ABSTRACT. Evolving consumers environments (i.e., physical, hybrid, and virtual) and the faster pace of sensory-enabling technologies brought to the market (i.e., stimulation of the senses) (Basdogan et al., 2020; Rekik et al., 2017) allow researchers to dig deeper the understanding of underlying perceptual processing of information preceding cognitive and mental stages (Barsalou, 2010). Indeed, computer-mediated environments have created tangible frontiers enabling to dissociate and study the various stages of sensory information processing (Racat et al. 2021). For instance, the recent haptic technologies used into touchscreens interfaces (e.g., Apple Haptic Touch) enable researchers to study the sense of touch on its perceptual level via the interface ability to stimulate differently tactile sensations in line or not with the virtual content, and with the search of high-fidelity sensations between in-person and virtual information access (Vezzoli et al., 2016). This is particularly relevant for online, distant and virtual consumption wherein shoppers use their experiences with offline purchases as a point of comparison between the virtual and physical representation of the targeted object. Therefore, the perceived similarity between these two experiences is likely to influence online shopping outcomes as well as the perceived congruency (Racat & Capelli, 2016; Xu et al., 2013).

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the effects of Virtual Reality (VR) on donation of time and money in the context of second chance tourism. This kind of tourism proposes a second 'life' to destroyed or deteriorated destinations, attractions, sites or artefacts. The concept of second chance tourism is applied to the case of Notre Dame, damaged by a fire on the 15th of April 2019. The project explores if the application of VR can serve as effective marketing tool for second chance tourism by actually increasing time and money donations for destroyed or deteriorated destinations. By doing so, this research contributes to marketing science by following calls for further research on the effects of VR on actual time and monetary contributions and for empirical research on second chance tourism. By testing the proposed framework with two VR studies, the study adds to the marketing and revitalization of deteriorated tourism attraction displaying a critical issue for tourism worldwide. In addition, by assessing VR as marketing tool for second chance tourism and its effect on donation behavior, the research provides insights relevant for city and heritage management.

ABSTRACT. Interactions between consumers and humanoid service robots will soon be part of routine marketplace experiences. How do consumers feel about humanoids? Previous research shows mixed results. In this study, we explore how the imperfect side of humans in humanoid behavior can improve consumer-robot interaction.

ABSTRACT. Although numerous studies highlight the positive impact of moral judgment on ethical behavior and performance, they do not consider how a salesperson's view of their tasks may moderate this relationship. In this pilot study, we test the measures and run preliminary analyses to shed light on the relationship between salesperson perceived quota difficulty in ethical decision-making and sales performance. We do to examine perceived quota difficulty as a factor moderating the positive relationship between moral judgment and performance to explain why high moral judgment may not always lead to higher performance. Although it is not possible to infer any causal relationships from our preliminary analysis, our results suggest that when salespeople believe their quota to be difficult, they may try to find shortcuts to meet it. Thus, further empirical testing of the impact of perceived quota difficulty on the ethics-performance relationship could provide important insight for sales managers.

ABSTRACT. The Covid pandemic brought out the best in the sales management. Exuding optimism, the sales force rallied around and adapted to the 'new ' normal, while delivering on newer businesses and working closely with internal R and D/Engineering departments to modify the existing ones. Through in-depth interviews among 12 senior personnel (CEOs/ Country heads/ Business development heads), this study spans three countries- India, Malaysia and UK, across 12 months. Digitization, customer centricity and adaptive/ resilient sales force have been the aspects in which customers and organizations have adapted to the pandemic. Sales processes got revised completely, from lead generation to closure/retention. Overall, the entire sales organization exhibited high levels of optimism, perseverance and creativity in solving the problems that arose during the pandemic. The study has significant contributions both theoretically and for managers. Frameworks for new sales processes, revised organizational culture and fresh perspectives on how to keep sales force motivated- all could contribute to significant theories in future. From an industry angle, what customers expect, how to stay customer centric, what are the effective marketing and sales strategies- are all paramount to dealing with a crisis event.

ABSTRACT. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact consumers, especially with regard to social interactions due to imposed restrictions and recommended practices. The current study addresses consumer behavioral and emotional changes during this extreme time. Specifically, the study examines consumption behavior in response to heightened anxiety and loneliness. Findings confirm increased consumption behavior of an indulgent nature as a coping mechanism. Additionally, results suggest people with different levels of fear of missing out report varying levels of loneliness. This research offers insights into the emotional challenges consumers experience during a crisis and potential coping behaviors.

ABSTRACT. Sales training provides salespeople with additional knowledge, skills, and abilities to help improve selling capabilities and, subsequently, firm performance. Although selling firms continue to invest billions of dollars in sales training, sales academics and practitioners are unaware of the many mechanisms that inhibit or promote the link between sales training and salesperson training transfer. To address this critical research need, we adopt the theory of planned behavior to develop a sales training transfer model focused on identifying antecedents and boundary conditions related to salesperson training transfer intentions. More specifically, our study investigates the relative influence of individual attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control in forming salesperson training transfer intentions and subsequent training transfer behavior. In addition, we report findings on salesperson job and career factors that impact transfer intentions. Results from this research provide insight to academics and sales organizations on how salespeople form intentions to use company-sponsored training.

ABSTRACT. The first macromarketing seminar held in 1976 represented a first attempt to “hack the system” of business schools to bring a societal focus to the teaching of marketing. This effort resulted eventually in macromarketing becoming a major field of the marketing discipline. Today, forces outside the business school are pointing business schools to broaden their curricula to include social responsibility in the form of macromarketing, sustainability, and marketing for a better world. The purpose of this article is to discuss the challenges and opportunities of teaching macromarketing and sustainability concepts to business students so that more macromarketing managers would develop and exert their influence in marketplaces around the world. Important points include (a) the imperative for macromarketing-minded educators to advocate for curriculum changes in their own business schools, and (b) the need for macromarketing-minded educators to become more capable teachers of macromarketing and sustainability content with students more skeptical about such content. This article offers a constructivist approach to setting the stage for students engaging macromarketing and sustainability content for the first time. Embracing the paradox of managerial macromarketing and integrating experiential learning highlight this approach.

ABSTRACT. Published banks of multiple-choice examination questions are ubiquitous. Many of the banks classify the questions into three levels of difficulty. The accuracy o those difficulty classifications, though, has been only sparsely investigated. This study assesses the accuracy of those classifications for a question bank accompanying a widely adopted retailing management textbook. The research employs a recently introduced statistic, TaxI, and complementary analyses associated with TaxI.

ABSTRACT. Scant research attention has been given to how various competencies required by entrepreneurs to successfully start and run small and medium sized businesses are taught in enterprise and marketing curricula. Drawing from a competence-based model of entrepreneurship (Morris et al., 2013), we investigate the role of competencies in enterprise and marketing pedagogy. Using an extensive secondary data analysis of industry insights and educational offerings, we apply a mixed-methodology approach to primary data. Using a sample of UK entrepreneurs in a series of interviews and survey questionnaires, this study reveals which competencies are crucial for business establishment, its marketing, nurture, and growth. Resulting implications are relevant for theory, pedagogy, practice (entrepreneurs and marketeers), and education policy makers.

ABSTRACT. This study develops and tests a multilevel model of the relationship between business ties and firm performance across nations. Based on a sample comprising 6,085 firms from 15 countries the authors find that the impact of business ties on firm performance is highly affected by formal and informal national institutions. Business ties are very useful for performance when power distance is low. As power distance rises the business ties-performance link becomes less positive. Furthermore, the effect of business ties on performance is highly positive in countries where government decision-making effectiveness is low. However, the positive impact of business ties decreases as government decision-making effectiveness rises and is even negative under high levels of decision-making effectiveness. This study offers key new insights for scholars and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. Shared micromobility concepts, such as electric scooter sharing (ESS), are experiencing explosive growth and adoption in urban centers. An interesting subcategory with only little research attention is the closed-campus micromobility. The scientific literature is lacking in providing evident insights into consumers’ mobility behavior in closed-campus micromobility services, especially with respect to the effects of external disruptive events, such as pandemics. With particular regard to variations during different pandemic stages, this article aims to identify temporal and spatial usage patterns for a closed-campus ESS service of an urban multi-location organization in Stuttgart, Germany. Using the Protection Motivation Theory and the Fundamental Motives Framework for Consumption, the analysis of user data indicates that, in contrast to findings of preliminary studies, the pandemic do heavily affect temporal and spatial usage patterns of closed-campus ESS. The hard lockdown decreases the frequency of ESS use, but only slightly the range of motion. The mobility behavior in the weekly overview varies greatly in the different pandemic scenarios. Roundtrips, however, consistently dominate at every stage, compared to one-way trips. In addition, the study enables to characterize first consumer types of closed-campus ESS services.

