Does snobbish service generate better sales? The case of luxury goods

The objective of this study is to explore whether a “bad” service encounter triggers a consumer's impulse purchase in a luxury goods store in an Asian emerging market. A 2 (service encounter: favorable vs. snobbish) × 2 (shopping companion: alone vs. with a close friend) between‐group factorial design was employed with 160 female consumers in an Asian emerging market to examine the antecedents of both the urge to save social identity and the impulse purchase of luxury goods. The results show that consumers in an Asian emerging market can be triggered to make an impulse purchase of a luxury good, not because they received excellent service in the store but because they encountered snobbish service, especially when shopping with a close friend. Research implications and limitations are also discussed.     

An exploration of courage in Chinese individuals

Definitional studies of courage have been performed by Western psychologists, but little research has examined Chinese folk courage. Two studies examined conceptions of courage in Chinese culture. In Study 1, the definitions, forms, inner traits, and reactions of courage were described by 307 individuals in China. A content analysis revealed that courage was divided into two forms: individually oriented and socially oriented; and the virtue was composed of persistence, responsibility, and breakthrough. Study 2 conducted in-depth interviews with 27 Chinese participants to explore the nature of courage further. The results suggested similar components; anger, self-confidence, support network, and social atmosphere were most likely to inspire courage; and trying something difficult was the most frequently experienced courageous event. Collectively, persistence and breakthrough were common components of both the current studies and the existing Western literature on courage, while responsibility may be more uniquely Chinese. Implications for prospective training programs are discussed.     

Burnout among Finnish and Chinese university students

In this study the levels of experienced burnout of Finnish and Chinese university students are compared using School Burnout Inventory (SBI). This study is motivated by earlier studies, which suggest that the level of student burnout is different in the culturally distinct Finnish and Chinese university systems, but which are based on different research instruments for the two groups. The sample studied consisted of 3,035 Finnish students and 2,309 Chinese students. Because of the cross‐cultural nature of this study the level of structural equivalence of SBI between the cultural groups was examined and the effect of different response styles on the results was taken into account. Both standard and robust statistical methods were used for the analyses. The results showed that SBI with two extracted components is suitable for cross‐cultural analysis between Finnish and Chinese university students. Virtually no difference was found in experienced overall burnout between the Finnish and Chinese students, which means that both university systems contain factors causing similar levels of student burnout. This study also verified that controlling for the response styles is important in cross‐cultural studies as it was found to have a distinct effect on the results obtained from mean‐level comparisons.     

运动技能水平与躯体感觉输入对运动表象的影响

运动表象质量与运动技能水平有关,运动表象质量随着运动技能水平的提高而上升。器械使用可使人脑产生可塑性改变,使用者会将器械纳入身体图式。然而,两者影响运动表象的神经心理机制还不清楚。本研究采用功能性磁共振成像探析篮球运动员与新手在不同持球条件下表象投篮时脑功能活动的差异。结果表明运动员表象质量较好,镜像神经系统激活高于新手;持球条件下运动员表象质量显著高于不持球条件下,镜像神经系统激活程度显著低于不持球条件下。研究说明持器械可以显著提高运动员的表象质量,器械使用带来镜像神经系统的可塑性变化。     

Proservice or antiservice employee behaviors: A multilevel ethics perspective

We adopt a multilevel approach to investigate ethical ideology, moral leadership, and ethical climate in predicting service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and service sabotage. Data were collected from 36 food and beverage units in hotels in Taiwan. The sample comprised 504 employees and 36 supervisors. Results show that idealism is positively related with service-oriented OCB, but negatively related with service sabotage; relativism is the opposite. Moral leadership and ethical climate are both positively related with service-oriented OCB and negatively related with service sabotage. In addition, moral leadership moderates the relationship between relativism and service-oriented OCB. Ethical climate moderates the relationship between idealism and service-oriented OCB and service sabotage. The implications of this study for research and practice are discussed.     

Information Mismatch: Cancer Risk Counseling with Diverse Underserved Patients

As genetics and genomics become part of mainstream Medicine, these advances have the potential to reduce or exacerbate health disparities. Gaps in effective communication (where all parties share the same meaning) are widely recognized as a major contributor to health disparities. The purpose of this study was to examine GC-patient communication in real time, to assess its effectiveness from the patient perspective, and then to pilot intervention strategies to improve the communication. We observed 64 English-, 35 Spanish- and 25 Chinese-speaking (n = 124) public hospital patients and 10 GCs in 170 GC appointments, and interviewed 49 patients who were offered testing using the audio recordings to stimulate recall and probe specific aspects of the communication. Data analyses were conducted using grounded theory methods and revealed a fundamental mismatch between the information provided by GCs and the information desired and meaningful to patients. Several components of the communication that contributed to this mismatch and often resulted in ineffective communication included: (1) too much information; (2) complex terminology and conceptually difficult presentation of information; (3) information perceived as not relevant by the patient; (4) unintentional inhibition of patient engagement and question-asking; (5) vague discussions of screening and prevention recommendations. Our findings indicate a need to transform the standard model of genetic counseling communication using evidence-based principles and strategies from other fields of Medicine. The high rates of limited health literacy in the US, increasing access of diverse populations to genetic services, and growing complexity of genetic information have created a perfect storm. If not directly addressed, this convergence is likely to exacerbate health disparities in the genomic age.