Qian Huang

Chatbots have been pervasively applied in online retailing to communicate with customers. However, attracting and converting customers with chatbots remains a challenge, and little is known about whether and how chatbots’ communication traits influence customer purchase intention. In this study, we draw on the stereotype content model to identify warmth and competence as two distinct traits of chatbot communication. Then, we employ interpersonal attraction theory to pinpoint perceived attraction as the underlying mechanism, where customer-chatbot similarity of communication trait plays a contingent role in shaping perceived attraction. Through a mixed methods design, we found that customers perceive higher attraction toward chatbots with the communication trait of competence, facilitating customer purchase intention. When the similarity of dyadic communication traits exists, we also found that customers perceive higher attraction toward chatbots with warmth. Our findings contribute to the literature on chatbot anthropomorphism and customer behavior. The study also provides practical insights into chatbot design for online retailing.

Purpose: This study aims to explore how team task-related social media usage (TSMU) and social-related social media usage (SSMU) affect employees' perceptions of intra-team cooperation and competition and further individual creativity.Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted a questionnaire survey on enterprises in China that have implemented social media and obtained 348 useable questionnaires from 55 work teams.Findings: The results revealed that employees' perceptions of intra-team cooperation and competition can promote employees' creativity. Employees' cooperation perception can be significantly positively affected by TSMU and SSMU, whereas employees' competition perception can be significantly positively affected by TSMU. Regarding congruence, the results indicated that the more balanced between TSMU and SSMU, the stronger the competition perception.Practical implications: Managers should pay critical attention to the role of team social media usage (SMU) in shaping employees' perceptions of their team environments. They should realize the different outcomes and the joint effects of the different types of SMU.Originality/value: This study contributes to the social media literature by explaining the impact of team SMU on employees' perceptions and evaluations of team environments based on the social information processing theory. The study presents the relationships among team SMU, employees' perceptions of cooperation and competition and employee creativity. Moreover, this study expands research on the trade-off of SMU by exploring the impact of balanced and imbalanced SMU in a work team.

A smart community provides various local services (i.e. smart community services [SCS]) to community residents through smart community platforms to improve their living environment and quality of life. The adoption of SCS by residents is critical to smart community initiatives, which is the concern of practitioners and researchers. However, few studies have empirically investigated factors affecting residents’willingness to adopt SCS. The present study empirically analysed how technological belief factors (i.e. perceived usefulness and enjoyment) and social influence factor (i.e. affective community commitment) influence SCS adoption intention. A total of 191 community residents in China were surveyed to test the research model. Results show that perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and affective community commitment are significant drivers of SCS adoption intention. Moreover, affective community commitment attenuates the impact of perceived enjoyment but enhances the effect of perceived usefulness on SCS adoption intention. This study enriches the literature on IT acceptance and offers practical suggestions for practitioners.

Cross-channel integration (CCI) is increasingly considered as an important driver of customer retention in omnichannel retailing. However, the existing findings about the relationship between CCI and customer retention are contradictory, wherein both positive and non-significant findings exist. This study aims to explore the contingency role of retailer image and alternative attractiveness for the above relationship. Specifically, both two-way and three-way interaction effects of retailer image and alternative attractiveness were tested. Our survey finding confirmed the positive relationship between CCI and customer retention. We also found that the positive relationship was negatively moderated by retailer image, while positively moderated by alternative attractiveness. This study further uncovered that alternative attractiveness can weaken the negative moderating effect of retailer image. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

The contract is widely conceived as an effective approach to decrease risk perception and resolve disputes. However, previous literature on the link between contracts and risk perception is contradictory, wherein both positive and negative findings exist. This study provides a novel insight about the mechanism of contractual dimensions and considers the boundary conditions of information technology (IT) integration. Data collected from 225 retailers of a manufacturer support most hypotheses. Specifically, contractual complexity has a positive influence on relational risk, and contractual recurrence has a negative influence on both performance and relational risk. This study further reveals the positive moderating effect of IT integration on the influence of contractual complexity on relational risk and the negative effect of IT integration on the influence of contractual recurrence on relational risk and performance risk. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

