Search results

The purpose of the paper is to develop and test a contingency model of buyer involvement when developing new products in technology-based industrial markets. Information Dissemination and degree of product co-development are identified as two behavioral dimensions of seller–buyer relationships. Further, the paper proposes that perceived buyer knowledge, innovation discontinuity, product customization and technological uncertainty moderate the impact of the behavioral dimensions on sellers’ relationship satisfaction.

The paper uses moderated regression on a data set of 296 small and mid-sized firms in a variety of high-tech industries to test relevant hypotheses.

The authors find that sellers can enhance relationship satisfaction by engaging in either unilateral or bilateral relationships. This is important because sellers have to be judicious in expending their relationship resources. While information dissemination is more satisfying when targeting less knowledgeable buyers, product co-development enhances satisfaction when targeting more knowledgeable buyers. Similarly, information dissemination can enhance satisfaction for discontinuous innovations; in contrast, product co-development has a similar outcome for customized products. However, when technological uncertainty is high, such co-development leads to reduced satisfaction.

Extant literature provides useful insights on the behavioral dimensions of seller–buyer relationships, the antecedents and consequences of such relationships and the stages of the new product development process when such relationships are more valuable. Despite this progress, important gaps remain in current understanding of seller–buyer relationships. In particular, findings regarding the contribution of relationships to desired outcomes are inconsistent. This suggests that important moderators of the relationship–outcomes link are being overlooked and warrant greater attention. This paper addresses this deficiency.

With the considerable attention given to customer experience (CX) today, customer experience management (CXM) has been touted as one of the most promising management approaches for organizations. The purpose of this paper is threefold: develop a scale to measure the CXM construct, investigate the financial outcomes of CXM and assess the impact of moderator variables (e.g. market turbulence) on these financial outcomes while accounting for the effects of control variables (e.g. firm size).

The study involves a survey of 233 firms (across 10 industries) involved in CXM. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modeling (SEM), instrumental variables and moderated regression analyzes are used to test four hypotheses.

The results support treating CXM as a second-order construct comprising three dimensions: cultural mindset toward CXs, strategic directions for designing CXs and firm capabilities of continually renewing CXs. Furthermore, CXM is positively related to financial performance; this effect increases as market turbulence, competitive intensity and technological turbulence increases.

With our CXM measure, future research can advance CXM theory by examining other outcome variables (e.g. employee satisfaction) and moderators (e.g. culture), as well as introduce antecedents to CXM (e.g. company heritage). Limitations include the concerns normally associated with using self-reported measures of performance, convenience samples and cross-sectional designs.

This research provides managerial prescriptions of when to invest in CXM initiatives to enhance financial performance. It also provides managers a CXM diagnostic to help assess their level of CXM maturity.

This paper develops CXM theory by advancing a measure of the CXM construct, relating the construct to an outcome variable (main effect) and introducing moderating variables to shed light on the generalizability of the main effect.

Customer experience management (CXM) and Innovation are two important capabilities on which businesses compete today. However, research to date has not empirically investigated their potential symbiotic relationship. Specifically, does better CXM improve innovation; similarly, does better innovation improve CXM? As a starting point, our research focuses on the former: how does effective CXM correlate with innovation success?

Data was collected by querying marketing managers from 251 goods and services firms involved in CX design and implementation. Managers answered questions related to their innovation efforts, customer experience management initiatives, and innovation outcomes. Cluster analysis was used to identify a taxonomy of CXM approaches contingent upon environmental factors (market turbulence, competitive intensity, and technological turbulence).

Our research found that higher levels of CXM engagement result in greater innovation success – i.e. higher success rates, revenues, and profits from new products or services. In addition, we find that there are three distinct approaches to CXM: (1) Extensive CXM approach (43% of firms in our sample); (2) Moderate CXM approach (39%); and (3) Limited CXM approach (18%). Firms with an extensive CXM approach operate in intensely competitive environments that are characterized by very high technological turbulence. Firms that employ a limited CXM approach operate in environments with the lowest levels of competitive intensity and technological change. Market turbulence did not factor into the choice of CXM approach.

To our knowledge, our study is the first to provide empirical evidence that firms adopt different CXM approaches. Further, we identify factors external to the firm that are considered when selecting these CXM approaches; namely, market turbulence, competitive intensity, and technological turbulence. Finally, our findings related to CXM approaches and innovation success indicate that managers should make investments in CXM to help improve innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the main effect of brand perception (brand warmth vs brand competence) on purchase intention, the mediating effect of brand love and the moderating effects of the emotional polarity of online reviews.

This paper utilizes experimental design and machine learning to collect and clean data. The ANOVA, t-test and bootstrap analysis methods are used to verify the assumed hypotheses.

Findings demonstrate that brand perception influences purchase intention with the mediating effect of brand love and the moderating effect of the emotional polarity of online reviews. In particular, brand perception can promote brand love and further enhance purchase intention. When consumers browse positive online reviews, brand warmth (vs brand competence) will lead to higher purchase intention. However, when consumers browse negative online reviews, brand competence (vs brand warmth) will weaken purchase intention more.

