행위자로 보는 경향으로 바뀌는 문학세계의 맥락으로 생각하는 자아의 가치의 가능성에 대해서 논의한다.

This article has shown the actuality of Chinese character teaching activities by using the method of name-choosing with 井. First of all, teachers must design the name question into the curriculum activity. While I started from the question of “assuming Xu Shen’s opening of a bookstore and how to get its name”, the students collectively completed the kanji character on the blackboard. Furthermore, the questioning method is used to promote student thinking, and the teacher is to give students feedback on the knowledge of the Chinese characters, sounds, and meanings. Finally, the teacher will explain the origin and development of the word “彧” in the structure of shape, sound, and meaning. The Chinese character teaching method provided in this article is an innovative and effective learning that can promote the teacher-student interaction. If we can implement this method through the teacher education, we will have a refreshing experience in the dissemination of international character education!

Introduction The fashion business is known as one of the major industries that is suffering from rising concerns about the consumption of its product, which led to a reorganization of the fashion supply chain to become more sustainable three decades ago. The interest in the concept of sustainability and demand for sustainable marketing activities is gradually growing in the fashion industry due to the negative image and press it receives. Within the luxury fashion segment, the three main themes that are recognized to contribute to sustainability are exclusivity, craftmanship and limited production. However, luxury brands are increasingly shifting their attention and commitment towards environmental and social issues to be incorporated in the concept of sustainability. Yet, the majority of consumers has little understanding or misunderstands the concept of sustainable fashion and marketing, which leads to a gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual behavior. As a result, fashion brands are trying to leverage their brand by making sustainability a key marketing strategy to raise awareness about social, environmental, economic and cultural issues. Extant research has not explored this recent trend to understand how consumers evaluate fashion brands with a sustainable marketing communication, especially in the context of luxury brands. This study investigates how luxury and mass fashion brands can utilize sustainable marketing contents in social media communication to reach their target group and enhance their equity with sustainability associations. Theoretical Development Associative network models of memory have served as a fundamental framework for a wide range of studies related to the formation and transfer of associations. According to associative network theory, brand knowledge is represented in form of an associative network of memory nodes connected to each other. Nodes are activated when cues, such as advertising, are presented. Mere exposure to cues was shown to be sufficient to active associations and facilitate association transfer. While brands are continuously attempting to make use of associative power to leverage brand equity, extant research has provided compelling reasons to accept that association transfer can also result in brand dilution when a retrieval of conflicting or negative associations occurs. Especially in the context of luxury brands consisting of very unique associations and being different from mass brands in many regards, managing the brand’s associative network is a crucial task in order to send the right signals to consumers and maintain exclusivity. This study investigates how social media communication of different sustainability dimensions affects brand attitude and how it ultimately impacts behavioral outcomes in an attempt to build brand equity for mass and luxury fashion brands. Method and Data The hypotheses are tested with 273 respondents who participated in an online experiment. They were first asked to state their involvement with the category fashion. Subsequently, subjects were presented with a brand post either for the mass or luxury brand including claims related to one of the four sustainability dimensions or no claims for the control group respectively. The experiment consisted of a 2 (brand: mass or luxury) x 5 (sustainability dimensions: none, cultural, economic, environmental, social) factorial design. The measures that followed included attitudinal as well as behavioral constructs related to the brand, sustainability as well as social media use. Analysis of covariance is applied to test for main effects and interaction effects. Summary of Findings This study provides evidence that social media communication of a sustainable brand affects the purchase intention of consumers. The findings indicate a significant difference between the mass and the luxury brand used for this study. The mass brand exhibits the potential to leverage associations with cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability. However, the results only reveal a marginally significant higher purchase intention when cultural sustainability is communicated compared to when the brand does not provide any sustainable associations. In contrast, the luxury brand suffers from significant brand dilution across all four sustainability dimensions resulting in a decline in purchase intention. Key Contributions The findings reveal that sustainability communication exerts a diverging influence depending on the type of brand that is involved. This study suggests that mass brands are able to benefit from sustainability communication in an attempt to leverage brand equity. However, for a luxury brand this type of associations rather presents a liability that might dilute the brand. The findings of this study provide important insights for brand managers. Since mass brands are currently increasing efforts into sustainable communication in the fashion industry, the results suggest that this might be a promising investment. However, luxury brands are advised to carefully manage the communication of salient content related to sustainability as it might harm the invaluable and unique associations inherent in a luxury brand.