ABSTRACT. It comes as no surprise that the US easily wins the competition of the world’s most popular global brands. Coca-Cola, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. However, other countries have their own source of pride such as Lego for Denmark, IKEA for Sweden, Gucci for Italy. In this research project, we examine how a brand’s performance affects a country’s reputation. Past research has examined country-of-origin effects (COE) whereby a brand from a country is perceived to be positive or negative based on a country’s reputation (Maheswaran et al. 2014). For example, several studies have documented how favorable or unfavorable evaluations of a country associated with a brand lead to corresponding favorable or unfavorable evaluations of the brand (Bonetti 2014; Gurhan-Canli and Maheswaran 2000a). In addition, past research shows that several factors such as motivational (e.g., involvement) or cognitive (i.e., mental capacity) factors moderate COE. For example, Gurhan-Canli and Maheswaran (2000b) show that the processing goal and the type of information will determine whether country of origin is used in consumer evaluations. However, despite the significant amount of research on COE, there is scarce research on the effect of brand performance on country brand reputation.

ABSTRACT. Because of cultural differences, international marketing literature commonly assumes that colors carry different meanings across cultures. However, because of biological reasons, colors also have consistent meanings across cultures. For example, because red is the color of common dangerous objects such as blood and fire for humans, red represents negative meanings for humans in different cultures. However, in some cultures (e.g., China), red entails positive social meanings. This study investigates how colors influence consumers when social meanings of a color conflict with its biological meanings. By investigating Chinese consumers’ responses to red through two experiments, the results show that social meanings are more salient than biological meanings, and thus Chinese consumers have positive rather than negative responses to red. Interestingly, the results of Study 3 show that when Chinese consumers purchase products from a firm that originates from a foreign country that they hold animosity toward, negative biological meanings that red represents may be activated to offset positive social meanings; the result is that red does not increase consumers’ purchase intention compared to other colors.

ABSTRACT. Conversational Agents (CAs) are computer programs that can generate dialogues to interact with human beings. CAs can assume physical manifestations, such as a robot, or take the format of an avatar, or can be merely embedded within a website or a smartphone application. Both text and voice-based CAs, such as Alexa and Google Home are being increasingly accepted in our daily life. However, because of the human-like conversing skills CAs manifest, they also sometimes assume a unique social role, such as emotional support and therapeutic use (e.g., “AI companion” apps Replika and Wysa). Trust plays a critical role in adoption and use of social CA products, as consumers need to be willing to share their emotions and life activities to get the social and emotional support from CAs. In this paper, we propose a theoretical model explaining consumers’ intention to use social CAs through the lens of emotional and cognitive dimensions of trust. This model was derived from a pilot study of an AI friend app called Replika. Our results indicate that building relationships with AI friends could disrupt our privacy calculus and lead us to continual usage of social CAs when our emotional trust outweighs our cognitive distrust.

ABSTRACT. This pioneering study reports the results of a pilot test of the roles of product information complexity and consumer product involvement in information overload, perceived decision confidence, satisfaction, and purchase behavior in the context of voice shopping using the Amazon Alexa digital personal assistant (DPA). Our results confirmed differential roles of cognitive and affective dimensions of consumer involvement in moderating the impact of information overload on purchase behavior. We also confirm the negative impact of information overload on perceived decision confidence and satisfaction, supporting earlier findings in different contexts. Our results offer a contribution to the emerging DPA research by identifying voice-based shopping via digital assistants as a phenomenon characterized by specific consumer information processing strategies and highlighting a need to use nuanced approaches to analyzing this phenomenon. Our findings can also be helpful to online vendors, who are increasingly exploring voice-based commerce, by suggesting ways to improve product presentations to achieve optimal sales results, and to policy makers by indicating potential regulation areas that can help protect vulnerable consumers.

ABSTRACT. Empathy is a fundamental requirement for effective communication. It expresses the capacity to care about and bond with another person at an emotional level. A salesperson’s empathic abilities are found to lead to successful selling and positively affect consumers' evaluation of the service encounter. Artificial intelligence-based voice assistants (VAs) such as Amazon Alexa increasingly assist purchase decisions and exhibit empathic behavior. Assuming the role of a personal shopper, VAs can partially replace traditional forms of customer-salesperson interactions. However, little is known about ‘how’ and ‘when’ consumers' affective responses towards an empathic VA influence decision-making outcomes. We design a 2 (VA empathy level: standard vs. high) x 2 (buyer type: individual vs. family) between-subject and individual-session experiment. Using structural equations modelling (N=386), we demonstrate an increase in consumers' perceptions, beliefs, and behavioral intentions when Alexa shows empathic responses during actual voice shopping. Our model explicates the bases of consumer's beliefs towards VAs in terms of functional (usefulness), relational (trust), and social-emotional (empathy) attributes and predicts three behavioral outcomes: intention to adopt as a delegated agent/decision aid and acceptance of product recommendations. Findings show that positive consumers' social-emotional responses to empathic VAs (social presence, empathy, emotional trust) hold constant in social settings.

ABSTRACT. Despite technological advancements and research into text-based (e.g. chatbots) and voice-based (e.g. voice assistants), literature remains in its infancy and it is imperative that research investigates how such technologies adapt to the ever-shifting customer needs. the authors propose that, to advance understanding in this area, voice and text-based voice-assistants (VAs) should be examined alongside each other with the expectation that, despite inherent benefits and limitations explored throughout literature, the sensory mode of communication will result in a different level of willingness to disclose personal information. Findings of the study advance theoretical understanding into the role of vulnerability within consumers’ minds when interacting with VAs through different modalities. Vulnerability extends understanding into the privacy-trust debate that has been widely addressed in literature as it takes into account how modality effects initial perceptions and pre-disposition of the communication mode and the human-likeness of such interactions. The findings also advances practitioner understanding into what modalities could be used for varying consumer needs across the consumer decision-making journey. Follow-up studies will further investigate the mediating role of perceived vulnerability and trust as well the scope of the effect, testing the moderating role of the conversational style (functional vs social).

ABSTRACT. Purpose: To frame B2B sales digitalization through technology by means of contemporary indicators of sales performance in services firms. Methodology/Approach: Based on a questionnaire survey and deductive approach. A total of 389 questionnaires out of 732 were returned, generating a response rate of 53.1%. Findings: Reports an extended framework of salesforce performance indicators based on contemporary indicators, such as skill, motivation, role perception, aptitude, organizational and environmental issues and adding digitalization through technology, which has acquired a high relevance recently. Research implications: Reveals the importance of the digitalization era and technology as a key indicator and broadens the validity and reliability of findings reported in previous studies, and demonstrates their relevance and applicability to services firms that have rarely been assessed in terms of salesforce performance indicators. Provides opportunities for future studies. Practical implications: The research offers firms guidance on non-technological and digitalization factors to take into account for improving sales performance. Originality: Makes a twofold contribution to existing theory and previous studies of salesforce performance indicators, by confirming main areas of non-technological and digitalization salesforce performance indicators, based on thirteen dimensions.

