Zhiyong Yang

Dr. Zhiyong Yang joined UNC Greensboro as the Department Head and Professor of Marketing in 2018. Previously, Zhiyong was a Professor of Marketing at the University of Texas-Arlington and played an instrumental role in: (1) community engagement with active learning projects, and (2) supervising doctoral students. Having published over 50 articles in leading scholarly journals, including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Zhiyong serves on the guest editorship and the editorial review boards of several reputed journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Zhiyong’s research has been funded by Statistics Canada, Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture of Canada, the National Science Foundation of China, and the Association for Consumer Research. He also received competitive research awards from Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, the University of Texas-Arlington, and Cardiff University. Before entering academia, Zhiyong spent over 10 years in industry, holding a number of industry positions, including project manager, marketing manager, and vice-president with major corporations. Zhiyong served on the President Advisory Committee at the University of Texas-Arlington from 2017 to 2018. He has given consumer insights seminars to industry professionals from North America, Europe, and China.

There are 50 included publications by Zhiyong Yang :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Abusive supervision in retailing: The mediating role of customer orientation and the moderating roles of contingent reward and contingent punishment 2021 1325 Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine a customer orientation mechanism through which abusive supervision influences retail salespeople’s job performance; and second, to investigate how abusive supervision’s effects may be m...
Advancing a participatory approach for youth risk behavior: Foundations, distinctions, and research directions 2013 744 Researchers of youth risk behavior frequently assume that behavior is volitional; the choice is to either engage in a risky behavior or a safe alternative. Yet, many factors may constrain life choices, not the least of which is how individuals view r...
Consumer Adoption of New Products: Independent versus Interdependent Self–Perspectives 2014 387 In five studies, the authors examine the impact of an independent (vs. interdependent) mindset on consumer adoption of new products. Study 1 demonstrates that consumers in a predominantly independent (vs. interdependent) culture are more willing to a...
Consumer power and choice deferral: The role of anticipated regret 2018 538 This paper examines the influence of social power on consumers' propensity to defer choice. Based on the notion that elevated power reduces regret anticipation—the fear of making a wrong choice—it is proposed that power influences the extent of choic...
CSR types and the moderating role of corporate competence 2018 1493 Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the impact of different types of corporate social responsibility (CSR; i.e. value-creating CSR, promotional CSR and philanthropic CSR) on consumer responses and the moderating role of corporate competence. Desi...
Cultural differences in consumer socialization: A comparison of Chinese–Canadian and Caucasian–Canadian children 2009 298 Based on the extant literature on the cultural/subcultural differences in socialization goals and parental practices in the childrearing process, this study compares Chinese–Canadian and Caucasian–Canadian families with respect to three issues centra...
Demarketing teen tobacco and alcohol use: Negative peer influence and longitudinal roles of parenting and self-esteem 2013 677 Tobacco and alcohol companies face increasing pressure to prevent smoking and drinking among underage consumers, reinforcing public policy initiatives designed to reduce youth substance use. One approach targets parents to influence their child's beh...
Development of Theory of Mind on Online Social Networks: Evidence from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat 2021 156 Teenagers are fond of online social networks (OSNs) but may be unable to decipher the marketing messages aimed at them or protect themselves from harmful advertisements, raising ethical concerns. The findings of this study may help alleviate such eth...
Differential effects of parenting strategies on child smoking trajectories: A longitudinal assessment over twelve years 2015 630 Past studies exhibit mixed findings regarding the effect of parenting strategies on children's behavior. We propose that it is due to behavioral heterogeneity among children – they differ in sensitivity to parental influence – and simultaneously exam...
Differential effects of pay-it-forward and direct-reciprocity on prosocial behavior 2020 817 This research conceptualizes the distinction between pay-it-forward and direct-reciprocity tendency from a construal level perspective, and examines such differences in three studies. Study 1 develops Pay-It-Forward Tendency scale and validates it in...
Differential effects of social influence sources on self-reported music piracy 2015 744 The paper examines the effects of five major socialization agents—namely parents, peers, traditional media, the Internet, and music industry—on emerging adults' attitudes and behavior toward music piracy in the form of unauthorized downloading. Based...
The Dual Role of Power in Resisting Social Influence 2013 950 This article maintains that power enhances consumers’ ability to resist social influence but produces different resistance outcomes, depending on the level of certainty with which consumers hold their own attitudes. When attitude certainty is high, e...
Early experience with digital advance care planning and directives, a novel consumer-driven program 2017 97 Barriers to traditional advance care planning (ACP) and advance directive (AD) creation have limited the promise of ACP/AD for individuals and families, the healthcare team, and society. Our objectives were to determine the results of a digital ACP/A...
The effect of job-related demands and resources on service employees’ willingness to report complaints: Germany versus China 2015 139 Service employees’ willingness to report complaints (WRC) is an important determinant of firms’ long-term growth. Despite its importance, we know little about the factors that drive or hinder employees’ WRC. Drawing on the job demands-resources (JDR)...