Thanks to their competitive price, store brands have important opportunities in emerging countries where customers have greater experience with modern retail products. However, less research has been devoted to the effect of store brand price while it is well known that price image is a critical factor that drives purchase behavior. The aim of this research is to understand how store brand price image factors (relative price, perceived benefit and perceived value) and perceived risk dimensions (functional and financial) affect attitude toward store brands in Colombia. Store brand relative price, store brand perceived benefit and store brand perceived value affect significantly attitude toward store brands in the Colombian context. However, neither store brand perceived functional risk, not store brand perceived financial risk affect attitude toward store brands. These results highlight the specificity of Colombia among emerging countries and have both theoretical and managerial implications.

A wide consensus of research points to an increasing responsibilization of individuals, as consumers engage in self-improvement through services and products (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014). Self-tracking services, with which consumers can monitor physiological and cognitive attributes such as breathing, pulse or mood, are a common manifestation of this change. This responsibilization means that solving structural well-being problems is left to individual consumers (Anderson et al., 2016). However, how this takes place in practice, and how service providers construct their service in this context of responsibilization has not yet been studied within Transformative Service Research. Through qualitatively analyzing text content from the websites of eleven different wearable devices and applications for self-tracking, this paper shows a novel conceptualization of how service providers present well-being capabilities to responsibilized consumers. The findings show that while well-being is in almost all cases concerned with managing a stressful work life, or enhancing the presentation of a healthy self, service providers present consumers with differing types of capabilities for tackling these issues. The first type refers to changing, which implies actively conforming to norms by changing one’s appearance or physique. The second type entails coping, i.e. more passively withstanding and learning to live with stress or pressure. The third type of capability, countering, refers to an active, non-conformist stance towards external norms, instead advocating well-being through self-knowledge. This study contributes to Transformative Service Research by responding to calls for research on well-being as a socio-culturally constructed phenomenon (Anderson & Ostrom, 2015). The findings show how “consumer capabilization” (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014) takes place in practice through services. In addition, it extends discussions on service providers’ abilities to transform or reproduce structures (Edvardsson, Tronvoll & Gruber, 2011; Blocker & Barrios, 2015) and how this can affect well-being.

This paper investigates a theoretical and experimental evidence for a niche strategy for small and medium online shopping malls to survive against large famous shopping malls dominating the E-commerce market. The present study explored both theoretically and empirically how consumers’ preferences for alternatives in online shopping context are affected by their construal level and concentrated its efforts on the verification of the phenomenon under various frames and regarding various categories(Liberman and Trope 1998; Liberman, Trope, and Stephan 2007, Liberman Trope, and Wakslak 2007). For this, this study demonstrates how chronic construal levels of consumers may affect their alternative choice for online shopping via various contexts (Experiment 1-3) and categories (Experiment 3-5). This series of experiments suggests that consumers with high construal level can be defined as a group that is relatively less susceptible to reputation of the shopping malls. Thus, strategically targeting this group of consumers will help small online malls lacking store reputation to mitigate their competitive disadvantage. Based on both existing literature and the experimental results as above, this research discusses possible methods for small online shopping malls to target high-construal segmentation.

In the era of digital retailing, consumer-empowering technologies greatly facilitate the dissemination of complaint messages. Consumer audiences, who view consumer complaints and the subsequent responses made by retailers, consider these messages as critical information sources for decision-making (Weitzl & Hutzinger, 2017). We argue that retailers can use two types of response strategies (warmth- vs. competence-related response) to regulate the information distributed online, and that these strategies may influence consumer audiences’ perceptions and subsequent attitudes and behaviors differently based on their different levels of power (Rucker, Galinsky, & Dubois, 2012). Two experimental studies using a 2 (retailer response: warmth vs. competence) X 2 (audience power: low vs. high) between-subjects design were conducted. Study 1 (N = 240) revealed an interactive effect of power and retailer response on perceived diagnosticity and perceived fairness; and Study 2 (N = 233) showed that the significant moderated mediation for audiences’ perceptions on the relationship between retailer response X audience power and outcome variables. Theoretically, this study enriches the consumer complaint management literature from the perspective of consumer audience. It also sheds light on the power theory by validating its notion in the context of service failure and recovery. Practically, results demonstrate how retailers can effectively respond to negative consumer reviews to maintain customer relationship management with consumer audiences in digital age.

