ABSTRACT. Customers’ participation and contribution are vital to the success of virtual communities (VCs) platform while people have many options to freely surf on the Internet. Sustained participation, instead of initial participation, is more meaningful to virtual communities’ practices. From the perspective of self-determination theory, this paper explores the effect of community artifacts on sustained participations through users’ satisfaction of psychological need and virtual community identification. With empirical studies in two types of virtual community platforms (interest-based and relational-based), our results reveal several important findings. Firstly, we find that virtual co-presence and deep profiling can increase users’ satisfaction of inner psychological needs. But the use of persistent labeling does not affect the user's satisfaction of psychological needs. In addition, self-presentation is positively related to relational-based community, and rather has no impact on interest-based community. Secondly, we find that there exists a positive relationship between users’ satisfied psychological needs and virtual community identification. Finally, virtual community identification significantly impacts sustained participation. This paper offers a new perspective on the psychological mechanism of sustained participation and yields important implications for the managerial practice.

ABSTRACT. When consumers undertake identity consumption by consuming products or services, not only brand could influence consumers’ choice, brand prominence would play a role as well. In order to investigate the association between consumers’ characteristics and identity consumption demand, this study examines the effect of self-construal on consumers’ preference for brand prominence in different identity consumption scenarios (i.e., identity consumption for self and identity consumption for others). The results show that, under the scenario of identity consumption for self, when consumers are insiders or in the high-level identity salience out-group, self-construal has no significant influence on consumers’ preference for brand prominence. However, when consumers are in the low-level identity salience out-group, self-construal significantly affects consumers’ preference for brand prominence; and under the scenario of identity consumption for others, i.e., gifts-giving, when gift-givers and gift-receivers are at the same fashion status, the self-construal of gift-givers doesn't affect their preference for brand prominence. Whereas when gift-givers and gift-receivers are at the different fashion status, the self-construal of gift-givers has effect on their preference for brand prominence. Specifically, interdependent self-construal consumers are more inclined to choose the products according to gift-receivers’ preference for brand prominence. Theoretical and managerial implications along with future research directions are discussed.

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the effect of shopping experience on consumers’ subjective well-being (SWB). The results imply that physical stores raise hedonic shopping value, thereby increasing SWB, especially when they purchase luxury goods. These results suggest luxury managers should place a high level of importance on their physical direct retail presence.

ABSTRACT. In the context one being one of the most environmentally polluting industries, fashion industry started the transition to a different system, a more sustainable one. This exploratory study will analyse how second-hand boutiques, the most numerous and popular sustainable business model from Romania, utilize the new digital platforms, like Instagram.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the role that possessing a trademark and a social media presence has in the development of international activities as well as their influence on performance for Small and Medium Sized (SMEs) companies operating within the fashion sector of the UK and Ireland.

ABSTRACT. This study attempts to identify 1) the possible mediators in the relationship between AR experience and consumers’ patronage behaviors and 2) the boundary conditions of AR experience. Our study verifies the usefulness of the control theory in a new media environment and provides marketers on how to utilize AR technologies.

ABSTRACT. The present study investigates the impact of blogger credibility, homophily and engagement on readers’ intentions to buy and e-word-of-mouth. Despite the growing relevance of these issues, past studies have neglected the relevance of a joint analysis of such dimensions within the context of fashion blogs. To address these scientific gaps, the study proposes and tests an integrated model that explains blog followers’ shopping intentions toward fashion products sponsored by the blogger. Results from a survey on Italian and Taiwanese consumers show that blogger credibility and homophily have a significant effect on blog engagement, which, in turn, positively affects both e-word-of-mouth and purchase intentions toward blogger’s sponsored products. Moreover, homophily also confirms its influential role on purchase intentions and e-WOM. Finally, theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Introduction Since the advent of social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the number of social media users have explosively increased over time. Given their popularity, social media are also considered an effective means for companies to easily and frequently expose their products to consumers and to strengthen customer loyalty by establishing relationships with them. Marketing activities through factors other than products and services, including the use of social media, have become important given that differentiation is hard to achieve these days solely based on products and services. In line with the belief that a CEO’s reputation can affect a company’s success, many corporate CEOs are using social media as a means of managing their images. CEOs of online fashion retailers are no exception. Despite the importance of this phenomenon, few studies have examined how consumers may perceive social media usage by the CEOs of online fashion retailers, and whether it would the affect consumers’ attitude toward the retailers. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine the effect of social media usage by the CEOs of online fashion retailers on the consumers’ attitude toward and intention to purchase from the retailers.

Hypothesis Development As social beings, human develops relationships with others. Social penetration theory (Altman & Taylor, 1973) asserts that relationships move from superficial to intimate through self-disclosure (i.e., revealing personal thoughts, feelings, interests, and experiences). That is, a person’s self-disclosure allows others to feel closer to the person, which leads to increased personal liking. A personal social media account can reveal the account owner’s interests and recent experiences to viewers. Therefore, an online fashion retailer CEO’s use of a personal social media account will allow consumers to feel a greater degree of intimacy and liking toward the CEO, which in turn is expected to positively influence the consumers’ attitude toward the retailer. Based on this reasoning, H1a and H1b were formulated. H1a: Online fashion retailer CEO’s use of social media positively influences consumers’ attitude toward the online store. H1b: Online fashion retailer CEO’s use of social media positively influences consumers’ intention to purchase from the store.

The messages CEOs post on social media may be informational and represent the expertise of the CEO on fashion. On the other hand, some CEOs simply post messages about their lifestyle or reveal their tastes and preferences. In relation to this reasoning, H2a was formulated. H2a: The message type of the online fashion retailer CEO’s personal social media influences consumers’ attitude toward the store.

Kotler (2001) defined image as “the set of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a person holds regarding an object” (p. 273), and here, the object may include a person. Based on the definition, CEO image can be defined as a set of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a consumer forms regarding the CEO as a person. Gaines-Ross (2003) argued that consumers may or may not purchase products depending on a CEO’s reputation, and good CEO reputation makes consumers willing to pay a premium price for products. This reflects the fact that a CEO’s image affects consumers’ purchase decisions. Therefore, we predicted that CEO image would influence consumers’ attitude toward the online fashion retailer. A significant relationship between CEO image and attitude toward the company was evident in previous empirical studies (Lee, 2004; Lee, 2005). Therefore, when the relationship is applied to online fashion retailers, it can be predicted that the CEO’s image would affect consumers’ attitude toward the store. In line with this, H2b is posited. H2b: There is a relationship between the image of the online fashion retailer CEO and consumers’ attitude toward the store.

We also predicted that the types of messages that CEOs post on their social media may have a moderating effect on the relationship between CEO image and consumers’ attitude toward the online fashion retailer. We assumed that the effect of CEO image would be maximized when the message types resonated with the image of the CEO. Therefore, H2c is posited as follows. H2c: The message type of the online fashion retailer CEO’s social media would moderate the effect of the CEO’s image on consumers’ attitude toward the store.

The message type of a CEO’s personal social media account may affect the belief in the products themselves offered by the online fashion store that the CEO represents, besides belief in the store itself. Therefore, we expected that the message type would influence consumers’ purchase intention in the store regardless of what attitude consumers form concerning the store, formulating H3a. H3a: The message type of the online fashion store CEO’s personal social media account influences consumers’ purchase intention in the store, controlling for consumers’ attitude toward the store.

The CEO image of online fashion retailer may be correlated with consumers’ intention to purchase products offered in the store regardless of consumers’ attitude toward the store, due to the halo effect. Ko et al. (2008) empirically revealed that the image of CEOs was correlated with the image of products offered by the company that the CEO represented, meaning positive CEO image may spill over to the product or store image. This leads us to the postulation that CEO image would influence consumers’ intention to purchase from the store regardless of what attitude consumers have toward the store, generating H3b. H3b: CEO image is correlated with consumers’ purchase intention in the store, controlling for consumers’ attitude toward the store.

Based on the same reasoning as for H2c, we predicted that the types of messages that CEOs post on their social media may have a moderating effect on the relationship between CEO image and consumers’ intention to purchase from the online fashion retailer. Thus, H3c is posited as follows. H3c: The message type of the online fashion retailer CEO’s social media would moderate the effect of CEO image on consumers’ intention to purchase from the store.

According to the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), the attitude toward an object can lead to the behavioral intention related to the object. Given this, we expected that the attitude toward an online fashion retailer would influence the intention to purchase from the store. Specifically, we predicted that the attitude toward an online fashion retailer would have a positive influence on consumers’ purchase intention. Therefore, H4 was posited as follows. H4: Attitude toward an online fashion retailer affects consumers’ intention to purchase from the store.

Method The participants in this research were South Korean women in their twenties or thirties. A total of 313 participants were recruited through a mobile survey company. The recruited participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: A (lifestyle message), B (informational message), and C (control). For this study, researchers developed a fictitious online fashion retailer, and screenshots of this store were presented to all three groups. Moreover, the researchers developed two social media postings featuring different types of messages along with related pictures. Screenshots of the social media postings featuring lifestyle messages and pictures that show an individual’s lifestyle (e.g., a gift from a friend, traveling, and meeting up with friends) were presented in the questionnaire for group A only. Similarly, screenshots of the social media posting featuring informational messages and pictures of relevant fashion items were included in the questionnaires for group B only. Participants in both group A and B were asked to imagine that the screenshots were from the personal social media account of the CEO of the presented online fashion retailer. After viewing the social media posting screenshots, participants were asked to answer questions for a manipulation check. For group C, only online fashion retailer screenshots, and no social media screenshots, were presented. The questionnaire included items related to CEO image, attitude toward the store, intention to purchase from the store, and demographic variables. Measures for the variables were adopted from previous studies and then modified to suit the purpose of this study.

Results As a result of the manipulation check, a chi-square test showed a statistically significant difference between groups A and B in terms of their perception of the type of messages (p < .001). Of the participants in group A, 86.5% perceived presented messages as lifestyle messages, and 72.4% of the participants in group B perceived the messages as informational messages. Further, the three groups were identical in terms of personal traits (demographics, interests in fashion, etc.) other than the variables of interest in the study.

Next, a factor analysis was conducted to identify the underlying factors of items used to measure CEO image. The factor analysis revealed that there were two underlying factors. All factor loadings were over .4 and Cronbach’s α for the two factors were .87 and .74, respectively. Based on the items loaded on each factor, the two factors were named “likeable” image and “sophisticated” image. Finally, measures of both the attitude toward the online fashion retailer (Cronbach’s α = .79) and purchase intention (Cronbach’s α = .84) demonstrated good reliabilities. As a result of a t-test, the attitude toward the store scores for the condition wherein participants viewed screenshots of the fictitious CEO’s personal social media account (groups A and B, M = 3.10, SD = .57) were significantly higher than those for the control condition (group C, M = 2.92, SD = .42; t = 3.12, p < .01), supporting H1a. Moreover, another t-test showed that there was a significant difference in the purchase intention scores for the social media use condition (M = 3.03, SD = .91) and control condition (M = 2.67, SD = .68; t = 3.85, p < .001) as well, supporting H1b.

Tests for hypotheses H2 to H4 were conducted using only the data from groups A and B. In relation to H2a, H2b, and H2c, a hierarchical multiple regression was conducted with attitude toward the store as the dependent variable. First, message type was entered at stage one and did not significantly contribute to the regression model (R² = 0.00, F = .87, p = n.s.). Therefore, H2a was not supported. Next, adding “likeable” image and “sophisticated” image to the regression model at stage two explained the additional 39.3% of the variance in attitude toward the store and the model was statistically significant (F = 45.03, p < .001). Both “likeable” image (ß = .40, p < .001) and “sophisticated” image (ß = .29, p < .001) were positively associated with the attitude toward the store. Thus, H2b was supported.

Since message type did not make any statistically significant difference in the CEO image in the analysis for H2 testing, an additional analysis to test if CEO image moderated the effect of message type was carried out in stage three, i.e., a test of the interaction effect (message type X “likeable” image, message type X “sophisticated” image) (H2c). The added interaction terms explained the additional 1.6% of the variance and the model was statistically significant (F = 28.58, p < .001). The interaction term of message type and “likeable” image was not a statistically significant predictor (ß = .14, p = n. s.) while the interaction term of message type and “sophisticated” image was a statistically significant predictor (ß = -.64, p < .05).

Because we found that CEO image moderated the effect of message type, we conducted regression analysis with “likeable” image and “sophisticated” image as predictors and attitude toward the store as the outcome variable per message type. The analysis revealed that when lifestyle messages were featured, both “likeable” image (ß = .35, p < .001) and “sophisticated” image (ß = .42, p < .001) were statistically significant predictors. However, when informational messages were featured, “likeable” image (ß = .41, p < .001) was a statistically significant predictor but “sophisticated” image (ß = .20, p < n. s.) was not.

To test H3a, H3b, H3c, and H4, a hierarchical multiple regression was conducted with purchase intention as the dependent variable. Message type and attitude toward the store were entered at stage one and then, “likeable” image and “sophisticated” image were entered at stage two. As in the analysis for H2 testing, we additionally tested if CEO image moderates the effect of message type by entering the interaction terms to the regression model at stage three. The regression model with CEO image, message type, and attitude toward the store was statistically significant (R² = .57, F = 136.37, p < .001). The effect of message type was not a statistically significant predictor (ß = -.03, p = n.s.). That is, H3a was not supported. The regression model at the stage two explained the additional 1.7% of the variance of purchase intention and the model was statistically significant (F = 72.46, p < .001). However, neither of the CEO image factors, “likeable” image (ß = .11, p = n.s.) and “sophisticated” image (ß = .08, p = n.s.) were statistically significant predictors, indicating H3b was not supported. Finally, introducing the interaction terms additionally explained 0.3% of the variance and the regression model was statistically significant (F = 48.44, p < .001) but none of the interaction terms were statistically significant predictors (H3c not supported). Attitude toward the store was positively associated with purchase intention (ß = .76, p < .001), supporting H4.

Discussion We found that an online fashion retailer CEO’s use of a personal social media account induces a positive attitude toward and increased purchase intention from the store that the CEO represents. Based on the findings, we suggest that online fashion retailer CEOs actively use personal social media accounts to influence consumers to develop a more favorable attitude toward and greater purchase intention from the store. In terms of CEO image, our research revealed that both “likeable” and “sophisticated” images were positively correlated with attitude toward the store. It was also revealed that attitude toward the store was positively associated with purchase intention from the store. Given these findings, online fashion retailer CEOs should try to form “likeable” and/or “sophisticated” images in consumers’ minds so that consumers have a more favorable attitude toward the store that they represent, leading to increased purchase intention from the store.

Finally, we found that when a CEO’s personal social media account features lifestyle messages, both “likeable” and “sophisticated” images were positively correlated with attitude toward the store. However, when it features informational messages, only a “likeable” image was positively correlated with the attitude toward the store. Therefore, in terms of managerial implications, when an online fashion retailer CEO communicates through a personal social media account featuring informational messages, focusing his/her effort to form a “likeable” image rather than a “sophisticated” image would be a better strategy.

ABSTRACT. The current research empirically documents the positive effects of category interest, need for cognition, and transportation tendency on the persuasiveness of social media adverting and, more importantly, examines the perceived usefulness of posted information and the perceived manipulative intent as the psychological mechanism underlying the observed effects. The results of this study showed that in general, consumers showed more positive responses toward a brand post using holistic content than toward one using analytical or storytelling content. However, when consumers high in need for cognition were highly interested in the product category, they perceived more usefulness of information from a brand post using analytical content than a brand post using holistic content. Perceived usefulness of the post led to positive responses toward the analytical content. Moreover, when consumers high in transportation tendency were not very interested in the product category, they perceived less manipulative intent from the brand post using storytelling content than the brand post using analytical content. Low perceived manipulative intent of the post led to positive responses toward the storytelling content.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the effect of digital advertising on the customer-brand relationship, looking at the mediating role of privacy risk perceptions on consumers’ purchase intentions. Through an online experiment, authors show how the source of the customized promotion via e-mail (known source vs. unknown source) has implications on privacy risk perceptions which in turn influence purchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Storytelling has been widely used as a marketing strategy by brands to communicate with consumers. With characters and plots, well-developed stories not only connect brands with consumers but also elevate the perceived value of products. As social media becomes an important platform to catch consumers’ attention, brands are developing more brand videos to post on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This is because brand videos allow consumers to engage with brands and increase click-throughs more than conventional ads. Knowingly, brands such as Chanel and Kate Spade have launched episodes of online brand videos on social media. These brand videos portray the same main characters in a series of episodes. The viewers follow this one main character in several plots. These characters are effective in drawing consumers into the stories and engaging them. While past studies examined the role of characters or the holistic effects of storytelling in advertisements extensively, whether seeing the same characters in a series of episodes is uniquely effective is unknown. Therefore, the present study explored the effects of plot diversity (i.e., the different episodes) on consumer-brand relationship based on the literature of self-referencing and brand anthropomorphism. The current study found that participants who viewed three plots were able to link the character with their own self-concepts and experiences better than those who viewed one plot. The perceived similarity between the self and the character in the narratives may have increased due to the different dimensions portrayed in the videos. The more situations a character is placed in a narrative, the more consumers are likely to find a similar situation they personally have experienced.

ABSTRACT. ABSTRACT

Introduction The number of North Korean defectors in South Korea has reached 30,000, however, it has been reported that many of them still have adaptation problems. Research on adaptation of North Koreans to South Korean society has been approached mainly from social, economic, and psychological perspectives, and little research has been conducted on their adaptation in terms of lifestyle of North Koreans in South Korean society. Adaptation to daily life pattern in a new social-cultural environment may be examined in the context of acculturation. As a part of the daily life, this study focused on North Korean defectors’ clothing behavior and how they use clothing as a strategic tool for their adaptation to South Korean culture. The results of this study may provide educators or marketers the information needed to develop respectively educational program and mobile applications to help the North Korean defectors adapt to South Korean fashion style. This research also examined the impact of fashion SNS and word-of-mouth communication as a means of identity formation. This study may contribute to the understanding of adaptation process, not only of North Korean defectors, but also other immigrants to other countries.

Theoretical Development Previous studies on the adaptation of North Korean defectors to South Korea have mainly dealt with their adjustment-related problem or stress, and satisfaction that they can experience in social, economic or psychological aspects. Kang (2011), Lee and Hwang (2008), and Ryu (2001) examined their adaptation focusing on social relationships and role as a family member or at work. Jung et al. (2013) investigated individual difference of social adjustment based on environmental and psychological adaptation, depending on defecting motive. To identify the overall life satisfaction of North Korean defectors in South Korea, Chae (2011) used the items such as income, residential environment and neighborhood, while Jeon et al. (2004) included governmental support system, support for employment or job training, economic status, self-consciousness, and sense of value in their questionnaire. Meanwhile, in-depth and exploratory research using qualitative approach has been rarely conducted on North Korean defectors. To clarify their adaptation to South Korea, Han (1996) dealt political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects and Shin and Bae (2010) investigated subjective perception, both using in-depth interview. Such prior researches on North Korean defectors have focused on their career and family life. However, little study has treated their adaptation to South Korean lifestyle related to clothing, food and housing. In order to study how they adapt to a South Korean mode of life on a daily basis, it needs to discuss on their acculturation process in which their values, attitude, and behavior might alter to accept a South Korean lifestyle (Lee, 1997; Chae, 2011). As the acceptance of new mode of life can be included in a concept of acculturation (Lee & Hwang, 2008; Yoon, 2001), North Korean defectors’ adaptation process of South Korean lifestyle should be examined in the context of acculturation. As one of means of adapting to South Korean lifestyle, North Korean defectors’ appearance management behavior to look like South Koreans can be an important way of expressing presence as South Koreans (Kim, 1999; Kim, 2016). Accordingly, this study tried to explore North Korean defectors’ acculturation process, in particular, focusing on the role of clothing as a means of expression of identity, and adaptation to new lifestyle.

Research Method In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 North Korean defectors in their 20s and 40s who agreed to voluntarily participate in the research from December 2016 to February 2017. Considering their social identity as defector, this study used the snowball sampling method which is made through referrals among respondents who know of other informants possessing various characteristics that are of research interest (Biernacki & Waldorf, 1981). In order to draw a representative sample which can fully convey various experience of adapting to the South Korean society after escaping North Korea, this study selected North Korean defectors who reside in South Korea for at least more than one year. Respondents’ adaptation process by passage of time was analyzed based on attitudinal aspects (i.e. cognition on South Korean appearance, change in clothing norm, values of fashion goods consumption) and behavioral aspects (i.e. information gathering, appearance management, clothing purchase behavior) which can be changed during five phases of acculturative process such as pre-contact, contact, conflict, crisis, and adaptation phase (Berry and Kim, 1988). The interpretation of the analyzed results followed Berry’s (1997) four acculturation strategies: assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration which are subdivided based on the extent of adopting the new culture and preserving original culture.

Results of the Study The findings from the interviews are as follows. The Integrators still tried to abide by the clothing norm acquired in North Korea, but at the same time accepted the clothing norms of South Korea. They also tried to change their personal ideal related to preferred appearance. They maintained their fashion style followed by North Korean clothing norms, yet they newly acquired norms regarding slim body-making or skin care management which are of public interest in South Korea. They showed the change of store preference and choices as they become adapted to South Korean culture, however they didn’t have feeling of loss regarding the culture of origin. The second group, Assimilators showed high degree of acceptance of South Korean culture. They regarded the sense of belonging to South Korean society and appearance management as important. Many of them played a role as a fashion adviser among their North Korean peers while they have formed and kept the social network with South Korean. They also thought that they dress better and more want to wear branded fashion products than South Korean so that they felt comforted to live a life similar to that of South Koreans. Thirdly, Segregators tried to maintain North Korean culture, and segregate from the South Korean culture. Defectors in this type still abided by the clothing norms they acquired while in North Korea, and had a negative viewpoint on the South Koreans' fashion styles. They still preferred North Korean fashion style, and were familiar with using North Korean words for expressing terminology related to fashion. However, they used mobile application or web site for information on shopping fashion goods. Finally, Marginalized group was the people who considered themselves being individual and independent self-standing entity with low degree of acceptance both of South and North Korean culture. They sought to express their own individuality before and after defecting by creating their own style.

Conclusion & Implications This study investigated how clothing would help strategically for North Korean defectors in their adaptation to South Korean culture and identity formation. In this study, the Integrators and Assimilators had a psychological comfort by purchasing popular fashion items (i.e. wide pants, long padded coat) in South Korea which can make them have similar appearance to that of South Korean. Furthermore, they confessed that they would gain self-confidence in adaptation to South Korean culture, in particular, if they heard the compliments that they are well-dressed from South Korean. It was revealed that they felt a sense of belonging as South Koreans while receiving the A/S, refund and exchange service, and sale promotion of department store. The Integrators, Assimilators, Marginalized group, and even Segregators used Internet-based media channel (i.e. mobile application, fashion-related blogs, or Facebook) to search and collect fashion- or shopping-related information. In particular, the Integrators, Assimilators, and Marginalized group acquired information on trendy fashion style in South Korea, fashion brand, and even luxury brand through SNS. The results of this study also suggested that as an active adaptation strategy, behavioral shifts in way of dressing which follow South Korean fashion style promote North Korean defectors’ positive self-esteem resulting in sense of well-being. Meanwhile, before entering South Korea, some of North Korean defectors have already been exposed to South Korean popular culture through TV dramas and singers, purchased secretly South Korean goods and imported goods from Japan and China, or obtained various cultural experiences from intermediate stop such as China and Thailand. Accordingly, such experiential factors may serve as moderating variables in future empirical studies. In addition, from a multicultural point of view, this study may contribute to develop clothing educational program to help North Korean defectors overcome cultural differences and live harmoniously in South Korean society.

Keywords: Acculturation, North Korean defector, South Korea, Migrant, Multiculture

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ABSTRACT. Introduction It appears that the last field to accept artificial intelligence (AI) technology is the field of art. Although the number of images generated by AI technology has been on the rise since Google’s pattern-finding software DeepDream, artworks generated by AI haven’t been getting much attention from art experts or lay people. However, Christie’s New York recently made history by becoming the first auction house to sell an art piece created by an AI; Portrait of Edmond de Belamy captured worldwide headlines by hitting the auction block with $432,500 on 25 October in 2018. Now that an auction house with such a high reputation has sold artwork made by a big data based algorithm, interest in AI-generated art has been sparked. After this fresh and shocking news was released, we had a question. Does the sale of Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (2018) indicate that people are ready to embrace art made by AI? As with the case of Portrait of Edmond de Belamy (2018), some people might like to believe that AI can paint. However, for others, it would be hard to accept that AI art can boost human well-being, as art is considered to be a uniquely human area and thus usually expected from human artist. Therefore, in this study, we will explore when people choose to adopt or not to adopt the art made by AI and find the underlying mechanism to explain this phenomenon.

Literature Review AI is defined as ‘‘a nonhuman entity that is autonomous, interacts with its environment and adapts itself as a function of its internal state and its interaction with the environment” (Grodzinsky, Miller, & Wolf, 2011). AI is spread out on diverse platforms and is used in applications to support human decision-making process, especially in the area of supervised learning. For example, in the medical field, IBM’s AI “Watson” has been proven superior to human doctors in diagnosing certain diseases, including skin cancer (Esteva et al., 2017; Leachman & Merlino, 2017; McFarland, 2016). However, AI continuously challenges the area of unsupervised learning, where no exact right or wrong answer exists. The art field is one of the most typical unsupervised learning areas. Despite the attractions of this advanced technology, interacting with AI to make art has not been welcomed. In previous studies of human-robot interaction (HRI), researchers have explored people’s responses to autonomous and intelligent technology. The factors affecting the acceptance of autonomous technology include trustworthiness (Lewandowsky, Mundy, & Tan, 2000), the degree of controllability (Jameson & Schwarzkopf, 2002), the transparency of the system (i.e., having the robot’s actions explained) (Kim & Hinds, 2006), the robot’s prior experience interacting with humans (Kirchbuchner et al., 2015), and sharing driving goals and information (Verberne, Ham, & Midden, 2012). However, none of the previous research addressed how AI could be applied in the art field, whether in the response of the people or in the final influence on human well-being. One clue to how people might feel about AI-generate art can be found in a study by Gray and Wegner (2012), who demonstrated that people feel uncanny when they are infringed in a uniquely human area by a non-human entity. They insisted that the essentiality of the human is in mind including two different domains experience (e.g., feeling fear) and agency (e.g., capability of self-control). For agency, there are some variations in ability; children or disabled people may not have the capability of agency. However, the domain of experience is what makes humans unique, from infancy to old age, all people can experience hunger, fear, and joy. Thus, Gray and Wegner (2012) empirically demonstrated that when the domain of experience is exhibited by a non-human entity, people are likely to feel uncomfortable. Thus, the fact that AI has the capability of creating art, which is considered to be one of the most uniquely human acts, may not be accepted by many people. However, we propose that when the art being created by AI is infused in products that are combined with a functional factor, people might not hesitate to accept AI art, which will increase human well-being. The product functionality exists to solve the people in use. Let’s say that if a person wants to drink hot coffee, then he/she needs a cup to maintain the warmth of the coffee. In this case, a cup satisfies a person’s need to drink a hot coffee. How to make a cup to maintain the warmth of the hot coffee may have a right or wrong answer depending on the ratio of the ingredients of the cup, where AI has in strength such as in the supervised learning area. Therefore, we conclude that people might not like AI infringing on the area of art, as it is considered to be a uniquely human area. However, when AI creates art that is attached to a product, called an art-infused product, then people might not hesitate to accept the product, which will increase human well-being. Thus, we can conclude with following hypotheses.

H1: Consumers have more favorable attitudes toward art-infused products than artworks when they are made by AI. Consumers do not have different attitudes toward art-infused products and artworks that are made by a human. H2: Consumers show greater purchase intention toward art-infused products than artworks when they are made by AI. Consumers do not have different purchase intention toward art-infused products and artworks that are made by a human.

