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PurposePrevious research has shown that consumers prefer a bonus pack to a price discount for virtue foods, whereas they prefer a price discount to a bonus pack for vice foods. Acting as a guilt-mitigating mechanism, a price discount justifies consumers' purchasing behavior, allowing them to save money and consume less vice foods. However, for virtue foods, neither the anticipated post-consumption guilt nor the resulting need for justification lead consumers to prefer a bonus pack to a price discount. This study investigates whether product promotions remain effective with other moderating variables.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use pricing tactic persuasion knowledge (PTPK), which refers to the consumer persuasion knowledge of marketers' pricing tactics, as a lens to understand whether the power of these promotions could be enhanced or mitigated. The authors inferred that increasing the frequency of exposure to these foods could positively influence consumers' purchasing choices. They conducted three studies to examine these effects. In Study 1, using pearl milk tea (vice food) and sugar-free tea (virtue food), the authors contended that consumers would prefer a price discount when purchasing pearl milk tea, but a bonus pack when purchasing sugar-free tea. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors varied the participants' frequency of exposure to photographs of people in everyday situations with vice (virtue) foods.FindingsIn Study 1, PTPK was shown to be more predictive of consumer choices regarding price discounts and bonus packs. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors contended that increased exposure to vice (virtue) foods increases the selection of vice (virtue) foods by participants who were unaware of having been exposed to vice (virtue) foods.Originality/valueThis research has not only made quite managerial and policy implications for marketing but also brought the theoretical contributions for marketing researches. This research demonstrates that either for vice foods or virtue foods, a price discount is preferred to a bonus pack.

Previous studies have found that touch input influences customer attitudes and behavior; however, most research in this area has focused on diagnostic rather than nondiagnostic input. The concept is that the perceptual transfer of haptic cues is from the product container to evaluation of the product itself. Two studies were conducted. The study1 (75 participants) tested whether high- or low-autotelic NFT consumers tended to incorporate haptic cues into their product evaluations. The study2 (153 participants) examined whether haptic cues influenced taste effects through the moderating role of the visual cues. In addition, this study also examined the moderating role of visual cues with 2 languages (Japanese and Chinese) in product packaging. The analysis was conducted using ANOVA. The experimental findings suggest that haptic and visual cues affect quality evaluations, brand attitudes, and purchase intentions. In addition, visual cues and the autotelic need for touch moderate the relationship among haptic cues, quality evaluations, and brand attitudes. The results have implications for product and packaging designers, not only regarding material attributes but also on the visual presentation of products. Keywords: Visual cues, Autotelic need for touch, Brand attitudes, Purchase intentions, Quality evaluation. To cite this document: Mehmet Fang-Ping Chen, Hsiang Chen, Hsiao-Chi Hou, Wenchang Fang, " Do Visual and Haptic Cues Affect Taste?", International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, Vol.15, No.1, pp.25-51, 2019. Permanent link to this document: https://doi.org/10.7903/cmr.18814

To explore the personality traits and corporate strategy of chief executive officers (CEOs), this study investigates how narcissistic and hubristic tendencies in CEOs affect the relationship between corporate sustainability practices (CSP) and firm performance. The primary purpose is to examine whether CEO narcissism and hubris can moderate the effect of corporate sustainability on firm performance. We investigate the influence of corporate sustainability on firm performance in three dimensions: economic, environmental, and social. The relationship between the mechanisms of supervision and agency theory is explored to assist investors in decision making. The results of this study show that compared to narcissistic CEOs, hubristic CEOs will further enhance the positive influence of CSP on corporate performance, especially in the environmental and social dimensions. This research strengthens the literature on CEO narcissism and hubris by demonstrating that CEO personality traits influence the relationship between corporate sustainability practices and firm performance.

This study combines programming and data mining to analyze consumer reviews extracted from Yelp.com to deconstruct the hotel guest experience and examine its association with satisfaction ratings. The findings show many important factors in customer reviews that carry varying weights and find the meaningful semantic compositions inside the customer reviews. More importantly, our approach makes it possible to use big data analytics to find different perspectives on variables that might not have been studied in the hospitality literature. Keywords: Big Data, Text Analytics, Data Mining, Social Website, Guest Experience Satisfaction, Hotel Management To cite this document: Pei-Ju Lucy Ting, Szu-Ling Chen, Hsiang Chen, and Wen-Chang Fang, "Using Big Data and Text Analytics to Understand How Customer Experiences Posted on Yelp.com Impact the Hospitality Industry", Contemporary Management Research, Vol.13, No.2, pp. 107-130, 2017. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/cmr.17730