Online reviews enable brands to promote their products by means of word-of-mouth communication. In an e-commerce environment, user-generated customer feedback, as a form of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), is a crucial source of information in the prepurchase stage as many customers base their purchase decision on feedback from other customers. eWOM is perceived as a reliable source of information and has become especially important in an online environment (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Li & Zhan, 2011). Existing research has shown that customer feedback positively influences sales (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Forman, Ghose, & Wiesenfeld, 2008; Ha, Bae, & Son, 2015). Yet, only very limited research on how to communicate customer feedback to maximize a company’s top-line growth has been conducted (Packard & Berger, 2017). In this study, we aim to fill this gap by investigating how numerical customer feedback metrics should be communicated to attract new customers. Using an experiment, we empirically investigate which of the two widely established numerical customer feedback metrics, a customer recommendation rate or a customer satisfaction rate, is better suited to attract new customers and hence stimulate company growth. The impact of the stimulus on the purchase process is measured by means of three different dependent variables to imitate the hierarchy of a purchase decision: consumers’ interest towards the ad, their attitude towards the product shown in the ad as well as their purchase intention. Furthermore, we include several moderating factors, which have proven to be relevant when looking at online reviews, namely product type as well as consumers’ motivation and ability to process persuasive communication (Gupta & Harris, 2010; Klein, 1998; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

This paper investigates the adaptation of suppliers’ business models to the changing customers relationships, with a focus on the fashion industry. The analysis of business models represents an understudied topic in business to business marketing research (Ehret, Kashyap and Wirtz, 2013; La Rocca and Snehota, 2017). In this regard, the paper tries to propose an original contribution by addressing the issue of how suppliers adapt their business models to cope with the needs of their fast fashion customers. It is well known that the fast fashion formula has represented an innovative business model which has generated huge changes within the fashion industry (Barnes and Lea-Greenwood, 2006). While, the business models of global brands, such as those of Zara or H&M, have been deeply studied, minor attention has been given to the business models of the suppliers that interact with this kind of players. Consequently, the paper addresses a research gap that regards the suppliers' business model changes due to the interaction with fast fashion clients. The paper has an exploratory nature. Methodologically, it proposes two qualitative case studies of suppliers in interaction with fast fashion suppliers, pointing out the main features of the adaptation of their business models in the relationship with these clients. The paper contributes to theory and managerial practice pointing out some drivers of change for suppliers with respect to the most evident characteristics of the business model of the buyers. It describes these drivers and proposes some relevant evidences to support the study of business models in business markets.

With the advancement of digital technologies, the importance of inbound marketing in the B2B is increasing rapidly. Previous studies on B2B marketing suggested that compelling content is a key component in B2B suppliers' inbound marketing. The most representative marketing content of B2B supplier firms is BRC (business reference content). BRC refers to a content, such as a ‘case study’ and/or a ‘success story’ that describes, in detail, deliveries of existing satisfied customers. Prior researchers argued that using existing customers as referrers enhances the confidence of potential customers, lowers perception of purchase risk. For these reasons, many B2B marketing experts consider BRC as the core of B2B digital marketing. Nonetheless, little is known regarding with researches on BRC in the academic domain. Therefore, there is urgent need for empirical research and an integrated model that can clarify the underlying mechanism of BRC. The focus of this study is to identify how BRC influences prospective customers' purchase decisions. To examine the underlying mechanism of BRC, our research focused on two unique aspects of BRC: 1) BRC format (narrative formant vs non-narrative format), and 2) ‘transportation’ to explain BRC effect process. Using a scenario-based online experiment, our results provide several interesting insights on the BRC. Results showed that stronger transportation takes place in narrative BRC (vs non-narrative BRC). In addition, narrative BRC has a positive impact on a favorable attitude toward referrer through transportation, which in turn lowers purchase risks (e.g. product performance risk, psychosocial risk, potential financial risk, and potential time risk). The results provide a clear basis for why it is important to use BRC in B2B supplier firms' marketing communication.