Experiment Participants One hundred and fifty participants (66% female) were recruited via international online survey site Prolific, and the mean age was 33.18 years (SD = 12.03). They received monetary rewards in exchange for participating the experiment. There was no significant effect of gender in the analysis, therefore, we do not report the gender effect hereafter. Methods The experiment was designed to explore how artist types will affect individual’s attitudes toward the product depending on the domain of the art. The experiment was designed as 2 (agent: AI vs. human) × 2 (domain: artwork vs. art-infused product) between-subjects design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. An example of artwork created by AI condition is presented below: Imagine that you want to buy an artwork to hang on your living room wall. While you were appreciating the pictures, you saw a painting drawn by Artificial Intelligence robot. The artwork was a classical-looking painting, however, it was generated by algorithm based on analysis of a database. After being presented with descriptions in their assigned group, participants completed a three-item contagion index on 7-point Likert scales (Newman & Bloom, 2011): “the work contains the true essence of the creator,” “the work reflects the heritage of the creator,” and “the work embodies the pedigree and history of the creator” (1= not at all, 7 = very much). Then, participants were asked to report attitudes toward the product on 7-point Likert scales as “very negative/very positive,” “very bad/very good,” and “unfavorable/favorable.” Finally, participants rated on 7-point Likert scales purchase intention (1 = definitely not buy it, 7 = definitely buy it). Results A two-way interaction of 2 × 2 ANOVA on contagion (α = .940) was not significant (p > .120). However, a one-way analysis of ANOVA on agent was significant which indicates that people feel contagious feeling toward creations made by a human in comparison with AI (F(1, 146)= 120.442, p = .000). The results provide important information by showing how people perceive AI works and man-mad works, respectively. Next, and more importantly, a two-way interaction of 2 × 2 ANOVA on attitudes toward the product (α = .942) was significant (F(1, 146)= 4.866, p = .029). The planned contrast showed that in the case of AI work, participants have more favorable attitudes toward art-infused product (M = 5.000) than artwork (M = 4.432; t(146) = -2.003, p < .050). However, in the case of a human work, there was no significant difference between artwork (M = 5.685) and art-infused product (M = 5.368) on attitudes toward the product (p > .260). Moreover, the planned contrast revealed that artworks made by a human led to more favorable evaluation than the artwork made by AI (t(146) = 4.391, p = .000). However, there was no significant difference between human and AI on the evaluation of art-infused products (p > .190). Consistent with the results of attitudes, a two-way interaction of 2 × 2 ANOVA on purchase intention was significant (F(1, 146)= 5.171, p = .024). The planned contrast showed that in the case of AI work, art-infused products (M = 4.263) evoked greater purchase intention than artworks (M = 3.378; t(146) = -2.755, p < .010). However, there was no significant difference between art-infused products (M = 4.474) and artworks made by a human (M = 4.622; p > .640).

Discussion and Conclusion In conclusion, we could empirically prove that consumers have more favorable attitudes toward art-infused products than artworks when they are made by AI. However, this effect disappeared when two types of works are made by a human. We expected that contagion can explain the underlying mechanism for this interaction effect but the proposition was not supported statistically. Thus, we are going to develop this research by conducting additional empirical studies to explain the psychological process, which can finally contribute to human well-being.

ABSTRACT. This paper studies the phenomena of evolving lifestyles, upward mobility trends, and cultural paradigm shifts in emerging markets that lead consumers to purchase luxury fashion goods thus engaging in conspicuous consumption. Through three experimental studies that utilize a 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial design, the proposed hypotheses are tested.

ABSTRACT. This research shows that consuming art through products or services in marketplaces enhances consumers’ well-being by inducing a sense of inspiration. Four studies provide support for our hypothesis by showing that consuming art increases consumer well-being using an administrative dataset (Study1) and experiments (Study 2a, 2b, and 2c).

ABSTRACT. Applying the construal level theory (CLT), this study examined the effect of social distance on luxury brand experiences with a social media craftsmanship video, and assessed perceived luxury and brand purchase intentions.

ABSTRACT. The consumer-brand relationship is an important aspect in brand management. The strength of consumer brand relationships forms the basis for future purchases of the consumers (Fournier et al., 2012). The emotional aspects influence consumer brand relationship and especially the brand love (Fournier, 1998; Fetcherin & Heinrich, 2015; Langner et al., 2015; Alvarez & Fournier, 2016; Aro et al., 2018; Bairrada et al., 2018). This research intended to analyse if the brand identification (BI) and the brand social responsibility (BSR) consumer perception have positive effect in brand love (BL) and how negative emotions toward the brand (NEB) can moderate these effects in accessories luxury brand.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research is to explore how fancy names of products will have an impact on consumers’ purchase decisions. Companies spend tremendous amount of time in selecting the names for their products. Experiments will be conducted to explore if fancy names lead to more positive feelings about the products compared to generic names, and if consumers are willing to pay more for products with fancy names. Implications for product naming will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Conspicuous consumption is connected to luxury consumption and is usually represent materialism (Wu et al., 2017). The traditional role of luxury goods was signaling consumers’ social status (Eckhardt et al., 2015). However, wide spread of luxury brands and even counterfeits make traditional luxury value diluted. Therefore, upper class consumers are more likely to prefer luxury brand that have subtly marked (Wu et al., 2017). Eckhardt et al. (2015) suggest that currently consumers who consume luxury products tend to prefer inconspicuous logo rather than overt conspicuous brands features. In other words, the preference for inconspicuousness increased desire for subtle design to distinguish oneself from others (Eckhardt et al., 2015). According to need-for-uniqueness theory (Snyder & Fromkin, 1977), it is shown that consumers pursue differentiating oneself from others and enhancing one’s self-image by obtaining material good (Chan et al. 2015). Ruvio (2008) argued that acquisition of unique material is a way for individuals to express their social image and differentiate themselves from others (Chan et al., 2015). The rise of inconspicuous consumption contributes to explaining consumers’ attitude toward luxury brands consumption based on status seeking and social class to personal experience (Shoa et al., 2019). In this context, Atwal and Williams (2009) argued consumers’ luxury consumption is influenced by their personal oriented perception (Shoa et al., 2019). Several researches emphasize the personal values affecting need-for-uniqueness. For example, consumers pursue interpersonal difference, the need-for-uniqueness, by consuming material possession (Chan et al., 2015). In that reason, materialism is important factor to expect need-for-uniqueness. As dependent variables, consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) a price premium was investigated. Netemeyer et al. (2004) posits that perceived uniqueness affects consumers’ WTP a price premium by giving an added value to consumers (Dwivedi et al., 2018). Moreover, Dwivedi et al. (2018) asserts that consumers pay the price premium because of uniqueness of brand. Therefore, this study focuses on personal perception as antecedent factors of luxury consumption behavior. In detail, we suggest that personal perception such as materialism, self-esteem, public self-consciousness, self-congruity with internal self affects luxury consumption, particularly inconspicuous consumption and willingness to pay a price premium. To better understand how need-for-uniqueness is activated to buy luxury brand, social exclusion would be considered also. Data were collected through questionnaire asking luxury brand consumption from consumers who have experienced luxury brand product. Participants responded self-concepts, need-for-uniqueness, social exclusion, purchase intention and willingness to pay a price premium. The data were analyzed by AMOS 21. The expected result indicates the following: First, personal concepts such as materialism, self-esteem, public self-consciousness, self-congruity with internal self have significant influence on need-for-uniqueness, which affects willingness to pay a price premium. Second, social exclusion moderates the relationship between personal factors for inconspicuous consumption and need-for-uniqueness. This study contributes to the literature of the relationship between inconspicuous consumption of luxury brands and uniqueness seeking through investigating the mediating role of need-for-uniqueness.

ABSTRACT. The following work aims at identifying the most accounted economic, environmental and social indicators in the 100 largest luxury goods companies in the world, through a content and multivariate analysis of the GRI-based sustainability reports.

ABSTRACT. Young consumers are appealing to commercial fashion marketers because their purchasing power has increased over the years (Johnson, 2006). Apparel marketers use sustainability practice concept as a marketing tool to stimulate young consumer to purchase apparel products because this sustainability practice can impact the reputation of a fashion business and consequently, consumer’s purchase decision (Seuring & Muller, 2008). Customer-brand (C-B) identification is an important concept serving as the critical mediator in apparel branding because it is related to concepts identified as predictive of consumer loyalty (Lee, 2014). In research with Taiwanese consumers of skincare cosmetic and mobile phone products, He, Li, and Harris (2012) found that consumers’ brand identification significantly but indirectly affected their brand loyalty via their brand value, customer satisfaction, and brand trust. Previous researchers have conducted studies on the influence of sustainability practices on consumers’ purchase behaviors. However, no studies have focused on gender difference in consumers’ perception of apparel brands’ sustainability efforts on brand attributes (i.e., attitude and loyalty) although female consumers are more involved in fashion and they show greater sensitivity towards fashion than men do (Moss, 2009). Therefore, the goal of this research was to examine the gender perception difference in impact of apparel brands’ sustainability efforts on customer-brand (C-B) identification, brand attitude and brand loyalty. These findings may help commercial fashion marketers use the sustainability efforts as an effective marketing strategy to enhance targeted female young consumers’ brand loyalty or purchase decisions.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to examine consumers’ perceived anxiety about the safety of clothing and lifestyle products and the influencing factors by focusing on the physical risk factors in the overall clothing industry. The results showed that anxiety about chemicals and hygiene products has a greater impact than anxiety about clothes and beauty products. We also identified the effect of consumers’ subjective perceptions of their health and demographic characteristics related to anxiety. The results of this study can be used as fundamental data for to effective communicate methods and consumer safety-related policies to reduce consumers’ anxiety related to clothing. It is also ultimately meaningful to help consumers make informed decisions that lead to safe and sustainable consumption.

ABSTRACT. To sustain their growth worldwide, luxury brands are increasingly adopting the codes of fast fashion. They continually introduce new designs that move quickly from the catwalk to stores to stay on-trend, resulting in short and constantly renewed collections. But does this fashionization impede luxury brands’ CSR image? This article investigates this question building on the ephemerality-scarcity dual route model. Findings from a first experiment involving a fictitious luxury brand show that fashionization increases both perceptions of ephemerality (negative route) and scarcity (positive route), with opposing resulting effects on the brand’s CSR image. Extending these results to a real-life luxury setting, findings from a second experiment show that the influence of fashionization on the brand’s CSR image is only mediated by the positive scarcity route. This study provides a number of noteworthy theoretical insights and relevant managerial implications for luxury managers involved in CSR communication.

ABSTRACT. Product ratings & reviews are popular tools to support buying decisions. The author examined acceptance and potential usage of ratings & reviews in e-commerce of luxury goods. A survey of 421 global luxury consumers was conducted and the paper concludes that ratings & reviews can be important source of information.

ABSTRACT. This research has adopted Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and social support theory along with a social media (SM) perspective to investigate why consumers enjoy using SM and interacting with luxury brand. Focusing on fundamental human needs, this study aims to examine fulfilment of which type of needs enhances interactivity on SM, encouraging in turn WOM adoption and brand-self connection. Our results have shown that consumers’ cognitive and integrative needs drive social interactivity and lead to WOM adoption and brand-self connection. However, no relationship is found between social needs and interactivity. Such relationship can only be strengthened with the presence of emotional support as perceived from the company and its brand.

ABSTRACT. With the development of social media, nowadays, people connect to each other more frequently and timely. In this article, we want to discuss this interactive communication in Chinese social media, i.e., WeChat, Weibo and Xianhongshu, between the Chinese immigrants in France (French Chinese) and Chinese in China. The intent of this article is to explore if there is a significant difference between high-acculturated and low-acculturated French Chinese in the use of word-of-mouth (WOM) in response to the purchase of product categories high in social signaling value. The article helps firms plan their international marketing strategy in terms of how they will benefit from WOM where French Chinese consumers comprise a significant part of the target market. Additionally, this research helps firms develop effective virtual interaction tools to build a strong long-term brand relationship with ethnic groups.

ABSTRACT. This research intends to find out how luxury watch brands should use Instagram and its effect on customer relationship and purchase intention. Researcher explores luxury watch brands’ social media attributes (entertainment, customization, interaction, word of mouth, and trend) and values (functional, hedonic, symbolic, financial, and relational). Result indicates that there is a positive relationship between social media marketing, customer relationship, and purchase intention. Also, symbolic and hedonic value appear as the most engaging contents while relational shows potential though it has not been implemented frequently.

ABSTRACT. This teaching case examines the question of whether luxury fashion designers like Louis Vuitton should abandon the practice of destroying unsold inventory in the face of growing pressures from customers and other stakeholders for greater transparency within their supply chains and more sustainable materials management and waste disposal practices. The case is set in mid-2018, in the midst of a public relations crisis enveloping UK luxury fashion retailer Burberry, which admitted to burning $40 million in unsold apparel, accessories, and perfumes during the previous year. Second-hand retailer thredUP has just published an open letter to Burberry criticizing the company for destroying its unsold inventory instead of donating or recycling it. The letter criticizes Louis Vuitton for engaging in similar practices. Now LVMH's chairman must decide how to respond.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines what challenges and barriers fashion companies following linear models face when moving towards more sustainable actions and pursue towards sustainable business model. Besides highlighting the struggles, the aim is also to build understanding about the change and processes linear-operating fashion businesses are applying when moving towards more sustainable behavior. The empirical data consists of eight expert interviews from diverse Nordic-based fashion and lifestyle companies who are operating internationally. As linear and circular models differ significantly from each other in terms of their motivations, objectives and practical operations, the transformation from the prevalent linear systems to circular systems requires time. The key barrier was lack of short-term results, which brought pressure to resource allocation (both economic and human). In addition, the multifaceted concept of sustainability brought uncertainties: not being sustainable from top to toe brought a feeling of incompleteness, which was feared to reflect on company image.

ABSTRACT. The fast fashion business model is largely based on the exploitation of poor working conditions and lack of environmental protection laws in the production countries. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of this dark side of fast fashion and the retailers are addressing their concerns with selective organic clothing collections. This study investigates the underlying rationale of environmentally and socially conscious young Swedish consumers for their continued consumption of fast fashion. The findings of this study show that the participants prioritize price, quality and how the clothes look over where they have been produced and under what circumstances. Future research could investigate how Sweden can take a more pro-active role in educating their citizens about the negative impact on people and environment caused by the overconsumption of disposable fashion. [Word-count: 128]

ABSTRACT. The brand is one of the highest valuable assets for companies across B2C and B2B industries. It has even larger role for most fashion manufacturers and retailers. Many fashion brands belong to companies that are publicly listed (e.g., Calvin Klein, LVMH, Zara). Their management decisions are closely monitored by the capital market. Investors ask whether brand investments generate sustainable future returns for the company and its owners. Although prior research has established that brands contribute to firm value, little knowledge exists about the exact mechanism by which they generate value for investors—that is, which value drivers they influence. Having knowledge about important value drivers, such as profitability, expected earnings growth, and duration of excess return (competitive advantage), is important for deriving the appropriate value-based brand exploitation strategy, because the contributions of these value drivers can differ across firms. At the same time, the impact of brand on value drivers also differs across firms. Therefore, to be most effective, a value-based brand exploitation strategy should involve leveraging the brand for the most influential value driver to appropriate the highest value in the marketplace. In this submission, the authors conceptualize their idea, which can be tested using empirical data.

ABSTRACT. The purchase experience in a shopping center may trigger different emotional responses, particularly in a crowded environment. When the mall is fully crowded there is an enormous probability of consumers feeling stressed (Baker & Wakefield, 2012; Eroglu, Machleit & Barr, 2005a). However, Donovan and Rossiter (1982) show that inducing positive and relaxing emotions can reduce the perceived excitement level. Therefore, evoking positive and relaxing emotions in a retail environment can compensate the perception of crowding (Eroglu, Machleit, & Davis, 2001) in order to induce more positive consumer behaviors (Fedorikhin & Cole, 2004). Virtual Reality is characterized by its levels of Interactivity, Immersion and Connectivity (e.g., Eroglu et al., 2001; Bhatt, 2004). Immersion involves a psychological state of isolation from the real world by means of a virtual environment (Witmer and Singer, 1998; Bhatt,2004). This is strongly related to the concept of Flow. This means that, a total sense of involvement of an individual in a certain experience exists, resulting in an experience unlike any other, and without unexpected distractions (Nah, Eschenbrenner & DeWester, 2011). As such, Mikropoulos (2006) assures that immersion causes a feeling of total presence (telepresence). Yee (2007) describes four subcomponents of immersion: discovery, role-playing, customization and escape. Escape is the measure in which a user can temporarily forget the real world and dodge negative emotions that are a product of a stressful life (Yee, 2006; Loureiro et al., 2018). However, there is a gap in literature liked to the lack of studies dealing with the way escapism in virtual reality environment stores influences behavioral intentions Thus, the aim of the current study is to explore how escapism in virtual reality environment fashion stores affect the consumer behavioral intentions. Findings suggest that a stimulus that remains in the consumers’ mind leads to an essential involvement in the creation of cognitive and emotional affects leading to vividness and positive behavioral intentions. If a consumer finds that the atmosphere of a virtual store is pleasant and adequate during the exposure period, that consumer will want to return.

ABSTRACT. Weibo is the twitter in China. "The Great Show" of D & G was going to taken place on 21 Nov, 2019. At 11:15 Stefano's social media conversation posted to Weibo and spread out, in less than 75 minutes, models refused to walk the catwalk and celebrities and VIPs refused to attend. The show was officially cancelled by 1700. This paper is going to discuss the lessons learnt from this D & G case, impact of the brand owner and microblogging, as well as what fashion company should do.

ABSTRACT. Introduction The aim of the paper is to develop a methodological approach that integrates textual and visual content analysis for the study of brand associations in image-based social media. More specifically, the paper identifies and analyzes user-generated contents (UGC) as expression of consumer-perceived brand associations, and measures their alignment with the company-defined brand associations. Such alignment is relevant for companies, since it indicates the congruence between brand identity and brand image, with positive effects on the overall brand performance. The novelty of the study lies in measuring brand associations alignment by combining the use of textual and visual content analysis. The need to integrate textual and visual analysis is justified by the shift towards visuals among the main social media platforms, and the rapid growth of image-based social media, such as Instagram, not only among individual users, but also for companies that use them as a powerful marketing and communication tool.

Theoretical Development The study of brand associations is a central issue in marketing practice. Brand associations synthetize consumers’ brand perception and constitute the brand image as perceptual nodes that consumers associate with the brand and keep in their memory. Companies look for strong, positive and unique brand associations that produce positive effects in terms of consumers’ choices (Carpenter et al., 1994) and brand performance (Romaniuk and Gaillard, 2007). These effects imply that there is an alignment between brand image and brand identity. The rise of social media and the associated possibilities of large-scale consumer-to-consumer interaction shed light on the importance of investigating brand associations emerging from user-generated content (UGC), in addition to company-generated content (CGC). UGCs can take a textual form – conversations, post, comments – and a visual form, namely images. The study of UGCs in textual forms have been addressed through the quantitative methodology of text-mining (Witten, 2005) that is used to extrapolate information from relatively large amounts of electronically stored textual data by means of computer applications. This analysis is still important even if, with the rise of YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and other image-based social media, the ecology of social media has shifted towards visual images (Svensson and Russmann, 2017) and the web is becoming more and more a visual medium (Belk and Kozinets, 2005). When discussing this shift in social media practices, Highfield and Leaver (2016) observe that such shift requires researchers to broaden and diversify the way social media is examined and addressed, as most online marketing research focused on text-only aspects of online communication or the structural elements like hyperlinks. Thus, marketing studies have started adopting the methodology of visual content analysis, namely a systematic, observational method used for testing hypotheses about the ways in which the media represent people, events, situations (Bell, 2001). The adoption of image coding procedures is related to a more general process of “hybridization” between qualitative and quantitative that affects the research methodologies adopted in the field of marketing and management (Guercini, 2014). Visual content analysis may be a “representational analysis” if it translates images into data. This happens when it uses methods based on computer vision that produces an automated understanding of visual contents providing, for example, faces and objects recognition (Joo and Steinert-Threlkeld, 2018). Visual content analysis may also be an “interactional analysis” that translates images into verbal language (text). It can exploit semiotic analytical tools that contribute to providing a meaning from the syntactic relations between the people, places and things depicted in images (Bell, 2001). Regardless of its characteristics, there is a need of extending the application of visual content analysis in marketing research by integrating them with the diffuse techniques of textual content analysis (Stemler, 2015). Recent studies have focused on the analysis of brand associations through innovative approaches that combine netnography and text-mining for the study of text-based UGCs and their alignment with CGCs (Crawford Camiciottoli et al., 2014). However, there is a lack of studies that combine a textual content analysis with a visual content analysis, thus taking into account visuals shared on image-based social media.

Research Design The paper adopts a mixed methodology based on the integration of visual and textual content analysis. The methodological steps are the following. The analysis involves three luxury companies/brands on Instagram. It starts by selecting images and texts from the company and consumer-generated contents. We focus on pictures and texts that company and consumers shared on Instagram in the last three months. Consumers are identified by using posts that contain hashtags and/or tags of the brands under study. The download of images and texts is done with the use of the crawler 4K Stogram. We then extract brand associations from a visual and textual analysis. This is the most challenging moment in the analysis. The possibilities we intend to experiment are at least three: a) translation of figures into narrative texts and following use of text-mining techniques to extract brand associations (Farhadi et al. 2010); b) use of compatible automated methods to identify brand associations from images and texts and c) use of semantic language in the form of metaphors (Gärdenfors, 1996), or brand concept maps (John et al., 2006) as a common base to extrapolate brand associations both from images and texts. Finally, company-based brand associations and consumer-based brand associations are compared in order to identify the level of alignment, and related measurements, between brand identity and brand image. The choice of fashion as context of our study can be easily justified. It emerges how on the one hand, consumers of fashion interact extensively by means of digital platforms (Rickman and Cosenza, 2007; Ranfagni et al., 2016), and their interactions provide textual resources that can often contain well-articulated expressions of brand-related perceptions among fashion consumers. On the other hand, it emerges that fashion brands are, among others, very active on image-based social media, especially on Instagram (Hu et al., 2014).

Result and Conclusion We propose a methodology that allows brand managers to control over their brands by considering the role of consumers in picturing brands and in telling their histories. Its novelty lies in measuring brand alignment by integrating a figurative and textual representation of brands. Thus, the indicators we elaborate allow you to verify an overall match between perceived brand associations and communicated brand associations. Such match can be spun off both in terms of images and text. In this way, companies can obtain guidelines on how to redefine their branding policies on social media through the use of images and brand stories.

Keywords: Brand, visual content analysis, textual content analysis, alignment

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ABSTRACT. When consumers curate fashion items on social shopping sites, it can have important implications for fashion brands. We use data collected from two groups on a social shopping site and employ a clustering technique to demonstrate that consumers are assembling brands together and presenting them to others in curated displays.

ABSTRACT. China has become the largest game market in the world, and Shanghai plays a vital role in the China’s game industry. Adopting digital and social media for branding has been the preferred marketing strategy for more and more Chinese game enterprises. This paper attempts to use big data tools to collect and sort out Shanghai game brand data and social media branding database, so as to grasp the development of game brand network influence of Shanghai game brand, predict the development potential of Shanghai game brand and provide reference for the development of Shanghai and even international game brand. The result indicates that most Shanghai game brands have shifted from a quantitative "siege" digital and social media branding strategy to a high-quality "precision" strategy, and they form the enterprises’ weibo matrix in order to maximize the brand value to meet the brand perception needs of different audiences, and then set up stable game brand network influence.

ABSTRACT. BACKGROUND In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of selfies taken and posted online (Chae 2017). It is estimated that young people such as millennials dedicate one hour each week to selfies and that in their lifetime they will take up to 25,700 selfies (Teen Vogue 2016). This is a worrying trend because selfie posting is shown to lead to increased anxiousness and both decreased confidence and perceived physical attractiveness even when people are edited their selfies before posting them (Mills et al. 2018). The harmful effects of selfie-editing call for research focused on understanding the antecedents and specific consequences of selfie-editing.

ABSTRACT. This study is designed to investigate whether different influencer characteristics have differential influences on consumer trust toward the influencer. In so doing, prior research on source credibility and attractiveness is applied to explain the role of influencer characteristics in enhancing trust toward the influencer. An online self-administered, cross-sectional survey methodology was employed to collect the data. Data were collected using Amazon MTurk from U.S. adults aged 18 or older (N = 200) who had had an experience of following an influencer on social media.The results from path model analysis suggest that trustworthiness and similarity are significant to trust toward the influencer.

ABSTRACT. Purpose - The aim of this study is to investigate how fashion brands are communicating through social media their sustainable profile to consumers. Limited research has been conducted in exploring consumers’ behaviour towards sustainable clothing and how online communications - especially social media – may affect consumers’ response, perception and purchasing behaviour towards sustainable fashion.

Design/methodology/approach - The above aim is achieved through a systematic literature review. The first step was to identify the key authors that published mostly in peer–reviewed articles. The next step was to develop a search strategy using specific keywords to search academic journal articles that are related to sustainable fashion and digital communications using “inclusion criteria” “exclusion criteria” undertaking an electronic literature search (Web of Science, Scopus, EBSCO, Google Scholar, IngentaConnect and other publishers). Due to the infancy of this research area, most of the papers related to this study were published after 2006.

Findings - The results of this systematic literature review highlight the negative effects of “fast fashion” in an economic, social and environmental dimension and the lack of consumers’ knowledge about sustainable fashion. However, the general consensus of several scholars is that social media could prove to be a valuable medium to create awareness amongst this market.

Practical Implications - The implications of the systematic review for academia consists of enriching the literature on sustainable fashion and digital communications strategies. For industry, this systematic review can provide social media practices to better inform consumers towards sustainable fashion. For the consumers and the society, the current systematic review enhances their knowledge on social and environmental issues related to sustainable fashion.

Research limitations – This study chose only academic peer – reviewed articles and book chapters excluding commercial journals and magazines. In this initial stage due to various synonyms used by authors to describe sustainable fashion (i.e. “slow fashion”, “eco fashion”, “green fashion” etc.) some potentially relevant papers may not be included. Other important limitations of the current literature review may be bias towards the “inclusion criteria” “exclusion criteria” for the articles.

ABSTRACT. This research develops an under-investigated aspect of the business literature regarding firm-created and user-generated social media communication and their influence on purchase intention of endorsed fashion products. The results indicate that (i) brand equity mediates the relationship between social media communication and purchase intention of endorsed fashion products, and (ii) the mediational role of brand equity is further moderated by the consumer’s self-congruity with fashion brands.

ABSTRACT. The advent of social media and digital technologies has changed the competitive landscape by posing several challenges for luxury and fashion firms and questioning their traditional business models. Moreover, recent macro-trends such as those of circular economy and sharing economy are challenging traditional mass production paradigms and lead to innovative business models centred on people sharing and collaboration to satisfy personal needs. In fact, information technology has created digital platforms for new online marketplaces and provided even better channels of communication to connect users and owners by making sharing resources cheaper and easier than ever. In particular, this paper aims at examining the key features of fashion rental platforms through a qualitative research design based on case studies.