ABSTRACT. This research introduces and examines the emergent Service Provider Guided Consumer Milestone Journey; a consumer journey previously unexamined in marketing theory and research. Consumer milestone journeys are not only pervasive, but arguably one of the most meaningful types of journeys consumers undertake. For these types of journeys, service providers often have complex and fraught roles as they help consumers navigate multiple milestones while also evaluating and sometimes delaying or terminating their progress. Within the context of amateur boxing, we investigate the service provider as both co-creator and evaluator of the consumer’s milestone progress and ultimately, their continuation on the consumption path. As boxing has potential for serious physical harm if consumers are not appropriately screened and prepared, we empirically interrogate the role of the service provider in a market mediated platform for consumer physical violence. We uncover the complex ways aggressive emotions are perceived, embraced, and collectively governed to create therapeutic outcomes. This research contributes to understanding the emotion work of service providers of high-risk consumer milestone journeys by considering both the complex guide and gatekeeper role, and the intricacies of their position and servicescape for managing risk, violence and customer relations to produce therapeutic and potentially transformative outcomes.

ABSTRACT. Service reliability has been defined as “performing the service dependably and accurately” (Berry and Parasuraman 1991, p. 15). It may be argued that this definition is double-barreled, as it combines an element of dependability and a minimum level of quality at the same time. Sparse empirical research has evaluated service reliability from a customer’s point of view, and, to our knowledge, no prior research has evaluated service reliability and service excellence in the same study. This study aims to determine if service reliability and service excellence can be distinguished by customers, and what role each plays in predicting a customer’s likelihood to recommend. We operationalize service excellence as having four components: interpersonal, technical, administrative, and environmental dimensions (Dagger, Sweeney and Johnson 2007). Using data from 48,760 surveys from previously hospitalized patients, we show that customers differentiate reliability from dimensions of service excellence. However, regression analyses and two-way means comparisons show that reliability is the most heavily weighted service dimension. This changes, however, when the service excellence dimensions are aggregated, demonstrating that reliability and excellence both matter to customers. Implications for theory and service professionals are offered based on our findings.

ABSTRACT. There exists a vast literature on developing and designing scale measurements use in conducting marketing and consumer behavior academic research. Yet questions continue to be raised concerning the actual quality and relevancy of many of the scales designs in capturing quality data for investigating and testing proposed relationships between constructs of interest. This special session narrows its focus on identifying and discussing a variety of fundamental, underlying scale design elements which create different problematic scaling issues, designs, and practices that negatively impact researchers’ efforts of capturing high quality and relevant data. A panel of scale measurement expert researchers’ break down the fundamental, underlying elements needed to enhance the construction of solid scale measurements. The session encourages audience questions and participation as a means of driving the discussion. The ensuing discussions of these fundamental scale elements should provide clearer insight and understanding of the impact of correctly applying the scaling elements to achieve (or enhance) the capturing of high quality data through the development and use of appropriate scale designs.

ABSTRACT. How do entrepreneurs become the innovators of tomorrow? This question has received growing attention from marketing scholars for decades (Roy et al. 2004). Especially for start-ups, radical innovation can be an important success factor that drives their growth (Luca et al. 2021). It is also one of the core instruments of start-ups to compete with other start-ups as well as established corporates – making it crucial to understand (Baumol 2002). Entrepreneurs can create these innovations by leveraging their human capital such as prior experience, education or knowledge (Marvel and Lumpkin 2007).

However, we still have limited knowledge and see mixed results with regards to the interplay of human capital and radical innovation in start-ups on a micro-level (Shan et al. 2016). By drawing on the resource-based theory and by illustrating the contextual factors of prior founding experience and education of founder’s parents we fill the research gaps. We show that these factors affect the performance of radical innovation.

Our results extend the resource-based view in a marketing context by exploring how family influences the innovativeness of entrepreneurs. Moreover, we enrich the stream of emerging market research by adding essential insights on enabling factors for radical innovativeness in South America.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to explore the relationship between marketing and sustainability in companies by assessing the nature of the involvement of the marketing function in sustainability practices.

An exploratory study was deployed by interviewing the representatives of 10 companies and analyzing the sustainability reports of these companies. Purposive criterion sampling was applied to select companies which were guaranteed to be implementing sustainability practices and reporting on them.

One of the main contributions of this research is that it demonstrates that the marketing function gets involved with sustainability in the condition that consumers are affected by it or concerned with it. This contribution to the literature will open the path to further research on the evolving nature of the marketing function within corporates.

Furthermore, the findings of this study augment current literature on understanding the relationship between CSR and sustainability. This study showcases how CSR is evolving and shifting with the advent of the sustainability concept.

The case studies in this research demonstrate that the SDGs can be integrated into the core strategies of businesses and showcases different methods of implementing this, thus giving flexibility and a broad range of applications to other companies looking to follow suit.

ABSTRACT. Makeshifting is a social practice whereby consumers bypass market-mediated offerings to directly design and produce their own products by reusing materials, parts or objects at hand. Our study investigates this understudied, yet widespread, consumption practice thriving in many emerging markets. We adopted practice theory as our main theoretical approach, and conducted a netnographic study immersing ourselves in multiple online platforms where the practice was shared and discussed among consumers. Our research findings unpack an understudied practice form—disruptive—where disruption occurs either in the object materiality, altering its functionality, or in the process, developing new competences. Overall, our study offers an in-depth reflection on sustainable consumption and its implications for public policies.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates whether, how and under what conditions psychic distance affects managers’ decisions regarding international marketing adaptation strategies. Drawing on the construal level theory, we develop a model that suggests promotion orientation and cognitive style as the boundary conditions, and construal level mindset as the underlying mediating mechanism of this effect. Using an experimental vignette study with 233 export managers from originating from analytic (Greece) and holistic (Taiwan) cognitive style markets we find that psychic distance has a significant positive effect on price adaptation, but that this effect is attenuated among managers with a more holistic cognitive style. Results further reveal that the positive effect of psychic distance becomes weaker when managers are characterized by higher promotion orientation and confirm that construal level mindset mediates the effect of psychic distance on adaptation decisions. The article contributes to the international marketing literature by uncovering boundary conditions and an underlying mechanism for the effects of psychic distance and provides managerial implications for international managers.

ABSTRACT. Over the last decade, social media platforms have been amongst the most polarizing settings, especially with the emergence of an increasing number of polarizing social media influencers (SMIs). This research explores the effectiveness of using polarizing influencers for brand-related communications. Using both experiments and real-world data from Instagram, this research investigates how polarizing SMIs such as Kim Kardashian trigger consumers’ defensive motivated reasoning and subsequent engagement with SMIs’ posts. The results of our two experimental design studies suggest that consumers, when evaluating a polarizing (vs. non-polarizing) SMI’s argument, engage more in defensive motivated reasoning which, in turn, leads to higher engagement with a polarizing SMI’s brand-post. The second experiment’s results suggest that the observed effect of polarizing SMIs is stronger for individuals low (vs. high) in need for closure. Additionally, our analysis on 23441 Instagram influencers’ posts confirms a higher engagement rate for polarizing (vs. non-polarizing) SMIs and further suggests that this effect is stronger for the mega influencers and celebrities than for less popular SMIs. The findings of this study suggest that the presence of disagreement among social media users over polarizing SMIs is an opportunity for marketing practitioners to increase their influencer marketing effectiveness.

ABSTRACT. Most studies dealing with influencer Marketing have focused on the content published on Instagram, the motives for using Instagram, the antecedents of consumer interaction in a brand's official Instagram account or the effects of the brand generated content characteristics on the actual consumer behavior . However, the question of which influencer characteristics are likely to generate positive reactions towards the brand remains under-studied. In this research, we investigate the impact of SMI perceived homophily and underdog effects on consumers’ perceived playfulness, trust, perceived message quality and brand purchase intentions. Results confirm that both underdog and homophily influence playfulness, trust, message quality which in turns impact purchase intentions.