Introduction Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in peer to peer (P2P) sharing-service businesses such as Uber and Airbnb. In P2P sharing-service businesses, goods or services are provided by customers (peers) rather than by service firms, who act simply as an intermediary between customers. One customer acts as a service-providing customer (SPC), and the other as a service-receiving customer (SRC). P2P sharing-service firms have no direct control over an SPC’s quality of service provided to an SRC. Further, both SPCs and SRCs are customers to the firm, and therefore firms are concerned with the quality of service provided not only to SRCs but also to SPCs. In the P2P sharing-service context, particularly in the case of services serving the needs of diverse travelers (e.g., Uber or Airbnb), SPCs and SRCs can be people of different genders and races, which can cause them to feel socially distant from each other. Since SPCs are not professional service employees, they may not know how to cope with the social distance, which can result in uncomfortable service experience for both SPCs and SRCs. The more similar to the SPC an SRC feels, the more comfortable the SRC is likely to feel, which can lead to higher service satisfaction. Yet, few studies examined how such social distance can be reduced. This study is intended to fill this gap in the research. Specifically, we propose that an SPC’s form of address for SRC can moderate the effect of the incongruence in gender and race on an SRC’s perceived social distance. Theoretical Development Social distance refers to the level of acceptance people have of others outside of their own social group or class (Bogardus, 1928). It is a measure of perceived difference (or distance) between groups. In the context of the P2P sharing service, SRCs and SPCs can be from diverse social groups. When an SRC encounters an SPC from a social group that is different from theirs, the SRC can feel socially distant from the SPC. Immediate differences an SRC can identify upon meeting an SPC is demographic such as gender, age and race. In this study, we first propose that the difference (incongruence) in gender, age and race makes an SRC feel socially distant from an SPC. Social distance is closely related with similarity (Osbeck & Moghaddam, 1997; Liviatan, Trope & Liberman, 2009). In the context of mentoring, the higher the perceived and actual similarity a portage feels with a mentor, the higher the level of the portage liking and satisfaction for the mentor and with the mentoring service (Ensher, 1997). Matching gender and race between a mentor and a portage positively influenced self-reported grade point average, efficacy and confidence of a portage (Blake-Beard et al. 2011). Race was well demonstrated to influence social distance (Triandis & Triandis, 1960). Taken together, we conjecture that the effect of the difference in gender and race on social distance will apply to the P2P sharing service context and propose the following hypothesis: H1: The incongruence in gender and race between an SRC and an SPC will make SRCs feel more socially distant from SPCs compared to the case of congruence. We propose in this study that the form of address for SRCs by SPCs can influence the level of social distance SRCs feel because of the incongruence in gender and race. The relationship between forms of address and social distance has been proposed (Brown, 1965). Intimate terms of address is associated with intimate relationship. Intimate terms of address is inversely proportional to social distance (Keshavarz, 2001). Calling someone by the first name is related with friendliness (Brown, 1961). The use of first name is positively associated with closeness in relationship (Brown, 1965). An empirical study in the healthcare context showed that most patients preferred to be addressed by the first name (as opposed to last name) (Gillette, Filak & Thorne, 1984). Taken together, we propose the following: H2: Intimate forms of address by the SPC for the SRC will reduce the level of social distance caused by the incongruence in gender and race. We propose that the level of perceived social distance influences the level of comfort SRCs feel with the SPC during the service delivery. The negative effect of social distance on the level of interaction comfort has been shown (Paswan & Ganesh, 2005). In the context of service encounters where customers feel cultural differences, psychological distance was shown to influence comfort negatively (Weiermair, 2000). Since social distance is a dimension of psychological distance (Trope & Liberman, 2011), we propose the effect of social distance on comfort as following: H3: Reduced social distance will lead to a higher level of comfort. The effect of social distance on comfort can vary by customers. In this study, we propose that the effect is moderated by the customer’s motive for the purchase of the P2P sharing service. There are largely four movies for customers who participate in collective consumptions (i.e., sharing service): economic motive, social motive, hedonic motive, and the motive to reduce risks and responsibilities (Benoit, Baker, Bolton, Gruner & Kandampully, 2017). Economic motives are associated with reducing expenses, and social motives are with meeting other people (e.g. more authentic travel) (Benoit et al., 2017). Hedonic motives are related with “accessing products that are exciting or normally out of reach” while motives to reduce risks and responsibilities are related with “no burdens of ownership, option to preview a product for potential purchase” (Benoit et al., 2017). According to a research in the context of P2P accommodations, cost saving, familiarity, trust, and utility are determinants of satisfaction with a sharing option. Thus, we propose that customer motives moderate the effect of social distance on comfort (Möhlmann, 2015). H4: The effect of social distance on comfort vary by customer motives for purchase. When feeling comfortable, people are more likely to trust, feel satisfied, and commit themselves, which can help improve relationship (Spake, Beatty, Brockman & Crutchfield. 2003). Comfort positively influences perceived service quality and satisfaction (Dabholkar, Shepherd & Thorpe, 2000). Comfort influences satisfaction positively (Paswan & Ganesh, 2005). In the P2P sharing-service context, SRCs’ evaluation of SPCs are carried out by reviews. Customer reviews of SPCs’ services are vitally important for both SRCs and SPCs. Reviews help other SRCs to identify desirable SPCs (Ert, Fleischer & Magen, 2016) and SPCs to receive feedback for their service quality improvement. Therefore, we propose the following: H5: Comfort leads to SRC’s intention to write good reviews. Data Collection Data will be collected from American consumers who have used Uber at least once in the past one year through an online scenario-based survey using a 2 (genders: male vs. female) x 3 (races: white vs. yellow vs. black) x 3 (forms of address: no address vs. first name vs. last name) between-subject experimental design. Hypotheses will be tested by an analysis of variance and a structural equation modeling analysis. In the analyses, the potential effects of trust, familiarity, community belonging, utility (Möhlmann, 2015) and age will be controlled. Implications Findings of this study will reveal the importance of reducing social distance that SRCs feel during encounters with SPCs. Of many possible ways to reduce social distance between SRCs and SPCs, the result of this study will show that SPCs’ use of appropriate form of address to SRCs is effective. Further, it will show that the effect of social distance on customer comfort can vary by the purpose of the use of the sharing service. These findings will offer P2P service firms insights on how to help SPCs offer more comfortable services to SRCs and as a result receive positive reviews from SRCs.