ABSTRACT. Fashion brands can now serve personalized recommendations to consumers in mobile and social media contexts. On one hand, mobile technological capabilities have enhanced fashion marketers' capability to target potential customers with location tracing technologies. On the other hand, the ubiquity of social media has changed how consumers share information with each other and interact with brands. Past studies have demonstrated the significance of proximity in consumers' mobile Internet searches. However, the efficacy of social media targeting strategies in location-based mobile advertising has not to be examined yet. This research examined how social media is effective in mobile advertising strategy of fashion brands. We used data derived from a large randomized field experiment conducted in a big shopping mall in China. In our experiment, We used an indoor positioning system to alert the mall when a shopper owning membership is within a pre-determined set of locations of interest. Shoppers in proximal and non-proximal locations randomly received messages offering discounted coupon from WeChat friend circle, WeChat official account, and short message service (SMS). We first find that social media advertising of fashion brands is average more effective than SMS advertising when targeting proximal shoppers. We also find when targeting mobile users located at non-proximal distances, WeChat friend circle are more effective than both SMS and WeChat official account. Moreover, for social media mobile advertisings, higher involved fashion products are more attractive than lower ones. Our research adds to the strategy rulebook of the mobile marketing industry by showing the importance of social media and push-pull marketing strategy.

ABSTRACT. If the user is exposed to the banner ad without click on it, is it worthless advertising performance? What are the impacts of a banner ad beyond click? The current study hypothesized that the users who view a brand’s banner ad are more likely to search for the brand, to show a response to search ads exposed, and to purchase the advertised products than their counterparts (i.e., users without the banner ad exposure). To test our predictions, two field experimental studies were conducted. The findings suggest that display ad exposure lacking clicks can have a positive impact on users’ search- and purchase- related behavior.

ABSTRACT. What would happen when social marketing advergames contain fear appeal? Although fear appeal generates psychological reactance, its negative effect in consumers’ sharing intention is moderated by telepresence of the advergame.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the effects of Chief Executive Officers’ (CEO) self-disclosure on Instagram and the moderating role of brand relationship norms. A 2 × 2 (the level of CEOs’ self-disclosure: high versus low × the types of brand relationship norms: exchange relationship versus communal relationship) factorial design was implemented to test hypotheses. Results showed that the level of CEOs’ self-disclosure on Instagram, and the type of relationship norms between consumers and brands, interplayed and affected consumers’ attitude toward the CEO and the brand, and consumers’ intention of reciprocal self-disclosure.

ABSTRACT. Findings regarding the effectiveness of Webtoon product placement in Korea suggest the following: consumer responses to product placement in Webtoon is more positive when the product is hedonic (rather than functional) and when attitudes toward the Webtoon are positive (rather than negative). This study further suggests that the type of product placement moderates the effect of attitudes toward the Webtoon on perceived intrusiveness and attitudes toward the product placement.

ABSTRACT. This working paper aims to conduct an empirical study to examine the relationship between industry performance and consumer well-being. We adopt the holistic view of consumer well-being which is measured using multiple dimensions (economic, socio-cultural variables). This paper proposes the model to test the effect on industry performance on well-being. Findings could benefit practitioners and academics.

ABSTRACT. Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) is becoming very important issue in terms that it could contribute to consumer well-being under the situation that the importance of sustainability and CSV(create shared value) is stressed on. Recent researches suggest that consumers can induce not only positive attitudes but also negative attitudes toward a firm’s CSR activities. Despite that many studies have examined the effects of a firm’s CSR activities on consumer behavior, the results are not consistent. Even though, Companies are investing considerable efforts and costs in their CSR activities, there is a lack of systematic research on how CSR activities affect consumers and society. To find out the effective CSR activities to contribute consumers’ well-being, we tried to investigate the effects of consumers’ perception of each type of CSR on consumers’ loyalty. We categorized the CSR types into the five sub dimensions adding environmental responsibility to the Carroll (1979, 1991)’s economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic 4 responsibilities of CSR. Recently, the importance of environmental responsibility from the standpoint that the company has been emphasized as consumers have begun to show great interest in the environment. Nevertheless, the research about the environmental responsibility of companies is insufficient from the CSR point of view. We considered the corporate image, consumer-company identification, and the trust to the firms as the mediators to the consumer loyalty and perception of firms. We also focused on moderating effects of consumer’s CSR-Orientation and congruence between corporate’s CSR activities and its products.

Research Model and Methodology This study is purposed to verify the causal relationship between consumers' image of the firm, consumer-firm identification, firm trust, and consumer loyalty according to consumers’ perception of CSR activity types. Based on the theoretical framework, we set up the research model with 11 research hypotheses. To verify the hypotheses, we conducted scenario based questionnaire survey. 600 questionnaires were distributed to college students and working people in their 20s to 50s. 552 consumer data were collected, and 501 were used for the final analysis. The data were analyzed using a structural equation model with AMOS program. Through the confirmatory factor analysis(CFA), reliability and convergent validity of the study constructs were verified. To test discriminant validity, 3 methods were used and discriminant validity was also verified. The fitness index of CFA result met Hu & Bentler’s(1999) standards as a good model.

Results By using the structural equation model, research hypotheses were tested and most research hypotheses were statistically significant and accepted. The final research model also showed the statistical significance with the good fitness index. Most of types of CSR activities have a significant positive influence on corporate image, Consumer-Company identification, trust, consumer loyalty, and perception of firms. But trust does not significantly influence to consumer’s loyalty and perception of firms. It is verified that environmental responsibility which was added to Carrol’s 4 pyramid of CSR has a statistically significant positive influence on corporate image, but it does not significantly influence to other variables. To verify the moderating effects, we carried out multi-group analyses. AS a result, CSR orientation and congruence are proven to be significant moderators. With low CSR Orientated consumers developed consumer-company identification when firms fulfill legal responsibilities. With High CSR Orientated consumers showed to build Consumer-Company identification and trust toward companies when they exercise philanthropic responsibilities. If Company’s CSR activities are not congruent with its products, consumers tend to have a good image through the corporate’s philanthropic responsibilities. Consumer’s trust toward company influenced on their loyalty. In the cases of high congruence situation, consumer-company identification was formed by corporate’s ethical responsibilities. Consumer’s trust was built by C-C identification. Consumer trust was also developed by legal and ethical responsibilities.

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ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to how information on a sustainable label of a product and labeling body credibility influence consumers’ intention of purchasing eco-friendly products. Since consumers have difficulty judging a product with a sustainable label and labeling body credibility, they are highly likely to check information on a product label and labeling body credibility before purchasing an eco-friendly product. A product label has a variety of product information. This study analyzed two representative factors of a label-label color and traceability information of products-and the effect of the two factors and labeling body credibility on consumers’ intention of purchasing eco-friendly products. Based on the metacognition of label information, how fluency perception and reliability of product function influence consumers’ intention of purchasing the products with sustainable labels.

In this study, MSC label, ECOCERT label, and Eco-friendly label as samples were tested three times. As a result, label color, traceability information, and labeling body credibility influenced consumers’ change in their perception of eco-friendly products. Particularly, it is argued that label color, traceability information, and labeling body credibility improve consumers’ metacognitive ability of eco-friendly products and thereby consumers are able to purchase eco-friendly products reasonably.

As the result of this study, both label color and traceability information significantly influenced consumers’ fluency perception and their reliability of the functions of labeling products. In addition, consumers’ purchase behavior of eco-friendly products was changed differently depending on labeling body credibility. It was found that label information and labeling body credibility significantly influenced consumers’ intention of purchasing eco-friendly products.

This study revealed that consumers gained reliability of eco-products and had purchase intention on the basis of labeling body, label color, traceability information, and labeling body credibility. Therefore, label information and labeling body credibility make it possible for consumers to gain reliability of eco-friendly products. From a business perspective, it is possible to use well label information and certified labeling body to improve product competitiveness.

ABSTRACT. The authors analyze perceived risk data collected from over 500 Japanese iPad owners. Findings indicates the perceived emotional risk of switching to an Android tablet (1) has a negative relationship with follower-product purchase intent and (2) mediates the relationship between perceptions of (a) Android tablet performance and (b) financial and social risk.

ABSTRACT. Do unhappy people drink alcohol or does alcohol make people unhappy? This research utilized cross-national data (Study 1) and a daily diary survey (Study 2) to investigate the link between alcohol consumption and happiness. In Study 1, at the national level, we examined the relation between alcohol consumption and happiness in 113 nations. The results revealed that there was an overall negative correlation between alcohol consumption and subjective well-being (SWB), positive affect, and generosity. In Study 2, at the individual level, we validated the findings of Study 1 by using the multilevel modeling method via the daily diary reports of Korean participants (N = 480). This method allowed us to investigate further whether alcohol consumption affected the level of happiness or whether happiness affected the level of alcohol consumption. The results showed that SWB increased the likelihood of alcohol consumption on that day, however, drinking alcohol decreases the level of SWB on the next day.

ABSTRACT. The authors use data collected from over 600 Japanese mothers to analyze the importance in Japan of social motivations for generating word-or-mouth (WOM). Findings indicate that (1) the desire for social bonding (SB) is positive related with the desires for social comparison (SC) and the sharing of social norm information (SNI), and (2) all three social motivations influence the generation of positive and/or negative WOM.

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to identify the effects of shopping environmental stimuli on Chinese consumers’ functional and symbolic value perceptions toward luxury lifestyle fashion stores. An enhanced S-O-R (stimulus-organism-response) model was used as the theoretical foundation. Significant relationships were identified between shopping environmental stimuli and the perceived values.

ABSTRACT. The dawn of the new millennium has given birth to a new era for luxury brands. The prevailing luxury brand strategy of that new era seems to be the art-luxury alliances. Facing this new phenomenon there are several questions that remain unanswered—why luxury brands strive to collaborate with art? What are the reasons for those activities? Are they out of the charitable purpose or commercial consideration? How consumers see art-related brand extensions and what influences their perceptions? This research seeks to explore those questions using the case of a well-known luxury brand-Louis Vuitton and its art-related initiatives. The findings of this research present significant implications for small and big luxury brands wishing to develop an art-luxury brand image.

ABSTRACT. An attitude-behavior gap exists in eco-fashion consumption due to price premium and uncertainty on product benefits, given that highest price and quality are key features in luxury products, naturally, luxury eco-fashion consumers may not be sure that the further higher price of luxury eco-fashion could bring further higher quality in eco aspect. Therefore, attitude-behavior gap would also exist in luxury eco-fashion context. As evidences of fake eco-fashion exist, which may create consumer cynicism, consumers would have less intention to buy the so-called eco-fashion to avoid possible damage to the image of their unique personal identity. Besides, majority studies adopt ‘all orientations’ of Vitell & Muncy’s (2005) consumer ethics scale, it seems not much study to examine just the ‘unethical orientation’ and its impeding force on luxury eco-fashion purchase intention. In view of these research gaps, this conceptual paper proposes to investigate whether attitudes towards eco-product purchase is related to luxury eco-fashion purchase intention, as well as the impeding effects of consumer cynicism and the unethical orientation of consumer ethics over luxury eco-fashion purchase intention. This paper also aims to provide insights to marketers in identifying the factors impeding the purchase intention of luxury eco-fashion, and to facilitate the advocacy of eco-fashion practices and consumptions.

ABSTRACT. Cortical activity was assessed in fashion-luxury addicted consumers with a different sustainability orientation, in order to obtain insight on implicit dynamic towards eco-luxury products. Findings highlighted a strong emotional negative impact elicited by sustainability pictures implying a high engagement in luxury consumers when exposed to specific sensitive issues.

ABSTRACT. This paper is centred on exploring art foundations owned by luxury fashion brands as a potential venue for engaging with the luxury fashion consumer in a meaningful relationship, and without undermining the exclusivity and the controlled access of the luxury product. Specifically, this paper focuses on Fondazione Prada. In this context, it is important to consider the concept of Consumer Engagement but also of a more general concept of public engagement in the art context. In this context and for the purpose of this paper, public engagement is an active participation of both producer and receiver of art (Edmonds, Bilda, & Muller, 2009) in a two-way conversation (National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, 2014) with regards to understanding the arts and with the scope of generating benefits and well-being (Belfiore, 2002; Hoey, Zutis, Leuty, & Mihailidis, 2010; Kay, 2000). Finally, this two-way conversation has to be free from power structures and hierarchies; the people involved have to act as and perceived to be equals (Lanz & Montanari, 2014; Men & Tsai, 2016)

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the retailing world has changed dramatically due to several factors; anyway, two of them have a greater relevance among the others. The first one concerns the proliferation of distribution channels and the advent and the affirmation of digital technologies (Hagberg et al., 2016). The second one regards the growing managerial attention that retailers have towards the environment and the social issues that brought the academic literature to define the concept of sustainable retailing (Wiese et al., 2012). Indeed, retailers play a key role in the transmission of sustainability values being in close contact with the ultimate consumer (Lehner, 2015). At the same time, digital technology can be a powerful tool for both the diffusion of sustainability values and the valorization of sustainable retail business models. In a context of increasingly competitive retailing, where physical stores compete not only with other physical stores but also with online and mobile retailers, the differentiation of the point of sale is crucial to continue to attract consumers (Pauwels and Neslin, 2015) and sustainability could be a relevant competitive factor. Recent literature focuses on the role of digital technologies such as chatboxes and service robots (Wirtz et al., 2018) as assistants or substitutes of sales personnel in store, creating a smart place to work (Evans and Kitchin, 2018). Indeed, the retail store has to balance good customer services and soft labor skills with efficiency, maximizing revenue and formal labor. However, the increasingly specific skills required of workers and the longer opening hours offered to allow consumers to make purchases without time limits in offline stores as well as online ones, create unsustainable business rhythms. To guarantee the social sustainability of the points of sale and not burden the staff, an increasingly number of stores are adopting digital technologies in the point of sale. In this way, retailers can offer efficient and continuous services without weighing on the staff. On the other hand, an increasing number of digital technologies can diminish the role and importance of workers, impacting their perception of usefulness. This problem is reflected in the image of ethics and sustainability of the retailer himself (Wirtz et al., 2018). Therefore, it is essential to be able to balance the involvement of sales personnel and of in-store technologies to improve and not diminish the overall image of sustainability of the retailer. Particularly, in the context of luxury retailing, where the store plays an even more relevant role, in order to create a unique shopping experience (Kim, Lee and Choi, 2016). Much literature has already analyzed both the role of the luxury store and sustainability in luxury, but to the authors' knowledge, research lacks in the analysis of the role of digital technologies in store together with sales personnel in the overall transmission of sustainability to the consumer (Arrigo, 2017; Han, Seo and Ko, 2017). Particularly, it is interesting the analysis of luxury retailers’ ability to transmit to the consumer both the green and social aspects of sustainability. For this reason, this research aims to analyze a case study (Yin, 2004) of an Italian luxury retailer that has invested in digital points of sale where digital technologies and sales personnel coexist. Through the case study, this research aims to determine how digital technologies and sales personnel can be combined within a luxury store to give a unique shopping experience. Most importantly, a shopping experience that also respects the ethical and sustainable principles of employees.

ABSTRACT. A fashion industry as one of the most toxic industries has led the luxury industry to put efforts in building a more sustainable fashion future. Although the current fashion industry has put efforts into introducing ethical and sustainable consumption, customers has displayed contradictory attitudes toward green products in a luxury sector. Specifically, customers have generally shown interest in friendly environmentally products while many customers are shown to be reluctant in purchasing sustainable fashion clothing. Therefore, this paper will primarily examine how green advertising of luxury brands influence consumers’ behavioral intentions. Based on the persuasion knowledge model, this study proposes a conceptual framework by addressing four key variables: perceived consumer effectives, perceived personal relevance, ad trust, ad attitude. A pilot study was administrated using two fictitious green ads for luxury brands. And the results showed that perceived personal relevance and ad attitude are significantly associated with recommendation intention. Since ethical and sustainable luxury may play a role in sustainable fashion consumption, this study ascertains the importance of eco-friendly production and corporate social responsibility activity to provide better understanding of consumers’ perceptions and attitudes toward luxury brands in a sustainable market. In turn, eco-friendly production and corporate social responsibility will enable luxury brand marketers to design the most appropriate and effective sustainable development strategies depending on the situation and customers’ needs.

ABSTRACT. The study investigates the effect of Country of Design (COD), Country of Manufacturing (COM) and Brand Origin (BO) on consumers’ evaluation of product quality, brand image and behavioral intentions in the context of fashion industry. Two separate experiments conducted on a sample of UK and Polish females manipulated 2 countries with opposite perceived capacity to design and manufacture (Italy and China) and 4 brands with different level of perceived brand origin and familiarity. Results revealed that COD, COM and BO exert an opposite effect under a high VS low brand familiarity condition: in a high brand familiarity condition consumers seems to rely on COD and COM to infer product quality evaluations and related behavioral intentions regardless of the perceived brand origin association, while under a low familiarity condition the perceived BO plays a prominent role over COD and COM. On the basis of findings, the study discusses contribution to country of origin theory and related managerial implications.

ABSTRACT. Collaborative apparel consumption is proposed as more sustainable alternative to conventional consumption. The purpose of this study is the exploration of consumers’ motives to participate in collaborative apparel consumption. Findings suggest that consumers’ intention to participate in collaborative apparel consumption is mainly influenced by financial benefits, convenience and sustainability awareness.

ABSTRACT. The current study investigates how retailers deal with sustainability issues in different market fields with a specific focus on fashion industry. This work examines the last ten years of the scientific literature on sustainable retailing (SR), through a systematic literature review. 215 papers selected from the EBSCO database are analyzed, in order to develop an overview on the state of the art of research on SR. A comprehensive framework for a holistic definition of SR and for retailers’ practices related to sustainability is outlined. Future research directions on SR are provided.

ABSTRACT. The rapid development of technology has made it difficult for brands to convince consumers of their authenticity and value. Brands have begun to take note of the creative and emotional power of art and its competitive value in marketing strategies. Humans can create an aesthetic of aura and awe, as exemplified by the many works of art and the feelings that they inspire. However, research that systematically analyzes consumer responses to art marketing is insufficient, particularly given the need for luxury-marketing strategies. Aura and awe can amplify a brand's authenticity and experience, making marketing strategies more effective.

This study analyzed aura and awe in marketing and the relationship between consumers' brand attitudes and their willingness to buy luxury brands. This study set out to discover if art marketing of luxury goods affects consumers’ impressions of aura and awe, and then to further investigate if aura and awe affect brand attitudes and purchasing intentions. The study examined luxury brands that are currently the most active in art marketing and investigated how these brands convey aura and awe to consumers.

The study's academic implication is that through art marketing of luxury brands, aura and awe can further emphasize the authenticity of these brands and the artistry of innovation. The study’s exploration of the aura and awe felt by consumers who consider luxury brands and the analysis of that information makes it possible for art marketing to be introduced more effectively in the future. The practical conclusion of the study is that luxury brands can present marketing strategies that induce positive brand attitudes and encourage purchasing intentions by targeting the aura and awe felt by consumers.

ABSTRACT. We show that Chinese consumers’ face concern consists of two distinct dimensions, concern with face gain (CFG) versus concern with face loss (CFL), and that these two dimensions operate differently in their impact on the desire to purchase luxury and visible (LV) brands, with CFL having the stronger effect. Measures are developed for these two distinct concerns, with greater levels of convergent and discriminant validity than recent prior measures. We show that individual-level CFG versus CFL operate additively with the nature of situational face needs (gain versus loss) salient in specific social situations. We also show that the needs for face interact in predictable congruency-benefiting ways with independent self-construal. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Despite fast fashion prevalent and increasing in production, some apparel companies are taking the opposite approach and focusing on slow fashion and sustainability because many, especially young customers who are conscious of importance of sustainability tend to purchase sustainable products. Recently, wedding culture has been changed from traditional trends to more practical and casual ways. This transition may change wedding dress market as well as big wedding-related industry, and it is important to understand how cultural transition will influence the industry and market. Although wedding is one of the most important ritual events in one’s lifetime, its format and content may significantly depend on many factors such as country, ethnicity, age, regions, and values of the couple. For example, bridal consumers of hedonic value possessing subjective and intangible attributes may want more fantastic wedding dress than those of utilitarian having actual and tangible attributes. If it is the case, understanding their values is essential to establish successful strategy of production and retailing of wedding dresses. This study aims at understating the effect of type of values (i.e., hedonic or utilitarian) and sustainability conscious ness of college students on desired budget of handmade wedding dress. The main research questions are 1) How type of values of young consumers affects their desired budget of sustainable wedding dress? And 2) Does sustainable consciousness of young consumers influence their desired budget of sustainable wedding dress? Answering these research questions will provide handmade wedding dress manufacturers and retailers with useful information regarding advertisement and practice of sustainability and it will help them to set up right strategies related to target products.

ABSTRACT. This paper is devoted to investigating the effect of price presentation format (i.e., price precision) on travelers’ evaluations and their purchase intentions of luxurious travel products. Based on the two different metaphorical associations of price (i.e., cost vs. quality, Bornemann and Homburg 2011), we expect that the price presentation format (e.g. precise - $1,800 vs. rounded -$1,799) will influence the evaluation of the luxurious travel options in price promotion. Furthermore, the degree of lay rationalism (Hsee, Yang, Zheng, and Wang, 2015) will moderate the effect above. In the same line of reasoning, through a series of experiments, the results confirmed our predictions. Study 1 illustrated that, when the promotion is presented using simple presentation format and same type of price precision level (i.e. using prices for both original and discounted prices), travelers show more favorable evaluations towards rounded (vs. precise) prices. In Study 2, when the price promotion is presented with the original price and discounted percentage, travelers evaluate the travel options using rounded (vs. precise) original prices much positively under the rounded discounting condition (e.g. 20% discount). In contrast, their evaluation shows the opposite pattern under the precise discounting condition (e.g. 19.99% discount). Study 3 illuminated the significant moderating effect of lay rationalism in the context of price bundle discount situation (e.g., regular hotel price = $200, regular car rental price = $100, hotel + car rental package price = $240). Specifically, the effect of price preciseness on the evaluation of the package is significant only for travelers with high (vs. low) lay rationalism indices.

ABSTRACT. This study found that two-sided arguments are more effective than one-sided arguments for a hotel online review to be considered as helpful. In addition, the two-sided arguments identify how many percentages of positive and negative content are accepted as helpful. The data set consists of over two million Big Data sets. In the pilot study, approximately 70,000 online hotel reviews on the US travel site agoda.com were scrapped. Moreover, in the main study, 2 million online hotel reviews on the US travel site booking.com are scrapped to provide empirical evidence. The main findings of the 2 million Big Data analysis of this study are as follows. (1) Negative reviews are considered more helpful than positive reviews. (2) Two-sided arguments are considered twice as useful as one-sided arguments. (3) Two-sided arguments are considered most useful when the ratio of positive to negative content is approximately a quarter in positive context, and vice versa. (4) When the ratio of positive and negative content is a quarter, reviews in the negative context is accepted to be helpful about twice as high as in the positive context. Therefore, online hotel reviews are perceived the most helpful when a quarter of reviews in the negative context is positive content. In practice, in order to gain helpfulness from the online review, both negative and positive reviews should be better than just positive reviews by themselves.

ABSTRACT. ‘Fast fashion’ versus ‘slow fashion’ consumption is increasingly receiving attention from both academic scholars and practitioners. In accordance, fast fashion has been repeatedly criticized for environmental degradation, consumer waste, greenhouse gas, and poor production welfare, albeit being ideal in cost and trend timeliness for consumers. In contrast, slow fashion has been praised for long-term environmental sustainability and production welfare, while costing consumers higher price tags and less time-bound (season-less) trends. Against the backdrop of sustainability, our previous research has demonstrated that mindfulness provokes consumers to be more aware about their consumption decisions. In a series of experiments, we show that 1) mindfulness builds self-control, and 2) mindfulness results in more well-being choices within participants who exhibit impulsive and immediate gratification decision-making behavior. We then translate these experimental learnings into the domain of fashion. While fashion consumers profess concerns about sustainability issues, the fashion oriented impulse buying theory postulates that purchase intent for higher impulse (fast fashion) products increases with price discounts and short-term trend indicators. Our research shows how mindfulness can alter this relationship. That is, mindfulness may increase purchase intent for slow fashion products, as it encourages sustainable consumption and more thoughtful decision behavior. This study will illustrate how marketers can encourage consumers to become oriented toward slow fashion.

ABSTRACT. Unlike slow fashion that takes workers, consumers and environmental welfare into consideration, fast fashion is criticized for neglecting these. This study investigates attitudes and adoption intention of the slow fashion concept among young adults in South Africa, a highly socio-economically unequal emerging market. An extended information adoption model will be adapted and tested through a self-administered survey of 300 respondents. The results will provide marketing professionals, environmental and consumer interest groups and policy makers with valuable insight into barriers and motivators of slow fashion idea adoption among young adults who are a large, influential and profitable consumer segment.

ABSTRACT. Adopting voluntary simplistic lifestyles with practices that are socially and environmentally responsible remain key issues in the quest toward saving the planet. This research explores the prevalence of voluntary simplistic clothing consumption practices among female consumers in South Africa, where dramatic increases in consumption must be curbed.

ABSTRACT. The goal of this exploratory study is to develop a model to systematically understand different types of sustainable clothing consumption behaviors through consumers’ moral values. The research model was developed using the Moral Foundations Theory and empirically tested using online survey of moral beliefs and clothing purchase behaviors of the past 12 months. The findings (n=362) suggest that individualizing foundations and binding foundations differently predict green and local purchase behaviors. Second-hand purchases were not predicted by the moral foundations. Subjective knowledge was important predictor of all three types of sustainable clothing purchase behaviors.

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to identify the key factors influencing the U.S. millennial consumers’ willingness to recycle their denim apparel to brands or retailers. Consumer perceived value model provides the theoretical framework and guides data analysis. Five main values identified are the perceived social, financial, emotional, convenience and ecological values.

ABSTRACT. The resale market of used items presented an annual growth of 7% in the US market in 2015, a U$ 16 billion market in the US alone (NARTS, 2016). The advancement of social media usage allowed consumers to interact more and boosted the commerce of used items amongst consumers. In Brazil, Enjoei started as an informal website amongst friends and in seven years became an e-retailer with annual revenue of U$ 68 million selling exclusively used products. We researched the literature about the motives and barriers consumers have to engage in second-hand product (SHP) consumption and performed a mixed-method approach to collect consumers perception on the matter: in-depth interviews with 12 consumers, and a survey to confirm some of the findings from the interviews with 167 respondents. Our results shed some lights in understanding this behavior: consumers choose SHP mostly due to economic reasons (price) or fashionable reasons (uniqueness of the product), but sustainability is marginally considered by consumers. Lack of interest and fear of contamination are the main barriers for consumers that do not engage in SHP. The relevance of the brand in SHP consumption and the impact of selling their used products on consumer behavior are marginal topics that need further investigation. Impacts on consumers' disposal of clothing are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The study finds placing informational message first generates increased brand attitude for female consumers, while males prefer informational message placed last. High construal level leads to increased brand attitude for both males and females, low construal level consumers do not differ significantly in brand attitude across information order or gender.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to identify the main drivers behind consumers’ connection with fashion brands on social media. With a sample of 29 in-depth interviews with French individuals the study analyzes why and how consumers connect with fashion brands on social media platforms. Our results disclosed three categories of drivers: information with characteristics of information seeking, need for “staying in”, public self-consciousness and tracking promotions; aspirational with characteristics of entertainment, visual enjoyment, and dreaming; and last social with characteristics of need for belonging to brand community, social contamination, and benchmark with reference groups. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed as well.

