Virtual agents wear many different names according to their use contexts, functionalities, degrees of anthropomorphism. They can also be visible or incarnated, or not (incarnated agents are called Embodied virtual agents or EVAs). They have been widely used since the 2000's and first generated a...

An approach for capturing unobserved customer heterogeneity in structural equation modeling is proposed based on partial least squares. The method uses a modified finite-mixture distribution approach. An empirical analysis using quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty data for convenience...

We study how salespeople cope with sales call anxiety and find that two tactics ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions in selling interactions. That is, situation modification and attentional deployment both moderate the effects of felt physiological sensations and anxiety on...

Account managers invest in two distinct, compensatory social ties to achieve social capital, namely peripheral knowledge ties and implementation support ties. The first ties require communal investments, which consist of organizational citizenship behaviors and peripheral information sharing....

An approach for capturing unobserved customer heterogeneity in structural equation modeling is proposed based on partial least squares. The method uses a modified finite-mixture distribution approach. An empirical analysis using quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty data for convenience...