This paper examines the impact of thanks from the sellers on consumer satisfaction in the tourism industry. Study 1 shows that thanks from the sellers (vs. no thank from the sellers) will decrease consumer satisfaction. In this process, perceived fairness and perceived value play a serial mediation role. Study 2 shows that the pricing type (the fixed price vs. the flexible price) plays a moderate role on the impact of thanks from the sellers at the end of a transaction on consumer satisfaction. This paper introduces transaction utility theory and culture difference to explain the seemingly inconsistent phenomenon. Introduction The present studies focus on retailers expressing gratitude and, especially, how the communication of retailer expressing gratitude or not affects consumer satisfaction under the tourism purchase environment. Image that you encounter a seller is selling the souvenirs in the tourist spot you just visit, you would like to buy one of the souvenirs, such as a special cup with the souvenirs logo, you conclude a deal with the seller eventually, after that, the seller thanks for your purchasing and you leave. One question arises, will consumers feel less satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” at the end of a transaction? Theoretical Background Thanking is one of the speech acts or communicative acts frequently and abundantly utilized in human interactions, even though, most of these studies have focused on a western perspective, little is known about the experience of tourists from Asia. In western countries, people are accustomed to saying "thank you" after the benefit of others. Some behavioral responses may resemble the expression of gratitude (e.g., saying thank you to a waiter in a restaurant), but may instead be an automatic polite response not grounded in emotion (Buck 2004; Emmons and McCullough 2003; Fazalehasan et al 2017). However, in Somali and China culture, people are not used to expressing thanks, which makes many Americans or Australian feel rude or impolite (Chiu and Hong 2013; Robertson 2014). Here we test the prediction that gratitude from retailers may affect consumer satisfaction in a potentially counterintuitive manner. In other words, we hypothesize that gratitude from the retailer may lead to lower consumer satisfaction. This prediction draws from both the existing literature on gratitude as well as from research on culture difference and transaction utility theory from the response to gratitude. Research Design Two experiments have been conducted to test the hypotheses. Study 1 will provide support for the three central hypotheses regarding perceived fairness inference (hypothesis 1), perceived value inferences (hypothesis 2), and consumer satisfaction (hypothesis 3). Study 2 will test an important boundary condition. This study shows that the proposed negative effect of saying thank you (vs. saying nothing) holds only if the price of product is fixed. Result and Conclusion In the study 1, we found that sellers saying thank you after the transaction leads to less consumer satisfaction. Therefore, an important contribution of our work emerges from our melding of the literature on perceived fairness and value and demonstrating that gratitude from the sellers dictates which literature is more applicable in relationship marketing. Furthermore, we also examined the mechanism in study 2 and explore a boundary condition. We discovered that when the price of a souvenir is fixed, consumers feel more satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” at the end of a transaction. Conversely, when the price of a souvenir is not fixed, which is to say when consumers can bargain in the store, consumers feel less satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” after the transaction

In this paper, OTT (Over-The-Top) refers to voice, video and data services that arrive from a third party service provider (SP) and doesn’t require any business or technology affiliations with the network operator (Southwell 2011). Traditional telephone companies (telcos) are under big threat from OTT messaging applications which have been splitting flow of text message and voice from the former. Even though, mobile operators still enjoy some asymmetric advantages by controlling the basic telecommunications infrastructure, monitoring the network usage and distinguishing between different OTT actors (Bertin et al. 2011). From a market structure perspective, mobile telecoms industry with the entrance of OTT messaging applications is analogous to the traditional dual-channel structure. On one hand, mobile operators “sell” communication services such as SMS and voice directly to subscribers; on the other hand, they “wholesale” the network infrastructure to OTT SPs on which OTT applications distribute text, picture, video and voice for end users. Extant research has extensively examined the channel selection, channel competition and coordination in traditional sectors (Cai 2010; Cattani et al. 2006; Chiang et al. 2003; Dumrongsir et al. 2008). However, the explanation of dual channel might not be well applicable to the mobile operator and OTT issue considering some new features in the industry. 1) comparing with traditional product distribution, the mobile operators are selling “the right to use the network”, thus they could both charge the “access” and “usage” fee. 2) unlike the traditional retailing channel where consumers make payments to retailer, consumers using OTT would pay network usage fee (data fee) to the mobile operator. 3) traditional retailors earn their profits by selling products with a higher price than the wholesale price. However, OTT services aim to develop their own business after accumulation of sufficient quantities of users, such as revenues form ads, traffic guidance and so on. This paper is conducted to analyze the pricing strategy of mobile operators facing the challenge of OTT. For simplicity, we assume a monopoly market, namely one mobile operator provide network infrastructure for one OTT messaging service provider who provides communication service for consumers. Based on dynamic game theory, we show that: firstly, under non-cooperative strategy, a mobile operator should charge OTT a positive network access fee which is positively correlated to OTT platform’s future commercial value and direct communication service price, and negatively correlated to indirect communication service; secondly, under cooperative strategy, a mobile operator and OTT could create a more joint profit than that under non-cooperative strategy. The platform access fee that the joint venture charges end users is negatively correlated with OTT platform future commercial value; thirdly, despite the choice of cooperative or non-cooperative strategy, the price of direct communication products has a negative correlation with OTT platform future commercial value and a positive correlation with the platform quality; while the price of indirect communication products is positively correlated with platform future commercial value and is negatively correlated with OTT platform quality. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the managerial implications for mobile operators and OTT SPs. With regard to policy makers, we suggest that a convenient cooperation environment should be provided, because both mobile operator and OTT SP would obtain a high profit under cooperative condition than that under non-cooperative condition and at the same time consumers could also enjoy a better welfare. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71172011 and 71272160) and NCET-12-0772.