ABSTRACT. Over the past few years, the Internet has profoundly affected customer experience and how customers interact with and respond to offerings (Kumar & Anjaly, 2017). Nowadays, digital and social media represent relevant touch points that contribute to shape the customer journey and allow consumers to engage more with firms (Leeflang et al., 2014; Kim & Ko, 2012; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). In particular, digital media play a primary role in a country such as China, which has the highest revenues in the e-commerce sector worldwide. Another characteristic of the Chinese market is represented by mobile retailing, which accounts for 75.35% of total Internet sales as of 2017 (Euromonitor International, 2018). Recent studies have analyzed the drivers of customer experience in relation with digital touch points, distinguishing utilitarian factors from emotional ones. Scholars argue that utilitarian factors such as customization, convenience, and ease of use drive an effective customer experience (Natarajan et al., 2017; Rose et al., 2012; Singh & Swait, 2017). Moreover, in analyzing the impact of retailers’ mobile applications, McLean et al. (2018) have found out that enjoyment is an important mediator in relationship between the utilitarian factors and the customer experience, affecting the level of satisfaction and positive emotions. As the customer journey does not end with the purchase phase, it is also important to consider the types of touch points activated in the post-purchase phase. Indeed, the post-purchase phase affects facets of the customer experience, such as consumer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Court et al., 2009; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Westbrook, 1987). Consumers, especially Millennials, are willing to share their experience through personal evaluations of purchased products, thus facilitating word-of-mouth communication (Chen, Fay, & Wang, 2013; Mangold & Smith, 2012). As studies on the customer journey in China are still scarce, the present research compares the impact of this digital and mobile touch points between Chinese and European consumers in the fashion sector, the segment with the highest e-commerce revenues in 2018 (Statista, 2019). Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to empirically test the hypothesized model investigating the drivers and effects of customer experience. Thus, we contribute to the recent literature on customer journey and discuss managerial implications for international companies.

ABSTRACT. As the interactive service provision in online platforms presents its significance, gamified marketing activities have been adopted to foster consumer motivations and engagements. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support the discussion that connects gamification to the betterment of consumer behavioral outcomes. Also, the scholarly debate has remained primarily in game studies and human-computer interaction (HCI). Therefore, the purpose of this research is as followings: First, it is to define gamification and examine the effects of gamified marketing activities. Second, it is to investigate the relationship between gamified marketing activities and consumer experiential value, which results in customer satisfaction. The findings of this study could be implemented to understand the diversifying consumers' luxury brand perception patterns in the context of gamified activities and guides luxury brands for better management of online marketing activities.

ABSTRACT. This study attempts to deepen our understanding of consumers’ micro-moments by assessing the impact of curiosity on consumer traits (i.e., impulse buying, hedonic consumption, novelty aversion tendency) and perceive benefits of mobile shopping (i.e., likeability of the offer received through the phone, convenience/speed of the transaction, usefulness of the mobile device). The result of the study revealed that interest curiosity negatively relates to impulse buying tendency and novelty aversion tendency while deprivation curiosity positively relates to impulse buying tendency and hedonic consumption tendency.

ABSTRACT. In the context of popular culture, web celebrity is a kind of modeled commodity. Advertising can generate tremendous value energy and is an important development channel for the web celebrity economy.In order for an advertisement to attract consumers and enhance their desire to purchase, it is necessary to have a factor that can guide consumers.As a celebrity with high visibility and exposure, web celebrities have the conditions as a guiding factor. This research examines the role of fashion web celebrity endorser on advertising value, and how the experience affects brand attitude and brand equity. The study also investigates the moderating role of parasocial relationship in the relationship between fashion web celebrity endorser and advertising value. The findings show that the fashion web celebrity endorser positively affect advertising value, and the experience and brand attitude and brand equity are positively associated, while parasocial relationship has differential effects on the relationship between fashion web celebrity endorser and advertising value.

ABSTRACT. This study assesses the fashion blogging content and the content categories attract SNS users’ attention on Chinese social networking sites via content analysis and eye-tracking methods. Fashion blogger need to optimize their content strategies to remain outstanding in online environments. Based on literature review, we generated five content categorise social fashion blogging posts, and examine the effect of the posts based on fixation count, the duration, and time to first fixation.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores how the social media influence Gen Y consumers’ online and offline purchase decision on luxury fashion brands. The focus will be the Gen Y consumers from the South East European (SEE) region. Interviews with customers reveal dilemmas that lead them to prefer traditional shopping environment that lead to subsequent managerial implications.

ABSTRACT. The future of global society is heavily characterized by scientific advancement, including artificial intelligence, quantum computers, self-driving cars, stem cell technology, and genetic superheroes (Future Forecast, 2019, May 23). Similarly, in 2007 and 2009, Kim and Johnson predicted that the apparel industry would be enhanced at all levels by technology in the next decade. For the future of apparel production, computerization and total automation, a wide adoption of mass customization, and outsourcing were discussed as important issues.

This study is to build on the findings of the aforementioned Kim and Johnson’s studies (2007, 2009) to forecast the U.S. apparel industry in the next decade. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify and describe what future professionals in the apparel industry believe the future holds for the apparel industry, focusing on production in the next ten years. Examining the predictions of these developing professionals for apparel production is an important undertaking for the apparel industry. By looking to the future, we may be able to address proactively those events likely to negatively impact it (Peterson, 1992); and, perhaps, the greatest contribution is that these predictions will cause us to think about the future.

The design of this study was based on a qualitative analysis. This specific study reporting only the findings on production is a part of an ongoing project of the author that explores all aspects of the apparel industry, so an essay questionnaire consisting of four open-ended questions about materials, design, production, and retailing in the apparel industry over the next ten years was developed. The questionnaire was distributed to undergraduate students enrolled in the retail merchandising and product development program at a southeastern university in the U.S. One hundred ninety-two students responded; however, they were asked to choose two questions to which to respond. As a result, eighty-two responses to the question on production were collected. The constant comparative method and open coding were used in analysis of data.

Almost all respondents foresaw that advances in technology would be the driving force of the changes in future apparel production. The manufacturing process was envisioned to be automated with enhanced technology and artificial intelligence. Specifically, robots were predicted to replace human labor, and automated sewing machines, seamless knitting machines, digital textile printers, 3D printers, and laser cutters were discussed. The respondents’ optimistic views of the future production are summarized as better quality, customized, cost efficient, vertically integrated, domestically manufactured with shortened lead time in supply chain, ethically labored, and sustainable production with less waste and energy consumption.

As in other aspects of the world, technological developments were predicted to be the driving force for changes to apparel production. Implications are discussed in terms of providing adequate technological preparation for all apparel majors.

References Kim, E., & Johnson, K. K. P. (2009). Forecasting the U.S. fashion industry with industry professionals Part 2: Production and retailing. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 13(2), 268-278. Kim, E., & Johnson, K. K. P. (2007). The U.S. apparel industry: Futuring with undergraduate apparel majors. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 25(4), 283-306. Future Forecast (2019, May 23). State of science in 2029. Quantumrun. Retrieved from https://www.quantumrun.com/future-timeline/2029/future-timeline-subpost- science Peterson, R. A. (1992). A context for retailing predictions. In R. A. Peterson (Ed.), The future of U.S. retailing (pp. 1-25). New York: Quorum.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the factors that determine daily changes in Twitter following of the Super Bowl advertisers in 2019. A panel regression model is constructed by taking into consideration of factors having potential to affect audiences’ usage of the Super Bowl advertisers’ twitter account.

The primary independent variables are grouped into two broad categories of variables, one relevant to the advertisers’ financial and management performances, and the other relevant to the advertisers’ marketing and communication activities including the daily activities on each advertiser’s respective twitter account. The dependent variable is the daily change of the number of Twitter followers for each Super Bowl advertisers’ Twitter account.

Using Python program language, the Super Bowl advertisers’ Twitter data were collected on a daily basis, every morning at 10 a.m. from Feb 2, 2019 to Feb 11, 2019—one day before the Super Bow through 10 days past the event. Other data of the advertisers were collected from various sources such as the official stock market reports of the Super Bowl Advertisers. All data analysis will be performed by Stata 15. Both fixed effect model and random effect model will be examined. The results will reveal specific determinants that have significant relationship with Twitter following, which will contribute to understanding the relationship between Super Bowl advertisements and social marketing, both academically and practically.

ABSTRACT. With the rapid development of technology, the marketing industry is also undergoing rapid changes. VR technology is a new development in the marketing industry in recent years. The interactive and immersive environment provided by this technology helps the emergence and development of parasocial relationship. In this context, this research explores the impact of fashion web celebrity endorser’s attractiveness on parasocial relationship, and how the relationship affects brand equity. The study also investigates the moderating role of activity of fashion web celebrity endorser in the relationship between endorser and consumer. The findings show that all the three attractions the fashion web celebrity endorsers have affect the parasocial relationship, and this relationship and brand equity are positively associated, while the activity of fashion web celebrity endorser has differential effects on the relationships between endorser and consumer.

ABSTRACT. As new, interest-based social networking services (SNS) like Instagram and Pinterest are introduced, people have been migrating from web communities and Facebook to these new outlets. These new interest-based social network services focus on sharing photos and videos, as opposed to text-based posts, allowing the users to consume contents more quickly and effortlessly. At the same time, these interest-based services enable the users to selectively consume the contents in which they are interested. Because of those advantages, the activities in interest-based SNS, especially on Instagram, has been growing rapidly over the past few years (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). As such, marketing activities on Instagram has been also soaring to take advantage of its high connectivity and ease of use.

Among the various types of marketing activities that take place on Instagram, ‘sponsored product review posting’ is the most frequently used one. A typical ‘sponsored product review posting’ delivers advertisement messages to a large number of people through a social influencer who has a large number of followers to his/her Instagram account to gain exposure effect. When casting the social influencers through whom they deliver the messages about products, social influencer marketing practitioners also consider source credibility and the match between the expertise of the influencer and the featured product. Influencer marketing practitioners also provide the casted influencers some general instructions on how to post their product review posts. Those instructions stipulate how to edit the posted photos (e.g., including product photos, detail cuts, etc.) and what to include in the hashtag (e.g., brand names, product features, etc.).

However, the effectiveness of such sponsored product review posts posted on Instagram through social influencers, especially in eliciting interests and shaping opinions of consumers, has not been systematically examined yet. More specifically, what type of Instagram post (i.e., which combination of different types of photos and hashtags) is the most effective in affecting consumers has not been examined. Hence, the current influencer marketing practices (e.g., who to cast as the influencer, how to edit posting contents, etc.) are largely based on the theories and principles of advertisements and persuasive communications founded and tested in the contexts of traditional media communications including the product placement (PPL) and sponsorship (Homer, 2009; Ohanian, 1991; Pornpitakpan, 2004; Van Reijmersdal et al., 2009; Wathen & Burkell, 2002). However, some characteristics of the new interest-based media including Instagram that differ from those of traditional media like TV, newspapers, and web pages (e.g., high interest in the subjects coupled with low general cognitive involvement) may alter how various elements in the posts (e.g., pictures, comments, etc.) affect consumers’ responses to the posts.

Therefore, this study empirically examines how the picture and the hashtags in an Instagram post that feature specific products affect consumers’ responses to the posts and the featured products. Specifically, this study tested a series of the hypotheses about how the picture types (dominant vs. ambiguous product placement) and hashtag types (word-chain type vs. sentence-imbedded type) affect the viewers’ perceptions of the commercial intent of the posts and trustworthiness of the person who posted the posts, and responses to the features products (i.e., interests in, evaluation of, and intention to purchase the featured product) that were derived based on the extant theories of consumer information processing including those on message salience, attribution, and persuasion knowledge.

An experiment testing the proposed hypotheses was conducted in a real, existing Instagram account setting. An Instagram user who meets the typical characteristics of social influencers (i.e., the number of followers, match with the product, etc.) recruited by current SNS influencer marketing practitioners were recruited. The recruited influencer posted four different posts featuring the same focal product (a pair of casual sneakers targeting consumers in their 20’s) but using the four different combinations of picture type (dominant vs. ambiguous product placement) and hashtag type (word-chain vs. sentence-imbedded) at four different points in time per the researchers’ requests. Each time the user posted a version of the four experimental posts, a different group of the study participants who were recruited from a pool of undergraduate students enrolled in a business school at a large metropolitan university in Korea were convened in a lab and instructed to visit the recruited user’s Instagram account and browse the account for 5 minutes. Then, the participants answered a series of questions about their general Instagram usage patterns, the dependent variables of the study, and the experimental Instagram post.

The results of the experiment revealed that that the perceived commercial intent of the post negatively affected the perceived trustworthiness of the user while the perceived trustworthiness of the user positively affected the participants’ interest in, evaluation of, and purchase intention for the featured product as expected. However, contrary to the hypotheses, the perceived commercial intent of the post was stronger when the sentence-imbedded hashtags were used than when word-chain type hashtags were used. The picture type had no effect on the perceived commercial intent of the post. In addition, sentence-imbedded hashtags and dominant placement type picture more positively affected the perceived trustworthiness of the user than word-chain type hashtags and ambiguous placement type picture did respectively.

These findings indicate that people indeed perceive stronger commercial intent when an Instagram post accompanies the hashtags within a sentence. However, the findings also indicate that the higher trustworthiness of the influencer cued by the candid placement of the product in the picture and the elaborate manner in which the influencer placed the keywords about the product in a sentence, as opposed to as a bunch of words, outweighs the negative effect of the perceived commercial intent of the post and positively affects the viewers’ responses to the products featured in an Instagram post. Conversely, the findings may also indicate that the viewers may interpret the ambiguous product placement in the pictures as an attempt to hide the true (commercial) intent of posts and the use of word-chain type of hashtags as a sign of the lack of enthusiasm for the featured product by the influencer.

In sum, the findings of this study demonstrate that consumers’ responses to the products featured in an Instagram post are influenced by how the influencers post the pictures of the product and the related hashtags. Practically, the findings indicate that social influencer marketing practitioners may also yield effects of the influencer marketing activities to acquiring more favorable product interests and evaluations, on top of getting high exposure, by providing clear and well-founded instructions on how to compose the posts featuring the target product to the social influencers they recruit. Theoretically, the finding that the use of the elements that plainly reveal the commercial intent of an Instagram post (i.e., the dominant product placement in the picture and the more elaborate, sentence-imbedded hashtags) led to more favorable responses to the featured product suggests a boundary condition for the well-established, negative effects of persuasion knowledge. However, what distinctive characteristics of consumers’ processing of the marketing activities on Instagram are responsible for such differences needs further investigation.

ABSTRACT. As a pleasant private lifestyle plays a vital role given current industrial and social trends, numerous business models are emerging that provide individualized, customized products and services. In this context, fashion-recommendation systems are considered one of the latest trends in the fashion industry, providing the most appropriate products based on a user’s information—information that ranges from personal preferences to physical attributes. Even though fashion-recommendation systems attempt to accumulate diverse personal information about a user, fabric, which is fundamental to a consumer’s real-life activity, is not emphasized in this process. Therefore, the major objective in the present study was to describe the role of personal information including fabric selection in fashion-recommendation systems, fabric being a variable that can impact consumer well-being and sustainable intentions. This research examined three current fashion-suggestion systems to understand how they accumulate a user’s personal information, including how fabric selection appears in the formulas of fashion-recommendation systems. The study analyzed how the process of personal selection affects consumers’ satisfaction level and develops feelings of well-being, and how it leads to sustainable use of fashion-recommendation systems via a value-based adoption model (VAM).

ABSTRACT. Recent environmental and ethical issues in the clothing industry have led fashion companies to offer sustainable products and increase their social responsibility. Implementing sustainability strategies is no longer an option but a necessity (Hiscu, 2017). However, due to the cognitive dissonance between the concepts of luxury and sustainability, sustainability strategies employed by luxury fashion companies have not yet been effective (Torelli, Monga, and Kaikati, 2012). The current status of the luxury fashion industry’s sustainability strategy is vague; it remains an unsolved challenge for luxury fashion companies. While the traditional perception of luxury consumption has been that of being a symbol of wealth and a means to show off one’s social status to others, the consumption of luxury goods and luxury experiences have extended to other individuals with changing values and lifestyles in modern society (Baek and Han, 2018). In this context, sustainable consumption and luxury consumption overlap, as they are ultimately personal values. In this study, luxury consumption and sustainable consumption were considered components of a lifestyle focused on “well-being, a lifestyle that seeks to “improve the quality of life,” Three factors were designated as study variables: luxury consumption, sustainable consumption, and well-being consumption. First, the study conceptualized luxury consumption, sustainable consumption, and well-being lifestyle through a literature review. Second, through in-depth interviews with consumers of luxury consumers and sustainable products and services, common keywords and consumption attitudes and perceived values of luxury consumption and sustainable consumption were extracted based on a well-being consumption measurement model introduced by Jin (2012). Third, based on the keywords extracted in advance and the consumption attitudes and perceived values attributes, a survey questionnaire was prepared and its reliability and validity verified by data measurement. In-depth interviews showed that practical value and self-realization were important factors in consumption decisions for a large share of both consumer groups. In other words, when they purchase fashion items, both luxury and sustainable consumers value long-lasting product designs and functionality. These buyers also value and achieve some self-realization through a brand’s social responsibility, thereby partially practicing well-being consumption. The results of this study are expected to provide strategic frameworks and keywords that can be utilized in future marketing activities to derive an effective sustainable strategy for future luxury businesses.

ABSTRACT. With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the pace of technological development has become much faster; the application of new technology is spreading to all industries, including the fashion industry. Virtual personal stylists using artificial intelligence are examples of new technology in the fashion industry; they analyze users' physical attributes, tastes, and preferences through big data and machine learning in order to suggest customized styles and recommend products.

This study analyzed the prospect of adopting this service, which proposes fashion styling through a modified technology acceptance model (TAM), and considered the five capacity factors of an artificial intelligence (AI) style assistant extracted through in-depth interviews. It also looked at the status of the AI speaker market, the advantages and disadvantages of device use, and the problems and limitations of the same. These topics have academic significance, as they focus on fashion-styling services among artificial intelligence speakers. Practical significance also comes from identifying ways to utilize the artificial intelligence technology of domestic luxury fashion companies, the resulting market applicability, and the suggestion of more appropriate styling proposal services from a consumer perspective.

ABSTRACT. Web series is an emerging online entertainment content of subscription video on-demand (SVOD) which is developed and popular world wild. This study discussed why audience prefer watch TV series on SVOD platform, what motivation drives audience to watch on SVOD platform and how the SVOD platform be able to keep their paid member audience. This study defined what benefits are delivered from SVOD platform. Technology advantage, social involvement, psychological and gratification are defined as attributes of web series based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) theory and Users & Gratification theory. The web series audience’s intrinsic needs and extrinsic needs are studied in this study based on Self determination Theory. Both of audience’s intrinsic needs and extrinsic needs are proved to influence audience engagement degree with SVOD platform. Based on audience’s needs and audience’s engagement, this study explored the drivers of customer equity in web series. The drivers of customer equity are developed based on Lemon’s work which applies brand, value and relationship equity as drivers. The results of this study show that higher engagement degree leads higher band equity, value equity, relationship equity.

ABSTRACT. Although the word luxury fashion does exist, the intrinsic meanings of fashion and luxury have little in common. Beyond the fact that they both aim at igniting desire, they represent two symmetrical relationships to temporality. In addition, managing a fashion brand fundamentally differs from managing a luxury house. But what are the perceptions of consumers? Are these two concepts perceived as opposite? Analyzing the perception of 60 high end brands, from various sectors, across six countries (USA, China, Japan, Brazil, Germany and France) one finds that being perceived as luxury contributes positively to their desirability while being perceived as fashion impacts most often negatively, with the exception of China. While luxury brands need to look in the air, contemporary, these results show that they should be managed cautiously so as not to look try to look too fashionable. It might jeopardize their ability to sustain their desirability long term.

ABSTRACT. This paper studies the phenomena of evolving cultural patterns, social mindsets, and ethical decision-making patterns in emerging markets that lead consumers to purchase counterfeit luxury fashion goods thus engaging in conspicuous consumption. Through three experimental studies that utilize a 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial design, the proposed hypotheses are tested.

ABSTRACT. In the meantime, companies have focused on sales of products and have been interested in consumers' choice in terms of utility theory. However, we should pay attention not only to the individual choice process, but also to the right disposal after consumption. In particular, the size of the consumer industry of fashion apparel has increased dramatically, but it has become a serious social problem globally because it has not received much attention for the right recycling or disposal of product. Therefore, this study examines factors explaining the disposing behavior of fashion apparel from the perspective of sustainability of consumption and suggests ways to utilize these factors.

ABSTRACT. Artification offers luxury brands an interpretive framework to improve their image through the application of art-based management strategies. Via an in-depth literature review and secondary data analysis, a new model is designed to synthesize the operations which luxury brands may implement to channel artification processes to their benefit.

ABSTRACT. Advanced web technologies enable consumers can create and exchange the content in various social media platforms (SMPs). As an interactive communication channel, SMPs serve as a new and updated form of online community where consumers and companies benefit each other. Due to it openness and easy accessibility, consumers use SMPs to acquire information in addition to seeking for socialization, which affect a purchase decision making process (Wang, Yu, and Wei, 2012). With various benefits of using SMPs among consumers, product reviews and information in SMPs perform as a new type of endorsement. Individuals who actively share and disseminate the content regarding products/services become micro-celebrities in SMPs. According to DiSilvestro (2016), customers no longer trust advertising, but they prefer to read reviews on SMPs, and in fact, 67% of consumers visit SMPs to reviews by other customers. In this regard, increasing number of brands tries to find influential micro-celebrities to build positive brand image and customer relationship which potentially increase sales in the end (Khamis, Ang, and Welling, 2016). Despite the increasing popularity of SMPs and influencers to brands, marketers struggle to measure their returns on investment, such as customer retention and increased customer lifetime value (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010). Thus, a focal interest of this study is the role of a sense of community in building participants’ positive relational outcomes for a given brand (Hudson et al., 2016). Literature Review and Hypotheses Development Considering openness of SMPs and heterogeneous consumer populations and activities in SMPs, this study adopts psychological sense of community (PSOC) as a theoretical foundation to explain how consumers’ social and psychological states develop affective and behavioral consequences. The essence of PSOC lies in measuring the subjective quality of an individual’s feeling of belonging and perceptions of a target (Blanchard and Markus, 2002). PSOC provides an understanding of consumers’ voluntary engagement and sharing of personal stories in various settings (Carlson, Sutar, and Brown, 2008). Instead of approaching collective behaviors of consumers around shared interests or shared consciousness, the focus of PSOC is on individual’s perception which depict individual’s underlying motivations of community participation (Sarason, 1974). Studies on sense of community have examined the relationship between exchanges of supports and development of sense of community (Royal & Rossi, 1996). Blanchard (2002) also indicates positive effects of sharing information and emotional support in a virtual group, which in turn, developing sense of community. Compared to face-to-face communication, a computer-mediated environment is regarded as less personal and demonstrate weakened social presence (Rovai, 2002). Thus, individuals’ awareness of support in online setting is essential for members to have a sense of community (H1) This study also highlights the role of brand to represent one’s self- image. Consumers often become attached to brands that help them to create or represent their desired self-concepts (Escalas and Bettman, 2003). Through emotional attachment with the brand, a consumer develops a sense of oneness and favorable association with the brand (Park et al., 2010). By capturing the strength of the connection between meaning of brand and the consumers’ self-concept, self-brand concept is examined as a predictor of positive attitude toward the brand as well as behavioral intention (H2). To examine the effects of relationship building in SMPs, this study implements the commitment as an outcome variable because the strong positive relationship between commitment and several attitudinal/behavioral intentions including purchase intention are confirmed in the previous study (Carlson et al., 2008). This study particularly examines whether strong relationship building in SMPs affect purchase in two different store formats (brick and mortar (H3a) vs. e-commerce site (H3b). In SMPs setting, consumers’ feeling toward the community plays a critical role to establish a positive attitude toward the community as well as attracting them to participate in any community related activities. Though interactions among users in the social media platform are not forced, having PSOC between users and the influencer page will encourage them to have more interests on brand they the influencer use or present on the page, which encourages users’ positive evaluation toward the brand (H4). Attitude is known as one’s evaluations, emotional feelings and tendencies toward some object or ideas (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). Attitude has been widely used to predict consumers’ behavior towards a product or service. In SMPs, the affective feeling toward the page may create a positive evaluation toward the brand, which in turn affecting a potential purchase of a product or service. Thus, this study examines the effects of attitude on purchase intention through two different channels (i.e., brick and mortar store and e-commerce) (H5a-b). Research Methods A quantitative research method is used for this study and the sample was recruited through a HIT posted on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (Casler, Bickel, and Hackett, 2013). Since the purpose this study is to investigate antecedents and outcomes of building PSOC in the context of social media influencer page, the participants who had used SMPs at least past seven days were recruited and requested to indicate a particular social media platform, then one specific social media influencer page as well as one specific brand that the participants feel most connected through the selected social media influencer page. A total of 396 participated in the survey. After excluding ineligible and incomplete survey responses, 283 responses were retained, representing a response rate of 71.5%. All measures are adopted from the existing studies and used a 7-point Likert-scale except for self-brand connection which utilized a 10-point Likert scale (1=not at all, 10=extremely). Results The proposed model consists of three exogenous variables (perceived interactivity, brand-self connection, brand commitment) and four endogenous constructs (psychological sense of community, attitude toward brand appeared on social media, purchase intention via brick-and-mortar store, purchase intention via e-commerce site). Using AMOS 22.0, the model fit and path analyses were conducted and the results demonstrate the good fit of model (NFI > 0.95, IFI > 0.95, CFI > 0.95, RMSEA < 0.07, Chi-square/df < 5). The results of the causal model analysis revealed that all, except one, hypotheses received statistical support. H1 showed the positive influence of perceived exchange support on users’ perception of PSOC in SMPs (gamma11 = .93, p < .001), H2 proposed and confirmed the positive impact of self-brand connection on users’ attitude toward the brand in general (gamma22 = .26, p < .01), H3 investigated and demonstrated the positive influence of brand commitment on users’ purchase intention via brick-and-mortar store (H3a) and e-commerce site (H3b) (H3-a: gamma33 = .14, p < .05; H3-b: gamma43 =.18, p < .01). H4 examined the direct impact of PSOC on attitude toward the brand and the confirmed the positive effect (beta21 = .23, p < .001). Lastly, H5 examined direct positive effects of attitude toward the brand on the users’ intention to purchase via e-commerce site (H5-b: beta42 = .13, p < .05) was confirmed, but not through a brick-and-mortar site (beta32 = .10, p < .10). Discussion Findings of this study provide theoretical and practical contributions to the body of knowledge on this topic. Theoretically, the results of this study confirm a successful application of the PSOC in an emerging important marketing channel (i.e., social media influencer page). So far, PSOC has been widely adopted in the community psychology (e.g., Talo, Mannarini, and Rochira, 2014) and organization literature (e.g., Boyd and Nowell, 2013). However, little studies have applied PSOC in a broader context where lower pre-existing brand related factors are required to form a relationship between brand and the users. Findings of this study empirically confirm that the PSOC plays an important role of building positive attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. In order to apply more a holistic approach to the impact of social media influencer on consumer behaviors, this study incorporated overall consumer-brand relationships. The findings of this study also confirmed the importance of consumer-brand existing relationships. From a managerial perspective, the findings in this study underpin the relevance of social media influencers for brand management. While brand managers may still doubt the usefulness and effectiveness of social media influencers on brand management, the findings of present study points in the direction of social media as an important and integral part of the marketing communication strategy.

ABSTRACT. Customers have turned to social media and started sharing fashion tips and/or fashion photography, and have managed to build a following base, sometimes becoming influencers. Influencers have become an important mean for fashion brands to reach consumers, with fashion marketers allocating between 30 to 75% of their ad spending to influencer marketing on social media (Econsultancy, 2016). At least 30% of Instagram users have purchased a product they discovered through a picture in the app (Instagram Business Team, 2018). And while advertising scholars have started to shed light on the particularities of this app, it is important to understand whether advertising generalizations apply to this promising social media platform. In this study, we investigate the effects of multiple brand endorsement by non-celebrity individuals on brand and product evaluation in fashion advertisements.