ABSTRACT. In our study, we explore how video and text characteristics in influencer marketing campaigns can affect consumer engagement (in the form of liking and commenting) and, thus, eWOM. Our analysis of 2096 videos from 1093 influencers in partnership with 178 brands provides several findings. First, we find video characteristics such as saturation and visual variance to be positively associated with engagement. Second, we find greater human presence in videos (i.e., the average share of the screen that is covered by humans) to increase engagement. Third, we find that there is no statistically significant impact of emotional facial expressions on engagement. Fourth, we find that emotional post descriptions are positively associated with engagement. Lastly, we find that whether the promoted product/service is predominantly hedonic or utilitarian moderates some of the mentioned relationships. For example, the positive impact of emotional post descriptions and human coverage on engagement is stronger when the subject product/service is predominantly hedonic instead of predominantly utilitarian. Drawing on an interplay of theories, such as emotional contagion theory and heuristics-systematic model of information processing, we disentangle how specific post characteristics affect eWOM and offer advice to marketers seeking to increase their return on eWOM efforts with influencer marketing.

ABSTRACT. This study is focused on the novel concept of virtual influencers (VI). VI is defined as a digitally created individual who collaborates with several brands as endorsers through various social media. Created as fictitious computer-generated images with features, characteristics, and identity just like humans, VIs engage consumers at any time and are able to post content frequently. The current research presents a two study design aimed to better understand why consumers engage VIs and what effect heuristics have on consumer outcomes such as attitude toward the VI and brand attachment. Specifically, this research explores what motivates consumers to follow VIs (Study 1), what heuristics are accessed when thinking about VIs (Study 1), and what effect does heuristic cueing has on attitudes toward VIs and brand attachment (Study 2).

ABSTRACT. Online advertisements are a promising option for both advertisers and host websites. The advanced development of technology allows advertisers to design high-personalized advertisements in order to capture consumers’ attention online. This study investigates the effects of the product and the brand ad personalization on attention, according to four experimental conditions: full personalization (same product and same brand); product personalization (same product and different brand); brand personalization (different product and same brand), and the control condition (different product and different brand). Results show that the ad personalized according to the product capture more attention (time to first fixation, fixation duration, number of fixations and number of entries) than the full-personalized ad. That is, consumers would be more attracted by the product personalization as only the product was relevant to their needs.

ABSTRACT. In modern society, people are under increasing time pressure as their lives are getting busier than ever. Under constant time pressure, people are sacrificing their health. Past research has documented numerous evidences for a negative correlation between lack of time and unhealthy diet. Research examining the psychological mechanism underlying this correlation is lacking. This research shows that when consumers are under time pressure for eating, they are more prone to choose unhealthy food. This choice is driven by an over-generalization of a “fast meal = fast food” intuition. The intuition is building on the fast preparation nature of fast food. However, consumers over-generalize shorter preparation to “fast eating” and fast food to unhealthy food. As a result, consumers falsely believe that unhealthy food is faster to eat and more suitable for a fast meal. Two field studies and three lab experiments provide convergent support for the proposed effect.

ABSTRACT. Although still a very uncommon dietary practice in the West, entomophagy is increasingly mentioned as a solution to limited food resources. The purpose of the present study is to identify advertising levers that could help children to adopt this practice. The results show that children distinguish between attractive, pleasant and potentially useful insects on the one hand and those that are annoying and dangerous on the other. The cooking procedure and the appearance of the dish play an important role in acceptance. Results point out that ads aiming to promote this new practice could opt for both utilitarian (fun, educational, gustatory) and symbolic (the consumption experience, the challenge involved) orientations. This first study on the communication levers mobilized to promote entomophagy among children could be followed by considering what could be included on the packaging, an important vector of communication with this target.

ABSTRACT. More than one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are due to the way food is produced, processed, and packaged (Crippa et al. 2021). Carbon footprint labels have been introduced as a means to signal the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product during its life cycle (Thøgersen and Nielsen 2016). In practice, however, product labels are rarely placed in isolation, and carbon footprint information competes with other types of information on a product's packaging (e.g., nutritional information). As first manufacturers consider introducing carbon footprint labels (e.g., Unilever), the question arises of how carbon footprint information will interact with existing product labels. Drawing on cue consistency and cue diagnosticity theory, this study investigates the interaction effects between positive and negative carbon footprint labels and different types of nutritional information on the quality perception of a food product. We further examine how a consumer's self-interest values influence the diagnosticity of nutritional information (intrinsic benefit) versus carbon footprint information (external benefit) in the evaluation context. With our study, we seek to extend cue diagnosticity theory to the context of carbon footprint labeled products to provide novel insights and guidance to manufacturers who consider adopting carbon footprint labeling.

ABSTRACT. Micromobility solutions play a major role in the current transformation of mobility in urban areas. It is not yet clarified conclusively which opportunities of micromobility will make a real contribution to more environmentally sustainable mobility and which will not. In particular, the significance of e-scooters is controversial. Our study uses the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate the perception of potential users of -scooters and shared bikes to draw conclusions about possible differences in the perception of different mobility solutions. We use PLS-SEM and MGA to analyze two different groups: Lime (an e-scooter service provider) and Call a Bike (a bike sharing provider). Looking at Call a Bike the Environmental Concern we found strong effects to mediators that can influence intention to use, like Attitude Toward Using and Subjective Norms. We can state that in this group Environmental Concern really matters. It seems that bikes are perceived environmentally friendlier than e-scooters, what leads to a better Attitude Toward Using the solution. For Lime these effects are reversed. Higher Environmental Concern results in a more negative Attitude Toward Using and a worse evaluation by the social environment. Regarding Intention to Use, both solutions are only affected by Perceived Behavioral Control.

ABSTRACT. Predictive model evaluation and comparison are essential for theory development and validation. However, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method provides limited methodological approaches to test and validate the predictive power of a model and compare it to other models. We present methodological extensions of the cross-validated predictive power test (CVPAT) to address this research gap. Guidelines for applying the CVPAT extensions and reporting the results are provided to help researchers demonstrate the predictive ability of their models. This research helps strengthen the practice of validating predictive models in PLS-SEM, which is essential for deriving management implications that are typically predictive in nature.

ABSTRACT. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is an essential element of marketing researchers’ methodological toolbox. During the last decade, the PLS-SEM field has undergone massive developments, raising the question whether the method’s users follow the most recent best practice guidelines when evaluating their models This paper extends Hair et al.’s (2012) seminal review by presenting the results of a new analysis of PLS-SEM use in marketing research, focusing on articles published between 2011 and 2020 in the top 30 marketing journals. We find that while researchers were more aware of the when’s and how’s of PLS-SEM use during this period, there was some delay before the adoption of model evaluation’s best practices. Based on our review results, we elucidate recommendations for future PLS-SEM use, offer guidelines for the method’s application, and identify areas of further research interest.

ABSTRACT. While entrepreneurs are a much-studied group, there is a gap in our understanding of how their environments foster entrepreneurial thinking and behaviors. To address this gap, the present study examines the role of shared space on creativity, or the development of new and useful ideas (Amabile, 1996). Rather than viewing creativity as a fixed trait, this study proposes creative thinking as a malleable state that may be influenced by external factors; i.e., shared spaces for engagement and interaction with people, programs, and places. Prior studies examining workplace creativity in the daily lives of professionals have been limited to internal factors, such as mood, job stress, and recovery (Bledow et al., 2012; Binnewies & Wörnlein, 2011; Weinberger et al. 2018). Previous studies that address how physical environments assist or hinder entrepreneurial pursuits focus on more formal environments; e.g., incubators and accelerators (e.g., Pittaway et al., 2019). This study takes a broader view to examine how environments influence venture idea generation among nascent entrepreneurs, an understanding that informs innovation and entrepreneurial marketing.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the relative efficacy of entrepreneurial marketing (EM), market orientation (MO), and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on firm performance under different conditions by investigating the moderation effects of an extensive set of environmental (i.e., market turbulence, competitive intensity, supplier power, and market growth) and organizational factors (i.e., network structure and firm size). Employing structural equation modeling to analyze data from 401 U.S.-based firms, the empirical findings suggest that EM is superior to MO and EO in improving firm performance under the following conditions: high market turbulence, high competitive intensity, and high supplier power. Moreover, EM is the best alternative for medium-size firms with low network strength (more weak ties). However, MO is superior to both EM and EO under the conditions of low market turbulence and low supplier power. It works best for large firms with high network diversity and high network strength. Finally, EO is superior to EM and MO when competitive intensity is low, and both in high and low growth markets. It is the most viable option for small firms with small and large network size, but low network diversity.

