Hong Kong Baptist University

About: Hong Kong Baptist University is a education organization based out in Hong Kong, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & China. The organization has 7811 authors who have published 18919 publications receiving 555274 citations. The organization is also known as: Hong Kong Baptist College & HKBU.

Do actions speak louder than voices? The signaling role of social information cues in influencing consumer purchase decisions

Abstract: The rise of social media has facilitated consumer social interactions. Many product-focused online social platforms have included design features that can convey more information about product quality as well as the credibility of the members of the social community. Drawing on information signaling theory, we empirically examine how the two social information cues frequently found on online social communities, action-based social information (i.e., peer consumer purchase) and opinion-based social information (i.e., peer consumer review), influence consumer purchase decisions. We also explore the moderating role of consumer characteristics, consumer engagement and consumer expertise. Analyzing panel data (n=39,897) collected from a popular online beauty community, we found that consumer purchase decisions are indeed influenced by the two social information cues and that action-based social information is more influential than opinion-based social information. Furthermore, our results show that both consumer engagement and consumer expertise play an important moderating role in consumer purchase decisions, albeit in opposite direction: Whereas consumer engagement exerts a positive moderating effect, consumer expertise is found to have a negative moderating effect. This study contributes to existing literature by providing an evaluation on the signaling role of online social community features in consumer purchase decisions. The results offer important and interesting insights to IS research and practice.

Properties of one-dimensional photonic crystals containing single-negative materials.

Abstract: The transmission properties of a one-dimensional photonic crystal containing two kinds of single-negative (permittivity- or permeability-negative) media are studied theoretically. We show that this structure can possess a type of photonic gap with zero effective phase $({\ensuremath{\phi}}_{\text{eff}})$. The zero-${\ensuremath{\phi}}_{\text{eff}}$ gap distinguishes itself from a Bragg gap in that it is invariant with a change of scale length and is insensitive to thickness fluctuation. In contrast to a photonic gap corresponding to zero averaged refractive index, the zero-${\ensuremath{\phi}}_{\text{eff}}$ gap can be made very wide by varying the ratio of the thicknesses of two media. An equivalent transmission-line model is utilized to explain the properties. A photonic quantum-well structure based on zero-${\ensuremath{\phi}}_{\text{eff}}$ gaps is proposed as a multiple channeled filter that is compact and robust against disorder.

Supply chain management in the US and Taiwan: An empirical study

Abstract: This study uses an empirical survey of middle-line managers in the US and Taiwan to study the association of supply chain management components and organizational performance. Through structural equation modeling, critical components of supply chain management are found to have considerable effects on organizational performance. The findings of the study are summarized as follows: • Supply chain competencies have positive effects on organizational performance in both the US and Taiwan. Supply chain competencies are developed around quality and service, operations and distribution, and design effectiveness. The goal of supply chain competencies is to satisfy customer requirements. • Supply chain practices, which are made up of supply chain features, integration, and customer services, have direct impact on organizational performance in Taiwan, but they have only indirect impact in the US. • Supply chain practices and competencies are significantly associated in both the US and Taiwan. However, supply chain concerns and practices are associated in the case of the USA only. These results help middle-line managers in both the US and Taiwan to know which components and practices of supply chain management to focus on to improve organizational performance. They also show some of the similarities between the two regions and note differences that may be situation-dependent. However, what is measured here is the perception of middle-line managers. The actual practices may be different from these perceptions. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mining customer product ratings for personalized marketing

Abstract: With the increasing popularity of Internet commerce, a wealth of information about the customers can now be readily acquired on-line. An important example is the customers' preference ratings for the various products offered by the company. Successful mining of these ratings can thus allow the company's direct marketing campaigns to provide automatic product recommendations. In general, these recommender systems are based on two complementary techniques. Content-based systems match customer interests with information about the products, while collaborative systems utilize preference ratings from the other customers. In this paper, we address some issues faced by these systems, and study how recent machine learning algorithms, namely the support vector machine and the latent class model, can be used to alleviate these problems.