Brand crisis could threaten a company with declining public trust and decreased brand reputation (Greyser, 2009). When confronting with a crisis, the organization should respond immediately and properly so that the crisis can be stopped from escalate into a catastrophe (Davies and Walters, 1998). Crisis type can be divided into the victim, the accident or the intentional clusters according to perceived responsibilities the company should shoulder. Based on these factors, the company should select the most appropriate response strategy or a combination of different response strategies to address the crisis situation. In other words, a match between crisis type and response strategy is effective for companies to survive crisis situations (Cheong and Morrison, 2008). Food-related crisis tend to become rampant in recent years and require more in-depth studies. In the face of a food-related crisis, the affected company are compelled to communicate with both internal and external stakeholders, including employees, stockholders, retailers, suppliers and consumers to manage and survive the crisis (Massey, 2001). There are four options for companies in a product-harm crisis to choose from: denying the defect, involuntary recall, voluntary recall and improvement campaign (Souiden and Pons, 2009). This study took the issue of Blue Bell ice cream recalls as an example of product-harm crisis for case analysis and proposed three different kinds of strategies or hypotheses based on the Image Repair Theory (Benoit and Pang, 2008) covering the denial, evasion of responsibility, reducing offensiveness of events, corrective action and mortification aspects.

The past research concerning pets mostly focused on the assistance rendered by pets. Due to the climate of lesser child and never-go marry, more and more people treat pets like their children indeed. What they care does not limit to practical purposes such as guard and accompany, but also the pet¡¦s needs. They are willing to offer their pets all sorts of foods, goods and services so that their pets are happy with. On the other hand, the video technology reaches its maturity and is widely applied to mobile communication, house monitoring, and kindergarten monitoring. In addition, such technology is accessed to pet hotels, pet parlors, pet sitters and pet clinics where the pet owners can surf on their 3G phones to watch their pets at any time. This study aims to explore the pet owners¡¦ recognition of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and use intention in terms of video technology. This study is based on the framework of TAM, using raising attitude as external variable whereas subjective norm as independent variable to willingness to use. The questionnaires were sent to the pet owners through random sampling in Taiwan. 481 copies were retrieved and conducted SPSS and AMOS analysis. The findings indicate that all hypotheses are validated except two hypotheses- one is the pet owners ¡¥s mental propensity toward their pets is not related to the perceived ease of use of video technology, the other is perceived ease of use is not related to use intention. Therefore, the results confirm that¡G1. The feelings of the pet owners for their pets incur positive impact on their recognition toward the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use of video technology, 2. With subjective norm, the pet owners are more willing to use video technology. 3. If video technology facilitated easy caring for pets, the pet owners could easily recognize its perceived usefulness. 4. If the pet owners consider video technology perceived usefulness for keeping their pets, they have no intention to use such device to care about their pets. 5. For pet business sectors, it is imperative to make use of video technology in order to convince the pet owners of its conveniences which can be always appealing to the pet owners.

Combating HPV infection in males is a significant public health issue. In addition to the number of HPV-related cancers that develop each year, Palefsky (2007) reported that "HPV infection of men is of great importance given that sexual transmission is the primary mode of spread to women" (p. 261). In recent years, the development of the HPV vaccine has spurred controversy over whether or not males as well as females should obtain the vaccine against this disease. The purpose of this study was to examine male college students' intention to be HPV vaccinated and their HPV knowledge, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control towards the vaccination. A descriptive, correlational, cross-sectioned research design was employed. Two hundred and eight (208) male college students at a mid-sized public university participated in the study and completed an in-class questionnaire. The results of the descriptive statistics showed that, on average, the sample of 208 male college students had correct responses on only half of the 15 questions regarding knowledge about HPV based on the mean scores. Respondents had positive attitudes towards HPV vaccination, greater sense of control over being HPV vaccinated, and favorable intention to be HPV vaccinated. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were significant predictors of male college students' behavioral intention to be HPV vaccinated. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control had a positive influence on male college students' behavioral intention to be HPV vaccinated. Lastly, male college students' level of HPV knowledge was not significantly correlated to their behavioral intention to be HPV vaccinated