ABSTRACT. We conceptualise a framework for adopting diversification speed in digital portfolio management strategy within digital news entrepreneurship, based on the innovation diffusion and product life cycle theories. Our propositions connect diversification with speed, and cultural development of connecting research and practice in the context of technology and science-driven startups. As this research is specifically designed to apply marketing science to practice in a digital startup, data is to be collected from the verticals of a Taiwan-based digital news agency in rapid expansion seeking stability and survivability.

ABSTRACT. Many social media networks (SNSs) such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter have added a capability we call “virtual tip-jars,” which allows social media users to send monetary payments to social media influencers (SMIs) in return for SMIs valuable content creation. In this study, we seek to understand what factors motivate users to use virtual tip jars to send payments to SMIs. Through the lens of the theory of norms of reciprocity, we show that social media content that is interactive increases social media users’ intentions to reciprocate an SMI’s efforts by sending monetary payments to that influencer. In addition, we show that when users feel they have a close relationship with an SMI, they are more likely to reciprocate the SMI’s content creation efforts through monetary payments and non-monetary engagement (e.g., liking, commenting, and sharing the content). This study has implications both for social media influencers who are planning to earn money through the tip-jar feature and for the platforms that offer such a feature since they can create revenue by charging fees on the virtual tips sent to the influencers.

ABSTRACT. People often post brand selfies on social media platforms, i.e., selfies that include identifiable branded products. Brand selfies are a form of peer endorsement of particular interest to marketers owing to their ability to shape brand’s image on social media. Building on a model derived from the endorsement advertising and user-generated content (UGC) literatures, this research investigates how endorser characteristics directly as well as indirectly influence viewers’ attitudes toward brand selfies through changed endorser authenticity. As a result, four endorser characteristics from endorsement advertising literature (i.e., endorser attractiveness, endorser-viewer similarity and endorser-brand fit and endorser happiness) positively and directly relate to brand selfie attitude. By contrary, two context-specific characteristics from UGC literature (i.e., endorser conspicuous brand usage and endorser monetary-gain motive) do not have significant relationships with brand selfie attitude. Furthermore, endorser authenticity mediates the effects of endorser-viewer similarity and endorser happiness on brand selfie attitude. Previous literature in brand selfies has explored limited and fragmented factors that influence viewers’ responses. This study extends it by providing a holistic understanding that helps explain the influences of peer endorser characteristics and peer endorsement mechanism in brand selfies. The results help practitioners to choose brand selfies to repost on social media.

ABSTRACT. Marketing scholars and practitioners have accepted authenticity as a construct that holds positive value for brands. Authenticity is broadly defined as the extent to which an entity is real, genuine, or true. Most scholars conceptualize authenticity as an integral property of an object and quite often operationalize it as an agent’s perception that the object is real, genuine, or true. This research challenges this limited definition of authenticity as a property of an object. We redefine authenticity as a combination of both agent and object properties. In fact, we argue that it is only in the absence of internal motivations for authentic judgments in the agent that agents look outside of themselves for external clues in the object. Using our new definition, we show that fakeness, quite often condemned as the opposite of authenticity, can lead to authentic judgments by consumers and positive outcomes for brands and the firm. An experimental design is adopted to test hypotheses on the impact of the authenticity of social media influencers (SMIs) on brand credibility, brand engagement and purchase intention. These results will be relevant to managers and researchers as technology transforms virtual interactions with consumers and firm investments in social media marketing communications.

ABSTRACT. Marketers’ use of social media influencers to promote products, known as influencer marketing, is a widely employed and effective strategic tool (Linqia 2018). While the FTC requires that influencers disclose their commercial partnerships with brands, a recent survey of influencers finds that only 39 percent do so (Lim 2021). A likely reason for many influencers’ hesitancy to disclose is their assumption that their followers may think they [influencers] really do not like the product and are featuring it because they are only being paid—that they are not passionately authentic. Passionate authenticity refers to an influencer’s feelings of intrinsic gratification and enjoyment when publishing digital content (Audrezet et al. 2018). Nonetheless, such disclosures may have the opposite effect on a different type of authenticity—transparent authenticity. If so, disclosures may be inconsequential due to the opposing effects on the authenticity types, both of which are proposed to positively effect attitude toward the brand and the influencer, as well as purchase intention. Further, these opposing effects are also proposed to be moderated by influencer attachment strength. An online 2 x 2 between-subjects experiment that includes actual followers of a real influencer will be conducted to test the hypotheses.

ABSTRACT. This study examines how employees form their perception of the CSR performance of their employers. Based on social identity theory and uses and gratifications theory, this study examines how the use of internal and external media shapes the perceived CSR performance of employees. We propose that higher use of media will lead to a better perception of the CSR performance. In addition, CSR awareness is proposed as a mediating factor between the CSR media use and perceived CSR performance. We conducted an online survey with employees (n=959) of small- and medium-sized enterprises from different industries. Survey respondents were european middle managers (e.g., sales or procurement), as they are less prone to social desirability bias. We expect to finish the analysis of the survey results by the end of 2021. With these findings, we expect to draw several conclusions and implications, including the importance of how companies should communicate their CSR efforts to internal stakeholders (i.e., employees).

ABSTRACT. Given that interest in the CEO’s characteristics-related antecedents of firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) is growing, little is known about the relationship between a CEO’s childhood experience of natural disaster and CSR. This study demonstrates that CEOs who experienced natural disasters in their childhood are more likely to engage in CSR and that this relationship is stronger (1) when CEOs have a high level of general managerial skills and (2) when community social capital is high. Using archival data, the findings demonstrate that a CEO’s childhood exposure to natural disaster has a positive influence on the firm’s CSR performance and emphasize that the level of general managerial skills of a CEO and the level of social capital in the community moderate the effect of a CEO’s childhood experience of natural disaster on the firm’s CSR performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The objective of the present study is to expand the understanding of the role of cultural values in moderating the relationship between corporate social responsibility initiatives and consumer-brand relational outcomes such as brand identification and brand loyalty. Results of a structural equation model testing the hypothesized relationships provided support to the effect of CSR on brand identification. Brand identification was also found to increase brand loyalty while acting as a mediator between CSR and brand loyalty. Cultural values measured at the individual level, namely uncertainty avoidance and collectivism were found to negatively moderate the relationship between CSR and brand identification. These two variables were also found to positively moderate the relationship between brand identification and brand loyalty.

ABSTRACT. The present research addresses the role of grammatical type of word and its position in the text in shaping perceptions of online review usefulness. This topic belongs in an underexplored area of online reviews scholarship, specifically the role of grammar in shaping reader perceptions. Grammatical types include nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and interjections, as well as the connecting particles prepositions, conjunctions and articles. We are particularly interested in adverbs and adjectives, as both types of words qualify nouns and/or modify verbs, thus reflecting the writer’s judgments of things and actions—the type of information that arguably makes a review useful. We are also interested in interjections, which fundamentally convey emotions, as well as in pronouns. Specifically, first-person pronouns indicate immersion in the experience the reviewer is reporting on, whereas second-person pronouns may help the reviewer establish intimacy with the reader. We also acknowledge that these functions by type of word are not clear-cut, e.g. a chosen adjective conveys information but may have a strong emotional twist. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at understanding the role of grammatical type of word, and their position in the text, in the formation of review reader perceptions.