Many commercial vendors provide brand valuation measures, which have important practical implications for many stakeholders on how brands are bought and sold and how they are managed. These commercial measures, however, differ to a great extent from one another, which raises serious concerns about their accuracy. In this study, we assess the measurement properties of brand valuation measures provided by the four dominant commercial vendors: Interbrand, Brand Finance, Millward Brown, and Corebrand. We find that the brand valuation measures from the four commercial vendors measure the same underlying construct in a reliable and valid way according to established psychometric test methodology. However, it appears that they measure a construct that does not predict actual brand transaction prices well. In most cases, they significantly overestimate the transaction price. The magnitude of systematic bias varies by method and industry. Our results suggest that an upward bias is more likely to occur in situations when the relevance of tangible assets and non-brand intangible assets is high. These empirical findings challenge current practical and academic thinking on brand valuation. A main conclusion is that brand valuation for transaction purposes needs to first value all assets of the company in their totality and then allocate a fair share to the brand.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that incidents like the recall of the exploding Samsung Galaxy 7 phones drive owners of other (competing) brands to experience and express feelings of joy when a rival brand fails (e.g., “the hottest phone in the streets!”). Although consumers sometimes experience brand-related schadenfreude—that is, joy out of other brand’s failure—, psychological processes driving schadenfreude are not clearly understood (Hickman & Ward, 2007; Van Dijk, Van Koningsbruggen, Ouwerkerk, & Wesseling, 2011). We propose that schadenfreude may be elicited by consumers’ tendencies to stand by their choices (Ye & Gawronski, 2016). We demonstrate that consumers show higher levels of schadenfreude if their choice is disconfirmed; for example, by a comparative product review that evaluates their chosen brand to be inferior to a rival non-chosen brand. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by the popularity of the chosen brand and mediated by feelings of self-threat. Moreover, we show that this effect is stronger for narcissists. We also find evidence that schadenfreude is a means for consumers to reaffirm their sense of self after they experience a self-threat induced by the disconfirmation of their choice.

