The use and popularity of online auctions is growing all over the world. Bidding strategies are important because they are related to an auction's final price and ultimately its revenue. This study ...investigates the bidding strategies adopted by online bidders and the factors of the bidders, including bidding motivations, time availability, bidding experience, and risk aversion. We use the data from China to test the model and identify three bidding strategies in single-unit auctions: agent bidding, snipe bidding, and ratchet bidding. By running logistic regression, we find that hedonic motivations, utilitarian motivations, time availability, bidding experience, and risk preference all influence online bidding strategies. We also conduct pairwise comparisons of bidding strategies based on these factors and a simulation experiment to compare the benefits brought by different bidding strategies. We conclude by discussing the implications for both research and practice.
•Hedonic motivations, utilitarian motivations, time availability, bidding experience, and risk preference all influence online bidding strategies.•Utilitarian motivations increase snipe bidding over agent bidding.•Time availability increases snipe bidding over the other two bidding strategies.•Bidding experience increases agent bidding the most, followed by snipe bidding and then ratchet bidding.•Bidders' snipe bidding is the least beneficial to sellers.
Finances are a prevalent source of stress. In a sample of 799 nursing home workers measured multiple times over 18 months, we found that higher perceived income inadequacy, the perception that one's ...expenses exceeds one's incomes, was associated with poorer self-reported mental health indicators and Epstein-Barr Virus antibody titers (a marker of cell-mediated immune function). Perceived income inadequacy predicted outcomes over and above the role of other socioeconomic status variables (objective household income and education). Mental health variables were not related to Epstein-Barr Virus antibody titers. Additionally, we found an interaction between perceived income inadequacy and informal caregiver status on our mental health outcomes; informal caregivers with higher perceived income inadequacy had poorer mental health than non-caregivers with the same perceived income inadequacy. Our findings may add nuance to the reserve capacity model, which states that those at lower socioeconomic levels are at higher risk of adverse health outcomes partly because they have fewer resources to address demands and strain. Perceived income inadequacy may significantly predict mental and physical well-being beyond other socioeconomic status variables, especially among lower-income employees. Caregiving stress and perceived income inadequacy may have synergistic effects on mental health.
•Perceived income inadequacy predicted stress and distress beyond household income.•Perceived income inadequacy predicted Epstein-Barr virus antibody titers.•Informal caregivers had poorer mental health at high perceived income inadequacy.
The objectives of this research are to identify the research trends in and publication outlets for the applications of the fuzzy set theory technique in production and operations management (POM). ...The major findings indicate that (1) the most popular applications are capacity planning, scheduling, inventory control, and product design, (2) some application areas make more use of particular types of fuzzy techniques, (3) the percentage of applications that address semi/unstructured types of POM problems is increasing, (4) the most common technologies integrated with the fuzzy set theory technique are genetic/evolutionary algorithms and neural networks, and (5) the most popular development tool is C Language and its extension. Our survey confirms several research trends, some of which are unexpected and some of which contradict previous findings.
Currently, it is critical to nurture bidder loyalty in the highly competitive online auction business. This study investigated the mediating effect of consumer perceptions between technological/brand ...stimuli and bidder loyalty to an online auction website by applying the traditional and evolutionary stimulus–organism–response models. We tested these models using 449 bidders from Taobao, an online auction service provider in China. Based on the results of covariance-based structural equation modelling, we showed that consumer perceptions fully mediate technological stimuli, but only partially mediate brand stimuli, and bidder loyalty. These results can be used to further improve the related research and practice.
ABSTRACT
Integrating the perspectives of transaction cost economics, the resource‐based view, and resource dependency theory, this study analyzes the institutional settings of enterprise resource ...planning (ERP) implementations in China. Specifically, it examines how bilateral transaction‐specific investments (TSIs) and relational governance mechanisms influence customer satisfaction with ERP implementations. The model is empirically tested using data from on‐site interviews with 208 ERP customers in China. The results demonstrate that the effects of vendors’ and customers’ TSIs on customer satisfaction are facilitated by multiple‐stage micromediational chains. The influence of TSIs on customer satisfaction is mediated by relational norms, and the impact of relational norms on customer satisfaction is bridged by perceived service quality and customer trust. Furthermore, the influence of vendors’ TSIs is stronger than the influence of customers’ TSIs. The findings contribute to business research and practice by providing valuable insights into how ERP vendors and customers should strategize TSIs to enhance relationship performance.