ABSTRACT. Charities often feature needy victims in their appeals and extensive donation research focuses on victim appeals. The present work proposes an alternative charity appeal that features a benefactor (e.g., a person who volunteers at the charity) and investigates when and why a benefactor appeal can be more effective than a victim appeal. Results from five studies involving both behavioral intention and real donation measures suggest that featuring a benefactor can elicit more donations than featuring a victim, and that this effect is driven by moral elevation. Moreover, this effect is moderated by charity recipients’ group membership (e.g., American vs. African). Further, not all benefactor appeals are effective. Featuring an out-group benefactor (an African volunteer), though it elicits similar levels of moral elevation as featuring an in-group benefactor (an American volunteer), leads to lower donations. We find that this is because the benefactor’s group membership influences the extent to which the evoked feeling drives donors’ decision process, such that an in-group (vs. out-group) benefactor appeal facilitates donors’ feeling-based (vs. reasoning-based) decision process, resulting in higher donations.

ABSTRACT. This study provides a broad overview of literary theory and criticism in advertising and discusses its relevance in understanding advertisements as textual narratives while also suggesting some avenues for future research. We do so by framing it through the work of Barbara Stern, who helped to introduce literary criticism into the marketing discipline. We then explain our thoughts concerning why the renewed interest in a literary approach to advertising is essential. Our approach integrates Stern’s work with other emerging theories in English and consumer literature, synthesizing a variety of insights into an overview of “what has been done” within the discipline, offering a brief glimpse into the dynamic theoretical approaches wielded by others.

ABSTRACT. During the past 30 years, many studies in marketing discipline have addressed the issue of agencies’ opportunistic behavior, while there is less academic attention on how principals take advantage of agencies. This work-in-progress paper aims to examine the perceptions and solutions towards opportunistic behavior in the advertising industry from a bilateral perspective by interviewing marketers and advertising agents in South Africa. This qualitative study will look into the factors that can affect and control opportunistic behavior and the interaction among these factors, proposing strategic actions to improve the principal-agency relationship.

ABSTRACT. This session orchestrates participation from startup entrepreneurs, investors, academics and policy makers. Innovative startups can adopt marketing science in their decision-making processes, provide data to academics, and inspire them to co-develop new theories and models contributing to the elevation and influence of the discipline (Key et al. 2021), putting marketing science to practice (Steenkamp, 2021) and solve managerial problems (Lilien, 2011). Four presentations are made by startup founders operating in Artificial Intelligence, Financial Tech, Digital News and Advertising Tech, using marketing science to their advantage.

ABSTRACT. This study examines whether the geographic centrality (the spatial concentration of people and firms in large metropolitan areas) can contribute to the explaining of heterogeneity in advertising spending decisions. This investigation takes a novel approach to explaining firm-level advertising intensity and in doing so establishes empirical support for the relevance of geographic location to the firm’s advertising decisions. It also adds to the limited location-based considerations in marketing for the relationship between location and firm-level advertising competition.

ABSTRACT. Since the seminal papers of Prahalad and Ramaswamy, and Vargo and Lusch (2004), value co-creation has engendered a wide stream of literature, especially theoretical papers. Although value co-creation is presented as a radical departure for marketing practice, we have had limited knowledge about value co-creation in managers’ domain so far, especially for those operating on B to C markets. Notably, we have little insight into the factors fostering the emergence of value co-creation within firms. Furthermore, we ignore whether value co-creation has a positive effect on firms’ performance. Based on two surveys of French managers involved in B to C marketing (123 junior managers and 120 senior managers), our research conceptualizes value co-creation as a unique marketing practice, encompassing value-in-use and co-production components. After analysis through PLS-SEM, our results unveil the role of firm-level antecedents related to organizational culture - adhocracy and proactive market orientation. In addition, our analysis identifies a significant positive effect of value co-creation practice on firms’ performance. Thus, our research encourages managers to engage into value co-creation in case this practice lines up with their organization’s culture.

ABSTRACT. Online Brand Communities (OBCs) are communities where the members can interact with other members, or with the brand through the Internet without temporal and spatial barriers. Some firms have successfully created firm-initiated online brand communities to connect with the customers directly. These firms use online brand communities to build customer relationships, enhance brand image, and increase customer interactions with the brands. Using the dynamic capability perspective, we propose a novel construct - online brand community management capability (OBCMC) - and theorize its effect on firm performance. We conceptualize online brand community management capability as a dynamic capability that can be developed through technology infrastructure, brand communication, and customer service. We propose that online brand community management capability leads to increased firm growth, customer engagement, and firm reputation. We also propose that the impact of OBCMC on the firm performance is affected by B2B or B2C focus of business offerings. This research tries to show how well-managed OBCs can be used by firms to connect with customers and reach business goals.

ABSTRACT. Most studies that aim to explain or predict firm success explicitly incorporate product category as one of the success drivers often by using a set of dummy variables to control for profitability differences across categories. In this paper, we explore the possibility that the impact of the category type is firm-specific as it depends on firm-specific domain knowledge and expertise. We use the motion picture industry as a backdrop and explore the overall impact of the genre as well as the impact of the genre for individual studios. Results suggest that even though there are some commonalities in ROI for various movie types, the studio-genre combination is significantly more informative in predicting performance.

ABSTRACT. Based on a sample of YouTube videos about COVID-19 (N=831), this research examined their contents by doing text analysis of their transcripts to see if narrative-based persuasion is more effective in influencing viewer engagement or argument-based persuasion. Results suggest that narrative-based persuasion is more effective in generating user engagement.

ABSTRACT. Given the ever-increasing product return rates, constituting a risk for firm profitability, retailers interest in online technologies enabling virtual product try-on has been spiking (Petersen and Kumar 2009). These technologies provide a means to overcome the limitations of product fit uncertainty, an area still short of evidence regarding signals (Gallino and Moreno 2018). This study examines how usage of augmented reality-based virtual try-ons impacts short- and long-term consumer purchase behavior, especially returns and customer satisfaction. Initial results help us validate that interactive technologies outperform web-based product presentations and can function as signals to reduce product fit uncertainty, reducing the probability of product returns and increasing customer satisfaction. To assess our hypothesized relationships, we leverage a unique, multi-year customer transaction dataset comprising almost 22 million purchases, obtained from a European e-commerce retailer. We are among the firsts to draw on Expectation-Disconfirmation theory and Signaling theory to empirically analyze the influence of try-on technology usage on purchasing behavior. Marketers can gain a better understanding of a new technology that can help increase online purchasing consideration, conversions, and ultimately returns.

ABSTRACT. Music enhances consumer wellbeing. Often used as entertainment and atmospherics in various servicescapes, in the advent of COVID-19, live music experiences as the world knew it changed for the foreseeable future. In this article, we investigate the way young consumers engage with virtual live music events (VLME) during COVID-19, by using logistic regression modeling. We present factors that determine the probability to attend a VLME during COVID-19, to attend a VLME post-COVID-19, and to have a willingness to pay (WTP) for a VLME. In the Internet age, VLME could represent a post-COVID opportunity for the cultural sector, if consumers consider it as a real option, and not only a second choice in a pandemic context.

ABSTRACT. Few studies have considered the consumer’s view on digital addiction and whether they are concerned about the potential of becoming addicted, and if so, where they place the responsibility in terms of curbing addiction. As consumers are shifting from innocence to an informed understanding of their addiction, they too are engaging in behavior that seeks to curtail their addictive tendencies. But where does the responsibility lie? Should consumers continually disengage from technology and move further away from digital devices, should marketers intentionally alter the design of their strategies that have largely enhanced addiction, or should legislation enforce changes to reduce digital addiction? It is imperative to gain an understanding of the roles of both marketers and consumers in driving digital addiction, not to place blame, but to establish responsibilities for addressing these concerns in the future. The purpose of this research is to assess where the responsibility for digital addiction rests from the perspective of the consumer.

