Qimei Chen

• Ph.D.
• Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Prior research in international markets has yielded two seemly opposing views regarding customer engagement (CE) with local/domestic versus foreign-made brands, i.e., a preference for foreign brands based largely on country-of-origin effects or a preference for local/domestic brands based primarily on consumer ethnocentrism. In the present research...

Being green has become a focus in hospitality as evidenced by the rise of sustainable tourism in general and green hotels in particular. The current research examines the impact of willingness to sacrifice for the environment on green hotel evaluations and demonstrates that consumers high in willingness to sacrifice are more likely to embrace green...

This research develops a conceptual framework that delineates the interplay between brand relationship norms and ease of sharing on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and willingness to pay (WTP). We find that when sharing is difficult, compared to those in a communal relationship, consumers in an exchange relationship are more likely to generate eWOM...

Brand mentions on social media platforms are prevalent phenomena today as consumers increasingly share their daily consumptions and experiences online. However, how brand mentions on social media impact evaluations of social media posters or the brands involved remain largely unknown. The current research identifies a novel distinction between two...

In this research, the authors examine the effect of underdog versus top dog brand positioning on different stages of WOM generation, from mental representation (i.e., WOM intention) to action implementation (i.e., WOM behavior) and the underlying mechanism. Across five experiments, the authors find that an underdog (versus top dog) positioning lead...

Advertising both builds upon and benefits from the relationship between consumers and brands. In three longitudinal studies this research explores the cultivation and effects of this relationship and demonstrates that, when consumers are in an exchange relationship with a brand, ownership duration leads to higher self–brand connection, which subseq...

Purpose Biological sex is an important segmenting variable in marketing. Yet its ability to meaningfully distinguish beyond the female/male dichotomy is limited. With traditional gender roles continuously shifting and contemporary fluid conceptualizations of gender altering the consumption mainstream, the diverse and multi-faceted behaviours relate...

Purpose This paper aims to describe the results of four studies that examine the interaction effects between locus of causality and social presence on consumers’ emotional response to a service failure and how they subsequently cope with the negative emotional experiences through support-seeking or vindictive negative word-of-mouth (NWOM). Design/...

The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been widely used to gage IS adoption. Over the years, although research on the replications, extensions, and modifications of TAM has been prolific in adding antecedents and moderators to TAM, scant attention has been devoted to exploring TAM mediators. The current research attempts to deepen the understand...

Human life experience is constantly shaped by the impact of the presence of others. In this paper, using five studies, we demonstrate that social presence plays a crucial role in how consumers respond to a service failure. Specifically, studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that social presence prompts higher negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intentions among co...

Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing has recently attracted a great deal of attention from marketers, especially since the emergence of social media. Three field experiments demonstrate the effects of consumer mind-set (i.e., competition versus collaboration) on narrowcasting and broadcasting intentions and actual behaviors. The results show that a collab...

This research demonstrates that consumers react differently to donations emphasizing a company's effort invested in charitable actions, as opposed to those highlighting its ability to carry out those actions. Our results show that consumers rate the brands that adopt an effort-oriented donation strategy more favorably than those that use an ability...

Why do some consumers evangelize brands and create value for them even without receiving any direct reward in return? How do their motivations influence their role behaviors and their identification with the company or brand? We draw on motivation theory and the in- and extra-role literature of leadership to propose a theoretical framework. We use...

Baron and Kenny’s (1986) classic procedure for testing mediation required that the simple correlation between independent variable X and dependent Y must be significant, which we call c’ test. Many authors, including Kenny, later recommended suspending c’ test under some conditions. A couple recent articles recommended to completely repeal the test...

Traditional brand management perspectives are changing rapidly as evidence grows that consumers build stronger brand connections when they are able to infuse their own meanings and uses into the brands they encounter (O'Guinn and Muniz 2009). This emerging "bottom up" perspective is found in research on self-generated attitudes versus externally-mo...

Brand websites provide opportunities for levels of interactivity that increase the potential for innovative co-creation between consumers and firms. However, little is known about predicting consumer interaction levels on brand websites in markets outside of North American and Europe. Adult consumers in the U.S., China, and South Korea responded to...