Effect of peer influence on unauthorized music downloading and sharing: The moderating role of self-construal 2015 972 This research develops an integrative model of music piracy, specifying self-control and differential association as antecedents, peer influence in music downloading/sharing as mediator, and self-construal as moderator. Disentangling peer influence i...
The effect of uncertainty avoidance and social trust on supply chain collaboration 2015 1152 Supply chain collaboration (SCC) is strategically important in today's business world, and the use of inter-organizational systems (IOS) much facilitates SCC. The present study examines: (1) the differential effects of two types of IOS—open and close...
Effects of antismoking messages from media on adolescent smoking: The roles of family, school, and culture 2019 656 Considering the context of family, school, and culture, this paper examines the effectiveness of antismoking messages from public media in influencing adolescents' smoking intention. Specifically, it proposes a model of the impact of antismoking mess...
Effects of service employees’ negative personality traits on emotional labour and job satisfaction: Evidence from two countries 2019 631 Purpose: Frontline service employees’ (FLEs) positive personality traits enhance service experiences, for both employee and customer outcomes. Yet, limited research addresses negative personality traits. Drawing on the emotion regulation framework, t...
Ethnic Youth: Parental Style and Consumer Socialization 2015 724 A substantial portion of the U.S. population consists of immigrants and all the indications are that the segment is growing in numbers. According to the 2010 Census, 37.9 per cent of the American population consisted of non-European ethnic groups; th...
Exploring How Intangibility Affects Perceived Risk 2004 1453 Studies have found that product intangibility increases consumers’ perception of risk. However, most of these studies measured the intangibility and perceived risk constructs unidimensionally. The primary objective of this article is to examine the e...
A Family Level Measure of Acculturation for Chinese Immigrants 2006 141 Acculturation refers to changes in cultural attitudes, values, and behaviors that take place as a result of continuous direct or indirect contacts of groups having different cultures (Broom and Selznick 1963). Consecutive waves of ethnic groups arriv...
A goal-directed interactionist perspective of counterfeit consumption: The role of perceived detection probability 2019 358 Purpose: To provide a keener understanding of consumers’ decision-making processes and motivations regarding deliberate counterfeit consumption, this paper aims to integrate insights from several theoretical perspectives and the relevant literature. ...
How Anxiety Leads to Suboptimal Decisions under Risky Choice Situations 2015 786 The current research proposes that situationally activated anxiety—whether incidental or integral—impairs decision making. In particular, we theorize that anxiety drives decisionmakers to more heavily emphasize subjective anecdotal information in the...
How culture matters in children’s purchase influence: a multi-level investigation 2007 211 Children’s purchase influence (CPI) is an important factor in understanding family consumption behavior. The present study investigated the effects of cultural adaptation, including the role of acculturation and ethnic-identification, on children’s r...
How Do Differing Community Engagement Strategies Affect Consumer Responses to a Retailer? 2016 119 This article develops and tests a conceptual model examining the effects of retailer’s use of two community engagement strategies, partnership and philanthropy. A survey, featuring one of four randomly assigned promotional messages, was created and d...
How Does Consumers’ Local or Global Identity Influence Price–Perceived Quality Associations? The Role of Perceived Quality Variance 2019 1379 Globalization has substantially influenced the world economy. However, managers have a limited understanding of how local–global identity influences consumers’ price perceptions and behavior. In this research, the authors propose that consumers’ loca...
How Parental Love Received in Childhood Affects Consumers’ Future Financial Discipline 2020 1007 The quantity and quality of nurturance that a child receives from her parents has a significant effect on the child’s future psychological health. However, it is unclear whether early nurturance similarly impacts future financial well-being—an issue ...
The impact of moral identity on consumers’ green consumption tendency: The role of perceived responsibility for environmental damage 2018 1629 In this research, we examine the effects of moral identity on green consumption tendency and a key process underlying such effects. In five studies, we show that moral identity increases consumers’ tendency to choose green products or exert effort on...
The Impact of Parenting Strategies on Child Smoking Behavior: The Role of Child Self–Esteem Trajectory 2010 879 Multidisciplinary research has documented that parenting strategies influence children's cigarette use. Extending the extant literature, this article develops an integrative model that examines the effect of parenting strategies on children's smoking...
The interactive effects of bitter flavor and mood on the decision to spend or save money 2017 100 People are more inclined to spend money when they are happy than when they are sad. However, unobtrusive situational factors that activate the concepts of a bitter life can reverse these effects. In line with this reasoning, our research shows that d...
Internet versus bricks-and-mortar retailers: An investigation into intangibility and its consequences 2005 536 Intangibility has long been studied as a unidimensional construct with the focus being placed upon the physical element. This paper explores the effects of three unique intangibility dimensions on a consumer's ability to evaluate goods and services, ...
An investigation into the antecedents of prepurchase online search 2018 155 This study investigates what influences consumers' extent of online search (i.e., the number of relevant web stores visited) before a purchase. A dataset containing website visitation and transaction activities from a panel of US consumers is used to...
A Meta-analytic investigation of consumer response to anthropomorphic appeals: The roles of product type and uncertainty avoidance 2021 128 We aim to resolve the mixed findings on the effectiveness of anthropomorphic appeals in generating positive product evaluations from consumers. In a meta-analysis of 47 papers that explores the persuasive impact of anthropomorphic versus non-anthropo...