ABSTRACT. The development of ideas and knowledge creation in research require one of three, or a collaboration therein, of scholastic modes: logic, empirics, and the literature. Of these, the latter is perhaps one of the least understood and studied. Moreover, there is an ongoing call for the marketing discipline to increase in relevance and impact in such a way to further our discipline and re-orient how marketing scholars create knowledge that spans beyond our own expertise to impact other business knowledge and practitioners. To this end, this special session looks closely and critically at previously taken for granted aspects of how impact and relevance is created. Specifically, what is the marketing literature and how is it used to increase impact as a foundation for theory and conceptual work in the discipline of marketing; how does theoretical and conceptual research impact others business disciplines and the practice of marketing; and how can marketing research studies / papers be restructured to increase impact through parsimony, clarity, and application? It is the hope of the expert panel to present novel insight and facilitate discussion that will help seasoned and new scholars increase the value and reach of their intellectual contribution to the marketing discipline.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates whether the social media marketing (SMM) activities is helpful in terms of increasing the purchase intention of technology products and services. For this purpose, this research explores this relationship by examining the customers’ purchase behaviour of 5G mobile service bundle in the Chinese market. We applied The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) concepts as driving forces for the purchase intention of 5G mobile service bundle to test whether SMM activities improve the overall customer behaviour outcome. This study also tries to demonstrate the relationship between the driving force and purchase intention. Moreover, the function of the driving force as the mediator between SMM activities and purchase intention is tested. For the result, we analyse questionnaires from 765 participators. The result shows that SMM activities has direct negative relationship with purchase intention. However, it has positive influence on purchase intention through UTAUT and CBBE. The findings have critical implications for design and delivering of the content in the company’s SMM activities for technology products and service. The research outcomes can also be used by companies to help them engage their consumers through company-generate contents.

ABSTRACT. While most brands fully rely on marketing teams to take care of their communications on owned media, some of them have embraced a practice called social media takeover, during which the responsibility of managing brands’ accounts is delegated to a selected employee. The purpose of the present research is to advance the existing understanding about the role of different communication sources (brands vs. employee) and types of communication initiatives (transactional vs. relational) in fostering parasocial interaction with brands on owned media. The outcomes of the first pre-test show that brand messages coming from employees during social media takeovers have a stronger positive influence on consumer responses than traditional brand communications. The future studies will further examine the impact of communication source on development of parasocial interaction as well as the role of different social media communication initiatives in it. The research also points to several practical implications.

ABSTRACT. Atmospherics have been widely researched, consisting of design, ambient, and social factors. Surprisingly, we have yet to understand how social influences decision-making in retailing. This gap motivates the current research. Specifically, the research investigates: Whether and under which conditions social media salience increases purchase intentions of goods/services useful for impression management? Two experiments address this question. Both experiments primed public self-awareness by making social media salient (e.g., social media logo, etc.) and revealed that high self-awareness increased purchase intentions of identity-enhancing products and services (study 1, 2). Additionally, low (high) positive affective intensity attenuates (intensifies) this effect (study 2). High arousal positive emotions mediate these effects (study 1, 2). The results, first, provide implications that salience of social media in the servicescapes activates positively directed impression management, affecting responses toward the retailer. Second, we reveal a broader effect of how social media ubiquity shapes people’s behaviors. Third, in contrast to prior research, which reveals perceived surveillance negatively influencing consumer responses, the findings offer evidence that perceived surveillance can increase consumers’ wellbeing (e.g., gym subscriptions) and affects their purchases. We reveal at least one moderator to this effect (i.e., high arousal positive emotions) and delineate future research plans.

ABSTRACT. The soaring popularity of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, has changed service business surroundings. This change is largely driven by the fact that social media, as effective information tools, increase information symmetry between service providers and customers. This study investigates the association of Internet retailers’ service marketing/operations performance with social media use. Findings show that retailers’ order procurement performance is a significant predictor of their social media use. This finding indicates a clear connection between Internet retailers’ online marketing performance and their use of social media. However, a retailer’s order fulfillment performance is not associated with social media use. Previous research on information economic theory has highlighted the positive effect of information asymmetry on sellers’ opportunistic behavior. However, our research highlights information symmetry and finds empirical evidence that service performance becomes a critical issue in the enhanced information symmetric retail context.

ABSTRACT. Intra-organizational power and extra-organizational relationship are two central topics in corporate governance. This study connects the two topics by examining the role of power asymmetry between Marketing and Sales (M&S) departments in managing shareholder value. Using a panel of 6,140 firm-year of 592 public listed firms over 2000 to 2017, the authors find that the impact of power asymmetry toward marketing/sales on firm performance is contingent on a set of power balancers. The authors suggest that firms may use the power balancers to help marketing and sales departments in achieving collective goals.

ABSTRACT. Innovation is an important individual factor to prepare Business to Business (B2B) salespeople to cocreate solutions (i.e., a complex mix of products and services) with customers. Additionally, collaboration between different functions of the organization is important for the success of the solution cocreation. The primary purpose of this research is to explore how a well-accepted innovation method, Design Thinking (DT), can predict the readiness of B2B salespeople to cocreate solutions. Specifically, this research tests the relationship between some of the individual level DT factors (i.e., abductive reasoning, gestalt view and tolerance of ambiguity and failure) and their interaction with an organizational level DT factor (i.e., interdisciplinary collaboration) in predicting the readiness of solution selling. Results show that abductive reasoning, gestalt view and interdisciplinary collaboration have a significant positive relationship with solution cocreation readiness of salespeople whereas tolerance of ambiguity and failure does not have a significant relationship with solution selling readiness. Furthermore, interdisciplinary collaboration level lowers the positive relationship between abductive reasoning and solution selling readiness whereas interdisciplinary collaboration exacerbates the positive relationship between gestalt view and solution selling readiness.

ABSTRACT. Based on the sales enablement lens, the sales functions’ cross-functional relationships are integral to ensuring organization-wide support for optimal sales productivity. To that end, this research studies the relationship between cross-functional social capital and organizational identification (OI). Prior research has highlighted the importance of cross-functional ties for multiple organizational outcomes. However, the literature has (1) largely focused on marketing and R&D, overlooking the key role of the sales function in these cross-functional relationships, and (2) adopted a cross-sectional approach. This study takes a social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998) view to study the social ties among sales, marketing, and R&D in young ventures. We study how this internal social capital relates to employees’ identification with the organization. Moreover, acknowledging the dynamic nature of both OI and internal social capital, we conduct a longitudinal study of how the relationship evolves over time, and amidst exogenous shocks (e.g., COVID-19). The proposed relationships will be tested using four waves of data from 280 participants nested in 103 young firms in the technology sector.

ABSTRACT. The emergence of cause-related marketing (CRM) in the 1970s has drawn substantial scholarly attention rendering the existing discourse exhaustive and almost non-navigable. Towards this, our study aims to synthesize the existing CRM literature using bibliometric and thematic analyses. The data was retrieved from the Scopus database in September 2021, resulting in 421 articles for final analysis. We analyzed the performance of research constituents (i.e., authors, articles, countries, and sources) and evaluated their adherence to Lotka’s Law, Bradford’s Law and Matthew effect. Subsequently, we used the three-field plot to visualize the interaction between keywords, countries and sources. Finally, we delineated the conceptual and intellectual structure of CRM scholarship through thematic analysis, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence analysis. Subsequently, we identified seven themes and explained each theme while highlighting the prominent gaps in each cluster. By analyzing ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘who’ and ‘when’, our study consolidates and portrays the current state of CRM literature, providing avenues for future research works.

ABSTRACT. This study applies sentiment and semantic network analyses on online reviews big data with the help of machine learning methods to reveal the roots of negative hotel guest sentiment. A methodological framework is suggested to identify the reasons for low guests' satisfaction with the hotel services. The suggested approach is a practical solution for the valuable customer insights mining from big data sets containing online reviews. It builds on the accumulated approaches suggested by previous researches by (a) introducing the VADER NLP sentiment analysis framework in hospitality settings; (b) applying reliable logistic regression procedure to extract singular hotel service elements generating guest frustration; and (c) by implementing semantic network analysis to procure more precise guest insights grounded in the context of the poorly operated hotel services. The findings stemming from future research based on the methodology will allow managers to detect and revamp poorly operated hotel services, and further lead to improvements in hotel guest satisfaction and, ultimately, in the business performance of hospitality organizations.