Background: This study tested whether exposure to e-cigarette advertising affects the subliminal-spontaneous or automatic-attitudes towards e-cigarettes as a more pleasant or safer alternative to cigarettes among non-smoking young adults. Methods: 187 young adult (mean age=21.9; SD=4.1) current non-smokers who had never used an e-cigarette were...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a key component of a firm's reputation (Argenti and Dmckenmiller, 2004; Fombrun, 2005). Further, a strong reputation can afford the firm many advantages, and is generally associated with higher levels of financial performance (e.g., Orlitzky, Schmidt, and Rynes, 2003). The pressures for CSR (and rela...

In today’s hyper competitive market, the explosive growth of information technology creates unprecedented challenges and opportunities for MNCs, making the outcomes of learning and knowledge unpredictable. The adoption of information technology influences significantly the practice of information and knowledge sharing world-wide. To increase our un...

To advance development and application of signaling theory in the new product preannouncement literature while seeking to resolve ambiguity regarding the influence of innovativeness on stock market return, the role of information quality is examined. Specifically, this study investigates the effect of innovativeness across low and high levels of in...

Two studies identified core value influences on medical decision-making processes across and within cultures. In Study 1, Japanese and American adults reported desired levels of medical decision-making influence across conditions that varied in seriousness. Cultural antecedents (interdependence, independence, and power distance) were also measured....

In this research, four longitudinal studies investigate changes in post-purchase brand attitude. Following predictions based on adaptation theory, Studies 1a & 1b reveal that brand attitude declines over time after purchase. This research further identifies moderators that counteract post-purchase brand attitude decline. In the first two studies, l...

In this research, we explore the negative consequences of engaging customer participation through voting mechanisms. Specifically, we draw attention to the double risk of customer voting, first by identifying the adverse effects of losing, and then by revealing the potential of turning an already engaged set of customers over to underdog competitor...

Multinational corporations (MNCs) use their overseas subsidiaries to access tacit knowledge about host countries. It is generally assumed that subsidiary tacit knowledge contributes directly to greater product innovativeness; however, little empirical evidence supports this assumption. In this research, the authors propose a negative direct relatio...

The point of retail service delivery is crucial to a business as previous research shows that negative deviations from consumers’ service expectations often discourage customers to make referrals to others. Effective management of customer referral likelihood at the point of retail service delivery, however, remains an understudied area. In this re...

Although the essential role of affect transfer has been evidenced in the brand extension literature, scant research has focused on affect transfer when a firm attempts to add sub-brands into its brand portfolio. We conducted a series of four experiments to demonstrate that affect associated with a family brand does in fact transfer to its sub-brand...

In this research, two separate experiments investigate the effects of virtual direct experience (VDE) and the degree of digitalization of experiential product attributes on on-line ad message effectiveness (i.e., perceived risk, product evaluation, affect, and conation). In the first experiment, the message effectiveness of on-line advertisements (...

Continuous improvement in managing customer relationships is a necessity for companies wishing to remain competitive in today's global marketplace. The two studies presented herein respond to this need by developing and testing a new nomological net that features social presence and its moderators as antecedents to service satisfaction. Study 1 dis...

Two studies examine the role of the cultural value orientation, self-construal, as a moderator of the relationship between social presence and service satisfaction. Cross-cultural data are collected in China and the USA to maximize variation on self-construal. Results suggest that social presence effects vary depending on the consumer's independent...

Drawing from both resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory, this research investigates how customer resources (i.e., knowledge and network size) influence firm performance through marketing program implementation. The current research shows that customer resources are critical to the development and execution of marketing programs, which...

La procedure de Baron et Kenny pour determiner si une variable independante affecte une variable dependante a travers une mediatrice est si connue qu'elle est utilisee par les auteurs et requise par les relecteurs quasi systematiquement. De nombreux projets de recherche ont ete stoppes tot dans un programme de recherche ou plus tard dans le process...

Purpose Building on the service‐centered dominant logic, this paper aims to investigate the effects of firm knowledge (knowledge of customers, industry, and practices) and synergistic combinations of different types of employee knowledge as a foundation for competitive advantage in retail and service organizations. Specifically, it seeks to theoriz...

Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if an independent variable affects a dependent variable through some mediator is so well known that it is used by authors and requested by reviewers almost reflexively. Many research projects have been terminated early in a research program or later in the review process because the data did not conform t...