This study examined whether chief executive officers’ (CEOs) with narcissistic tendencies are more likely to execute earnings management behavior because of pressure to fulfill earnings thresholds. The results revealed that a CEO who exhibits high narcissism is more likely to be involved in earnings management to compensate for her/his performance. Our findings suggest that CEO narcissism directly influences financial decisions. Considering the earnings thresholds, firms with a more narcissistic CEO experience a regulatory effect on real earnings management behavior. Studies have indicated that CEOs manipulate earnings to satisfy three primary earnings thresholds: prior year’s reported earnings, zero earnings, and analysts’ forecasts. Our empirical results provide further evidence that CEOs engage in earnings management to fulfill positive earnings thresholds and analysts’ forecasts. We infer that CEOs use the abnormal production cost method as an underlying mechanism to increase reported earnings. Our findings help clarify the relationship between CEO personality traits and earnings manipulation to assist investors with decision-making.

The need of the low power, long range, and low cost connectivity for satisfying the requirement of internet of things (IoT) applications for smart city is leading the emergence of low power wide area (LPWA) networking technologies. The resource efficiency plays an important role in realistic application, LoRaWAN allows the static end devices to individually adapt and optimise the data rates and the transmission power, which is referred to as adaptive data rate (ADR) problem. In this paper, we develop a new ADR algorithm for multi-gateway LoRaWAN environment to quickly choose the appropriate LoRa transmission parameter for independent LoRa end device based on LoRaWAN specification. To successfully execute the ADR algorithm, we especially rewrite the firmware of Semtech's SX1276 transceivers to implement our proposed ADR algorithm over multi-gateway LoRaWAN system, including end device, multi-gateways and network server. Our ADR algorithm utilises the radio link quality, including RSSI, SNR, and packet reception ratio (PRR), from multi-gateways, and the network server determines the appropriate LoRa transmission parameter. Finally, the experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm improves the energy efficiency, the effective bit rate, and the battery life of the end device.

The effect of container size of food and drinks as well as the effect of the variety of drinks on the selecting behaviors of male and female undergraduates were investigated in this research by manipulating the sizes of plates and glasses. The findings suggest that male students tended to choose smaller plates and preferred tall slender glasses that appeared to contain a greater volume of beverage compared to short wide glasses. In contrast, female students focused more on the quality of the food that they were interested in or attracted to rather than the quantity of food. Moreover, the findings showed that plates with or without a concentric circle have no influence on the selecting behaviors of male and female college students. Thus, male and female undergraduates have different selecting behaviors, and the effect of food container size showed distinct impacts on them.

The perception of the value of a blog positively influences the intention to revisit a blog and adopt its ideas. Few studies have attempted to elucidate readers’ behavior by examining the effect of trust and the involvement of fashion on the revisiting and adoption of fashion blogs. Trust and fashion involvement are new factors that influence the decision of young readers to revisit fashion blogs and adopt the recommendations of bloggers. Data were collected using an online survey distributed through the Tpaobj blog. In this study, 363 questionnaires were conducted and completed. The results partially support the model and hypotheses proposed in this study, and indicate that fashion involvement affects only the intention of a reader to revisit the blog, but not the intention to adopt its viewpoint. Furthermore, the results reveal that trust in a blog is positively related to the likelihood of readers revisiting a blog and adopting its viewpoint. In this paper, the implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed. To cite this document: Ru-Jen Cheng and Wencheng Fang, "Blog intention based on fashion involvement and trust", International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, Vol.6, No.1, pp.19-36, 2015. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijecs.1390 Â

Previous research has rarely examined the advertising effects of computer-generated imagery. To address the research gap regarding spokescharacters, this study examined the rarely discussed influence of lip synchronization on online advertisements. This study tested the effects of different types of virtual character on advertising effectiveness, which was measured according to ad credibility, attitude toward the ad, and attention toward the ad. The primary experiment included 8 conditions in which each character had a different gender (male vs. female), facial appearance (human-like vs. cartoon-like), and lip synchronization (adult vs. child), thereby representing a hedonic animated online advertisement. By using an analysis of variance, this study revealed that cartoon-like female spokescharacters with child lip synchronization exhibited the highest effectiveness in online advertisements. To cite this document: Ya-Hui Hsu, Hsiang Chen, Yi-Lan Lu and Wen-Chang Fang, " THE EFFECT OF VIRTUAL SPOKESCHARACTER TYPE ON ONLINE ADVERTISEMENTS ", International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, Vol.9, No.2, pp.161-190, 2018. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijecs.1798