This study investigates how to leverage information technology (IT) capability to build organizational agility in the context of product innovation. A moderated mediating model is proposed from the capability‐building processes perspective. The data collected from 194 senior executives of firms in China show that knowledge management capability partially mediates the relationship between IT capability and organizational agility. Innovative climate also positively moderates the indirect relationship between IT capability and organizational agility in the context of product innovation. Discussion, implications, and direction for future research are offered at the end of this paper.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how psychological motivations influence the knowledge-sharing intention of employees and how these effects are moderated by traditional Chinese culture. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey was conducted in China to test the research model. The target samples comprised MBA students who have enough practical experience, as well as considerable academic experience. Findings: The results suggest that anticipated reciprocal relationships, anticipated extrinsic rewards and sense of self-worth exert different effects on knowledge-sharing intention. In addition, traditional Chinese culture plays different roles in the relationships among these three psychological motivations and knowledge-sharing intention. Specifically, guanxi orientation positively moderates the effect of anticipated reciprocal relationships and negatively moderates the effect of sense of self-worth. Face gaining negatively moderates the effect of anticipated reciprocal relationships and positively moderates the effect of sense of self-worth. Face saving negatively moderates the effect of anticipated reciprocal relationships and sense of self-worth. Originality/value: A few studies in extant knowledge management (KM) literature provided insights into how traditional Chinese culture could directly affect knowledge sharing. The authors depart from these studies by integrating these characteristic indigenous concepts (i.e. face and guanxi orientation) into this study. The authors offer an indigenous cultural view of how these indigenous concepts truly influence an individual’s psychological states and inclination in KM literature. Through this approach, the results confirm that these cultural factors do play an important role during the formation of knowledge-sharing intention and reveals several important research findings.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating role of social media usage in the relationship among multicultural experiences, cultural intelligence, and creativity. Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted a questionnaire survey in three public universities in China and obtained 310 useful responses from international students. Findings: The authors categorized social media usage into informational and socializing usage. Findings show that socializing social media usage strengthens the relationship between multicultural experiences and cultural intelligence, whereas informational social media usage does not strengthen such relationship. Research limitations/implications: The findings suggest that practitioners, such as managers or university administrators, should focus on well-designed multicultural activities in the development of individual creativity. They should also acknowledge the enabling role of cultural intelligence in developing individual creativity and realize that social media usage should be differentiated from the outcomes of its usage. Originality/value: This study contributes to the knowledge on the moderating role of social media usage in the relationship between multicultural experiences and creativity based on experiential learning theory. The study presents the relationship among multicultural experiences, cultural intelligence, and creativity. Moreover, by investigating the moderating roles of informational and socializing social media usage, the authors presented that an IT contingent view of multicultural experiences is helpful in understanding the relationship between multicultural experiences and cultural intelligence.

We empirically investigate how sellers’ website quality affects buyers’ economic and social satisfaction, which in turn influences buyers’ repurchase intentions in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce contexts. In addition, we examine how the effects exerted by economic and social satisfaction on repurchase intentions are moderated by relational capital between buyers and sellers. Data collected from 311 buyers on the TaoBao website provide strong support for the proposed model. The results indicate that information quality exerts a stronger impact on economic satisfaction than does service quality. Service quality exerts a stronger impact on social satisfaction than does information quality. System quality has no effect on economic or social satisfaction. Economic satisfaction can contribute to buyers’ repurchase intentions, but the impact of social satisfaction on repurchase intentions is insignificant. Furthermore, relational capital positively moderates the effect of social satisfaction on repurchase intentions, whereas it has no moderating role in the relationship between economic satisfaction and repurchase intentions. Our study advances the theoretical understanding of the information systems success model in the C2C e-commerce context. The results also inform online sellers that they should more strategically improve website quality dimensions according to different types of buyers’ satisfaction and take advantage of relational capital in order to facilitate buyers’ repurchase intentions.

An inter‐organizational team, which consists of diverse members from different organizations to conduct an initiative, has been widely treated as a critical method to improve organizational innovation. This study proposes a multilevel model to test the relationship between shared leadership and creativity at both team‐ and individual level in the context of inter‐organizational teams. Multisource data were collected from 53 inter‐organizational teams. We obtain the following findings: first, shared leadership is positively related to both team creativity and individual creativity via knowledge sharing. Second, task interdependence positively moderates the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge sharing. Third, task interdependence positively moderates the relationship between knowledge sharing and team creativity, but does not moderate the relationship between knowledge sharing and individual creativity. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.