ABSTRACT. To enable digital interactions in a physical store, many fashion brands have installed interactive screens (Pantano 2016; Bonetti and Perry 2017; Mintel November 2017). Consumers can therefore experience shopping via both tactile physical and digital media, which can potentially heighten the overall store experience (Dennis et al. 2014; Poncin and Ben-Mimoun 2014; Kent et al. 2015). In addition, the appearance and interactivity of the screens can heighten the ambience of a store, and contribute to its atmospherics. These can have a strong influence on in-store consumer behaviour, providing a pleasurable store experience and influencing the length of visit and purchase intention.

However, studies of consumer engagement with interactive screens in the store remain scarce. This paper aims to explore the retailers’ use of interactive screens, consumer interactions with them and how the screens contribute to the store’s atmosphere.

ABSTRACT. Customization services can protect the exclusiveness of luxury brands, which evolve in accordance with millennial values. The effectiveness of luxury-brand customization as a marketing strategy targeted at millennials is the theme of this research. The study was conducted with a focus on Louis Vuitton, a fashion brand that offers self-customization services online. A survey of local millennial consumers aged 20-39 was conducted from May 27-June 3, 2019, with a total of 136 surveys returned. This study had three objectives. The first was to understand both the luxury- customizing experience and the intention behind the purchase of customized luxury products. This understanding came from, prior purchase histories of luxury products, the scope and volume of luxury purchases, and total expenditures on luxury consumption. The second objective was to measure consumers’ purchasing intention with regard to customized luxury products according to the regulatory effect. The final objective was to investigate purchasing intention in response to luxury customization components. As a marketing effort, applying customization services to the luxury sector yields practical and significant results. This strategic option for overcoming the popularization of luxury products can also enhance a brand’s credibility and image concurrently.

ABSTRACT. The global luxury industry has climbed rapidly for many years and millennials fuel the main growth of the luxury market. Despite young millennials’ luxury brand consumption represents an interesting phenomenon, little research has examined which external information sources millennials utilize when purchasing luxury fashion brands. Based upon the functional theory of attitudes, the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of external information sources on millennials’ attitudes and purchase intentions toward luxury fashion brand consumption. A total of 711 college students at two large Midwestern universities in the United States responded to a web-based survey. Results indicate hedonic function of attitude that significantly influenced purchase intention to luxury fashion brands was more impactful for millennial consumers than Social-adjustive, value-expressive, utilitarian functions of attitudes. These young luxury brand shoppers perceived the information sources, such as their own experiences, magazines ads, celebrity endorsement, Instagram, blog, store reputation, and point of sales information, more important than the other sources. These information sources significantly influenced hedonic attitude and purchase intention to luxury fashion brands. Findings from this study highlight the important role of hedonic attitude on purchase intentions to luxury fashion brands as well as uncover individual differences in usage of information sources that shape millennials’ motivational function of attitudes and purchase intention toward luxury fashion brands.

ABSTRACT. While LGBT themes have increasingly been portrayed in advertising, little research investigates the influence of such themes on consumer attitudes. This research examines how a consumer’s political ideology affects their attitudes toward an advertised product. The findings demonstrate when politically conservative consumers view advertisements that include LGBT imagery and male models (vs female models), they report more negative attitudes toward the advertised product; however, such polarization does not occur among liberal consumers. This research also sheds light on the underlying process driving these findings. Specifically, conservatives experienced higher levels of disgust after evaluating an LGBT-themed advertisement that included (what appear to be) gay male (vs. female) models, leading to more negative attitudes towards the advertisement and the product. These findings provides theoretical and managerial implications by identifying the factor (political ideology) that might influence the acceptance of LGBT themes in advertising and establishing the mechanisms driving the predicted effects.

ABSTRACT. This article explores the main motives and outcomes of brand addiction towards fast and luxury fashion brands. Considering the exploratory nature of this research, twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted in the U.S. to tap into the respondents’ addictive experiences for luxury and fast-fashion brands. Different themes emerged for the motivation for fast-fashion and luxury brand addiction. Continuous update of fashion-led items, perceived value, and product assortments are motivators for fast-fashion brand addiction while self-expressiveness, status consumption and perceived quality are motivators for luxury fashion brand addiction. As for the consequences, interpersonal relationships and financial issues emerged as common themes for addiction to particular luxury and fast-fashion brands while repetitive styles and motivation to work harder came up as themes for addiction to particular luxury brands.

ABSTRACT. In the last decades, manufacturing firms have been increasingly challenged by sustainability (Macchion et al., 2017). In order to distinguish themselves from competitors and to reach competitive advantage, firms need to produce new sustainable products (Neutzling, Land, Seuring, & do Nascimento, 2018). However, as sustainable innovations overcome the single firm’s boundaries, firms need to extend their focus from internal to their whole external supply-network (Cherrafi, Garza-Reyes, Kumar, Mishra, Ghobadian, & Elfezazi, 2018). A sustainable innovation is the one that takes into account equally economic, environmental and social aspects (Silvestre & Țîrcă, 2019), according to the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) perspective (Elkington, 1997), and it can be created only through the collaboration among external and internal stakeholders (Bag, Gupta, & Telukdarie, 2018). Even though innovation can be a process within one single firm, actually every innovation process influences all the supply-chain and network partners (Van Bommel, 2011). In spite of the recognized importance of all stakeholders involvement, most researches focused mainly on focal firm’ relationships with its suppliers and customers, lacking in considering the role of NGOs, Universities, etc. (Bag et al., 2018). Moreover, not so often all the three aspects of the TBL are equally taken into consideration. The aim of this research is to understand how business relationships should be managed in order to produce new sustainable products. The context of this research is the textile industry because it is characterized by one of the most complex and unsustainable supply-network (Majumdar & Sinha, 2019), and also because in its related field of research there is the need to better disentangle the link between innovation and the adoption of sustainable practices (Macchion et al., 2017). The research considers the point of view of one focal fashion company.

ABSTRACT. Bamboo has been considered as an alternative sustainable materials for fashion clothing. This study investigates how the Chinese millennials perceive bamboo textile fashion production through the lens of consumption values.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to identify new practices and innovations in fashion and apparel retail firms, through a multi-case study, in order to observe whether and how “ethical retailers” are different from traditional and fast fashion retailers. First, we identify in the literature the key characteristics of traditional and fast fashion retail paradigm. Then, we present the firms composing the case study and summarize their key characteristics into groups of suggested themes defying the traditional and fast fashion paradigm. Lastly, we analyze the empirical evidence and the observations regarding the comparison between emerging ethical retailers and ruling paradigms on the industry to then propose an empirical definition of ethical fashion, which is the main contribution of our study. We hope these insights can help guide future studies.

ABSTRACT. This qualitative research will explore ethical consumption of fashion through the lens of self-concept, and projective techniques will be utilized to gain insight into participants’ experience, thoughts, and emotions.

ABSTRACT. Luxury brand is actively delivering stories includes their birth and growth through social media. Unlike mass media, it communicates with consumers more quickly and frequently and delivers the story of brand naturally. What kind of emotional empathy and emotions do consumers have about luxury brands that actively operates SNS, and how will it affect the interest of the brand? This study examines how the story of luxury brands delivered through SNS is being received by consumers. Therefore, it starts from the question of how many consumers will understand the story and consume the brand. And, it tries to analyze it by linking self-esteem to find out the propensity of consumers consumption who do not understand the story. Self-esteem is a personal evaluation of one’s self. The reasons for consumption of luxury brands may differ according to these evaluations, and the patterns of understanding and consumption of luxury brands story may show difference. This study has two purposes: First, it is to classify luxury brands into four groups based on story recognition of luxury brands and self-esteem, and analyze and materialize each group of the propensity of luxury brand consumption. Second, it is to find the effect of advertising by analyzing narrative transportation on SNS advertising, interests in videos, and the interests in stories based on these typical groups of luxury consumption. The theoretical significance of this study is as follows. First, it theoretically studies from the perspective of narrative transportation for how much consumers are interested in the story by focusing on the story of luxury brands. Previous studies have focused on what story luxury brand has and how to deliver it. This study analyzes how consumers understand and think importantly the story. Second, it classifies characteristics of consumption by linking luxury brands with self-esteem. Although researches on conspicuous consumption have been carried out a lot, this study suggests more specific verification results in consumption sentiment of consumers by classifying types of consumption as its psychological factor. Third, it verifies the effect of SNS advertisement by comparing narrative transportation of luxury brands according to the type of consumption. Previous effects of advertising were measured by attitude change, purchase intention, etc. However, SNSs needed differentiated measurements of effect because they have different characteristics from existing media. Therefore, this study attempted to measure narrative transportation and continuous interest in images and the interest in the story. The practical implication of this study is that narrative transportation can be used for targeting to increase the effect of SNS advertisement. According to self-esteem and story recognition, the level of narrative transportation changed and the interest in images and story differed. Thus, based on these criteria, classifying the market can be tried, and it can be used as a strategic method to target a specific market according to delivery goal of the story.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to investigate the effects of brand personification on consumer responses to the brands on social media, by employing a longitudinal experiment. The results show that brand personification increases the perceived social presence, resulting in more favorable brand evaluations.

ABSTRACT. Brand scandal happens more frequently in recent years. Cause-related marketing (CRM), which can enhance the brand attitude effectively as a strategic tool, has attracted campaigns’ attention. The pattern of CRM is increasingly diversified, and there is a new pattern which allows consumers to choose the cause that receives the donation. It was demonstrated that allowed consumers to choose the cause which receives the donation would lead to greater consumer support than those in which the company determines the cause in normal situation. However, consumer psychology becomes more complex after scandal. It’s necessary for campaigns to adjust the pattern of CRM based on consumer regulatory focus.Specifically, for prevention focus consumers, campaigns had better not provide them with the choice of cause after scandal. The conclusion provides practical guidance for campaigns to maximize the effectiveness of CRM campaigns and response to the crisis effectively.

ABSTRACT. THE EFFECTS OF PRODUCT NOVELTY AND FASHION INFLUENCERS’ SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS ON FASHION ADOPTION IN SOCIAL MEDIA Eonyou Shin, Virginia Tech, USA Jung Eun Lee, Virginia Tech, USA Although many businesses are successful because of fashion influencer marketing on social media, no studies to date have investigated which factors contribute to these businesses’ success by attracting consumers via social media. We investigated whether the relation between apparel product novelty and consumers’ curiosity depends on perceived fashion influencers’ socioeconomic status. In addition, we examined curiosity’s mediating role in the product novelty effect on purchase intentions and intention to use a social shopping service. A two-product novelty (familiar vs. novel) × two levels of perceived socioeconomic status (moderately vs. extremely high) between-subjects experimental design was used. A total of 338 female participants was collected. The results showed that curiosity was greater for the novel than the familiar apparel product when it showed an SMFI with moderately high socioeconomic status. However, curiosity did not differ regardless of product novelty when it showed an SMFI with extremely high socioeconomic status. As moderated mediation effects of curiosity, for SMFIs with moderately high socioeconomic status, product novelty increased consumers’ purchase intentions and exploratory behavioral intentions to find product information through product curiosity. In contrast, for SMFIs extremely high socioeconomic status, consumers were equally curious about familiar and novel apparel products, which did not cause differences in their purchase intentions and exploratory behavioral intentions to use the social shopping service, such as, “LIKEtoKNOW.it”. This study’s findings can help retailers and marketers plan strategic influencer marketing that generates higher consumer curiosity, which encourage consumers to adopt the apparel product.

ABSTRACT. Introduction This study aimed to examine the impact of the presentation format of haptic information, i.e., visually and verbally in an online retail website, on consumers’ imagery information-processing and satisfaction both with the information and the online shopping mall offering such types of information. Furthermore, this study tried to investigate how different components of mental imagery influence consumers’ elaboration of imagery for evoking imagination imagery as well as the relationship between the imagination imagery and consumer satisfaction. The results provide empirical evidence that as an imagery-evoking strategy, concrete visual and verbal presentation formats of haptic information on apparel product might facilitate consumers’ evaluation on product attributes for purchase and positively influence on their attitude.

Theoretical Development Mental imagery is described as a mode of processing information and imagery information-processing is induced by images in working memory (Kosslyn, Brunn, Cave, & Wallach, 1984; MacInnis & Price, 1987). The role of mental imagery in information processing has been discussed in terms of consumers' use of imagery in product information processing as well as memory or imagination with regard to hedonic and/or symbolic consumption experiences. The use of highly imaginal stimuli such as picture or concrete language, especially in product advertisements, promote consumers' association with the advertised product (Kisielius & Roedder, 1983), and facilitate their evaluation on product attributes when selecting product for purchase (MacInnis & Price, 1987; Rinaldo & Childers, 2010). Meanwhile, the use of imagery is highly related to visual thinking (Forrest, 1980), and haptic imagery can be evoked by visual processing through pictorial or verbal cues (Park, 2009; Peck & Childers, 2003; Rossiter & Percy, 1978). Accordingly, in an online retailing for apparel products where consumers cannot see and touch the products during their purchase decision-making processes, haptic information will be processed imaginatively under visual thinking process. In that clothing fabric is considered as one of the important attributes in consumers' purchase decision-making process in the online shopping environment (Choi & Taylor, 2014; Yoo & Kim, 2014), improved processing of haptic information on clothing fabric through mental imagery may facilitate consumers’ decision-making of product choice. Furthermore, imagery-evoking strategies using concrete visual and/or verbal cues can help consumers examine a series of brand and product attributes, particularly while they process brand or product information in online fashion stores. A few of the studies assessed the effects of imagery on attitude and found that imagery-eliciting strategies seem to promote consumers’ positive attitudes (Lutz & Lutz, 1978).

Research Design For this study, authors designed a 1-page mock websites simulating an Internet fashion shopping mall to measure the effect of presentation format of haptic information on apparel product on consumers' imagery responses and satisfaction in the online environment. Therefore, this study employed a 2 (verbal presentation format of information: concrete descriptions vs. no descriptions) x 3 (visual presentation format of information: closer view, schematic diagram, and no picture) between-subjects factorial design with each experimental factor corresponding to a manipulation of an imagery-evoking strategy. The flared-dress in black and camel with long sleeves was selected for the test stimulus in that it shows the characteristics of clothing textile in more detail than other apparel products. Each experimental website used the same photographic images of flared-dress worn by the headless mannequins. The basic image size was 333 x 500 pixels in width and height, and three pictures showing the front, the back, and the side images of product were presented. The enlarged image size was 430 x 645 pixels in width and height. All the product images were taken in the same condition to eliminate extraneous variables. Except visual and verbal stimuli for the operationalization of imagery, all components of experimental websites were the same. Product’s fabric was pictorially and verbally manipulated as a part of detailed product information to evoke imagery by the presentation format of haptic information. The pretest was conducted with 200 female college students to modify visual and verbal stimuli. For the main experiment, a convenience sample of women (N = 528) in their 20s~30s was randomly assigned to one of the 12 treatment conditions and answered the questionnaire including all dependent measures and demographic items. Summed and revised scales were used to measure each of the dependent variables of interest in this study. To measure the 3 dimensions of imagery (i.e., the quantity and the vividness of mental imagery, the ease of evoking mental imagery), and the elaboration for imagination imagery related to imagery processing, thirteen Likert-type items were adopted from Ellen and Bone’s (1991) communication evoked imagery scale and its modified version of Babin and Burns (1998), and revised to fit this study. Eight Likert-type items for measuring the attitude toward the presentation format of information and an experimental online shopping mall were adopted from Richard and Chebat (2016). All items used a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). For the manipulation and confounding checks, four items for each check were adopted from Miller and Marks (1997). As a results, more concrete visual and verbal conditions were reliable and effective in evoking imagery and at the same time no confounding effects were found. A chi-square analysis was performed to test the differences in demographics among 6 groups by three levels of the visual condition and two levels of the verbal condition of which cell sizes ranged from 86 to 91. The results confirmed that there were no differences at the p<.05 level in age (χ2=.20, df=5, p=.99), residence (χ2=9.12, df=10, p=.52), marriage (χ2=4.53, df=5, p=.48), education (χ2=9.38, df=15, p=.86), monthly income (χ2=26.23, df=20, p=.16). A MANOVA test with blocking product’s colors (black, camel) as a nuisance factor to reduce or eliminate experimental error also revealed that there were no significant differences among 6 groups in Internet shopping mall familiarity (M=6.04, F(5, 522)=.301, p=.912) and fashion product involvement (M=5.46, F(5, 522)=.419, p=.836) which as a covariate might affect the measured results. Data checks indicated that no serious violations of the basic assumption of MANOVA. A 6 x 6 MANOVA was performed to test the main and interaction effects of visual and verbal conditions on the dependent variables. A structural equation modeling analysis was used to test the causal relationship between the 3 dimensions of imagery and the elaboration for imagination imagery, and between the imagination imagery and each attitude variable. The relationship of two attitude variables was also assessed.

Results of the Study A six-factor confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to assess the dimensionality, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of all measures. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated a satisfactory level of model fit (χ2=433.34, df=174, p<.000, GFI=.93, CFI=.98, RMSEA=.05). The reliabilities of the 6 dependent variables ranged from .90 to .96, indicating adequate internal consistency of the scales. Standardized factor loading(λ) of all items ranged from .81 to .95, and all indicator t-values were significant at the .001 level. Construct reliability estimates ranged from .75 to .94. Variance extracted estimates ranged from .71 to .83, and all were greater than the square of the correlation between their respective constructs. The conditions of supporting convergent validity and discriminant validity were satisfied. The MANOVA results showed a significant main effect for three levels of visual information condition on both the elaboration for imagination imagery and satisfaction with the presentation format of information and an online shopping mall (Wilks’ λ=.95, F(5, 522)=2.10, p<.05, partial η2=.02). However, the three dimensions of imagery (the quantity and the vividness of mental imagery, the ease of evoking mental imagery) was not significantly influenced by visual presentation format of information. Univariate main effects were significant on the elaboration for imagination imagery (F(2, 525)=4.41, p <.05, partial η2=.02), and satisfaction both with the presentation format of information (F(2, 525)=4.03, p <.05, partial η2=.02) and an online shopping mall (F(2, 525)=8.04, p <.000, partial η2=.03). The Tukey’s post hoc test demonstrated that a closer view condition was significantly more effective than other two visual conditions in evoking imagination imagery, and both attitude toward the presentation format of information and an online shopping mall. Another MANOVA revealed that a significant main effect for two levels of verbal information condition (Wilks’ λ=.98, F(5, 522)=2.20, p<.05, partial η2=.03). Univariate results indicated a significant main effect for verbal presentation format of information on the quantity of mental imagery (F(1, 526)=5.63, p <.05, partial η2=.01), the ease of evoking mental imagery (F(1, 526)=5.20, p <.05, partial η2=.01), the elaboration for imagination imagery (F(1, 526)=8.58, p <.01, partial η2=.02) and satisfaction with the presentation format of information (F(1, 526)=8.55, p <.01, partial η2=.02), but not on the vividness of imagery and satisfaction with an online shopping mall. Multivariate interaction effect of visual conditions by verbal conditions was not significant in this study (p=.96). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted using AMOS 22.0 to illustrate the imagery processing which corresponds to an elaboration continuum including both simple evocation and elaboration of imagery (MacInnis & Price 1987). The measurement model achieved an acceptable level of fit (χ2=392.31, df=177, p<.000, GFI=.93, CFI=.98, RMSEA=.05). The path coefficient of the SEM showed that except the path for the ease of evoking mental imagery on the elaboration for imagination imagery, the quantity (γ11=.31, t=4.24, p<.001) and the vividness (γ12=.21, t=2.34, p<.05) of imagery were influential on the elaboration for evoking imagination imagery. In addition, the results indicated a significant effect of imagination imagery in imagery-processing continuum on attitude toward presentation format of information (β21=.51, t=9.94, p<.001), but not on an online shopping mall. Meanwhile, this study revealed that the positive attitude toward the presentation format of information in the context of evoking mental imagery had a significant impact on the satisfaction with an online shopping mall which provides such type of information (β32=.77, t=17.38, p<.001).

Conclusion & Implications This study showed how the visual and verbal presentation format of haptic information on apparel product in an online environment could affect the dimensions of imagery through visual thinking processing, and the consumer’s satisfaction both with the information and an online shopping mall providing such types of information. In addition, this study tried to test the validity of imagery information-processing model including the elaboration for evoking imagination imagery. The results demonstrated that a closer view as a concrete visual condition for haptic information was most effective in the elaboration for evoking imagination imagery, as well as influence satisfaction both with the presentation format of information and the online shopping mall. The results also indicated that the use of descriptive words as a concrete verbal presentation format of haptic information in the online context had a significant effect on the quantity of mental imagery, the ease of evoking imagery, the elaboration for imagination imagery, and satisfaction with the presentation format of information. The statistical analysis revealed that the quantity and the vividness of mental imagery created by visual and verbal presentation format of haptic information had a positive effect on the elaboration for evoking imagination imagery. Moreover, the results provided empirical evidence that as an image combination regenerated by the elaboration of mental imagery and the imagination, the imagination imagery positively influenced the satisfaction with information, and that the satisfaction with information was positively associated with attitude toward an online shopping mall. This study demonstrated that by evoking consumers’ mental imagery and making use of the imagination imagery, concrete visual and verbal presentation format of haptic information in an online shopping environment could have a positive effect on consumers’ satisfaction with information which results in their overall satisfaction with an online shopping mall. The result of this study also could provide a useful managerial implication that such imagery-evoking strategy in online apparel retailing might help consumers’ decision making-process in general, and reduce their perceived risk of purchasing apparel product in online shopping mall in particular, since the number of mobile shopping users has increased.

Keywords: mental imagery, imagery information-processing, haptic information, imagery-evoking strategy, online fashion store

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ABSTRACT. This paper studies how role-identity salience, susceptibility to normative influence, and the phenomenon of digital gift giving in the age of social media and interactive advertising platforms influence consumers to purchase luxury fashion goods thus leading to status consumption. Through three experimental studies that utilize a 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial design, the proposed hypotheses are tested.

ABSTRACT. Influencer marketing is becoming essential for fashion companies to advertise their products on Instagram. However, little research has been conducted in this context. Therefore, by undertaking an online experiment, we aim to analyze how influencer-product-customer congruence impacts on attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the influencer and the displayed product.

ABSTRACT. Consumers are exposed to native advertising while using social network service (SNS). Native advertising is made to gain the attention of consumers who tend to avoid flooding advertising. It is advertising that takes the native form of editorial content from the publisher based on sponsored content. The existing research on native advertising has focused on how consumers respond to disclosure cues. However, they notice which advertising of postings on SNS are without any disclosure cues of advertising because they use specific SNS repeatedly. According to the persuasion knowledge model, consumers to browse SNS can regard native advertising as irritation and then feel like resistance. Despite that, consumers often watch annoying advertising. For example, native advertising can be a good stimulus for individuals who feel bored and stressful and want to reduce the negative mood. Advertising tends to be more persuasive for consumers with positive mood than consumers negative mood in the previous research. However, this research suggests that consumers who have the intention to improve their mood can have a positive attitude toward native advertising even if they feel a negative mood. Thus, this research investigates the moderating effect between mood valence and arousal to reduce affective and cognitive resistance. In addition, we examine the mechanism of cognitive and affective resistance to explain how the interaction effect of mood on attitude toward advertising. This research suggests that the dynamic interaction of valence and arousal on attitude toward native advertising and persuasive knowledge mediate the relationship. Furthermore, it is suggested that the interaction between mood and advertising type affects attitude toward native advertising and cognitive or affective resistance mediate the relationship. Three experiments are conducted to examine the hypotheses.

ABSTRACT. In March 2018, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) states that the ‘Competitive’ e-sports project can be considered a sports event for the Olympic Games. The Asian Games in Indonesia, also known as 'The Courage of the Arena', has officially become an e-sports competition this year. Sports games are an important way of relieving stress in a modern society, and they are increasingly favoured by many individuals. Thanks to the popularity of mobile phones and the establishment of the social networking system (SNS), the communication between people has become more diverse, one of which is to establish social relationships through mobile social network games (MSNGs). From the perspective of game developers, a game needs to be continuously used by players to generate significant revenues. The present study focuses on the social characteristics of MSNGs and analyses their positive impacts in terms of the perceived enjoyment and concentration. The survey results show that the social presence of mobile games, which are connected to the SNS, makes it easier for players to enjoy and concentrate on the games, thus creating a positive attitude towards the games and resulting in their continuous use.

ABSTRACT. In the traditional online shopping experience, users can only view picture information. This kind of judgment is relatively simple and the user experience is not as good as offline retail. However, with the development of new technology may help the online apparel industry to make great changes. In this context, this research explores the impact of the attractiveness on parasocial relationship, and how the relationship affects brand attachment. The study also investigates the moderating role of flow experience in the relationship between attractiveness and parasocial relationship. The findings show that brand attractions have a significant impact on the parasocial relationship, and this relationship and brand attachment are positively associated, while the flow experience has differential effects on the relationships between the attractiveness and parasocial relationship.

ABSTRACT. Introduction This study was conducted to clarify the effect of consumer's cognitive resource on creativity of ideas (see De Dreu et al., 2012). Especially in the co-creation situation between consumer and company, this study shows how cognitive resource depletion can influence the generation of novel and meaningful ideas respectively, which, in turn, influence attitude toward the new product. In addition, this study examines the moderating effect of innovativeness on the relationship between cognitive resource depletion and novelty and meaningfulness. In order to examine the relationships among cognitive resource depletion, creativity, innovativeness, and attitude toward the new product, this study examines the following three research questions. The first question is whether there is any impact of depletion of cognitive resources on the degree of creativity of ideas produced by consumers. In answering this question, we examine the two dimensions of creativity, novelty and meaningfulness (Im & Workman, 2004). The second question is whether consumer innovativeness (i.e., individual predisposition toward new and innovative ideas, Manning, Bearden & Madden, 1995) moderates the relationships between cognitive resource depletion and two dimensions of creativity, novelty and meaningfulness differentially. The final question is whether novel and meaningful ideas influence consumer’s attitude toward the new product through two separate mediating routes, hedonic and utilitarian values (e.g., Babin, Darden & Griffin, 1994).

Hypothesis In order to answer the research questions above, we developed the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1a: The novelty of ideas is higher in the consumer group where cognitive resources are depleted, than to another group where cognitive resources are not depleted. Hypothesis 1b: The meaningfulness of ideas is higher in the group cognitive resources are depleted, than to another group where cognitive resources are not depleted. Hypothesis 2a: The effect of cognitive resource depletion on novelty is higher in the group with high innovativeness, rather than in the group with low innovativeness. Hypothesis 2b: The effect of cognitive resource depletion on meaningfulness is lower in the group with high innovativeness, rather than in the group with low innovativeness. Hypothesis 3: The novel ideas have positive impact on consumer’s hedonic value, but not utilitarian value. Hypothesis 4: The meaningful ideas have positive impact on consumer’s utilitarian value, but not hedonic value. Hypothesis 5: Both (a) hedonic value and (b) utilitarian value have positive effect on consumer’s toward the new product involved.

Research Design In order to test the above mentioned hypotheses, we conducted experiments on 350 students from science and engineering, business and economics, and arts who are attending universities in South Korea. The experiment asked subjects to participate in the survey after reading the scenarios designed to spend their cognitive resources, and at the end of the survey, subjects were asked to write down new product ideas as best as they could for two different product categories—sneakers and bicycles. The total of 229 out of 350 distributed surveys were used for statistical analysis after removing 121 cases because of incomplete and invalid responses. The three academic experts evaluated measurement items of each research variable--creativity, values, and attitude toward the new product for 229 ideas. We used measurement model in Structural Equation Model to test validity of the measurement items. Then research hypotheses were tested by one-way ANOVA and regression analysis in SPSS.