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the structure and antecedents of travelers' behavioral intentions. Understanding travelers' behavioral intentions is an important goal of both destination marketing organizations and host destinations. However, little research has contributed to the theoretical development in this area, and the lack of a solid theoretical framework has negatively influenced the validity of existing research. Thus, this study attempted to explain travelers' behavioral intentions, using a model which was developed based on existing human behavior theories: the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior. Another major objective of the current study was to test the validity of the proposed model. Based on the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior, a conceptual framework was established to explain travelers' behavior intention in a tourism context. Attitude was conceptualized as destination image which is a two-dimensional construct including cognitive and affective components. Subjective norms were conceptualized as the combination of normative beliefs and motivation to comply. Perceived behavioral control was conceptualized as constraints which is a three-dimensional construct including intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural components. An online panel survey was launched in September 2008 to collect data. Respondents were specially asked their perceived image about Texas, what were the barriers preventing them from traveling to Texas, and how their reference groups affected their travel decision to Texas. Totally, 1,448 completed surveys were received and utilized for analysis which included both visitors and non-visitors. The data analysis procedures included six major steps, from descriptive analysis and preliminary data analysis, to model and hypothesis testing. To do so, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 16.0 (SPSS) and Amos 16.0 were utilized. The structural relationships between all variables were tested with using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results of the study showed that destination image and subjective norm positively impacted behavioral intentions while constraints negatively affected behavioral intentions. Hence, this research provides important direction for the development of a more comprehensive theoretical framework to explain travelers' behavioral intentions, and presented a step toward offering practical as well as theoretical implications for future research.

Nowadays, the internet is an unseperatable part of human life and instant messaging software becomes an important role of communication channel. There are 40 million global IM registration popularity who use IM and billions of messages are sent everyday. In Taiwan, there are 6.5 million registration popularity and IM is the third important internet appilication, besides WWW and e-mail. As IM has become more and more important, there was few academic researchs published. We investigated consumer IM adoption behavior by focus group interview and structural equation model analysis. After holding a focus group interview, some antecedent of adopting IM was found out. Then we integrated technology acceptance model with media richness, computer self-efficacy and subjective norm as the antecedents of perceived usefulness(PU) and perceived ease of use(PEU) and analysised this structural equation model with LISREL. We found that subjective norm is an antecedent of PU, media richness and computer self-efficacy are PEU¡¦s antecedents. Finally, we made some suggestion for practice and other researchers base on the result.

While online shopping has high social acceptance and support from mature related industries in China, a considerable number of consumers choose to shop offline. The purpose of this study is to explore the specific factors that give consumers the intentions to shop offline. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is adopted as the theoretical framework to give a holistic view of intention-forming. Multiple-case studies are performed in this qualitative research. We study the contents of the interviews via TPB. Fifteen Chinese consumers take part in the research as the respondents in semi-structured interviews. After coding transcriptions, we explore detailed factors and divide them into three aggregates from TPB: attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The analysis of the interviews also supports the transformation of three dimensions of TPB.

