Drawing on the institutional theory, we explore the underlying mechanisms of legitimacy and their different roles to channel efficiency and relationship. The results from tow studies show that, cognitive legitimacy can help the running of marketing channel without management, but it is a slow process, and we should influence the inner beliefs and borrow the forces of other mechanisms. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the empirical application of institutional theory in marketing channel management at a micro analysis level.

Chinese face refers to reputation, others’ respect or compliance which is gained through self-representation and role-playing. The current research identifies and distinguishes the four dimensions of face construct: personal identity-face, family identity-face, friend identity-face, and occupational identity-face. Based on this, we discuss and investigate the influence of the four different face dimensions on consumer’s need for uniqueness (CNFU). The result shows that the influence paths and directions are differences. Specifically, personal identity-face and family identity-face restrain CNFU through promoting interdependent self-construal, and friend identity-face and occupational identity-face facilitate CNFU through enhancing consumer’s susceptibility to normal influence. These findings are useful for clarify contemporary Chinese individuality-seeking consumption and conformity consumption behavior, and will shed light on firm strategic practices, such as brand positioning and product communication.

Although market orientation plays a crucial role in building firm market competitive competence, China’s publicly traded firms vary enormously in their levels of market orientation. Based on agency theory, this study examines the antecedents of market orientation from the perspective of a firm’s ownership structure. We provide empirical evidence that the differences in ownership structure are closely related to varying levels of market orientation across firms. Moreover, the relationship between ownership structure and market orientation is contingent on firm size and age. This study enriches the extant market orientation literature by exploring the important but understudied role of ownership structure.

There is misinformation on the history of the early dissemination of marketing in China. Based on textual research of historical materials, several questions are discussed and useful conclusions are drawn. (1) “Principles of Marketing”, written by Ding Xinbo in 1933 and published in 1934, was the first Chinese monograph on marketing. (2) Taiwan scholars were the first to translate “marketing” into Chinese and use it as a discipline name. The translation was then modified by Chinese mainland scholars in 1987 and the new name had gradually become the mainstream since 1991. (3) Chinese translation of some chapters of Kotler’s “Marketing Management” by mainland scholars dates back to 1981, but the book didn’t become influential in China until the publication of the 5th and 6th Chinese edition of “Marketing Management” in 1990 and 1991.

While the Internet, with the increased popularity of application, has made customers more powerful in market exchange, it too brings firms with new capabilities. Taking the Internet as one of foundational environment factors rather than merely a new channel of communication or marketing, this paper proposes and defines the concepts of Internet interactive technology, firm’s interactive capability and interactive strategy from the perspective of interactive technology. It then constructs a conceptual framework of firm’s interactive capability and interactive strategy on the basis of Internet interactive technology after a discussion about the relationships among these concepts. Accordingly, even if all the firms live in the environment, they are different in interactive capability as a result of their differences in application of Internet interactive technologies, which in term would lead to the differences in their interactive strategies and behaviors and hereafter to the differences in their performance. Finally, this paper offers several directions for the future studies on the topic.

Through four experiments, we found that a messy physical environment would lower consumer self-control. Specifically, in a messy environment, consumers would prefer a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward (Studies 1A – 1B), and they were also more likely to choose tasty but unhealthy foods (Study 2). Finally, the effect of messiness on self-control was moderated by consumers’ need for cognition (NFC): messiness lowered self-control only for consumers with a relatively low NFC, but not for those with a relatively high NFC (Study 3).

Usually, customer interacts with different frontline employees across encounters with a service organization; this situation is defined as a service pseudo relationship. Under the circumstance, the characteristic of service heterogeneity could be more significant due to the increasing service encounter, so that service failure shows more common and the attributions and evaluations toward thus failure would be more complicated. Based on this, the present study attempts to investigates consumers’ attributions and judgments on offending employee and service organization base on their implicit theories of personality when face to a interactional service failures within pseudo relationships. By using express chain hotels as research object in a 2×2×2 experimental design, our empirical results show that compared to incremental theorists, entity theorists’ controllability and globality attributions toward a serious service failure can be lowered by positive past experience with the organization, while whatever the level of service failure, entity theorists feel more dissatisfaction with the offending employee, but feel more satisfaction with the organization; on the other hand, when faced to a mild service failure, entity theorists’ controllability and globality attributions can be increased and satisfaction toward the organization can be lowered by a negative past experience; while entity theorists’ feel more satisfaction with the organization when serious service failure happens.

Used single factor repeated experimental design, regarded the eight matches of the Logo elements and goods’ picture elements as an independent variable, and controlled online advertising size, background color, content complexity and other disturbance variable, this article investigated the best visual searching way when the subjects browsed Logo elements in online advertising layout. The results showed that: when the image elements were fixed in advertisement central, it was recommended that place Logo elements on the middle and parallel to the picture elements (right, left), and the upper-left position, and avoid Logo elements on the bottom of the picture elements, especially in the lower left position. The designers could determine the best online advertising layout based on the Logo elements visual search effects, and combined with the actual marketing purposes.

This paper studies on food nutrition label information, and discusses the impact on consumers by information persuasion, analyzes the influence mechanism that the information impact on consumers systematically. Comparing with promotion claim, high perceived risk information could get stronger positive attitude of consumer by prevention claim. Comparing with prevention claim, low perceived risk information could get stronger positive attitude of consumer by promotion claim. The higher level of product knowledge, the more differences of consumer’s attitude between prevention claim and promotion claim used by high perceived risk information; the higher level of product knowledge, the less differences of consumer’s attitude between prevention claim and promotion claim used by low perceived risk information.