Results and Conclusions The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, regarding the main effects, when consumers' cognitive resources are depleted, the novelty of the ideas increases, whereas the meaningfulness of the proposed ideas decreases. This result is evident for both novelty and meaningfulness in the familiar product category of sneakers. However, the positive effect of cognitive resource depletion on novelty is supported, but the negative effect on meaningfulness is rejected in less familiar product category of bicycles. H1a is supported in both product categories, while H1b is supported only in the bicycle category. Second, regarding the moderator of consumer innovativeness, it has positive moderating effect on the relationship between cognitive resource depletion and novelty in support of H2a, but it has no impact on the relationship between cognitive resource depletion and meaningfulness, rejecting H2b. This is true for both sneakers and bicycles. That means consumers with high innovative predispositions present relatively higher novel ideas (but not meaningful ideas) when cognitive resources are depleted, compared to when they are not. Third, regarding the novelty-hedonic value-attitude toward the new product relationships, novel ideas enhance hedonic value, which results in higher level of attitude toward the new product. In the same vein, meaningfulness enhances utilitarian value, which, in turn, results in improves attitude toward the new product. These results hold true for both sneakers and bicycles categories in support of H3, H4, and H5.

Implications The issue of how and why an individual derives creative ideas is currently attracting attention in academia, but existing research on creativity has focused on measuring creativity by the number of ideas derived by an individual. In this context, this study further examines two separate dimensions of creativity, novelty and meaningfulness. Our study contributes to current literature by providing an empirical evidence that cognitive resource depletion influences novelty and meaningfulness of ideas separately, which respectively influence consumer’s attitude toward the new product through hedonic and utilitarian value. According to the results of the analysis, the group with cognitive resource depletion compared to the control group generates higher novelty ideas, but lower meaningfulness ideas. Also, innovativeness as a moderator only affects the relationship between cognitive resource depletion and novelty, not that between cognitive resource depletion and meaningfulness. This implies that high innovativeness propensity of individual only influences how cognitive resource depletion is related to novelty of new product ideas, not meaningful ones. Moreover, this study indicates how the attitude toward the new product is formed by creative ideas. Novel ideas influence hedonic value and meaningfulness ideas influence utilitarian value respectively. Then, both values positively affect consumers’ attitude toward new products.

ABSTRACT. EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Introduction The fashion industry is characterized by its labor-intense nature, short product life cycles, volatile and unpredictable demand, tremendous product variety, long and inflexible supply processes, and a complex and fragmented supply chain (Sen, 2008). With increasingly demanding consumers’ needs for more variety, better quality and services, the fashion industry value chain faces challenges, such as siloed product data, poor communication across teams, inability to juggle multiple product categories, styles and seasons, and bottlenecks resulting from poor planning. Agile supply chain, flexible systems, and quick response are necessary to respond to these challenges (Lemieux et al., 2012). Industry 4.0 brings new communication, production and design technologies that could provide such agility and responsiveness. “Industry 4.0” has attracted research interests in engineering (28%) and computer science (41%), whereas only less than 2.5% of relevant literature is in business and management science (Liao et al., 2017). No consensus about the definition of “Industry 4.0” has been reached so far across different industries and geographies. Current research in Industry 4.0 is mainly focused on IT, electronics, and automobile industries. Scarce study is found analyzing its impacts on the fashion industry. It is still unknown whether and how the main technologies of Industry 4.0 may theoretically change the relationships between fashion brands and manufacturers. Additionally, most of the theoretical efforts in Industry 4.0 have eschewed empirical analysis. This research aims at providing systematic analysis to fill these research gaps. To clearly define the research scope and establish a foundation for the analysis, we propose a definition and identify the main technology components of Industry 4.0. Based on the definition of Industry 4.0, we analyze how it may change relationships between brands and manufacturers, including vertical integration and new types of partnerships. Finally, interpretation, implications, and limitations of the findings, as well as directions for further research on innovative strategies leveraging Industry 4.0 are provided.

The results based on the literature review indicate as follows: (1) Definition of research scope: We define Industry 4.0 in the fashion and luxury industries as a digital industrial revolution driven by five key technology components: 1/Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) such as robotics, 2/Internet of Things (IoT), connecting “smart things” to the internet, 3/Internet-based Services (IBS) comprise any functional or technical service provided over the Internet. They are enabled by Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), including web services, cloud computing and distributed ledger technology (DLT), 4/Data Analytics, including AI and machine learning, 5/New Production and Design Technologies, such as 3D printing and augmented reality applications. Together, those new technologies create a digitally connected ecosystem combining intelligent machinery, automated storage systems, self-adapting production facilities, autonomous distribution processes, customized products, and proactive consumers. Participants become both providers and users of cross-organizational services. (2) Five Scenarios of Transformation of Relationships between Brands and Manufacturers: A typical value chain in the fashion industry is linear, composed of four main steps: from design, raw material production, final product manufacturing, to wholesale and retail distribution. Under the influence of Industry 4.0, the value chain could become a fluid circular loop, enabling actors to connect digitally and to exchange knowledge with each other more efficiently. Nowadays, most luxury fashion companies keep in-house the essential activities for the creation of added value (design, distribution) and outsource the manufacturing stages to subcontractors (Delpal, 2011). Based on Theories of the Firm, we identify and develop five main scenarios of the transformation of the relationships between fashion brands and manufacturers depending on the technology they implement: 1/Manufacturers or brands could increase their vertical boundaries by implementing CPS, IBS, new design and product technologies. 2/Manufacturers or brands could outsource more activities and shrink their vertical boundaries, driven by the usage of IBS. 3/New digital partnerships could be established between brands and manufacturers, supported by the usage of IoT, IBS, data analytics, new design, and product technologies. 4/New marketplaces (digital platform) could emerge to connect atomized manufacturers and brands in a more verifiable and transparent way, driven by IoT, IBS, and new design and production technologies. 5/The number of networks in the fashion industry could decrease, driven mainly by IBS and data analytics.

Theoretical Development The main purpose of the research is to provide a framework and drivers explaining how Industry 4.0 may influence the relationship changes between fashion brands and manufacturers. We pull together various theories in our analysis including transaction cost economics (TCE) theory (Coase, 1937; Gurbaxani & Whang, 1991), the firm boundaries model (Afuah, 2003; Malone et al., 1987), relational contract theory (Scott, 2003), network governance conditions (Jones et al., 1997), and knowledge sharing conditions (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Based on those theories, we analyze the impact of the technology components of the Industry 4.0: 1/Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) advance the connectivity between the physical world and the cyberspace (Lee et al., 2015). They make the production process more agile, reprogrammable, reconfigurable, and precise. Hence, they could reduce per unit capital costs and labor production requirements, and thereby, reduce component production costs (Afuah, 2003). In addition, they could reduce asset specificity (Williamson, 1979) and internal transaction costs, especially for manufacturers whose activities rest on explicit knowledge (Polanyi, 1962). Therefore, manufacturers will tend to integrate vertically to preserve efficient firm boundaries (Harrigan, 1985; Williamson, 1979). 2/Internet of Things (IoT) turns physical machinery and products into “smart things” and connects them to the internet (Fleisch, 2010). It facilitates data exchange and provides clearer vision and instant updates to manufacturers and brands about the progress of the whole value chain, thereby increasing the efficiency of the production and reducing the communication cost. Accordingly, new digital partnerships could be established between brands and manufacturers when implementing IoT. Based on relational contract theory (Scott, 2003), a non-equity partnership could emerge, giving the flexibility to adapt to the constantly fast-changing environment (Hagedoorn & Hesen, 2007). Smart contracts could also be established to secure transactions between IoTs (Meunier & Zhao-Meunier, 2019). 3/Internet-Based Service (IBS) could enable four scenarios: (A) Per Afuah (2003) and Malone et al. (1987), IBS could help reduce asset specificity, information asymmetry, and opportunism, and thereby, should reduce external transaction costs. Therefore, it could favor markets over hierarchies, resulting in the shrink of a firm’s vertical boundaries and the emergence of new marketplaces (digital platforms). Distributed Ledger Technology could be implemented in such marketplaces to help firms that don’t trust each other share information in a more verifiable and transparent way, while keeping some ownership in the process (Meunier & Zhao-Meunier, 2019). (B) Based on the network governance conditions proposed by Jones et al. (1997), IBS could decrease the demand uncertainty, facilitate the customized exchanges, increase information sharing efficiency to complete complex tasks, and decrease the frequency of human exchanges among parties. In addition, by enabling each firm to connect to more counterparties, IBS could weaken the traditional network structure popularity in the fashion industry, especially for fast fashion and mass customization (Davis, 1989) whose value-adding activities rest mainly on explicit information. (C) IBS could help manufacturers reach the final customers directly, thereby increase their vertical boundaries. (D) The Internet has considerably increased the opportunities for knowledge combination and exchanges (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Accordingly, IBS could encourage create new partnerships between brands and manufacturers to co-create new value-adding knowledge, such as knowledge of recycling and redistribution. 4/Data Analytics allows analyzing big data sets (Russom, 2011). Data is the “new oil” that generates highly added value. For brands, data analytics could help derive insights from consumer data. For manufacturers, data analytics could help improve productivity. It could also help optimize data sharing relationships between brands and manufacturers, through strategic alliances (Gulati, 1998) or new digital partnerships for instance. 5/New Production and Design Technologies, such as 3D printing (Petrick & Simpson, 2013), digital printing (Longlin, 2018) and augmented reality applications (Nee et al., 2012), could encourage collaborations between design and production, shift power to designers, and create products with significantly reduced waste compared to traditional design and production processes. Therefore, it could increase brands’ vertical boundaries or encourage new digital relationships between brands and manufacturers. In a long term, it could also encourage the development of an “economy of one”, atomizing manufacturers and brands.

Research Design The paper follows a combination of deductive and inductive approaches. First, a preliminary theoretical framework is defined based on the literature review of the theories of the firm. It focuses on the definition of Industry 4.0 and the causality between the new technologies of Industry 4.0 and the potential scenarios they could induce. Then, considering previously fixed research objectives, we will follow a qualitative approach to explore the applicability of the proposed theoretical framework. In particular, multi-case studies (Yin, 2003) seem adequate to our study. We choose this methodology considering that the implication for the new technologies of Industry 4.0 in the fashion and luxury industries would be an existing phenomenon, and that deeper studies would be necessary to obtain evidence in a real context.

Result and Conclusion This paper offers insights on value chain innovation driven by Industry 4.0 in the fashion and luxury industries, by investigating a topic under-explored in the literature. The paper summarizes the main technology components of Industry 4.0 and proposes five potential scenarios of changes for the relationships between brands and manufacturers. It provides a theoretical framework to help firms choose which technology to implement and how to use it/them to reach their development goals. Industry 4.0 could create competitive advantage especially for leading and cutting-edge manufacturers and brands who leverage new technologies before their competitors. It could also benefit small manufacturers and independent brands who could access to open marketplaces and compete with larger firms.

Keywords: Brand, Corporate Strategy, Digital Transformation, Fashion and Luxury Industries, Industry 4.0, Innovation, Manufacturer, Value Chain

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ABSTRACT. Luxury sector has been facing a tremendous transformation for the last decade, where globalization, cultural convergence and technology played a pivotal role. Social media is specifically mentioned in numerous studies as the most impactful element to the market transformation. The scope of this paper therefore focuses on how luxury brands market its luxuriousness on social media and how marketing different dimensions of luxuriousness (i.e., conspicuousness, uniqueness, quality, hedonism, and extended-self) influence social media engagement for luxury brands. Conspicuousness was the only significant and biggest predictor of social media engagement for image posts. However, uniqueness and extended-self significantly predicted engagement negatively for video posts. Take together, our finding suggests that traditional concept of leading and powerful image from luxury may no longer resonate with the younger affluent luxury consumers.

ABSTRACT. The current research empirically documents positive effect of the firm’s own commitment to the environment on the attitudes toward luxury brand advertising and purchase intentions for the featured product, and examines ad trust as the psychological mechanism underlying that effect. The results of two studies showed that firm’s eco-friendly effort revealed in advertisements for luxury products generated consumers’ favorable ad attitude and increased their purchase intentions more than firm’s eco-friendly effort revealed in advertisements for mass products. This process was driven by the trust on the ad message, especially for the less-confused, careful consumers in the luxury (vs. mass) brand condition. This research presents clear evidence that green ads delivering firm’s own commitment to the environment can effectively influence consumers when they are used to promote luxury brands.

ABSTRACT. Value perceptions towards luxury fashion are important to understand consumer expectations and develop specific marketing strategies. They are in constant change and evolution and vary across different market segments and geographic locations. This research aims to get better understanding about differences in luxury value perceptions between generation X and generation Y consumers in Indonesia.

ABSTRACT. Attempting to combat counterfeiting appears useless, particularly in the luxury market, where the consumer is aware that the product being bought is an imitation (Wilcox et al., 2009). In the other side, some consumers of genuine products continue in the normal trend of behavior despite the presence of counterfeiting. To deepen the comprehension of this behavior, we have conducted a study in Morocco with a sample of 643 luxury consumer products aiming to provide answers by developing a PLS model with counterfeiting resistance, attitude toward counterfeits, brand experience and buying intention. First, we have developed a new concept called counterfeiting resistance, which is a reaction toward the luxury brand consumption in the case of the presence of counterfeiting. Second, the study has demonstrated clear positive effects of counterfeiting resistance on purchase intention of luxury brand, the attitude toward counterfeiting has a negative effect, whereas brand experience has no effect on purchase intention. These results should gain ground with luxury brand managers, who in fact need to reinforce counterfeiting resistance instead of working on brand experience.

ABSTRACT. “DRESSING” THE PART: TRANS MEN’S SELF-RECONSTRUCTION THROUGH CLOTHING

Domenique Jones, University of Tennessee, United States Heejin Lim, University of Tennessee, United States

Abstract

Introduction

LGBTQ+ individuals have amassed an estimated buying power of nearly $917 billion in the United States, despite their minority status, which is further strengthened by non-LGBTQ+ consumers who support and are more likely to spend money with LGBTQ+ inclusive retailers (Polakowski, 2016). The marketplace has responded to an emerging societal phenomenon that emphasizes diversity and inclusiveness, for example, by increasing their acceptance of non-traditional models (Safronova, 2016). Focusing on transgender men who are assigned female at birth but identify as male (FTM, i.e., female-to-male), this research explores the ways transgender men construct their self-identity by adopting and adapting to marketplace clothing products. Regardless of whether or not a transgender person has undergone gender affirming surgery, they face limitation of their physical body (e.g., height, muscularity, weight, etc.) that often creates a dilemma in fashion choices and options (Bertie, 2018; Sheng, 2018). In addition, FTMs have a narrower option of clothing in the mass market place compared to transgender women, in that female oriented brands offer a broader assortment of styles to fit different body types than menswear brands (Brodeur, 2016). Although individuals who do not conform to the binary gender system are still considered to be marginalized in our society, more and more transgender individuals have come to the surface and shared their transition experience in a public forum, owing to the aforementioned societal shift (Bertie, 2018; Frey, 2018; Safronova, 2016; Sheng, 2018). One example includes an increasing number of transgender social media influencers and their followers (Safronova, 2016). Given that physical appearance is critical in forming self-identity, particularly among young people (Subramania, 2015), this study analyzes FTM social influencers’ narratives and viewers’ comments in social media to explore how FTMs employ clothing products to re-construct their self in a way of negotiating with socially constructed gender stereotype in the binary gender system. The findings of this study enhance our understanding of gender-nonconforming individuals and their clothing needs for self-reconstruction and shed light on how consumers respond to increasing social presence of gender-nonconforming individuals and the emergence of public social exchanges among this group of people on social media.

Theoretical Description

This study employs institutional theory and social comparison theory as interpretative lenses to analyze the social media data of FTMs’ social presence and exchanges. Institutional theory describes the act of creating social norms that dictate the mass marketplace and media (Borgerson et al., 2006). This theory contextualizes the role societal norms and corporate apparel ideas play in the adoption of and adapting to marketplace clothing products for trans men. The social norm generates cultural persistence that is caused by “generational uniformity of cultural understandings, maintenance of these understandings, and resistance of these understandings to change” (Zucker, 1977, p.726). Social comparison theory was originally brought on by Festinger (1954), to depict the way in which humans evaluate themselves with their peers to create a perception of one’s self and one’s place in society. This survey of the environment allows people to institutionalize normal, as well as ideal, body standards (Myers, Ridolfi, Crowther, & Ciesla, 2012). In today’s society, there are increasing opportunities for comparison through media (Cash, 2012), but it is challenging for transgender individuals to self-reference due to the lack of representation in media (Sheng, 2018). Additionally, ill-fitting clothing options in the marketplace often lead to low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction among marginalized consumer groups (Scaraboto & Fischer, 2012). Based on these two theories, this study aims to answer the following research questions: (1) In what ways do transgender men cope with their female body attributes as they move through a process of re-constructing their gender identity? (2) In what ways do transgender men use apparel products to construct their self-identified gender which conflicts with their assigned gender at birth?

Method

Data for this study was captured from YouTube and Instagram, and the transcripts were analyzed by both researchers who were trained for qualitative data analysis. Two FTM influencers, Alex Bertie and Jamie Raines, were selected based on their number of videos, followers and views. Thematic analysis was utilized to create subthemes, which coincided with the two theoretical lenses, self-reconstruction and adopting/adapting to marketplace clothing products. The process depicted by Boyatzis (1998) was used to guide the authors in creating the codebook and extracting the themes. Two researchers analyzed and coded independently, then, discussed and refined emerged themes. Additionally, the same social media influencers’ Instagram postings and audience comments were used to verify identified codes from the YouTube data. The Instagram data were used to add richness to the excerpts and description of our findings.

Findings and Conclusion

Our analysis of social media data revealed two main themes: (1) Self-conscious female body and gender dysphoria as a result of social comparison and (2) self-reconstruction efforts to conform to socially-constructed ideal body images through use of marketplace clothing products to construct ideal self as a FTM. Self-conscious female body and gender dysphoria as a result of social comparison Our findings illustrate that FTMs constantly compare their physical appearance to cisgender men. To this same notion, they struggle with societal stigma, misgendering, perceived degree of manliness and body image. Jamie uses a phrase “self-conscious” a few times, indicating the discomfort of female body attributes they recognize consciously and the worry of not “passing” as a man. The discrepancy between their given physical appearance and ideal body image of their identified gender is self-conscious and based on gender stereotypes which are socially constructed in the binary gender system, such as voice and distinct body shapes. FTM social influences’ narratives and followers’ comments reveal that self-consciousness of gender-distinct body parts such as shoulders, waist-to-hip lines and breasts create gender dysphoria of their not fitting into a desired gender reference group that they identify. For example, Alex narrated, “[before my voice change] I just would not talk to people. Just think of it, like, this, at one point, I was a 20-year-old man in higher education with a voice that sounded like a 12-year-old boy. It was just the stressing and embarrassing.” When he mentioned his period stopping in this process, he stated, “I was over the moon… having a period was really really distressing to the extent that I would not leave the house when it happened not only was it gross and just plain, annoying to me, but it was a monthly reminder that I was born in the wrong body.”

Self-reconstruction efforts to conform to socially-constructed ideal body images FTM social influencers’ narratives show that FTMs cope with the gender dysphoria caused by their social comparison with a reference group with socially constructed body images by seeking diverse medical solutions such as taking testosterone and employing diverse clothing products. As Jamie shows, their goal is to hide their shames such as breasts, narrow shoulders, and curvy bottoms and make them look like a reference group of males: “There are three main things to consider: Chest, whether you are binding and you want to hide your binder and hide your chest a little bit; hips, whether you want a top to help hide your hips or you want to avoid tops that will accentuate your hips; and shoulders, finding a top that will maybe make you look a little bit broader that kind of thing.” Our data reveal that as a marginalized group in the mass marketplace, it is challenging for FTMs to find the right clothing because a gap between their assigned-gender body (i.e., female figure) and mass-brand clothing that is designed to fit standard male figures. FTM social influencers share their know-hows of how to hide shames by employing diverse styling tactics such as biding, layering, and wearing certain colors and patterns. FTMs’ narratives and followers’ comments indicate that self-reconstruction of their physical appearance and diminishing physical discrepancy from their identified gender group give them confidence and comfort with who they are. For example, Alex’s YouTube video shows his excitement when he talks about a change of his face shape to a manly squared shape as a result of taking testosterone. Our analysis also reveals that in recognition of limited options of clothing that serves their self-reconstruction needs, FTMs develop and refine their strategies in the mass marketplace which includes how to find the right fit and style by identifying their own body shapes, put outfits together and navigate different gender sections. Outfits are created through finding retailers with a breadth of styles and sizes, finding the right fit, altering pieces and sharing ideas and tips. Their struggles and challenges were identified not only in their finding right outfits but also in identifying inclusive retailers and altering clothing and changing rooms which are gender-specific. Our findings illustrate that being trans is not solely about gender affirming surgeries or correct pronouns but also involves creating a life and having the freedom to be one’s self. For many people, especially trans people, clothing is a source of comfort and individuality, but it can also be a very difficult subject. Apparel has the opportunity to hide features or to show-off features, as well as to convey a message about self without saying a word. The findings of this study indicate that misgendering is a heavy dictator of fashion choice for FTMs. Therefore, it is important to hide binders, mitigate femininity, increase perceived masculinity and feel comfortable, all at the same time, and clothing provides critical aids in this regard. LGBTQ+ individuals overall, including transgender individuals, are viewed as socially stigmatized and marginalized consumer group in the United States and across the globe. As socially stigmatized people who tend to be viewed as negatively stereotyped and oppressed (Crocker & Major, 1989), a great number of transgender individuals suffer from depression, self-harm, suicide, low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction (Bockting, Miner, Romine, Hamilton, & Coleman, 2013; Clements-Nolle, Guzman, & Katz, 2001; Mustanski, Garofalo, & Emerson, 2011). Our findings suggest that these negative outcomes caused by socially constructed ideal body images in the binary gender system can be mitigated through the access to diverse clothing choices in the apparel marketplace that support their ability to express their identity of true self.

Keywords:

References

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ABSTRACT. By applying Taylor’s (1999) six-segment strategy wheel in the exploration of influencers’ Instagram content, our findings reveal that they communicate in different ways; personal experiences shared establish their self-identity while balancing their roles as mothers, wives, and business women. Researchers and marketers can gain insight on effective influencer marketing decisions.

ABSTRACT. With the increased interest in drone racing throughout the past decade, understanding the needs of the consumers will be critical in making key business decisions. This study explores the change in opinions and emotions of the online community to determine the sentiment and key themes surrounding drone racing.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the impacts of pragmatic and hedonic qualities on consumer acceptance of SSTs in the context of fashion retail stores. The findings suggest two determinants of TAM (usefulness, ease of use) and three hedonic factors (enjoyment, aesthetic appeal, and stimulation) influence consumers’ attitude, which influences behavioral intention.

ABSTRACT. We examine two dimensions of conspicuous consumption, ostentation of social status and demonstration of uniqueness, and their impact on new product adoption intention. The results reveal that ostentation of social status influences new product adoption intention both directly and indirectly through social value, while demonstration of uniqueness improves new product adoption intention only through the indirect path by utilitarian and hedonic value.

ABSTRACT. The economic sustainability of companies that produce prosocial products is conditional on the degree to which marketers can reduce customers’ reliance on price as a key decision factor. The negative price primacy effect refers to when a customer declines to purchase based only on a high price, without attending to the product’s features. This study investigates how luxury brands’ marketing communication related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), such as fair-trade product features, can decrease a customer’s reliance on price and restore attention to product features. We record the brain responses of twenty-six young subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how CSR communication mitigates the negative price primacy effect during decision-making. Behavioral results show that subjects express more positive purchase intentions when CSR communication is present than when it is not. The anterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex activations, potential neural correlates of heightened cost consciousness, disappear when CSR communication is present, replaced by brain activations in the visual network area, which reflects restored attention to luxury products’ visual features. These results provide evidence for how CSR communication may modulate customers’ neural processes and mitigate the price primacy effect during decision-making.

ABSTRACT. Human decisions are malleable that are inconsistent across different contexts and cultures (Bartels et al., 2014). The present study used moral foundation theory (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2001) to investigate an association between individual-level political orientations and brain cortical potentials at medial frontal areas. Although many studies explored diverse individual differences in moral decision-making, little attention has been paid to understand how different political traits are associated with neurophysiological measures. Twenty-three participants with different political traits were recruited for the study. They read moral dilemma scenarios while examining brain activities with electroencephalography (EEG) and they were required to choose between an immoral choice and a moral choice. Participants were given different degrees of time pressure during the decision phase, in order to directly examine how individual differences of political orientations on moral judgment operate under time pressure. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded and analyzed to a decision phase displaying two undesirable choices. Our results show that both the time-pressure (i.e., 1/2/3 days) and the no-time-pressure condition (1/2/3 years) evoked the medial frontal negativity (MFN) amplitude at the early component of ERP (200-400ms). However, the MFN activity was shown to be most pronounced for participants with liberal orientations under time pressure. MFN amplitude was correlated with moral foundation questionnaires (MFQ) on AFz and Fz channels. Specifically, significant negative correlations were attained between MFQ (the higher score indicates liberal orientation) and amplitudes (200-400ms) over AFz (r(22) = -0.92, p < 0.000) and Fz (r(22) = -0.91, p < 0.000) electrodes under the time-pressure condition. In contrast, significant positive correlations were attained between MFQ and amplitudes over AFz (r(22) = 0.75, p < 0.000) and Fz (r(22) = 0.55, p = 0.008) electrodes under the no-time-pressure condition. Our findings show how different political orientations are related with the MFN activity during moral decision-making. Since liberals greatly concern decision outcomes, they displayed greater MFN than would those conservatives. This tendency was more salient under the time-pressure condition than the no-time-pressure condition. Furthermore, liberals are particularly known to pay attention to the value of the expected outcomes of the action, while conservatives shift their attention to the visceral value of actions during moral judgment (Hannikainen, Miller, & Cushman, 2017). Likewise, conservatives endorse deontological judgments more frequently compared to liberals (Piazza & Sousa, 2014). Our brain cortical potentials revealed that MFN in or near the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was greater in amplitude when liberals’ moral judgment between two undesirable options resulted in conflicts. The ACC is the putative source of the MFN activity to the loss-related processing in economic choices (Gehring & Willoughby, 2002). It is thus reasonable that the MFN manifested by liberals reflects a common basis of underlying ACC activity in processing moral decision-making. Collectively, examining the effect of individual differences of political traits on neural measures would offer stimulating insights into understanding the innate nature of human morality.

ABSTRACT. The initial purpose of the advertising is to attract consumer attention further leading to brand awareness or consumption involvement behavior. In the 21st century, the widespread popularity of social media has made advertisers no longer limited to traditional media platforms (e.g., newspapers, television, etc.). Unlike traditional media, ads on SNS typically include direct links to new web pages (which can be product or brand supplementary description, or a specific purchase page). Therefore, whether the advertising content can cause customers to click for pursuing more detailed information becomes crucial in social media marketing. According to the research of Gottlieb, the intrinsic psychological reason of people seeking further intelligence is curiosity (Gottlieb et al., 2013). Therefore, the research of consumer curiosity mechanism of social media marketing is vital. The use of celebrity-related information in advertising is a standard method used in traditional advertising, and a large number of prior researches examined the impact of celebrity advertising on consumer attitudes and behaviors in traditional media. Numerous studies confirmed the use of appropriate celebrity ads could promote the effectiveness of advertising (Bush et al. ,2004; Alsmadi, 2006). Although many researchers use psychological knowledge to validate the impact of consumer celebrity advertising, the relevant physiological cues associated with social media marketing research are still limited. Therefore, we examined the consumer curiosity mechanism in social media marketing through neural and behavior data.