Multi-level framework of open source software adoption 2011 146 Numerous studies examine potential facilitators and inhibitors of open source software (OSS) adoption at the firm level. This study represents the first attempt to propose and test a multi-level framework, examining the effects of five country-level ...
A Multilevel investigation into the effect of cultural distance on bilateral trade: The roles of product type and uncertainty avoidance 2020 128 Previous research shows mixed findings about how cultural distance may affect bilateral trade. To reconcile the mixed findings, we examine how key moderators at both the country-pair level (product type) and the country level (uncertainty avoidance) ...
Non-local or local brands? A multi-level investigation into confidence in brand origin identification and its strategic implications 2010 526 This article addresses a growing dilemma surrounding the strategic value of perceived brand foreignness (PBF) among consumers in emerging economies. Building on recent research evidence from the brand origin literature, we introduce the concept of co...
Outwitting the rational mind: How effortful thinking influences price cognition 2019 764 Prior research presents mixed findings on how people's degrees of effortful thinking influence their reliance on heuristics and biases. Although the tenets of dual process theory would argue that effortful thinking should attenuate people's reliance ...
Parental responsiveness and adolescent susceptibility to peer influence: A cross-cultural investigation 2011 812 From a developmental perspective, this research focuses on how parental responsiveness affects adolescent susceptibility to peer influence both directly, and indirectly, through the key elements of adolescent self-concept (i.e., interdependent self-c...
Parental style and consumer socialization among adolescents: A cross-cultural investigation 2014 1014 The paper examines how parental style affects consumer socialization in a cross-national context, focusing on family communication orientation, adolescents' use of influence strategies, susceptibility to peer influence, and impulse buying tendency. M...
Parental style, parental practices, and socialization outcomes: An investigation of their linkages in the consumer socialization context 2015 611 This study aims to generate insights into the mechanisms through which parental style influences adolescent consumer socialization. Toward this end, it examines two alternative conceptual frameworks: (1) The mediation model which posits two key dimen...
Parenting Strategies as Influences of Teen Drinking via Self Esteem: An Important Area for Family Policy 2010 167 Globally, in developing as well as developed countries, rampant increases in teen drinking are widely recognized as major threats to individual, family, and societal well-being. Parenting strategies influence drinking and related behaviors, leading t...
Peers matter: The moderating role of social influence on information security policy compliance 2020 1658 Information security in an organization largely depends on employee compliance with information security policy (ISP). Previous studies have mainly explored the effects of command-and-control and self-regulatory approaches on employee ISP compliance....
Productivity and Coauthorship in JPSSM: A Social Network Analysis 2010 638 This paper examines the key individual contributors and institutional contributors to JPSSM, covering 628 articles written by 761 authors since the journal’s inception in fall/winter 1980 until its fall 2009 issue. The nature and the dynamics of the ...
A proposed model of online consumer behavior: Assessing the role of gender 2010 266 This research examined the influence of Internet experience and web atmospherics on consumer online behavior. It developed a model of web navigation behavior where these antecedent variables drove website exploratory behavior and website involvement,...
Recent advances in identifying and theorizing the role of immigrant entrepreneurs, ethnicity, and culture in industrial marketing 2020 384 This special issue of Industrial Marketing Management (IMM) features four articles that cover topics related to immigrant entrepreneurs, ethnicity, and culture in industrial marketing. This introductory paper summarizes the contributions of these art...
Regulatory focus and consumption of counterfeit luxury goods: Roles of functional theories of attitudes and perceived similarity 2020 663 Four studies show that promotion (vs. prevention) focus leads to greater counterfeit consumption, and that social functions of attitudes and perceived similarity form a chain mediation underlying these effects. Study 1 links chronic regulatory focus ...
Salesperson time perspectives and customer willingness to pay more: roles of intraorganizational employee navigation, customer satisfaction, and firm innovation climate 2019 1002 This research aims to fill a critical gap in the sales literature by proposing a relationship-based model of customer willingness to pay more, involving salesperson time perspectives (i.e., long-term perspective and short-term perspective), intraorga...
Same Coin, Different Sides: Differential Impact of Social Learning on Two Facets of Music Piracy 2011 222 We demonstrate that two intertwined activities of music piracy, unauthorized obtaining and unauthorized sharing, are differentially influenced by the same social learning environment. We develop a structural model and test it using survey data from a...
The type-of-internet-access digital divide and the well-being of ethnic minority and majority consumers: A multi-country investigation 2018 1186 Wireless technologies and smartphones revolutionize the way consumers use the internet. How do these technological advancements affect consumer well-being or life satisfaction? We hypothesize that mobile- as compared to regular only- internet use enh...
When poignant stories outweigh cold hard facts: A meta-analysis of the anecdotal bias 2020 355 The objective of this paper is to resolve mixed findings about which type of evidence is more persuasive—statistical or anecdotal information. In a meta-analysis of 61 papers exploring the persuasive impact of evidence type, we establish that, in sit...