Alex S.L. Tsang

The interactive influence of country of origin of brand and product involvement on purchase intention

Purpose – Globalization and outsourcing have decoupled country of origin into the country of origin of manufacture (COM) and the country of origin of the brand (COB). This study seeks to extend the work of Gurhan‐Canli and Maheswaran and Lee et al. by investigating the interactive influence of COB and personal involvement with a product on purchase intention.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 168 young adults in Hong Kong were intercepted for mall interviews and presented with mock advertisements for personal computers ostensibly with brands originating in Japan and Korea. Their personal involvement with such products was measured using an instrument designed by Zaichkowsky, and their purchase intentions were self‐assessed.Findings – COB was found to predict purchase intentions among consumers with a low level of personal involvement with computers, but not among consumers with a high level of personal involvement.Research limitations/implications – First, to improve internal validity, the study inv...

Does culture affect evaluation expressions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at product reviews from a cross‐cultural perspective. Product reviews are potentially an influential form of marketing communication, as well as a predictor of sales performance. With Hofstedes typology as a backdrop, the basic proposition of this study is that collectivistic cultural values place more emphasis on giving face to others, even in impersonal social environments, resulting in them giving more positive product reviews than their individualistic counterparts.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses content analysis of Chinese and American computer game reviews to test the hypotheses.Findings – The results showed that Chinese reviews use fewer negative comments and give higher final ratings for the same set of products than their American counterparts. In addition, Chinese reviews showed a lower consistency between their evaluative comments and their final ratings. Also confirmed is a common belief that final ratings are a summary of the evalua...

Elucidating the conceptual structure of a business domain via exploratory network analysis of business survey data

Traditional hypothesis-driven research domains such as molecular biology are undergoing paradigm shift in becoming progressively data-driven, enabling rapid acquisition of new knowledge. The purpose of this article is to promote an analogous development in business research. Specifically, we focus on network analysis: given the key constructs in a business research domain, we introduce a data-driven protocol applicable to business survey data to (a) discover the web of influence directionalities among the key constructs and therein identify the critical constructs, and to (b) determine the relative contributions of the constructs in predicting the levels of the critical constructs. In (a), we build a directed connectivity graph by (i) using a state of the art statistical technique to perform variable selection, (ii) integrating the variable selection results to form the directed connectivity graph, and (iii) employing graph-theoretical concepts and a graph clustering technique to interpret the resulting network topology in a multi-resolution manner. In (b), based on the directed connectivity graph, multiple linear regression is performed to quantify relations between the critical and other constructs. As a case study, the protocol is applied to analyze opinion leading and seeking behaviors in online market communications environments. The directed connectivity relations revealed provide new ways of visualizing the web of influence directionalities among the constructs of interest, suggest new research directions to pursue, and aid decision making in marketing management. The proposed method provides a data-driven alternative to traditional confirmatory methods in analyzing relations among given constructs. Its flexibility enables the business researcher to broaden the scope of research he/she can fruitfully engage in.