We conducted a series of fMRI experiments to collect detailed neural evidence. To reduce the results errors caused by product involvement degree from individual difference, we chose the fashion category as the stimulus category. Before the experiment, we also tested the participant's product engagement to ensure that the subject was highly engaged in fashion products, thereby ensuring that the individual difference does not affect the overall statistical results. We designed 20 post advertisings based on the Facebook framework (celebrity ads condition vs. non-celebrity ads condition); each post ads contains relevant basic text description，related image and one further information link. Twenty-three university students participated in the experiment. The fMRI data were recorded during subjects watching the stimuli. Furthermore, the subjects pressed the key response according to the willingness to click-through when they observed those stimuli.

The fMRI data showed that when the subjects watched the stimuli of the celebrity ads condition, the Caudate area associated with the reward system（Nieuwenhuis et al., 2005) was activated, proving that the expectation of the information elicited the customer's curiosity, and the celebrity ads can deepen the expectations of customers and promote consumers to click the link. Simultaneously, the Brodmann area 19 related to visual attention（Wojciulik & Kanwisher,1999) was also activated, which proves that compared with non-celebrity, celebrity ads can attract customers' attention and improve advertising performance. The behavior data (key response data) collected in the fMRI experiment also confirms that the subjects are more tends to click on celebrity ads stimuli.

ABSTRACT. Using Neural Topic Modeling to Extract Marketing Intelligence from Social Media Review

ABSTRACT. Perceptions of luxury have long been associated with many desirable attributes such as premium quality, scarcity, uniqueness, and an ability to send messages to others about one’s sense of self. However little research has examined the strategy to premiumize a food brand and no research has examined the psychophysiological effect of luxury cues on a food brand. This study is the first experiment to use eye tracking and skin conductance analysis to examine how luxury cues in marketing communications can influence consumer perceptions for an Australian food brand. The use of luxury verbal cues can significantly enhance attention and interest to hedonic processing and elevate food brand perceptions. Specifically, consumers allocate greater attention and interest toward the imagery of the marketing communication when primed with the luxury verbal cues, and in turn, lead to arousal and positive brand evaluation. Using psychophysiological methods, the current study shows that the luxury descriptors used in Vigneron and Johnson’s Brand Luxury Index (2004) may serve as strong verbal cues in marketing communication to elevate a food brand’s perceived luxuriousness and in turn, its brand evaluation.

ABSTRACT. Currently, a popular AI-driven fashion recommendation platform, Stitch Fix, has achieved some notable outcomes, including increased revenue, decreased costs, and increased customer satisfaction from machine learning. Stitch Fix enables AI to serve curated, personalized fashion packages to its customers as a new kind of retail business model. Stitch Fix employs a multitude of machine-learning algorithms to underpin its operations, from customers’ styling and logistics to inventory management and product design. Stitch Fix generated $1 billion in revenue in 2017. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of consumption goals for using Stitch Fix on the agent value of Stitch Fix and consumers’ attitudes toward Stitch Fix. The study investigates the influence of agent value and attitude on purchase intention. The study clarifies goals for using Stitch Fix and the effects of goals on agent value and attitude that influence purchase intention, which would be important implications for fashion marketing academics and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. When we look at the trends of ‘International Consumer Electronics Show; CES’ which make us be able to figure out the trend of the global electronics industry and new technologies, we can find the household appliances industry with Artificial Intelligence(AI) is growing fast. In the high-technology & information society, we need to offer and develop the commercials that can provide customers with comfortable feelings and emotional comfort when they purchase products or services. Visual aspects of commercials are important factors that affect the awareness of customers on brands and products. The research aims to examine effects of typeface design on consumer's attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence appliances. According to Construal Level Theory, when an event in a remote place, happens in the distant future, involves a person who is not close to the self, or is not likely to happen, this event is more likely be construed at a high or abstract level. In this context, I’d like to prove how the interaction between typefaces and customers can affect differentially to the customers’ attitude towards the AI appliances by providing nostalgia cue and verbal anchoring for the linguistic information that can be provided in commercials. The expected result indicates the following: First, Calligraphy(handwritten) will have a positive effect on consumer's attitude to Artificial Intelligence appliances. Second, in case that personal nostalgia is provided the attitudes towards the AI products with calligraphy(handwritten) will be more optimistic than the products with typography. In case that vicarious nostalgia is provided no significant differences will be found between the AI appliances with calligraphy(handwritten) and AI appliances with typography when it comes to customers’ attitudes. Third, in case that metaphor verbal anchoring is provided, the attitudes towards the AI appliances with calligraphy (handwritten) will be more favorable than the products with typography. Also, in case that complete verbal anchoring is provided no significant differences will be found between the AI appliances with calligraphy(handwritten) and AI appliances with typography when it comes to customers’ attitudes. Finally, this research verifies that the interaction effects between typeface design and nostalgia cue or verbal anchoring of advertising on AI appliances attitude is mediated by the Familiarity.

ABSTRACT. Fashion system is one of the dominant hallmarks of consumer culture through which taste, style, and trends are cultivated and disseminated to consumers (McCracken 1986; Barthes 1967; Bourdieu 1975; Rocamora 2002). As a recent phenomenon within the fashion system, bloggers have come to play a vanguard role in cultivating taste, style, and trends (Dolbec and Fischer 2015). Their indispensability to social media marketing activities is taken for granted and as such they come to demand considerable amount of money for an endorsement. As Forbes magazine (2016) underscored, “bloggers tend to ask a lot of money for Instagram posts. It can go anywhere between €500 to €5,000, or even €10,000. €500 would be for a blogger with a following of 100k, in exchange they’ll give you a mention, hashtag, and tag you in a picture.” This quote alone is indicative of the power bloggers and similar cultural intermediaries have as taste makers and influencers. However, recently, bloggers in various interviews have been underscoring the role of algorithms as playing an important role in how they engage and disseminate their taste in various social media platforms. In this research project, we seek to look at the intersection between fashion bloggers as influencers and the algorithms in their social media activities. To this end we ask:

How are fashion bloggers influenced by algorithms in their social media activities? And, What is the role of algorithms in such processes?

This paper is organized as follows. First, to conceptualize fashion bloggers as influencers, we draw on Bourdieu’s notion of cultural intermediaries. Second, we provide a very brief literature overview on fashion bloggers and algorithms. And lastly, we bring the notion of market device from Muniesa et al. (2012) to theorize the role of algorithms in fashion blogging practices.

ABSTRACT. Introduction The fashion retail environment has changed significantly since the development of the internet. The channels available for purchase have increased but so too have the capabilities for brands to interact with consumers. Social media has created the capacity for multi-directional communications, and consumers now expect the opportunity to collaborate on online (Mulhern 2009, Royle, Laing 2014). This collaborative aspect of communications, made possible by the appearance of web 2.0 technologies, is one of the biggest changes which has arisen from digitisation (Kilgour, Sasser et al. 2015) and the communication environment is changing to one which incorporates three distinct communication flows; company to consumer (B2C), consumer to company (C2B) and consumer to consumer (C2C) (Bruhn, Schnebelen 2017).

Consumer to consumer communication has always been present in the form of physical word of mouth (Brown, Reingen 1987) yet the ease with which consumers can talk to each other with no constraint on either time or place (Brogi, Calabrese et al. 2013), presents a greater challenge to companies as they must consider new strategies which incorporate and accept this capacity (Dutot, Lacalle Galvez et al. 2016, Reimer, Benkenstein 2016). Consumers are starting to use social media to connect with fashion brands by sharing images of items they have purchased and by following brands on social media platforms (Mintel 2017). Social media marketing has therefore become a priority for fashion retailers (Mintel, 2016), due to the opportunity it presents to organisations to connect on a personal level with consumers (Bruhn, Schoenmueller et al. 2012). This paper explores consumer response to fashion retailer content posted on Facebook and Instagram by looking at consumer engagement levels on all posts and draws conclusions on the nature of the engagement displayed on each platform with the aim of adding to the literature by exploring the under researched platform of Instagram and drawing conclusions on differences in engagement behaviours of consumers on different social media platforms.

Research Focus Social media has changed the way in which individuals and organisations communicate and it is now possible to share information in an unprecedented environment of hyper-connectivity (Leung 2013). One of the key challenges presented to marketers by social media is a lack of controllability over content posted pertaining to their brands. Consumers are starting to engage in higher levels of content creation and expect the opportunity to collaborate and comment online. Marketers therefore are becoming more interested in the data available online and in using this to gain a deeper understanding of their customer and the market (Ashley, Tuten, 2015, He et al., 2015). Consumer engagement on social media has been considered by a number of authors within the context of online brand communities (Wirtz et al., 2013) and brand owned Facebook pages (Sloan, Bodey et al. 2015). These studies have considered the concepts of trust, commitment, satisfaction and loyalty (Brodie et al., 2013, Dessart et al., 2015, Wirtz et al., 2013) and have considered engagement in terms of content posted by consumers. Previous research has focused predominantly on consumer engagement in online brand communities and on brand owned Facebook pages however there is a growing interest in Instagram for fashion marketing due to the highly visual nature of the platform (Mintel, 2016). When considering the change to the communication environment Bruhn, Schnebelen (2017) highlight that there are three communication streams present within the online setting; B2C, C2B, C2C. Interest is growing into research into C2C communications online as they provide a clear insight into consumer behaviour, due to the opportunity it presents to facilitate consumer brand relationships and help to build emotional connections which can be assessed through consumer engagement to brand content. Research Design A netnographic technique was adopted to collect the data as this aligned with the aim to gain an understanding of consumer-brand social media interactions on Facebook and Instagram. Netnography is a relatively new concept in terms of research methodology (La Rocca, 2014) and while there has been much interest in the use of Netnography in social media research there is contention within the field as to what should be considered Netnography (Costello et al., 2017). Kozinets (2010, p.160), who pioneered the technique, however maintains that Netnography should provide a ‘Geertzian’ sense of ‘thick description’, which is achieved through ‘the intense involvement of the researcher in the day-to-day life of an online community’ (Costello et al., 2017, p.4). Netnography was selected as it provided the most effective manner in which to monitor consumer online conversations and individual reactions to company generated content on both branded Facebook and Instagram accounts. The researcher followed the branded accounts, using a personal Facebook and Instagram log in, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the environment and also to assess the levels of consumer engagement across the different platforms. The majority of studies which have used Netnographic techniques within the context of consumer behaviour and marketing research have focused on either digital communities revolving around blogs (Kulmala et al., 2013; Pihl, 2013) or online communities which manifest on Facebook pages and as such this technique was used to explore both Facebook and Instagram posting behaviours.

There is no definitive list of retailers which can be used to create a list of suitable participants however by considering previous research it became apparent that a common technique used to select participants was the consultation of top 100 or top 50 retailer lists (Ashley, Tuten, 2015, Kunz et al. 2011, Touchette et al., 2015). The retailers social media traffic scores were measured using a digital marketing evaluation tool (similarweb.com) and the retailers with the highest activity levels (ASOS, H&M and Zara) were selected for the study. The data was collected daily at the same time each day in order to ensure that all posts from the past 24 hours were captured. The replies to each post were monitored for 72 hrs as it has been found that minimal new responses occur after this time period (Adeji et al., 2010; Sloan, Jones, 2015). The total likes, shares and comments on each post (Schultz, 2016) were also recorded at the end of the 72 hour time frame and the post with the highest number of consumer responses from each brand was extracted for further analysis using the scale developed by Baldus et al (2015) to judge online brand community engagement. This provided an overview of how consumers were engaging on both Instagram and Facebook. Initial Results Company Posting Behaviour Initial results revealed that the selected fashion retailers are placing a higher level of focus on Instagram in terms of posting frequency over Facebook. There is evidence of an integrated strategy across the two platforms, however this was discovered to be a technique which was most favoured by Zara who predominantly double posted content on both Facebook and Instagram. ASOS also posted the same content on both with a slightly lower density of posts on Facebook however the posting strategy of H&M was vastly different across the two platforms. H&M posted 12 times on Facebook during the period of observation compared with 45 posts on Instagram thus showing a significantly reduced focus on Facebook when compared to Instagram. The retailers all sell both womenswear and menswear however the gender split of posts was only reflective of this for two of the retailers (ASOS and Zara) who both provided an equal split [provide statistics] of product posts between men and women whereas H&M focused their posting strategy solely on womenswear products. Consumer Engagement The engagement rates on Instagram for both H&M and ASOS were consistently high whereas Zara received lower engagement overall. ASOS ran a promotional competition, which offered the option to win a £1000 voucher for ASOS, during the time of observation and these posts reached significantly higher response rates with the most popular of the four posts posted throughout the week reaching 31.1K comments. This finding contradicts the literature (Stathopoulou, Balabanis 2016) as it supports the notion that consumers are interested in Utilitarian benefits such as financial gain. There were however multiple examples of each brand posting product posts or lifestyle posts which also gained high levels of engagement. H&M consistently received comment levels of 500-1500 however they posted a picture of a pug in a Christmas jumper which inspired a higher than usual level of comments (21.3K) which suggests that consumers are interested in engaging with brands in a more personal manner (Bruhn et al., 2012). These examples build on previous social media research providing evidence of engagement for both financial and relational needs. They show that there is a change in consumer behaviour when interacting on Instagram compared to Facebook as promotional activity received higher levels of engagement than more relational and lifestyle posts. The literature concerning consumer engagement on Facebook considers consumers conversing with each other and while these behaviours were observed on the branded Facebook pages it was also expected that these behaviours would manifest on brand posts on Instagram in a similar manner. The initial results show however that while there are a number of consumers commenting and engaging in this manner there are also much higher volumes of consumers simply tagging their friends in posts to share the image or product with them or tagging their friends with the addition of an emoji to convey some form of emotional reaction to the content. This is a change to the concept of C2C as, previous research into the assessment of online brand communities or Facebook posts (Baldus et al, 2015; Dessart et al., 2015) would categorise these behaviours as largely passive, however they are the most common form of engagement on Instagram. This poses questions around how engagement on Instagram should be assessed and interpreted by fashion retailers. Conclusion The initial findings of this research provide some insight into how fashion retailers and fashion consumers are using two key social media sites; Facebook and Instagram. They highlight a potential move within fashion marketing towards Instagram and pose questions around the difference in posting behaviours of both fashion retailers and fashion consumers highlighting that there is a need to continue research into consumer engagement on Instagram. Initial findings suggest that consumers engagement patterns are changing and that consumers are adhering to different social codes on Instagram than in online brand communities and on Facebook pages.

ABSTRACT. This research contributes to knowledge of the convergence of online and digital channels in the retail store and how consumers access and use the channels to create experiences. Fashion brands have extended physical environments into online and mobile media. Consumers’ access to branded and social media extends the individual and community experience.

ABSTRACT. Recently, many beauty brands use a particular type of mixed channel strategy to maximize distribution while minimizing the financial risk. They operate digital channel as a mono-brand store, while selling offline as one of many beauty brands in multi-brand specialty retailers. Studies in multichannel literature show that coexistence of digital and offline channels for the same brand can be complementary in some situations, and substitutive in others. Due to the experiential nature of cosmetic products, offline specialty retailers can function as showrooms for online purchases, playing a complementary role. On the other hand, they can be competing for the sales of same popular products available in both channels.

The primary objective of our research is to investigate the relationship between online mono-brand shop and offline multi-brand specialty store in the case of one beauty brand. In particular, we focus on the customers’ first digital purchase and the likelihood of a repeat purchase. We approach it by examining the effect of offline store density and introduction of additional offline stores on digital store sales originating from that region by survival analysis. Second, the kind of products chosen in the first digital purchase may be related to future purchase behavior. Because only certain popular items are available offline while digital store has a large breadth of product choice, whether the customers bought popular ones that are also available offline or niche ones that are only available in digital channel can be indicative of their channel patronage intention. Finally, whether the first purchase was made through mobile device or less ubiquitous device such as PC may be related to the chance of repeat purchase.

We obtained individual-level purchase data from one of the leading digital mono-brand cosmetic stores of which products are also available in the offline beauty specialty retailers. Our empirical analysis results are as follows. The density of the beauty specialty retailer is positively correlated with the likelihood of repeat purchase of the new customers of the digital mono-brand retailer. In the longitudinal view, introduction of additional offline specialty retailers decreases the chance repeat purchase in the online store. In addition, increasing trend of offline specialty retailers negatively moderates the positive correlation of physical store density on digital sales. Concerning the type of products bought in the first purchase, customers who bought niche products are more likely to repeat their purchase than those who bought the popular ones. For those who bought the popular products for their first purchase, the price of the products is positively correlated with repeat purchase. Also, mobile purchase usage is correlated with increased likelihood of repeat purchase in the digital channel. By examining the linkage between the offline specialty retailer and the digital mono-brand store, we contribute theoretically to related areas and provide practical insights to marketing strategies of beauty products with multi-channel sales context.

ABSTRACT. Growing engagement in sustainable business conduct is one of the communication strategy highlights of many luxury fashion brands. The aim of the article is to examine how and why sellers do (or do not) communicate and promote sustainable efforts of the luxury fashion brands to their consumers. Answer to this question was obtained through qualitative research in a form of mystery shopping, including interviews with sellers and consumers of 16 luxury fashion brands in four cities: Paris, Berlin, Dubai and Singapore. The findings show generally limited contribution of the sellers in communicating, and thus promoting sustainability activities of the brands to consumers. The main reasons for this scarce contribution is the lack of sellers’ knowledge about these activities. This in turn stems, at least partly, from the general lack of consumers’ interest in this area. This study has an important practical impact. The discrepancy between the communication of sustainable efforts by the brands and the general lack of this information from sellers’ side harms the cohesion of brand image. Some managerial actions are proposed how to make promoting sustainability as a part of luxury fashion value propostion more visible.

ABSTRACT. The growth of use of SNS such as Instagram is changing the way of acquiring fashion information. It is easy to find out how fashion trends in recent years are changing, to recognize the consumption patterns of people who have similar tendencies to oneself, to access various fashion brand information in real time, to speed up fashion. Especially, as mobile devices are becoming more popular, the spread of SNS fashion information is becoming more influential to consumers. While fashion consumption began with fashion magazines or TV commercials in the past, it recently has been changed to share and enjoy the consumption pattern using SNS that can show social philosophy, the trend of the brand and similar lifestyle. It is important to have your own fashion philosophy and lifestyle that meets the latest trends through SNS. As a result, in order to show not only trends such as promotions, product information, fashion shows, but also brand philosophy and concept that brand pursues, luxury fashion brands build their own Instagram account for marketing activities. SNS is also used as an appropriate tool to convey various images in the luxury fashion field emotionally. How consumers engage in their brand SNS to keep on visiting and acquire information, how much empathy they bring to content, and how quickly information is provided to keep consumers informed about fashion are important factor in attracting fashion consumption to enhance and express oneself. Therefore, this study examines the effect of social media engagement and contents characteristics on fashion consumption propensity. SNS engagement that indicates the engagement of using the social media is an independent variable. Empathy to contents and the continuity of the contents that created by pages or accounts of luxury fashion brand are two moderation variables, fashion consciousness and status consumption are the dependent variables. This study will test the direct relationship between social media engagement and fashion consciousness and status consciousness. Also, the moderating effect to the direct relationship will be tested by two moderation variables. In order to verify the research problem, the analysis is conducted focusing on the 2 × 2 × 2 MANCOVA model, and the results are derived about the difference of tendency of each group. This study will give some implications to the promotion strategies of fashion products through SNS by examining the effects of social media engagement and content characteristics on fashion consumption propensity. In addition, this study extends the existing literature review on the characteristics of SNS and consumer characteristics to derive theories and strategies that combine characteristics of contents such as consumer engagement, empathy to contents, and continuity of contents.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION Over the few past decades, the fashion industry has been a subject of increasing media, academic and professional discussions in terms of its sustainability. There is an agreement in both the industry and academia that current fashion business models may not be sustainable in the future as major socio environmental problems emerged making the fashion industry one of the most polluting industries worldwide (Pedersen and Andersen, 2015). In response to this seemingly unsustainable business model, alternative business models have occurred such as sustainable and slow fashion (Henninger, Alevizou & Oates, 2016) which may not merely oppose fast-fashion in the sense of time (Fletcher, 2010), but adds greater value to garments, making a conscious social and environmental impact throughout the product lifespan (Jung & Jin, 2014). However, these emerging more sustainable business models are still in their infancy and face a great deal of challenges one of which is the shift of consumer perceptions and behaviour. Past research has largely focused on trying to segment consumers in terms of fashion involvement (O’Cass, 2004); demographic and behaviour characteristics of fashion innovators (Goldsmith, Moore & Beaudoin, 1999); different characteristics of slow fashion consumers (Jung & Jin, 2016); and the different consumption behaviours of fast- and slow-fashion consumers (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013). However, when exploring green consumption, it has been said that focus should be shifted from segmenting consumers in terms of sociodemographic factors, to looking at consumption behaviour as a process (Peattie, 2001; McDonald, Oates, Alevizou, Young & Hwang, 2012) as consumers cannot be segmented into ‘green’ or ‘grey’ consumers as the two are not mutually exclusive (McDonald et al., 2012). However, taking a context focused approach in exploring underlying values and motivations has not yet been considered with fashion consumers and raises the question of whether consumers can be segmented into slow- or fast-fashion consumers or whether this is too restrictive. As such we focus on the relationship between consumers and their clothes consumption handling and disposal. We adopt a life histories approach and set the relationship between consumers and their fashion consumption, use and disposal as the pivotal line of inquiry. As such, we ask how do consumers perceive their relationship with fashion consumption? Understanding more about the relationship between consumers and their clothes and contextualising that relationship will assist a deeper understanding of drivers and motivations for more sustainable fashion communication and behaviour.

LITERATURE REVIEW Fast-fashion consumers have previously been defined as those who purchase fashionable, low cost clothing which are considered to be replaceable, meaning they purchase high quantities often (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013). When looking at consumer perceptions of fast-fashion, Gabrielli, Baghi and Codeluppi (2013) found that consumers have low expectations of clothing but this is accepted for two reasons: that clothing differs to their usual style meaning they don’t expect to wear items often; or that they don’t expect items to be long lasting, both views leading to consumers feeling reduced risk of post-purchase remorse (Gabrielli et al, 2013). Other research has also suggested a dissatisfaction in fast-fashion post-consumption, due to clothing becoming damaged easily, yet satisfaction because this was expected (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013). While Gabrielli et al, (2013) found despite consumers feeling that reduced quality and durability was compensated by the ability to create and change styles frequently, negative undertones were still present. Although this in part answers the question of consumers’ paradoxical behaviour, greater understanding of why consumers wish to change styles frequently, where this desire stems from and how this provides meaning to individuals is required. On the other hand, slow fashion consumers, have been defined as those who purchase clothing which is made with care to create high quality, versatile items (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013). Due to higher costs associated with higher quality clothing, slow-fashion consumers buy fewer items (Ozdamar et al., 2015). Furthermore, slow-fashion consumers show an emotional connection to their clothing due to the production of the items, which in turn affects their post-consumption evaluation and divestment practices in that they feel continued satisfaction and will not dispose of items (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013). However, this behaviour is exactly the opposite to that of fast-fashion, meaning that a shift in consumer mind set and habits will be required for a large scale uptake of the movement. Past research has found difficulty understanding sustainable consumer behaviours. Due to inconsistencies when trying to link consumer choices with sociodemographic factors, values and attitudes, it was proposed that the focus of research should change to study individual purchases, the context they take place in and processes of consumption (Peattie, 2001; McDonald et al, 2012). Purchasing takes place in a complex environment where a multitude of influential factors impact consumer choices (Peattie, 2001). Furthermore, it is proposed that there is not one green or grey consumer, but a continuum of consumers exist with regards to sustainable consumption (McDonald, Oates, Young & Hwang, 2006) and that different consumers use different strategies to resolve the tension between a green and grey lifestyle (McDonald et al, 2012). This view on consumers and their purchases has not yet been applied within fashion research. Previous research has aimed to segment consumers as potential slow-fashion consumers (Jung & Jin, 2016); to create definitions of types of slow- and fast-fashion consumers (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013); and to create classifications of consumers. Recent classifications of UK fashion consumers revealed 20 different categories of female fashion consumers (Experian, n.d). However, this provides an extremely confusing picture for marketers. Within this classification, multiple different ‘types’ of consumers visit one or two of the same stores in different combinations and for different reasons (Experian, n.d). Furthermore, within several of the consumer ‘types’ the paradoxical nature of their fashion consumption habits are highlighted (Experian, n.d), a finding which is not unique to this report and has been highlighted in other attempts at consumer classifications (Jung & Jin, 2016). This complex and sometimes contradicting picture of fashion consumers suggests that greater attention should be paid to purchases, different motivations and consumption processes, to gain an understanding of how consumers make fashion consumption decisions.

RESEARCH DESIGN The narrative style of life histories, can gain insight into how people understand and interpret social events and experiences over time and provide information into how people’s identities have developed (Musson, 2004). When looking at purchasing behaviour, narratives have been used to understand how people use consumption to construct their identities, with life histories in particular appearing highly relevant for symbolic purchase behaviour and brand loyalty (Baumgartner, 2002). This is highly relevant to this study with the objectives being to look at the relationship between the self-concept and consumption behaviours in a market where consumption is largely symbolic in nature. Therefore, the semi-structured interviews were designed using a life history technique to gain information both on consumers’ perceptions and behaviours now, and on how they came to hold those perceptions as a result of past experiences. A sample of 16 females was found for the research with ages of participants ranging from 22 to 68 years. Interviews were transcribed and coded thematically using NVivo software. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Participants concerns about clothing were self-oriented, supporting previous research (McNeil & Moore, 2012; Harris et al, 2015). Participants perceptions of fast-fashion differed among participants and this largely depended on their expectations of the products. However, satisfaction with fast-fashion in this study only occurred when the quality met or exceeded their expectations. These expectations were gauged from the price of the item and how this compared to prices of their other clothing. This suggests that consumers’ satisfaction in fast-fashion products is dependent on their expectations of quality which differs for each individual because they are influenced by their usual expenditure on clothing. Consumers generally purchased fast-fashion when looking for clothing that would not be important. Gabrielli et al (2013) found reduced risk of post-purchase remorse as clothing was believed not to be their usual style meaning they wouldn’t wear the items often or that they didn’t expect items to be long lasting. This was supported in this study as many consumers only expected to wear fast-fashion items which were of trendy design once or twice and neither needed or wanted the items to last long because of this. These beliefs of low quality influenced their perceptions that the clothing was not important which created a disposable mind set. This supports Zarley Watson and Yan (2013) as low cost clothing was considered replaceable. Past research found that slow-fashion consumers look for products made with care that are versatile and higher in quality (Zarley Watson & Yan, 2013). Whilst several consumers showed an orientation towards buying versatile and timeless items and would pay a higher price for such pieces, no consumers searched for information on how or where their clothes were made. Past research also suggested that the higher cost of clothing means slow-fashion consumers buy fewer items (Ozdamar et al, 2015) but for the majority of participants in this study, making slow-fashion purchases only meant that they purchased less of those particular items rather than less overall. However, in line with Zarley Watson and Yan’s (2013) findings, individuals experienced continued satisfaction and did not easily divest of these items due to being more attached and having an emotional connection with them. Interestingly however, this attachment and greater perceived value was not always the result of a higher price. Some participants purchased from vintage shops however they did so for the cheaper prices. This supports previous findings that luxury, vintage and second-hand fashion consumers purchase with the aim of finding unique items, suggesting that these item’s value to consumers is not signified by their high price, but buy intrinsic qualities of unique and timeless designs which tend to be higher quality (Cassidy and Bennett, 2012; Ditty, 2015). From looking at consumer perceptions of fast- and slow-fashion it is clear that the two are perceived differently. In support of Peattie (2001) and McDonald et al (2012), consumers could not be classified with regards to sociodemographic factors, attitudes and behaviours. Participant’s consumption of fashion products in this study was inconsistent and different purchase criteria was held by different participants in different contexts. This meant that focus was drawn to individual purchases, what motivated these individually and how this then influenced post-purchase behaviour. This meant that previous research by Zarley Watson and Yan (2013) which described slow-fashion and fast-fashion consumers and their different consumption behaviour could not be supported because the results of this study showed that individual consumers made a variety of purchase choices which included both fast- and slow-fashion purchases. This may explain why Jung and Jin (2016) found that those most interested in slow-fashion also had a high reliance on fast-fashion, as different factors and different contexts may have influenced purchases differently. As such, we noticed individual consumers label various aspects of their fashion consumption in contradictory terms, from being an ‘oniomaniac’ to a ‘hoarder’ highlighting the challenge of any clear segmentation.