Frågeställning: Vilken påverkan har attityd, subjektiv norm och eWoM på konsumentens klagomålsintention? Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att studera klagomålsintention ur ett konsumentperspektiv. Studien ämnar undersöka vilken påverkan attityd, subjektiv norm och eWoM har på konsumenten klagomålsintention. Undersökningen utgår från en kvantitativ forskningsstrategi av deduktivt anslag.  Metod: Denna studie baseras på en kvantitativ forskningsmetod där primärdata har samlats in via en digital enkätundersökning med frågor utformade från tidigare forskning. Kvantitativa primärdata samlades in med ett resultat av 314 respondenter där 17 respondenter blev bortfall, vilket gav 297 medverkande respondenter. En teorimodell skapade tillsammans med tillhörande hypoteser. Resultatet av studien undersöktes via en korrelations- och multivariat regressionsanalys i IBM SPSS-Statistics. Slutsats: Resultatet visade att attityd-tidigare erfarenhet, attityd-inställning att klaga samt subjektiv norm har en påverkan på klagomålsintentionen. Attityd-inställning till att klaga och subjektiv norm hade störst  påverkan med en mycket säker signifikans på klagomålsintentionen. Studiens resultat visade därmed att attityd-inställning till att klaga hade en större påverkan på klagomålsintentionen än attityd-tidigare erfarenhet. EWoM visade ingen direkt påverkan klagomålsintenitonen. Däremot kan vi konstatera att eWoM visade sig ha en relation till de oberoende variablerna attityd-inställning att klaga samt subjektiv norm. Vilket indikerar att det krävs fortsatt forskning inom detta ämne. / Research questions: Which effect do attitude, subjective norm, and eWoM have on the consumer's complaint intention?          Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine complaint intention from a consumer perspective. The study examines the impact of attitude, subjective norm, and eWoM on the consumer's complaint intention. The study is based on a quantitative research strategy of    deductive funding.               Method: This study is based on a quantitative research strategy where primary data has been collected via a digital survey with questions designed from previous research. Quantitative primary data were collected with a result of 314 respondents where 17 respondents were excluded, which gave 297 participating respondents. A theoretical model was created together with associated hypotheses. The results of the study were examined via a correlation and multivariate regression analysis in IBM SPSS-Statistics.    Conclusion: The results showed that attitude previous experience, attitude to complaining, and subjective norm have an influence on the intention to complain. Attitude to complaining and subjective norm had the greatest impact with a very certain significance on the intention to complain. The results of the study thus showed that attitude to complaining had a greater impact on the intention to complain than attitude to previous experience. EWoM showed no direct impact on the complaint intention. However, we can state that eWoM was found to have a relationship to the independent variables' attitude to complain as well as subjective norm. This indicates that further research is required in this subject.

Background: Less than half of Americans meet the recommendation of leisure-time physical activity (PA) of 150 minutes (CDC, 2012). A number of efficacious programs have been developed, and those that are based on theory are more effective. However, it is often difficult to determine the mechanisms of effect through meditational analyses. This is particularly an issue when a theory-based intervention is effective but theoretically hypothesized meditational relationships are not found. One reason for the lack of relationship could be the methods used to assess different theoretical constructs. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is one model used in the exercise and PA research domain which generally employs traditional fixed-graded measures of proposed theoretical mediators (e.g., strongly disagree to strongly agree response sets). More recent research provides initial evidence that using continuous-open scaling (e.g., ratio-level scaling; days or time/per week rather than agreement scales) has shown the superiority in measurement accuracy demonstrated by stronger relationships between the theoretical constructs and behavioral outcomes when compared to other scaling types. However, continuous open scaling has only been applied to correlational studies and there is no evidence that this scaling procedure results in measures that are sensitive to change or are related to both self-reported and objectively measured PA. Primary Aims: The primary aims of this study were to determine 1) the sensitivity to change of TPB constructs using different response sets and self-report and accelerometer assessed PA, and 2) if TPB constructs measured using the different response-sets have differential prediction of PA measured using self-report and accelerometry. Methods: Forty-six young adults were recruited to complete 13-item measure of TPB constructs using both fixed-graded and continuous-open scales as well as Godin's Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire at 3 time (T1=Baseline, T2=End of week 1, T3=End of week 2) points over 2-weeks. Potential participants were excluded if they engaged in PA of 150 minutes or more per week. Inclusion criteria were the ability to perform moderate intensity PA and aged 18-25 years old. The order of different scales for the TPB constructs was randomly and evenly assigned within each condition. Participants were asked to wear an accelerometer for 2 weeks; one week prior to the action planning activity and one week after. To determine the sensitivity to change of the measures, participants were randomly assigned to either complete a personal action plan for physical activity (AP) or not (Control). Due to the exploratory nature of the pilot we set the significance level for all tests at p<0.10. Results: In general responses to the continuous open versus fixed closed items, at each time point, resulted in significantly (p<.05) lower perceptions of attitude (instrumental attitudes T1=4.4, T2=4.2, T3=4.3 versus time1= 6.2, T2=6.4, T3=6.3; affective attitudes T1=3.6, T2=3.5, T3=3.9 versus time1= 5.0, T2=5.0, T3=4.8), subjective norm ( T1=3.4, T2=3.3, T3=2.4 versus time1= 5.3, T2=5.2, T3=5.3), perceptions of control ( T1=3.2, T2=3.7, T3=3.9 versus time1= 4.6 T2=4.9, T3=5.2), and intention (T1=1.5, T2=1.8, T3=2.4 versus time1= 4.8, T2=5.1, T3=5.2). In regards to sensitivity to change continuous open and fixed closed measures of instrumental attitudes, subjective norms did not demonstrate significant changes as a result of action planning. Affective attitudes measured by the continuous-open scale, but not when measured by the fixed-closed scale, showed change over time regardless of condition. Perceived behavioral control measured using the continuous-open scale increased for AP participants by approximately 0.5 compared to control participants change of approximately 0.1 (p=.09). A similar pattern was found with intention in that changes in the continuous-open scale were significant (AP=0.9; control=0.2; p=0.07). No other scales showed significant sensitivity to change. Self-reported PA increased significantly for AP participants (81-16 minutes per week of PA) when compared to control participants (87 +/- 19 to 75 +/- 17 minutes per week of PA; p<0.1). Same pattern of differences was shown between AP (65 +/- 13 to 107 +/- 15 minutes per week of PA) and control (70 +/- 14 to 65 +/- 16 minutes per week of PA) participants (p<0.05). Conclusions: Continuous open scaling have significant correlations with all constructs along with affective attitude and intention being correlated with the actual reported exercise behavior over fixed graded scaling. This data sheds further insight into the different response sets of the TPB in application to exercise domain within a sedentary, young population. The lack of a significant difference may be due to the small sample size. Further research should investigate the role of the personalized action plan utilizing a larger sample size and the correlation of the TPB with intention and actual exercise behavior within an intervention. / Master of Science