ABSTRACT. This study focuses on the influence of leadership on supporters' behavioral and attitudinal outcomes. That is, the influence that sports leaders exert on supporters’ non-transactional behavior (word-of-mouth and club support), loyalty and resistance to negative information In this study we propose a model to test the relationships among the following constructs: leader image, supporter trust in the leader; governance of the soccer club, supporter attitude towards the soccer club; Word of mouth towards the club; support for the club; loyalty and supporter resistance to negative information about the club. We developed a quantitative study among supporters of the Premier League Soccer clubs in Portugal. Based on a sample of 1833 respondents our findings confirm a that the leader’s image and governance in the club affect trust in the leader, the trust in the leader impacts on supporter's attitude and, in turn, the supporter's attitude has an effect on non-transactional behaviors (word-of-mouth and support for the club), loyalty and resistance of the supporter to negative information in relation to the club. The paper presents theoretical and practical implications.

ABSTRACT. Recent pre-COVID-19 pandemic years have seen accelerated increase in experience-related services such as travelling, attending amusement parks, attending events, going to movies, or engaging in creative activities like singing in choirs, playing in bands, etc. However, with the spread of the deadly virus nations restricted mass gatherings limiting group leisure activities. Music activities, especially ones engaging a large number of people such as signing in choirs or playing in bands, were particularly strongly impacted by public health restrictions. These days, as nations across the globe fight the deadly virus and its variants with the help of vaccines, the restrictions are slowly removed. The question, however, is, will pre-pandemic activities involving

large numbers of people (e.g., choirs) regain their place in the list of leisure activities in post- pandemic world. To answer this question, the current study examines the motivations and

perceived benefits of university-community membership to evaluate the practices and strategies for chorister recruitment and retention opportunities in the pre- and post-pandemic environment.

ABSTRACT. Tourism consumption has been outlined as having a positive effect on consumers’ psychological-wellbeing. Taking time away for vacation experiences is an integral part of human life for many consumers, however, due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, tourism abruptly halted. A vacation transports one’s self to an alternative world, physically. In parallel, Virtual-Reality (VR) transports one’s self to an alternative world, virtually. While parallel’s can be drawn, we have no understanding on the influence of a VR vacation experience in comparison to a physical tourism experience on consumers’ wellbeing. Accordingly, through a longitudinal experimental study and drawing on the theoretical lens of Effort-Recovery-Theory, this research aims to uncover the effect of VR vacation experiences on individuals’ psychological-wellbeing, the potential lasting effects of a VR vacation experience over the passage of time, the lasting effects of VR vacation experiences in comparison to a physical tourism experience and the effects of a combined physical and VR vacation experience. This research will shed light on the role of VR vacations on consumers’ psychological wellbeing while also providing tourism-boards, tourism-firms and policymakers practical implications on the use of VR as part of digital-tourism-consumption.

ABSTRACT. Over the last twenty years, researchers in the fields of tourism and marketing have proposed a number of destination branding frameworks to help national governments and tourism boards more effectively brand and market their countries, regions and cities as destinations (Balakrishnan, 2009). Most of these frameworks have recommended vision drivers or themes- such as services, heritage and physical infrastructure- that must be tailored to the unique characteristics of a location. They aim to help policymakers navigate some of the challenges inherent in branding a location to attract visitors. This study argues that many of these frameworks need to be updated to include a new dimension or vision driver that considers the growing “digital” needs of business travelers, digital nomads and traditional travelers wishing to keep abreast of their work through safe and secure access to the Internet. The authors of this study call this vision driver “digital infrastructure.”

ABSTRACT. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge about the role of AI Orientation and AI Capabilities and use on driving organizational performance outcomes. The study is a first effort to explore the impact of AI Orientation on the development of AI Capabilities, the impact of IP on AI Orientation and the moderating role of Adaptive Capabilities on the relationship between IP, AIO and AIC. Finally, the moderating role of AI Climate and AI Perceived Usefulness on the relationship between AIC and AIU will provide fruitful conclusions on the mechanisms that drive the transformation of AI capabilities and use into organizational efficiency.

ABSTRACT. One of the most significant conveniences that distinguish online shopping from offline shopping is the filtering service. Ecommerce filters facilitate the user’s experience and make product searches more accurate and easier, leading to a higher conversion rate. The current research, however, raises questions about the universal benefits of these filtering tools. This research demonstrates that while filtering services can be beneficial for consumers who have specific goals in their minds to find their ideal products easily, they can simultaneously undermine shoppers’ enjoyment, leading to lowered intentions to purchase/revisit websites. The current research investigates when and why filtering services can undermine shoppers’ enjoyment and subsequent online behaviors. Based on the findings, the current research suggests how online retailers can tailor their filtering services strategically to maximize both corporate profit and consumer experience.

ABSTRACT. As social media influencers (SMIs) grow their audiences they become a powerful marketing tool for organizations. Two ways that companies integrate SMIs into their marketing strategy is through sponsored content and affiliate links. These two forms of content sponsorship have thus far been grouped together under the umbrella term “influencer sponsorship.” This research contributes to the influencer marketing literature by establishing a foundation for discussing the use of active and passive advertising via sponsored and affiliate posts by social media influencers. It then explores the effect that such marketing has on specific forms of authenticity as well as downstream consumer perceptions and attitudes.

ABSTRACT. Connected stores are not a new subject and many researches have been made on that topic. However, many of them are focused on the impact of technology on customer experience but few examines the impact on the customer/salesperson dyad. This work attempts to give an answer by analyzing the technological instrument, not on a dyadic vision, but on a triadic or tripolar vision. This means that we focus on the communication mediated by the use of the technological instrument by both salesperson and customer. By using the triad of activity situations (Rabardel, 1995), we wish to focus on activity situations mediated by the use of the instrument. To do this, we suggest to adapt the TTF model (task-fit technology, Goodhue & Thompson, 1995), which highlights the importance of the fit between technologies and the tasks performed by users, and the impact on performance.

ABSTRACT. The essay focuses on how changing the logo to one that depicts social distancing affected individuals’ attitudes towards both the brand and towards social distancing as well as behavioral outcomes. A 2 (logo: conventional vs. novel) * 2 (product involvement: high vs. low) multivariate analysis of variance (MANCOVA) was run on the dependent variables (i.e., attitude toward the brand, attitude toward social distancing guidelines, following social distancing, purchase intention, logo evaluation and WOM). The results indicate a significant moderating effect of product involvement: individuals who were exposed to a novel logo for a low-involvement product demonstrated improved purchase intentions, attitudes towards the brand, word-of-mouth, and intentions to follow social distancing guidelines.

ABSTRACT. Humankind is collectively experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic crisis (CPC), one of the most harrowing crises in modern history. There is a slew of publications in academic and practitioner sources studying various aspects of CPC effects. Policies differ – from strict lockdowns (India) to liberal protocols (Sweden) – but overall stress severely alters subjective well-being (SWB) across societies. Recent publications address mostly industry-specific or local crises, but to our knowledge, none of them yet offers a comprehensive model describing CPC effects on consumer behavior and allowing academics and practitioners to understand and predict future consumption preferences. We posit that the relationship among various aspects of life and intended future consumption is mediated by mental health reflecting consumers’ SWB. This research aims to fill this lacuna addressing a key research question: To what extent do mental states mediate the impact of CPC on post-crisis consumption intentions? In this research, we introduced three new constructs and developed a conceptual model integrating the new and traditional concepts. Then, we surveyed consumers from Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands and the USA to find their post-pandemic consumption intentions for products and services. The results are tale-telling and carry implications for marketing theory and managerial decision-making.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the influence of loneliness on consumer decision making. Loneliness felt during COVID lockdown measures has led to lasting effects on significant portions of the population. Different from the effect of social exclusion, which has received abundant attention from past research, tacit loneliness results in consumers' need for structure and control. Three experiments validate the hypotheses and showcase the findings in consumer decision making contexts.