Baron and Kenny's procedure for determining if an independent variable affects a dependent variable through some mediator is so well known that it is used by authors and requested by reviewers almost reflexively. Many research projects have been terminated early in a research program or later in the review process because the data did not conform t...

As the international service market continues its phenomenal growth, understanding the nature of effective interpersonal interactions between service providers and their customers is increasingly important. However, cross-national theory and research on this topic remain limited. In response, the following study employs data from China and the Unit...

Although a large body of research has supported that information technology (IT) is critical to firm success, empirical findings on how it affects firm performance remain inconclusive. The authors argue that knowledge codification, a deliberate learning mechanism, must be developed for a firm to take advantage of its IT resources. Further to what e...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a key component of a firm's reputation. The reputational vulnerabilities and pressure for CSR are perhaps greatest among international firms with business activities across many countries and cultures. Although the strategies of firms entering new markets have been well researched, the CSR component...

Despite extensive research on adults, we know relatively little about the factors and processes that influence adolescent satisfaction with clinical reproductive healthcare. In this study, survey responses from 135 adolescent clinic users in the western U.S. support a client-satisfaction model that differs from the traditional coping response frame...

Market responsiveness is one of several important outcome consequences that denote a foreign subsidiary's success. The authors examine how foreign subsidiaries can improve their market responsiveness through understanding the different roles of information system integration and knowledge codification in connection with related market knowledge tha...

New product development and introduction is an ongoing important issue to facilitate a firm's success. To demonstrate the financial impact of new product introductions and the supporting role of firm resources and organizational structure, the authors collected 409 new product announcements from 1990 to 1998 and used event methodology and regressio...

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) systems focus on a website as the interaction channel for creating a one-to-one relationship with customers via various “touch” options. The intention of such technologies is to affectively and cognitively impact on online customers’ intention to return to the website. To capture the influence of e...

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) systems focus on a website as the interaction channel for creating a one-to-one relationship with customers via various “touch” options. The intention of such technologies is to affectively and cognitively impact on online customers’ intention to return to the website. To capture the influence of e...

There has been considerable academic and non-academic interest in the recent Long-Tail phenomenon, which refers to the shape of the distribution curve that emerges when very large numbers of previously uneconomical offerings become viable for the first time. While demand for these niche offerings is relatively low, when aggregated, they can potenti...

User satisfaction is essential to the success of any Web site. Satisfaction with electronic environments, or e-satisfaction, drives traffic to Web sites and encourages repeated use of a site. However, the e-satisfaction literature has not been critically examined to assess e-satisfaction scales that currently exist in an effort to determine potenti...

A multinational corporation's (MNC's) competitive advantage depends increasingly on control over intangible resources, such as knowledge and relational capital. Although prior research has suggested that cross-border knowledge transfer in MNCs is critical to their new product outcomes, the conditions under which such knowledge transfer can serve to...

This paper reports findings from a recent survey of 1115 respondents from 34 rural counties/villages in 11 Chinese provinces. It investigates consumers' reaction towards the advertising market by incorporating the use of information sources and perceived source credibility into the advertising effectiveness literature. This is the first time that i...

The Web Motivation Inventory (WMI) is used in internet advertising research, and is frequently used and cited in advertising, marketing and communication literature. Investigations of the robustness of the WMI have been somewhat limited. Additionally, new uses of the internet are not accounted for by the WMI since its publication in 2002. This pape...

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) systems focus on a website as the interaction channel for creating a one-to-one relationship with customers via various “touch” options. The intention of such technologies is to affectively and cognitively impact on online customers’ intention to return to the website. To capture the influence of e...

eCRM (electronic Customer Relationship Management) systems focus on using the web-site as the main interaction channel for businesses to simulate an old fashioned one-to-one direct relationship—high touch—with customers. In this research two distinct but related concepts, media richness from the Human Computer Interaction and Computer Mediated Comm...

The Web Motivation Inventory (WMI) is used in internet advertising research, and is frequently used and cited in advertising, marketing and communication literature. Investigations of the robustness of the WMI have been somewhat limited. Additionally, new uses of the internet are not accounted for by the WMI since its publication in 2002. This pape...

Prior research has found that advertising contextual information can affect how consumers evaluate the target ad as well as the brand. This study extends the existing research by investigating how the immediate and longterm effects of contextual priming on ad attitudes and brand evaluations may differ due to the low or high applicability of the con...