The findings of the current research contribute to purchase intention in the context of online reviews by highlighting the importance of brand love and the key role of brand perception, to which prior studies have paid little attention. The authors' research also provides some suggestions for enterprises about how to strengthen brand love by investigating consumers' perceptions of brand warmth and brand competence and further increasing purchase intention while consumers face positive or negative online reviews.

The purpose of this paper is to use competence theory to explore the fit between actual competencies of quality management (QM) practitioner and the perception of QM competence needs in organisations.

This paper is based on a cross-case quantitative study design featuring a survey of QM practitioners (n = 249) within eight large Swedish organisations. The research instrument was a questionnaire covering seven themes within QM. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics.

The results show that while the perception of formal QM competence may seem sufficient, the evolving nature of QM requires knowledge, skills and attitudes that are also apt for more external and explorative perspectives. There is a bias towards competence for exploitative QM rather than explorative QM. Organisational logics preserving and possibly reinforcing a perceived “competence lag” in organisations are identified and described.

Few empirical studies within QM explore the competencies required for QM practices. This paper contributes to QM research in providing arguments for adopting the competence theory as a foundation for organising current and future QM work.

To prove the effectiveness of the proposed design method, this study aims to propose the Fisher equation and temperature cooling fins that control high-speed aerospace vehicles.

A new approach whereby the control of aerospace vehicles can be achieved by fuzzy controller and appropriate Navier–Stokes equations in this article. The design of the controller based on models of Navier–Stokes equations simplified complex mathematical simulations and approximations.

If the fuzzy controller cannot stabilize the system, the Navier–Stokes fuzzy function is injected into the system as a controller tool, and the system is asymptotically stabilized by adjusting the fuzzy parameters.

The simulation results show that if the tuning frequency is high enough, the fuzzy controller and fuzzy observer can create chaotic movements by adjusting the dither amplitude appropriately. The demonstration of the Fisher equation and the temperature-cooled fin control problem for high-speed aerospace vehicles has displayed the benefits of combining fuzzy control with the Navier–Stokes equation.

Community question answering (CQA) websites provide an open and free way to share knowledge about general topics on the internet. However, inquirers may not obtain useful answers and those who are qualified to provide answers may also miss opportunities to share their expertise without any notice. To address this problem, the purpose of this paper is to provide the means for inquirers to access archived answers and to identify effective subject matter experts for target questions.

This paper presents a question answering promoter, called QAP, for the CQA services. The proposed QAP facilitates the use of filtered archived answers regarded as explicit knowledge and recommended experts regarded as sources of implicit knowledge for the given target questions.

The experimental results indicate that QAP can leverage knowledge sharing by refining archived answers upon creditability and distributing raised questions to qualified potential experts.

This proposed method is designed for the traditional Chinese corpus.

This paper proposed an integrated framework of answer selection and expert finding uses the bottom-up multipath evaluation algorithm, an underlying voting model, the agglomerative hierarchical clustering technique and feature approaches of answer trustworthiness measuring, identification of satisfied learners and credibility of repliers. The experiments using the corpus crawled from Yahoo! Knowledge Plus under designed scenarios are conducted and results are shown in fine details.

This paper aims to examine how Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power affects firm-level labor productivity.

The authors rely on regression analysis to examine the relation between CEO power and labor productivity.

Following prior research (i.e. the sequential rank order tournament theory), the authors predict that powerful CEOs lead to high labor productivity. They find a significant and positive relationship between CEO power and labor productivity. They further decompose labor productivity into labor efficiency and labor cost components and find a positive (negative) relationship between CEO power and labor efficiency (cost) component, suggesting that more powerful CEOs better manage labor efficiency and control labor cost. The results are also robust to various additional tests.

This study contributes to two streams of research: the CEO power literature in finance and the labor productivity and cost literature in accounting. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study that performs a direct empirical test on the relation between CEO power and labor productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the uncertainties and benefits influencing the repurchase intentions of buyers in cross-border e-commerce (CBEC).

The authors draw on the valence framework to hypothesize effects of positive valences (utilitarian benefits) along with negative valences (pre- and post-contractual uncertainties) on buyers’ repeat purchase intentions. Data were collected using an online survey from 378 international B2C buyers on a CBEC platform in China.

Results explain 51.4 percent of the variance and reveal that overall value, as determined by monetary saving, convenience and product offerings as positive valences, exerts the strongest effect on repeat purchase intention. However, negative valences remain significant, and are particularly salient for female shoppers.

The authors extend the valence theory into the study of repeat purchase behavior and contribute to much needed literature on why consumers return to repurchase from a CBEC platform.

Repeat purchase and loyalty of online consumers is essential for success of e-commerce providers. The results help online providers competing in international markets understand how buyers form repurchase intentions based on their evaluations of both value and uncertainty.

Buyer behavior in CBEC has received relatively less attention than domestic e-commerce. This paper is among the first to examine how both positive and negative valences combine to effect repurchase intention of international buyers in CBEC.