To achieve an efficient and effective supply chain, information needs to be shared. Most current information-sharing studies address the benefits gained from shared data, but neglect the effect of ...willingness to share, in which the benefits of sharing data may be discounted. This study looks into the factors that affect the extent of the willingness of companies to share information from a partnership-data-process perspective. To distinguish the mode of sharing, we differentiate information sharing into template based and proactive. Our results suggest that when partnerships become closer, the willingness to share template-based information increases and consequently the willingness to proactively share additional information.
The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been applied in different contexts to investigate a wide range of information technologies (IT), and a cumulative tradition has already been developed in ...this stream of research. Most TAM studies have been empirical investigations, using the survey approach with great success. TAM is a mature model and has been validated in different contexts. However, it still needs to be empirically investigated for its invariance across different respondent subgroups in order to make sure that different sample profiles would not have a negative effect on the findings. Unfortunately, this has not happened in most TAM research. Here, we applied different levels of invariance analysis on the TAM construct in the context of Internet banking acceptance. We concluded that the TAM construct was invariant for our sample across different gender, age, and IT competence subgroups. These findings suggested that male and female, old and young, IT expert and novice, conceptualized the TAM construct in very similar ways. These findings allowed us to understand TAMs validity in technology acceptance research.
Dementia spousal caregivers are at risk for adverse mental and physical health outcomes. Caregiver burden, anticipatory grief, and proinflammatory cytokine production may contribute to depressive ...symptoms among caregivers. People who report childhood trauma are more likely to have exaggerated stress responses that may also contribute to depressive symptoms in adulthood. This study aimed to test whether the relationship between whole-blood cytokine production and depressive symptoms is strongest in caregivers who report high levels of childhood trauma.
A sample of 103 dementia spousal caregivers provided self-report data on demographics, health information, caregiver burden, anticipatory grief, and depressive symptoms. We also determined lipopolysaccharide-induced whole-blood cytokine production as the primary measure of immune cell reactivity. We measured interleukin-1β (IL-1β), interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and interleukin-10 (IL-10) and converted z-scores of each cytokine into a composite panel. We regressed depressive symptoms on proinflammatory cytokine production, caregiver burden, and anticipatory grief, adjusting for demographic and health-related covariates.
Whole-blood cytokine production and childhood trauma were associated with depressive symptoms. Childhood trauma moderated the relationship between whole-blood cytokine production and depressive symptoms. Whole-blood cytokine production was only associated with depressive symptoms at mean and high levels of childhood trauma, but not at low levels of childhood trauma. The main effects of burden and anticipatory grief on depressive symptoms were strongest for caregivers reporting high levels of childhood trauma.
Childhood trauma has lasting impacts on psychosocial experiences later in life and has effects that may confer susceptibility to inflammation-related depression. Our findings contribute to ongoing efforts to identify risk factors for adverse mental health in dementia spousal caregivers.
•Stimulated cytokine production was associated with depressive symptoms in dementia spousal caregivers.•The association between stimulated cytokine production and depressive symptoms was moderated by childhood trauma.•The relationship between anticipatory grief and depressive symptoms was moderated by childhood trauma.
Online bidders use different strategies in their biddings. However, we are unsure of the bidders strategies and their effectiveness in achieving auction goals. Our study was an attempt to identify ...bidding strategies empirically in online single-unit auctions and evaluate their outcome in terms of cost saving, perceived bidder enjoyment, and bidder satisfaction. A research model was developed and used to examine the relationships. Both objective and subjective data of online single-unit auctions were collected from Taobao.com to validate our postulated hypotheses. We found three main bidding strategies: early, snipe, and agent-supported ratchet bidding based on their behavior patterns. These resulted in different levels of winning outcome and cost saving, but had no significant effect on perceived enjoyment. The hypotheses of the relationship between auction outcomes and bidder satisfaction of their bidding strategies were confirmed.
The aim of the authors of this paper was to identify areas that would aid in developing a better understanding of the dynamics of a customer's decision to shop online. To accomplish this, a review of ...the empirical studies on the antecedents of online shopping was performed. From an extensive literature search, a total of 45 relevant articles were identified. The factors that have been investigated in these studies were classified according to their similarity and patterns of their findings were identified and analyzed. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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