References:

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ABSTRACT. This study aims to investigate the effect of the core capability of products in eco-friendly stores on perceived CSR and consumers’ purchasing behavior. It is also to verify the moderating mediation effect of store type (multi-category store vs. single-category store). The results indicate that generally, in eco-friendly stores, consumers perceive the core competency of the products, which increases perceived CSR and purchasing intention. In the single-category store (i.e., fashion only) compared to the multi-category store (i.e., food and fashion), consumers perceive that the core capability and CSR are higher and thus they have higher purchase intention.

ABSTRACT. Service innovation allows firms to have a chance to establish a new market by offering a new feature. Providing innovative service to customer plays a key role for a firm to determine competitive advantage in the target market and to enhance firm performance. Thus firms are making efforts to deliver innovative service to the customer through innovative activities. Especially, firms conduct customer-oriented, technology-oriented, and co-creation oriented innovative behavior to have customer satisfaction. The authors identify these components of innovative behaviors through qualitative study and examine the relationship between innovative behaviors, customer performance, and customer loyalty focused on safety service using IT. The results of this study will provide a theoretical and practical contribution to researchers and managers.

ABSTRACT. Advances in business technologies and globalization are driving the rapid growth of the global outsourcing industry (Pournader et al. 2019; Stettler et al. 2014). In this paper, we focus on the B2B digital outsourcing platform, a new business model in which the information about the projects are shared between suppliers and customers, and the transactions are made when the customers find suitable suppliers for conducting their projects. Recently the number of outsourcing projects completed via digital platform increases rapidly (Cullen and Farronato 2014). In the outsourcing market, an optimal matching between suppliers and customers is a prerequisite for completing a contract, so the emergence of a B2B digital outsourcing platform has attracted great attention in terms of industrial development and it is expected to improve the efficiency of outsourcing procedures. In this paper, we investigate the determinant factors of successful project completion in the B2B digital outsourcing platform, in particular for small and medium-sized enterprises (hereafter, SMEs). Most of previous researches about B2B outsourcing were limited to large-sized companies rather than focusing on SMEs. However, it is expected that digital platforms can create unprecedented benefits even to SMEs, by optimally matching individual economic actors regardless of its industry and size (Breidbach and Maglio 2016). We use the actual data from a Korean B2B digital outsourcing platform. The data contain ‘the level of client’s commitment’, ‘time interval from project announcement to deadline’, ‘whether the project was stand-alone announcement on the platform or not’, ‘the number of voluntary suppliers’, and ‘the number of recommended suppliers from platform’. Additionally, the data contain ‘client size’, ‘rank of announcer’, and ‘budget for projects’. Notably, we scrutinize the influence of economic actors, characteristics of outsourcing projects and the role of platform, highlighting the consequence of digital platforms in the context of B2B SMEs (Fehrer et al. 2018; Wieland et al. 2017). Our empirical analyses suggest the following. First, the client company’s strong commitment to outsourcing projects plays a key role in turning business opportunities into actual contracts. Second, the longer interval between the posting date and the deadline of the project, the less possibility of completing the actual contract. Third, we expect that when the client company makes a stand-alone announcement on the platform, the likelihood of project approval through the digital platform will increase. However, we found a positive effect when analyzing with binomial logistic regression, but a non-significant effect with multinomial logistic regression. Analyzing with only digital platform data can lead to misleading conclusion. Forth, projects with bigger number of suppliers seem to find collaborators but this positive relationship weakens with the increase of suppliers recommended by the platform. We discuss the theoretical contribution of these findings, and offer practical insights to practitioners.

ABSTRACT. Social media is a good source of data for understanding collective opinions of consumers. Previous research in marketing suggests that social media activities would be a good indicator of consumer interests in a firm, and that the level of consumer interests would predict the firm performance. As prior literature largely centers on B2C contexts, we extend it to B2B contexts and examine the relationships between social media activities, the level of consumer interests and firm performance for B2B firms. Specifically, in our context, we postulate that various features of social media (“tweets”) help predict the attention given to the formal news of a company, and this attention is significantly related to absolute abnormal returns of stocks. Implied in this model is that consumer opinion directs their attention to the subsequent news, and through the information gained, consumers make decisions to buy or sell company stocks.

To answer our research questions empirically, we measure for each company social media metrics that have frequently been used in previous literature such as the volume, valence, polarity, and verifiability of the tweets. We test the relationship between the metrics and the number of consumer clicks on company news, which is known to indicate the level of interest. Then we analyze the effect of predicted clicks on the absolute abnormal returns on a daily basis for two years using the two stage model. In other words, we account for the contribution of consumer opinions measured through social media in predicting the abnormal returns, mediated by attention to company news.

The results of stage one analysis show that the volume, positivity, polarity, and verifiability of the tweets significantly predict attention given to company news. The greater the volume, greater the positivity, the more extreme the polarity, and lower the verifiability, the more clicks on the official company news. The result of stage two analysis shows that the predicted attention to formal news has significant relationship to abnormal returns: more attention to positive news leads to positive abnormal returns, and vice versa. Moreover, the predicted attention has closer relationship with stock market performance than the raw data for attention to formal news. Our results contribute to B2B literature theoretically and practically by revealing the linkages among consumer opinions, attention to news, and abnormal returns.

ABSTRACT. Social media is an open online platform designed to allow people to share ideas, opinions, experiences and information with other people and create or expand relationship with others by taking advantage of social network web 2.0 technology whose philosophy is based on value of openness, participation and sharing. Type of social media can be divided into five: Blog, social networking service(SNS), wiki, user-created-content (UCC), and micro-blog. Generally a web-based platform that provides service enabling to connect and interact people to people and people to information can be included in a social media category (Wikipedia, 2017). Social marketing Korea (2017) reported that social platform becomes a way of communication which enables to identify customers’ needs by using open and interconnected knowledge sharing with customers, and form sustainable relationship through real time interaction with customers. The researches involving value co-creation and sustainable competitive advantage using B2B based social platform have been insufficiently performed (Ranjan & Read, 2016). In addition, value co-creation had been dealt with in the past focusing on the suppliers, but there have been arguments that value co-creation needs to be studied with consideration of service-based contents such as Youtube and Blog, and a supplying partner and intermediary role in the future. (Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008). Value co-creation activity refers to a type of product/service creation performed by both company and customer together (Vargo & Lusch, 2014). Value co-creation allows for achieving sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) by providing customers with the differentiated product and service considering customers’ perspective (Porter, 1980). This indicates that the relationships mentioned above can substantially vary by service types with difference experience. We conduct survey to gain insights into value co-creation in social platform and to understand the relationships among co-production, value-in-use, SCA, and long-term performance. Our empirical analyses indicate that innovative co-production improves perceived value-in-use, and value-in-use leads to SCA, and long-term performance. Moreover, the multi-group analysis shows different relationships among these in accordance with service type.

ABSTRACT. This case study examines Delvaux’s Instagram marketing activities using Kim and Ko’s (2012) conceptual framework of five dimensions of social media marketing activities, namely entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, and word of mouth. Based on a survey among 195 luxury consumers, a structural equation model is developed to explore how each of these dimensions affect customer brand equity and purchase intentions. The study demonstrates a positive impact of trendiness, entertainment and word of mouth on customer brand equity. Moreover, entertainment and word-of-mouth enhance purchase intention, while trendiness had a significant negative effect on purchase intention. Furthermore, it was found that the effect of consumer’s overall impression of Delvaux’s Instagram marketing activities on purchase intention is partly mediated by customer brand equity. These findings provide further support for social media marketing as an important and cost-effective marketing tool for luxury brands in the digital age.

ABSTRACT. Especially the fashion sector is highly influenced by influencer marketing strategies (Escobar-Rodríguez & Bonsón-Fernández, 2017). Loureiro et al. (2017) claim that social influence is the leading important factor increasing consumers’ willingness to consume fashion and also has an effect on what consumers perceive as fashionable (Loureiro, Costa, & Panchapakesan, 2017). Therefore, it is essential for fashion brands to communicate the right information to the right consumers. (Goldsmith & Clark, 2008) For answering the question who are the right consumers to address, the recent literature only focuses on the motivations and usage behavior (Gironda & Korgaonkar, 2014; Abidin, 2016). But the current research leaves open who is influencing who in the social media universe, how the influence takes place and which role the fashion follower play for multiplying the influencer effect. With the help of the theory of the “Pyramid of Influence” the underlying study tries to identify fashion follower typologies focusing on their own ability to influence other consumers.

ABSTRACT. Introduction There is a great deal of practical evidence suggesting that weather affects consumers’ shopping behavior and companies make use of weather effects to improve sales performance. However, such weather effects of practical importance are under-researched in academia despite potentials in theoretical potential. To narrow this gap, we examine the effect of weather on consumers’ grocery shopping. We focus on (un-)pleasant weather conditions at the daily level and measure their effects on grocery store choices. Further we take into consideration the moderating effect of personal preference for shopping in addition to seasonal patterns.

Research Design We obtain the panel data including two types of grocery stores, megastores and supermarkets, and merge it with daily weather data. We then investigate three choices involved in grocery shopping trips: shopping at megastores, shopping at supermarkets, and no shopping. Although megastores and supermarkets are competitive by offering similar product categories, shopping experience can differ substantially as the difference in product assortment caters to diverse purposes of grocery shopping.

Result and Conclusion Our empirical analysis employing multinomial logistic regression provides the findings as follows. Unpleasant weather in spring and fall increases the likelihood of grocery shopping whereas it decreases shopping trips in summer and winter. Shopping preference plays a role as a moderator in determining the weather effect, and this effect only emerges with megastores. That is, the more frequent customers are, the more favorable they respond to the visits regardless of the season or daily weather. Finally, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors that affect a celebrity’s perceived authenticity on social media sites. In total, 653 Taiwanese consumers were recruited to examine the proposed model. The findings generally support our model. The theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study consists in examining the new sustainable trends used in the fashion industry to face the market demand. Today, textile, clothing and fashion are considered as one of the most resource-draining and polluting business industries in which concerns environmental impacts. Since several years, this unsustainability has been fed by different unethical practices of production such as the widespread use of chemicals in the manufacturing of textiles and clothing but also the important emission of greenhouse gases. Moreover, in a highly competitive market, businesses are avid of high margins and economies of scale. Indeed, they are continuously seeking low production costs without considering their armful social and environmental influence. Recently, the fashion industry has been criticised for the “exploitation of workers, damaging the ecosystem, contributing to the depletion of natural resources, and increasing textile waste” (Ozdamar Ertekin, Z., & Atik, D, 2015). Therefore, the notion of Fast Fashion, referring to the pressure exerted to reduce costs and speed up production, can be raised. To deal with this scourge, many businesses are developing new ways of manufacturing materials by keeping their focus on quality and sustainability.

ABSTRACT. Abstract—The Luxury Market currently faces a consequent growth of the use of Phygital Marketing tools, applied in Retail floors, to face some new challenges. However, these tools can be poorly applied and might not seem relevant to every single prospect’s eyes. In this article, we will raise questions, then try to understand the consequences of the Phygital strategy, nowadays in the Luxury Retail sector.

ABSTRACT. The global luxury travel market is in a constant state of flux, and traditional players have to adapt to the rising challenges in various areas of their business model. As new players emerge, using technology and the global reach of the Internet and social media to reach out to a discerning group of travelers, they speak to the changing expectations and behavior of international consumers. Our study will shed light on these consumption and travel patterns, on ways new disruptors in the field of luxury hospitality successfully differentiate themselves from their more traditional competitors and on the implications this will have on the business models of five-star hotels in Switzerland. While limited in scope, this study will provide insight relevant to academics and professionals in the field of luxury hospitality.

ABSTRACT. People feel emotional attachment to historical events. Heritage is a representation of the emotional response that many luxury brands develop amongst their customers. This study examines how Rolex fashions heritage as a strategic advantage that enhances the luxury level of a brand. Using heritage and innovation, Rolex has developed a brand that brings together historical and modern ideas in order to satisfy its customers’ desires. Some existing literature refers to luxury as an experience. First of all, this study analyzes how Rolex has used heritage to create an aura of authenticity and luxury. Authenticity fastens customer loyalty. Rolex enacts with its customers into a dramatic turn during the personal experience of purchasing Rolex watches. Second, the study analyzes how Rolex faces the challenge of engaging future customers—the younger consumers of the digital age. The study includes a qualitative analysis of Rolex’s communication strategy on Instagram, the social media network most in-use by millennials.

ABSTRACT. This study examined whether Chinese consumers’ perceptions of WeChat and their electronic word-of-mouth intentions on this social media platform vary by age and gender. The results of the study showed that perceived characteristics and usefulness of WeChat and electronic word-of-mouth intentions significantly differed not by gender but by age.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to reveal differences towards conspicuous consumption of the hard-hit by the recession Greeks and foreign consumers. For the purposes of this research a survey was carried out in Greece. Tandem cluster analysis was performed in order to separate consumers based on their conspicuous consumption patterns and tendencies. The analysis resulted in a three cluster solution and deduced that the recession-hit Greeks buy branded luxury goods, as hypothesized and expected.

ABSTRACT. The current research aims to explore the role of hedonic rewards (Babin, Darden & Griffin, 1994) in the relationship between consumers and fashion brands, specifically through brand engagement within online fashion brand communities. In this sense, we set out an analysis of several engagement dimensions based on previous literature (Baldus, Voorhees, & Calantone, 2015), with the purpose of exploring the role of brand engagement between consumers and the online fashion brand communities they are engaged with. To do so, we have performed a Netnography analysis (Kozinets, 2002), based on the interactions of consumers and a well-known online brand community.

We collect the data from an online fashion brand community - Beauty Insider (https://www.sephora.com/community) -, from the well-known cosmetics brand Sephora. This online community was launched in August 2017 and is considered an examples of a brilliant brand communities that is shaping the online environment (Marketing Insider Group, 2017). To perform our study, we decide to analyses the content of this online fashion brand community through a text-mining technique. This technique is capable to extract, examine, and transpose the vast amount of users’ interactions on these online brand communities into valuable insights (Fan, Wallace & Zhang, 2006). This technique is a solid and confirmed approach, already validated and tested by several authors (e.g., Bilro, Loureiro e Guerreiro 2018; Cai & Qu, 2018; Jeon, Lee, & Jeong, 2018; Tang & Guo, 2015).

Concerning our method, we collect a sample of 1,090 consumer reviews made available between April 20th and May 11th, 2018. All the reviews are from consumers of USA. We began by classifying the topics most covered in these sample reviews. The text-mining tool identified 142 topics. The six topics more relevant (by relevance) extracted by the tool were ‘Nickname’, ‘Product’, ‘Person’, ‘Body Parts’, ‘Industrial Company’ and ‘Organization’. We should note that for each review we may find several topics. This analysis is possible due to the use of NLP - Natural Language Processing - which relates the various dimensions or variables to existing topics (Fan et al., 2006; Mostafa, 2013).

We then performed a topic sentiment analysis. Of the topics reported, the text-mining tool extracted 8,888 sentiment topics, of which 2,520 are related to interactions between members of the Online Community. The dimension that arises most from the analysis of feelings made is ‘Community members interaction’, that is, the interaction between members or users of online community Beauty Insider. On the opposite, the topic ‘Body Part’ is the one with the lowest value. It should be also noted that none of the topics or constructs has a negative sentimental value.

Based on this study, it was possible to undertake some preliminary findings. Firstly, we may assume that online fashion brand communities allow consumers to have an up-to-date and reliable information about the brand they are associated with, and that they understand this type of platform as a great way to keep up-to-date on the brand associated with the online community they participate. Secondly, managers and marketers should be able to provide experiences to consumers, based on real opinions. A fashion brand and/or fashion company that involves its consumers will be a successful brand, and its consumers may experience their desires, needs and expectations satisfied.

ABSTRACT. The Internet has changed the way of consumers purchasing process and has become an effective tool for businesses. Online shopping is becoming a popular method of purchasing, especially among millennial generation (born 1980-2000). The development of luxury e-commerce is driven by young consumers as the main consumers of online luxury shopping. Generation Z and millennials buyers alone have accumulated 85% growth in the global luxury in 2017 (Bain & Company, 2017). Millennials is not presently the most profitable group since it is also new market for luxury brands; however, it is considered as the main customer of the future (Yazici, 2016). The Economist (2014) has forecasted that by 2026, the main consumers of luxury will be millennials. In line with this, it is very crucial to pay attention on their behavior. The millennials are crucial generational cohort of customers who buy luxury goods online. However, much remains unknown concerning the country of origin, materialism and differences in two countries (Russia, China) for millennial consumers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of country of origin and materialism on millennials’ online purchasing intention. The detailed objectives of this project are: 1) to analyze the interactions between country of origin, materialism and brand involvement, brand image, 2) to measure the association between brand involvement, brand image and online purchase intention, 3) to examine moderating effect of nation. Luxury goods are products that are simultaneously equipped with quality, brand name, and taste that provide consumers with multiple psychological and physical values (Vigneron & Johnson, 1999). These product lines are seen to possess exactly what modern network users pursue in terms of individuality and materialism (Chen, 2006). This study will focus on handbags as the luxury item. This category was chosen because handbags still make up the bulk of global purchases (Bain & Company, 2017). Additionally, handbags remained the top category sold online (Bain & Company, 2017). A pre-test will conduct to choose the brand for this study. The survey will focus on Russian and Chinese millennials who had luxury purchasing experience through Internet. The collected data will analyze using the SPSS program for descriptive statistical analysis and the AMOS program for structural equation model (SEM) analysis. This study will offer relevant theoretical contributions to the existing literature in two aspects. First, contribution will concern to a gap in research hypothesizing and testing relationships of country of origin, materialism, brand involvement and brand image. Second, this research model will contribute to past studies by adding brand involvement and brand image as meaningful mediators between country of origin, materialism and purchase intention through Internet. Its, thus will appear as significant outcomes of country of origin and materialism. Previous studies have explored a large number of outcomes of country of origin and materialism. However, knowledge about brand involvement and brand image as outcomes of country of origin and materialism remains limited. Thus, this research will develop literature by adding more insight to the country of origin and materialism construct. From a managerial perspective, the findings will enable marketers of luxury goods to understand millennials’ purchasing intentions of luxury handbags online and increase the sales among this target group.

ABSTRACT. ABSTRACT This paper tends to explore the influencing factors of the relationship between fast fashion product traits and consumer choice. The main traits of fast fashion products are low quality and short life cycle. The results illustrate that the main considered factors are short life cycle, low quality, design, price and purchase intention, and price is considered as the one which has significant effect on consumer choice of accepting low quality. Furthermore, product design also shows great effect on consumer choice. Nowadays, plenty of entrepreneurs try to use high quality products to compete with others, and occupy market share. However, high quality does not always mean that products will be accepted by most customers. We take fast fashion industry as example and choose fsQCA as the methodology to analyses the relationship between variables and result.

INTRODUCTION Most of customers prefer high quality products with low price (Dodds et al., 1991; Alfred, 2013; Shirai, 2015). But it’s difficult for companies to make high quality products low priced. Companies often consider high quality advantage. However, quality is not the only influencing factor that makes products high priced. Design, corporate culture and brand are also influencing factors (Homburg et al., 2015). How to make consumers accept low quality in short lifecycle product (e.g. fast fashion), which means consumers may purchase new product to replace the old one before it has problems.

In our study, we collect data from customers though questionnaire, and use fsQCA to analyze the relationship between consumer choice with price, design and short lifecycle. All these influencing factors make effect on customer purchase intention on low quality product. And we have following findings. Sometimes, low quality products can help companies achieve success by small profits but quick turnover, as well as satisfy consumers’ needs on certain traits in affordable price. From company’s aspect, low quality products are more affordable than those of high quality, so these products are easier to win larger market share and promote fast fashion items to sell fast. On the other hand, customers sometimes demand products with certain traits and an affordable price. Meanwhile, they can bear the unimportant traits as long as they can ignore. Low quality products can achieve balanced between consumer demands and purchasing power. This means companies and customers can get win-win situation.

References Alfred, O. (2013). Influences of Price And Quality On Consumer Purchase Of Smart Phone In The Kumasi Metropolis In Ghana A Comparative Study. European Journal of Business and Management, 13(5-1). Dodds, W. B., Monroe, K. B., & Grewal, D. (1991). Effects of price, brand, and store information on buyers’ product evaluations. Journal of Marketing Research, 28(August), 307–319. Homburg, C., Schwemmle, M., & Kuehnl, C. (2015). New product design: concept, measurement, and consequences. Journal of Marketing A Quarterly Publication of the American Marketing Association, 79(3), págs. 41-56. Shirai, M. (2015). Impact of “high quality, low price” appeal on consumer evaluations. Journal of Promotion Management, 21(6), 776-797.

ABSTRACT. Over the decades, many studies focused on luxury brand consumption and explored the customer perception and motives for purchasing luxury brands. Nevertheless, the role of gender in this context has been neglected. Recently, some researchers have been studying the influence of gender on luxury purchases. However, the subject is not fully explored and the effect of some motivations are still lacking on the studies. The present dissertation is based on previous researches about luxury values, consumer behaviour and gender behavioural differences. The study aimed to contribute to the analysis of whether men and women buy luxury for different reasons, from which the following research questions arise: Does gender have an effect on the purchase of luxury goods? And how does gender affect the buying-decision process among consumers of luxury goods? In order to answer these questions, a documentary analysis was conducted, as well as a face-to-face questionnaire to Portuguese women and men that buy ready-to-wear and/or luxury accessories. Results revealed that different motivations are attributed to each gender; in other words, women and men buy luxury products for different reasons. It was established that women have a higher purchase intention than men and respond more favourably to luxury brands promotional activity. Furthermore, men showed to be motivated by materialistic value, status value and conspicuous value, responding more positively to luxury brands loyalty programs than females. Nevertheless, gender did not show an effect on hedonic value, susceptibility to normative influence and uniqueness value.

ABSTRACT. While the issue of ethics and sustainability is relevant to all sectors and industries, some researchers have pointed out that limited attention has been given to luxury products. The current research investigates how gratitude and pride can leverage the effectiveness of sustainable luxury advertising. Specifically, pride (vs. gratitude) increases status-signaling (vs. reciprocal) motives, making luxury (vs. sustainable) claims more appealing to consumers. Consequently, while gratitude and pride can both effectively promote sustainable luxury brands by increasing sharing intentions in social media, they will differentially influence broadcasting versus narrowcasting intentions. That is, pride (vs. gratitude) will increase broadcasting (vs. narrowcasting) intentions. Hence, this research provides managerial implications by highlighting the importance of differentiating specific emotion appeals (pride vs. gratitude) and sharing intentions (broadcasting vs. narrowcasting) in promoting sustainable luxury brands.

ABSTRACT. This study focuses on the city of Florence and explores the diverse factors that affect how luxury brand identity is built and perceived. Accordingly, the paper will review the diverse definitions of luxury brands, place branding literature with a focus on urban brandscape effects and the place of origin literature in order to draw a comprehensive theoretical framework that will guide a qualitative study on the place-related determinants of luxury brands and branding. A case study approach is adopted. The case of Salvatore Ferragamo brand is selected as iconic brand, historically rooted within the Florentine brandscape. The expert panel will be composed and interviewed according to the Delphi method.

ABSTRACT. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of the (largely unexplored) role of opera houses within the brandscape of luxury capitals. In fact, a number of opera houses have in their own historic name and/or in their unique architecture a highly distinctive brand and contribute to the atmospheric of luxury consumption through the style and behavior of cultural consumers. As a simple “desk” exercise, we asked a number of luxury experts a list of cities that could fit into the general concept of “luxury capital”. A list of ten cities emerged as the most quoted and a systematic check of their “opera assets” has been performed.

ABSTRACT. Men is the future of the Cosmetics”. This topic has been ringing out since 1999 (LSA study, 1999) in our society where mentalities evolve endlessly. Almost 20 years later, the question of a future for male cosmetics still exists. The only difference: after many false starts, men’s beauty seems to have finally taken off, and males make-up lines are popping up everywhere. Today, men’s cosmetic sales are growing up, reaching $38,5 Billion in 2018 (Reportlinker cabinet, 2018) and a great number of cosmetic brands have seized the market potential for men’s skincare and make-up. Because for men appearance ranks second as a predictor of life satisfaction, after financial situation (D.A. Frederick, G. Sanhu, P.J. Morse, V. Swami, 2016) and they are under constant social pressure (Jankowski.G, 2018) men are being growingly unsatisfied with their bodies. This situation establishes a formidable opportunity for the cosmetic industry. This research was conducted in the aim of determining the cosmetic brands’ strategy that has allowed to make the male make-up trend a much larger phenomenon that is a real milestone in the cosmetics industry. The results obtained showed that cosmetic brands are playing a key role in this revolution by understanding the real potential of the cultural shift. Brands are focusing their strategy on males’ expectations, guiding them through this men’s grooming shift and orientating their communication in that way by a subtle strategy.

ABSTRACT. Small, independent and privately owned luxury companies face a number of challenges in today’s globalized and increasingly digitalized luxury market dominated by big luxury groups. However, the Internet and Social Media also create new opportunities. They enable luxury brands with limited resources to reach out to an international clientele and build brand awareness. Moreover, new channels and platforms allow for multifaceted storytelling, interactive communication with customers and data analysis for quick and continuous learning and improvement of strategies. While many luxury brands have long struggled in the digital sphere, which in many cases represents the exact opposite (e.g. openness, accessibility, dynamic change, etc.) of what luxury stands (or stood) for, a growing number of young and daring luxury brands with no legacy and heritage, embraces digital technology as an important, if not vital part of their business model from day one. Given the often high investment needed to start and sustain a company in the luxury segment, “born digital” luxury start-ups need to show a great deal of creativity, pragmatism, flexibility and a good sense for the actual tastes and preferences of their globally dispersed target group in order to be successful and cut out their share of the market in due time and despite fierce competition. By analyzing the case of VAULT, a Swiss luxury watch brand founded in 2014, the present study explores the main challenges of the young luxury brand with regards to positioning, communication, distribution and business development and the role of the Internet and Social Media for the company’s success. By deriving recommendations for similar brands, the study aims at a practical, but also a theoretical contribution.

ABSTRACT. Abstract: The role of top managers in firm’s performance is central to strategic management. Trying to identify factors that influence company’s strategy and innovations this study adopts resource-based theory (RBT) and upper echelon theory (UET) and apply them to the Swiss luxury watchmaking companies. This paper presents results of qualitative and quantitative research based on interviews with CEO and Marketing managers among Swiss luxury watchmaking industry. We present a set of conclusions of the connection between top executive’s background and their strategic choices and innovation strategy in Swiss luxury watchmaking industry.

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on luxury retail fashion trend imitation. Study 1 explores the effects of firm evaluations between luxury and masstige firms and in the context of imitation. Study 2 examines participant reactions to varied levels of imitation similarity and the effects of imitation on the trend originator.

ABSTRACT. This study explores how the fashion and product designers of luxury and premium brands envision the direction of product innovation. The findings include valuable support for the luxury brand strategy of moving towards innovation in sustainability, customization, and developing the new concepts of rarity of experience and luxury sports products.