Over the last decade, e-commerce platforms for goods and services have been widely explored by the marketing literature. Coherently, e-commerce is emerging as a relevant distribution channel also in the wine industry. This notwithstanding, wine e-commerce platforms show a slower growth rate whether compared to other goods and services categories – such as electronic and digital products. This is particularly true in Italy where the total volume of e-commerce sales in the food and drink sector are less than 1% of the total online sales. Therefore, it is important to investigate the underlying mechanisms explaining consumers’ positive and negative intentions to purchase wine online. This will in fact allow both theoretical and practical insights to wine industry marketers. Hence, this study proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model concerning the antecedents of consumers’ intention to purchase wine online. Specifically, the objective is to identify the differences that are specific to the context of the wine buying process. The 5 steps of the purchasing process – need perception, pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase, intention of repatronage – are analyzed through eleven determinants such as risk aversion, convenience propensity, product information availability, degree of independence in purchasing, shopping enjoyment, channel layout, shipping conditions, loyalty intention, and free-riding behavior. Data were collected from a sample of Italian 570 online consumers who habitually purchase wine online. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used for testing the hypothesized relationships. Results show that product information availability and convenience propensity significantly influence the digital channel selection and, consequently, loyalty and patronage intention. Building on these results, the present study suggests that wine industry should focus more on digital channels’ layout in order to better stimulate consumers’ loyalty and intention to provide positive feedbacks. Yet, it also emerged how this kind of channel is useful at most when targeting price sensitive consumers. Theoretical and practical implications are thus provided along with suggestions for future research in the marketing literature.

Digitalization has generated massive amounts of available data sources (Wedel and Kannan 2016). Consequently, firms aim to exploit this additional value – particularly in decision-making (Barton and Court 2012). However, potential misleading consequences of Big Data for companies have not been examined yet – neither in practice nor in research. Addressing this research gap, the current investigation first uncovers questionable managerial outcomes and behaviours generated by Big Data. The results of a first paper-and-pencil experiment show that executives tend to rely on Big Data even in a domain where this may be misleading (i.e., innovation) (Martin and Golsby-Smith 2017). Interestingly, this relationship is found to be particularly evident for top-managers. A second online study does not only replicate the findings in a correlational setting but beyond sheds light on its mechanism. We show that Big Data activates top-executives’ promotion focus leading them to become more risk seeking and egocentric. In study 3, we replicate these findings through experimentation and moderation underlining its robustness. Finally, we detect a lever to avoid that Big Data leads to less defensive decision behaviour (study 4).

When consumers are faced with various discounts, they are likely to find some easier to comprehend than others and this degree of difficulty will impact purchase decisions. This study explains complexity as a dimension of psychological distance using different types of discounts. Current research examines that easy-to-process discounts appear near and difficult-to-process discounts appear far. Applying construal level theory, this research investigates that the dollar discount leads to higher likeability of the attribute-appeal message and the percent discount lead to higher likeability of the benefit-appeal message. The dollar discount is low-level construal, as is an attribute message (i.e., how approach) whereas the percentage discount is high-level construal like a benefit message (i.e., why approach).

An increasing number of Internet users use hotel booking websites and online travel agencies to arrange trips and search for information related to their travels. This study investigates the impact of customer engagement on user perceptions of the quality and value of an online hotel-booking website, as well as whether such perceptions further influence user trust in online websites (eTrust) and result in behavioral intention of eLoyalty. The empirical results of structural equation modeling analysis of 400 questionnaire results collected in Taiwan reveal that customer engagement has a positive impact on perceived website quality (i.e., usability, ease of use, entertainment, and complementarity), which in turn influences perceived value. The results do not show a direct impact from customer engagement on perceived value. Finally, the results verify that eTrust mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived website quality and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website; eTrust also mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived value and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website. The findings provide both academic researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of customer engagement and facilitate development of more effective customer engagement strategies for online booking platforms.

When consumers are faced with various discounts, they are likely to find some easier to comprehend than others and this degree of difficulty will impact purchase decisions. This study explains complexity as a dimension of psychological distance using different types of discounts. Current research examines that easy-to-process discounts appear near and difficult-to-process discounts appear far. Applying construal level theory, this research investigates that the dollar discount leads to higher likeability of the attribute-appeal message and the percent discount lead to higher likeability of the benefit-appeal message. The dollar discount is low-level construal, as is an attribute message (i.e., how approach) whereas the percentage discount is high-level construal like a benefit message (i.e., why approach).