In search for novel anti-tumour agents targeting non-homologous end joining pathway, we conducted a virtual screening using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) on Ku heterodimer which plays an important role on DNA break repair system. Docking results gave glycyrrhizic acid and macedonoside C as potential TCM candidates. Both glycyrrhizic acid and macedonoside C were docked onto the Ku heterodimer with high-predicted binding affinities as evidenced in their Dock Score. These two ligands also interact with key residues which have been previously shown to influence Ku DNA-binding affinity. Both compounds show consistent hydrogen bonding interactions with key residues throughout the 10- ns dynamics simulation run. Furthermore, glycyrrhizic acid and macedonoside C are able to form additional hydrogen bond interactions with positively charged Ku heterodimer surface. Such interactions strengthen the binding interaction of the top two TCM compounds with Ku heterodimer. Glycyrrhizic acid and macedonoside C are pro...

Microsomal prostaglandin E synthase-1 (mPGES-1) has been regarded as an attractive drug for inflammation-related diseases. In search of new mPGES-1 inhibitors, we performed virtual screening using our traditional Chinese medicine and natural products database (http://tcm.cmu.edu.tw/) and constructed comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) using a training set of 30 experimentally tested mPGES-1 inhibitors. The CoMFA and CoMSIA models derived were statistically significant with cross-validated coefficient values of 0.808 for CoMFA and 0.829 for CoMSIA and non-cross-validated coefficient values of 0.829 for CoMFA and 0.980 for CoMSIA. Docking and de novo evolution design gave three top derivatives, 2-O-caffeoyl tartaric acid-Evo_2, glucogallin-Evo_1 and 3-O-feruloylquinic acid-Evo_7 that have higher binding affinities than the control, glutathione. These three derivatives have interactions with Arg70, Arg73, Arg110, Arg126 and Arg38, which ...

This study proposes a novel approach that integrates the qualitative approach, the quantitative approach, and fuzzy set theory for developing a framework of critical managerial competences of electronic commerce (EC) professional managers. The approach combines a focus group, a fuzzy Delphi method and the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) for identifying competences via experts’ opinions and questionnaires for developing the framework of managerial EC professional managers. Comparing the competences of traditional managers and EC managers reveals main differences in the emphasis on EC manager professional skills. Furthermore, competency weights for EC managers lie particularly in domain knowledge and information management skills. Research results reveal that our proposed EC competence framework not only help firms in selecting/hiring high quality EC professional managers more objectively, but also in evaluating the performance of EC managers.

Two parameters, C and σ, must be carefully predetermined in establishing an efficient support vector machine (SVM) model. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a genetic-based SVM (GA-SVM) model that can automatically determine the optimal parameters, C and σ, of SVM with the highest predictive accuracy and generalization ability simultaneously. This paper pioneered on employing a real-valued genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the parameters of SVM for predicting bankruptcy. Additionally, the proposed GA-SVM model was tested on the prediction of financial crisis in Taiwan to compare the accuracy of the proposed GA-SVM model with that of other models in multivariate statistics (DA, logit, and probit) and artificial intelligence (NN and SVM). Experimental results show that the GA-SVM model performs the best predictive accuracy, implying that integrating the RGA with traditional SVM model is very successful.

Many Websites have gradually constructed the sharing mechanism of Web2.0 through knowledge- based Systems. We use the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and the theory of knowledge-sharing self-efficacy to show that the performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence have significant impact on the knowledge- sharing self-efficacy of an individual and that facilitating conditions have no conspicuous impact. The contributions of the research include providing a reference from which the managers of the Web2.0 sites constructed on the basis of knowledge-based systems cam make decisions for development, and demonstrating the feasibility of applying concepts from the field off information activity in social sciences to the field of knowledge-based systems to study problems from different viewpoints and form new research directions.

A low overhead DFT technique, called clock-grouping, for delay testing of sequential synchronous circuits is presented. The proposed technique increases robust path delay fault coverage for circuits by exercising greater control over flip-flop clocks in the test mode. In the test mode, the flip-flops are partitioned into different clock-groups. The flip-flops in each clock group can be either clocked or not clocked, independent of the flip-flops in the other groups. This exibility is used to enhance the number of different (v/sub 1/, v/sub 2/) test pairs that can be applied to the state inputs of the circuit thereby increasing coverage of delay faults. Experimental data on benchmark circuits shows that high fault coverage can be obtained by using only two clock groups in most circuits. The proposed clock grouping methodology can be applied to non-scan circuits as well. In fact, it can provide a DFT solution for high speed data path circuits where the performance penalties of conventional DFT techniques are unacceptable.