With the development of the broadband and the digital technology, different medium could integrate and converge together and the boundaries become dimmer and dimmer. For example, Chunghwa Telecom¡¦s (CHT) Multimedia On Demand service crossed the boundary and entered the digital visual industry in March, 2004. CHT¡¦s MOD is based on the television and through ADSL to offer the digital interactive TV service, making broadband from the study to the living room. Above the service platform, it could not only transmit the visual message, but also the voice and data messages. This kind of business model will be the operational target of the broadband suppliers in the future. However, there are some problems on the promotional pace of CHT¡¦s MOD mow. Based on the results of the earlier researches, the reason why the interactive visual service could not promote successfully is the government and companies put too much emphases on the technical infrastructure, but they all neglect the market situation and the customers¡¦ usages. But, in order to popularize one kind of new media technology, understanding the conditions of the target audiences accurately is the most important mission. Therefore, this research will take CHT¡¦s MOD as an example to understand the key factors which will influence the target audiences to accept the new media technology. And we will see the viewpoints of users. This research will take the Technology Acceptance Model as the main framework and combine the innovation characteristics, such as the compatibility, Trialability and observability. Moreover, we also take subject norm, network externality and new media technology self ¡Vefficacy into account. Through our survey and analysis, we could also prove the originate TAM again and our extended model is more explicative than the originated one. As TAM says, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use will influence the behavioral intention to use directly. And perceived usefulness is the most powerful variable in the model. Other variables will influence the perceived usefulness or perceived ease of use. For instance, subjective norm and network externality have the positive and remarkable effect on perceived usefulness. And new media technology self ¡Vefficacy has the direct effects on the perceived ease of use. On the other hand, among the innovation characteristics, the compatibility and observability have the direct effects on the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, but trialability doesn¡¦t. That says, the more compatibility and observability are, the stronger perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are. From the outcome of this research, we could understand the key factors of affecting the behavioral intention to accept CHT¡¦s MOD. And it could be the reference for the operators. Furthermore, all variables included in this research will affect the behavioral intention intensely. When we talk about such kind of information system with entertainments, the motivational variables could be considered.