The purpose of this research is to contrast a traditional audience segmentation model that uses demographics and health evaluations against a model that uses these same variables plus media usage variables. The goal was to determine whether media usage variables - typically not used in health segmentation studies - add predictive power in determini...

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) systems focus on a website as the interaction channel for creating a one-to-one relationship with customers via various “touch†options. The intention of such technologies is to affectively and cognitively impact on online customers’ intention to return to the website. To capture the influence...

In this chapter, a general framework has been proposed to address the relationship between objective complexity and perceived complexity and their impacts on Internet communication effectiveness. Previous literature on objective complexity, perceived complexity, optimal complexity and cognitive complexity was reviewed. Based on the literature revie...

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) systems focus on a website as the interaction channel for creating a one-to-one relationship with customers via various “touch” options. The intention of such technologies is to affectively and cognitively impact on online customers’ intention to return to the website. To capture the influence of e...

Retail performance is driven in part by a retailer's ability to not only develop knowledge resources, but also convert these resources into the dynamic capability of market responsiveness. The results of this study add to the growing literature on dynamic capabilities by showing that the management orientation of entrepreneurial proclivity not only...

A Website Personality Scale (WPS) was developed and validated through a multi-phase process. We investigated the presence of human and brand personality attributes as well as information characteristics in over one hundred websites. A strong presence of information characteristics was found, verified along dimensions of content quality, access, and...

This study examines the psychosocial benefits of Internet community group participation for women with breast cancer. A longitudinal content analysis of more than 33,200 postings from an online breast cancer bulletin board, and thematic analysis of the “life stories” of 100 women randomly selected from the bulletin board, was conducted. Psychosocia...

This study investigated the effects of web site interactivity on consumers’ trust in brands and product evaluations, and their subsequent purchase intentions in a multi-channel context. Results from the experiment indicated that through greater interactivity, individuals developed greater trust in the vendor and better understanding of its products...

In this chapter, a general framework has been proposed to address the relationship between objective complexity and perceived complexity and their impacts on Internet communication effectiveness. Previous literature on objective complexity, perceived complexity, optimal complexity and cognitive complexity was reviewed. Based on the literature revie...

Changes in the retail environment have stimulated retailers to develop strategies aimed at synchronizing multiple, complementary channels to service an increasingly diverse consumer marketplace. In this research, two studies are presented to test a model of the behavioral implications of trust in brick-and-mortar and online retail channels. Results...

Electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) is one of the primary strategic initiatives in industry today with co-existing criticism and over-enthusiasm. There is a rapidly increasing number of reports on eCRM implementation failure and success; these reports, however, are all in piecemeal form. This research aims to systematically explore t...

In the last few years, the use and relative effectiveness of internet advertising has been the focus of research attention in the advertising and marketing literatures. However, few studies to date have examined these issues from the practitioners' viewpoint. This study reports the results of an online survey of top executives in advertising, marke...

Two follow-up studies of scales that measure attitudes toward websites show that the scales remain reliable and robust across substantial changes in websites, respondents, and methods of administration. These studies suggest that student respondents may be adequate when research addresses methodological issues such as scale development. They also s...

In the study of consumer satisfaction (CS), there is a long running controversy about whether satisfaction and dissatisfaction are equal and opposite constructs or to some degree independent. Parallel to the exponential growth of e-commerce, this issue needs to be revisited with respect to the Internet due to its uniqueness compared with traditiona...

In this study, the authors identify twelve dimensions of cyberspace on the Web through factor analyses of data generated by coders of web sites. A lengthy list of Web site attributes is summarized in twelve dimensions. As in previous analyses of differences among entities, overall evaluation accounts for the largest share of variance. The cognitive...

Attitude toward the Ad (A AD) is widely used in studies of traditional mass media advertising. As e-commerce becomes more important, Attitude toward the Site (A ST) will gain parallel status in evaluating effectiveness. In this study, we develop and present a reliable and valid scale that measures Attitude toward a Website (A ST). We then develop a...

This paper presents the theories of the ancient military strategist, Sun Tzu and illustrates how they have long been applied to marketing strategy. It calls for a reassessment of the appropriateness of the war metaphor for contemporary business practice, and proposes a new model that incorporates Confucian doctrines for a more ethical balance—one t...